Chapter 9
“Well,” Lisa said, letting the two old men inside, “he’s been living here for eleven years. Can’t imagine him being able to keep up an act for THAT long.”
Ford gave her a very weird look.
“ELEVEN YEARS?!” He yelled. “That’s not possible. How? He….How? That’s just not possible…”
“What’s not possible?” Lisa asked him.
“He,” Ford looked unsure of how to explain it. “He broke into our dimension from the Nightmare Realm last year, tried to completely break down all of reality, but he got defeated. We thought he had died.”
“I have so many questions I probably DON’T want the answers to,” Lisa said.
“You really don’t,” Stan said.
“You said he’s been here eleven years,” Ford said, Lisa nodded in response. “How did he happen to start living with you?”
“I found him out next to the house, half buried in snow and about frozen to death,” she explained. “He doesn’t have another home and obviously has no clue how to take care of himself, so he stayed.”
At that moment, the conversation got interrupted by a quiet tapping at one of the windows. The three of them turned to see an owl pecking impatiently at the windowpane.
“I should probably let it in,” Lisa said, getting up, going to the window, and opening it.
The owl immediately flew in and dropped a letter on her head before leaving again. Lisa carefully unfolded the parchment and began to read, her eyes widening the further she got down the page.
“He..I..No..This..,” Lisa couldn’t seem to string together a coherent sentence after reading whatever was in the letter. “I’m sorry, you two seem like very nice people, but I have to go now.”
“What’s in that letter?" Ford asked.
“He attacked another student,” Lisa said, sounding more like she was talking to herself than to Ford. “I have to get to the school to talk to the headmaster and one of the other student’s parents. Now, please leave, I have to hurry.”
Ford didn’t look shocked about the revelation that Bill had attacked someone, he just looked incredibly mad.
“We’re coming,” he announced.
Lisa was about to argue but decided against it after noticing Ford’s gun.
Bill was still locked in the small room he had been left in. One of the ghosts would come in every few minutes to make sure he wasn’t plotting escape and a small, ugly creature he had been informed was called a house-elf, came in a couple of times with food for him. He was very bored, though. After a while, Snape opened his door and brought him back to Dumbledore’s office, where Lisa and Reginald’s parents were waiting. Reginald’s mother looked close to tears, her husband had one arm around her shoulders, rubbing up and down on her arm in a comforting manner, and Lisa looked shocked and angry. Bill quickly averted his gaze from her and went back to staring at Reginald’s parents.
“Professor Dumbledore,” Snape said, softly as always. “I’ve brought the…..student.”
He spat the last word out like it was an insult. Dumbledore looked up from his desk.
“Thank you, Severus,” he said. “Bill, come here.”
Bill reluctantly approached the table.
“Why did you do it?” Dumbledore said simply.
Bill’s yellow color immediately started glitching weirdly, looking like it had been replaced by TV static, and he seemed completely incapable of any sort of response. After around 30 seconds, he went back to normal and looked up at Dumbledore.
“What was the question?” he asked.
“Do you not remember?” Dumbledore asked. “Why did you attack Reginald Barkly?”
Bill looked completely stumped by that. After a few seconds, he simply shrugged.
“How’s that thing going to be punished?” Reginald’s mother asked from where she was sitting, her voice shaking and sounding like she was on the verge of tears.
Bill, very offended by being called ‘that thing’, looked towards Lisa hoping for some sort of defense, only for her to look away from and ignore him.
“Bill,” Dumbledore said, getting the small triangle’s attention back on him. “Come up on the table.”
Feeling very confused and nervous, Bill climbed up onto the table Dumbledore was sitting at.
“Give me your right arm,” Dumbledore directed.
Bill reluctantly held his arm up towards him. Dumbledore picked up a small, silver, bracelet from another part of the table, tapped it with his wand while muttering a spell, and then put it around Bill’s wrist. The bracelet immediately shrunk until it fit perfectly around the small triangle’s wrist.
“There,” Dumbledore said, and then turned to Reginald’s parents. “As long as he wears this bracelet, his magical powers will be suppressed, and that should prevent another incident like yesterday’s.”
Bill started freaking out and trying to remove the bracelet after Dumbledore explained it’s purpose and almost fell off the table while wrestling with it, but was ultimately unable to get it off, he stopped, breathing heavily, and glared at Dumbledore in pure rage.
“Also, Lisa, come here,” Dumbledore said.
Lisa looked like she wanted to shrink down in her seat and pretend she’d never met Bill in her life, but she got up and went over to Dumbledore’s desk anyway.
“Here, take this,” he said, and gave her a small piece of parchment. “It has the location and times for some appointments at Saint Mungo’s psychiatric ward for Bill. They say they have someone there who can help him.”
Bill, still trying to struggle with the bracelet, glared with even more anger, somehow, at Dumbledore.
“I DON’T NEED THAT,” he shrieked, voice even shriller than usual, eye wide. “I’M COMPLETELY FINE!” he turned to Lisa, “DON’T LET HIM SEND ME THERE! PLEASE! I DON’T NEED HELP!”
“Bill, please hush,” Lisa said, looking at him for the first time since he’d entered the room. “You’re not fine.”
The look he gave her can only be described as pure betrayal. He did, however, hush.
The first appointment was a couple of days after that, and Lisa went with him to make sure he actually showed up for it. She led him to the door number written on the parchment and then waited outside while he went in.
Bill went inside very unwillingly, still fiddling with the bracelet and hoping to find some way to remove it. The room was fairly small and only had a table and a couple of chairs inside. It was painted completely in white, and the furniture was light grey. Bill slowly dragged his feet until he was seated on top of the table, staring down at the space between his feet in annoyance. After several minutes, the door opened, and a very tall figure entered. He could very quickly tell that whoever it was definitely wasn’t human, for one thing, they were much taller than any human he’d seen, for another thing, he’s never seen a human with purple skin, and finally, the thing had way too many eyes, Bill counted seven of them. The figure walked smoothly over to the table and sat down in the chair facing him. Bill stared at their face in confusion, it was confusing enough to figure out which eye to focus on with two of ‘em, what the heck was he supposed to with seven of the things?
“Cipher,” the figure said in a calm voice. “It has been a long time.”
“I’ve never met you before?” Bill said.
“Oh, of course, the amnesia,” she said, sounding skeptical. “I’d forgotten about that. I’m Jheselbraum, Oracle of the AXOLOTL.”
“Nice to meet ya, I suppose,” Bill said, reaching one of his hands forward for a handshake.
Jheselbraum very calmly ignored the offered hand. Bill let it flop back to the tabletop, a bit disappointed.
“Well, Cipher, the AXOLOTL seems to think I can help you,” Jheselbraum said to him.
Bill immediately decided not to answer questions she might decide to start asking.
“Why did you attack Reginald Barkly?” she said.
She always sounded very calm, it was almost disconcerting to Bill, it made him want to rant and rale at her to try to get some other emotion out of her.
“Cipher, answer me,” she said.
Bill remained silent, staring blankly at his feet.
“Really? Silence? The old you would have been gloating about his accomplishments way before now,” she said, still calm, but with a hint of annoyance creeping in.
Again, Bill responded with silence.
“How about a game of chess?” Jheselbraum asked him.
He immediately perked up and looked her in the eyes.
“Yes, I’d love to play one,” he said happily.
A few minutes later, the board had been set up and the game had begun. They talked while playing. Jheselbraum would ask questions, Bill would answer them, sometimes with questions of his own.
It went that way for the rest of the appointment’s time. Bill wasn’t sure what about that was supposed to help him ‘get better’, but he had fun playing chess.
Alistair and Robert were not having a good time. Rumors were flying everywhere that they had helped Bill attack Reginald, and all the other students had started avoiding them because of it. During this time, Alistair kept seeing the attack every time he dreamed, the unhinged glee of Bill’s laughter creeping into his head and making it impossible for him to concentrate on anything. Robert had discovered the jars of deer teeth that Bill had mentioned inside the small triangle’s chest of school supplies and ended up in the hospital wing after a curse that had been placed on them compelled him to eat them. The only two students who willingly spent time with them were the Pines twins, but the focus of their conversations always turned to Bill and how sorry they were that Alistair and Robert had to be tricked by him.
Dipper and Mabel both felt horrible for Robert and Alistair. The rest of the students had started shunning them for something Bill had done, and there was nothing fair or right in that, so Dipper and Mabel were going to make sure the two of them knew that at least a few of the students were on their side. They told Robert and Alistair about Bill’s history of tricking people into helping him, hoping that might help them somehow.
Ford was back to constantly planning how to kill Bill. Stan tried to get him to sleep sometimes but was usually unsuccessful. Many sleepless nights were spent with Ford spending all his time looking back through his old journals, hoping to find something he had missed.
Lisa was worried. It hadn’t been hard to notice that there was something wrong with Bill mentally, but she had been hoping he would never get bad enough to harm someone.
Reginald was still alive, barely.