Michael, not Mickey. That was another mark, then. He’d filled up almost twenty-two pages now, for that one. Michael, not Mickey. Nineteen pages for “Mike”, sixteen for “Mikey”, twelve for “Weirdo”, and so on and so forth, plus about twenty pages for miscellaneous names that he kept meaning to count out – but to be honest he’d really rather not linger on all of the more creative ones he had been given over the years.

Michael (not Moron) liked to keep track of his names. He had a lot of them. He liked to keep track of a lot of things, really. Just to make sure… well.

With a single smooth, well-practiced action, he drew the Names notebook (the worn blue one with water damage) out of his backpack and carefully flipped through it to the right page. Michael (not Psycho) slipped a pen from the diverse selection in his pocket and carefully, determinedly drew another line, perfectly straight, perfectly parallel. Four in a row now. That was nice. One more and he would cross it off as a set of five. Ms. Rhinehardt was still staring. She was new.

The dead mouse in the kitchen was also new, and even though no one else seemed to care, Michael (not Ghost-Kisser – that was a newer one, but of course seeing ghosts must mean that you saw girl ghosts which must mean that you kissed them and didn’t you know ghost cooties will kill you, stupid?) was worried that the poor thing would end up haunting the mouse trap because eventually they would check it and find it there and they would throw it out and then the little creature would be stuck in a garbage dump for the rest of eternity and Michael (not Mutant) was quite sure that no one, dead or alive, deserved that. But he also didn’t really want to go near it. Supernatural things were… well, to say the least, unnerving.

Still, the dead deserved just as much as the living, right? The dead, the undead, the little people who lived between the concrete and the insulation, the man-thing who hid behind the trees, they all deserved just as much – didn’t they? It had been ages since the Transcendence, ages since people realized that all of those things were real, that they were there, that sometimes you could see them. But then sometimes you couldn’t see them. And when other people couldn’t see things, Michael (not Freak) could. And of course you would think that they’d believe him.

Yes sure whatever everyone knows there’s something in the lake but Michael says he saw it and no one else did so of course he’s crazy. Yeah fine okay ghosts are real and all that but Michael talks to them (shakily, carefully, simultaneously curious and so very, very afraid) so of course he’s a freak of nature. Half the time he couldn’t even tell if they just didn’t believe him or if – and this might even be worse – they believed every word. Maybe they were afraid of him. He thought about people sometimes. One of his notebooks (the green-and-purple one) was for Things I Made Other People Feel, and there were maybe a page and a half of tallies for “fear”. He spooked people sometimes. And they would take it out on him with fists and shoves and of course names. Sure the kids in town made fun of him for other stuff, too – not having parents was a common source of torment – but even the other kids in the Shack would tease, and poke, and prod, and punch, and laugh in his face and whisper behind his back and oh he had an entire notebook (the white one Camilla had doodled on last spring when his back was turned) full of those whispers.

He hated people sometimes.

But he was occupied, for the most part. He read a lot, studied hard – he was almost top of the class in paranormal studies, and he was looking forward to two years from now when he’d be fourteen and in high school and could take demonology. It was terrifying. It was all so terrifying. But it was fascinating, and he wanted to understand; he wanted to know. And in the meantime, he read. He waited. He carefully, cautiously watched the things that only he could see, and desperately prayed that it was all real because yes it was horrible, yes it was nightmarish, but wouldn’t it be so, so much worse if it was also… fake?

That’s why everything had to be counted. Everything he saw or heard or did, every time he felt something or went somewhere, it all had to be marked down, remembered, because then he had proof. Sure it wasn’t detailed, just a tally mark, but each mark was a memory and when he looked at them he could remember all those times and he could be sure that it was real, just for a little while. Michael (not Wacko) could look at those marks, and he could be sure he wasn’t crazy. Everyone knew there were gnomes in the forest. But only he knew about the wraiths, the wisps, the things that never quite crossed over to the real world, never quite made themselves known, preferring to hide and watch and just observe – so of course he’d observe them right back. It was the source of most of his nightmares, yes. But… what else could he do?

Ms. Rhinehardt had stopped staring and had gone back to ignoring him like the adults usually did. Michael wasn’t surprised, and he didn’t particularly mind. It had been a rather long day. Jimmy, a little tow-headed boy a couple years younger than him with big happy eyes and sparkling teeth, had gone to live with a foster family in Washington, and while Michael couldn’t exactly say that they’d been friends, the kid had never said anything particularly mean to him, so he was sad to see him go.

He quietly stared at Jimmy’s tally mark (third row down, fifth from the left) in his Sort-of Nice People notebook (the tiny red one with the floral pattern). It barely had a quarter of a page filled, and it was really quite small to begin with. Michael wished that he had more friends – heck, any friends would be nice. But all those supernatural creatures – even the ones he dared to talk to – didn’t want to be his friends. He was unnatural, strange, weird, bizarre, and all of that.

“Well,” Michael muttered, a common word of choice when he was beginning a conversation with himself. “Unnatural, strange, weird, bizarre. That’s nothing new.”

Rarely was anything new, to be honest. A new kid came to the Shack (no one could completely remember why they all called the orphanage that, since it was large, well-kept, and quite sturdy, but there must have been a reason) maybe once every couple of months, and someone left about as often. But the day-to-day routine was quite mundane. Michael had occasionally entertained the thought of running away, but who’s to say the rest of the world would be any different? Assuming… assuming the best, assuming he wasn’t insane, then he must be one of those people that the books sometimes talked about, that the internet sometimes had rumors about: a medium, a person able to connect with the supernatural on their own level, to look into other planes of existence or speak to ghosts or even tap into some modicum of psychic abilities. But… well, those people were rare. Really, really rare. And after all, what if he wasn’t? What if… what if…

Michael glanced at his backpack and the assortment of colorful notebooks within, each one containing page after page of tally marks – page after page of memories, of proof…

What if he really was imagining it all?

What if the reason no one was seeing those things was because there was nothing to see?

What if he really was crazy? What if it was all in his mind? What if he wasn’t standing with one foot over the border that the Transcendence had blurred, but just running circles inside his own head, his eyes putting shadows where there were none, ghosts where there was smoke, floating people where there were trees?

Wait, was that…? Um. Huh.

Michael turned abruptly away from the teachers. They’d been giving a lecture to his class outdoors on different kinds of soil and geology or something like that, but he was far more interested in the mysterious shape that he’d caught out of the corner of his eye. There had been that familiar, itchy feeling of being watched, so he’d glanced over, and there – right there – what was that…?

It looked like a person, maybe. A grown-up, probably, but it was hard to tell since its feet weren’t on the ground, but crossed in midair. It was floating, but it didn’t look like a ghost. It was all black, though there was maybe a glint of gold here and there, and it seemed to be wearing some sort of hat. Michael grabbed his Things I Saw notebook (the yellow one with no back cover) with one hand, keeping his eye on the figure, and flipped through it, mentally running through everything he’d ever seen as the tallied pages flew under his fingers. Nothing. This creature was new.

And then, just as quickly as it had caught his eye, it was gone. That was fine. Supernatural creatures didn’t seem to like him much. It didn’t matter anyway – all he wanted to do was note it down and remember that it was real; He couldn’t expect every floating shadow to want to be his friend any more than he could expect it of the normal human kids. And frankly, he wouldn’t want it to be anyways. That thing, whatever it was, was creepy. Though wasn’t that just the pot calling the kettle black?

“Unnatural, strange,” he whispered, drawing a single perfectly-straight line in the yellow notebook. “Weird, bizarre.”

Michael (not Creep) tuned his ears back into the lecture. It was a good day. He learned some things about aquifers. And the next day, a new boy came to the Shack and took Jimmy’s bunk. His hair was brown, but not curly like Michael’s, and his eyes weren’t blue, and he didn’t write with his left hand and he wasn’t allergic to peanut butter and he thought foxes were awesomer than raccoons, so they really didn’t have anything in common.

Except… Dipper said he could see things.

———————————————————

Mildly terrified to submit a thing, but… hey, might as well. Based off of this ask, just wanted to play with the character a bit. Possibly a prologue to a longer fic – I want to write it, but… time…

I’ve put way too much thought into this, but the title comes from straif, a letter of the Ogham alphabet. I have headcanoned that, as Dipper and Michael become friends, that they develop a secret code of sorts between them using Ogham because everyone assumes it’s just a bunch of Michael’s tally marks. They both love codes and puzzles, after all. Straif in particular looks like a set of five tallies, and so it lent its name here.
Okay. Okay, I’m a linguistics/orthography nerd. But I would like to point out that the first letter in ALCOR (ᚐᚇᚄᚑᚏ) as written in Ogham is ailm. The pine or fir tree. Tell me that’s not interesting.

(Also, I presume it would take quite a deal to get Dipper to be corporeal for long enough to pass as human and become Michael’s friend. Now who would have done that…)

…Shutting up now.

– Sam (tardistoaster@gmail.com)