FIC: Metaphysical (Supernatural AU, Gen, R, 1/8)
Previous Part | Master Post
PRESENT DAY
Stanford University, 1905
Sam had never known anyone quite like Jessica Moore, which he was selfishly glad for because there was just one of her and she was his, as much as Jessica Moore was anybody's.
"You'll be missed soon," he said, glancing at his open window, cool night air fluttering the curtains and blowing a pile of papers askew. "Your new housemate has a wagging tongue."
"Do you think she's going to be picking my lock and checking my bed now?" said Jess breezily, putting her tweezers down and pushing her magnifying spectacles up onto her forehead. "I've not been missed before and I'll not be missed now. We have until just before dawn, as always."
Till dawn was still never quite long enough.
"Do you hear something?" he said, cocking his ear towards the sitting room. "I didn't forget to lock my doors, did I?"
"Sam Winchester forgetting to do something? Perish the thought," she said, reaching for her tinted goggles. "Pass me the soldering rod, would you?"
"I wish you wouldn't set things on fire in my bedroom," he said, kissing her hair before listening for the indistinct noise again, this time following it to the bedroom door. Three years and change at Stanford and still he was attuned to the smallest disturbance; some things you just never shook. Some things you didn't try too hard to.
"I thought you liked it when things got hot in here," she called at his back as he poked his head into the darkened sitting room. It was a moment before the barely discernable shadow by the door caught his attention, but less than a moment after that for him to stalk across the room and reach for the intruder.
He might have left the life, but he hadn't forgotten anything. Neither, apparently, had the intruder. Three moves had Sam on his back. A fourth had the intruder on his.
"Dean?" said Sam, as the fluttering of the curtains and the fortuitous movement of a cloud settled a beam of moonlight directly on his brother's face. Dean just grinned up at him and, in Sam's moment of weakness, pushed him off.
"Little brother," he said, getting to his feet and brushing imaginary dirt off his trousers. "It's good to see you again."
"Dean, what are you doing here?" he hissed, rolling right to his feet again, his eyes darting to the open bedroom door. "You can't be here."
"Since when can't I pay my little brother a visit?" said Dean, his gaze following Sam's to the bedroom door. "Did I interrupt something, is that it?"
"Nothing you'd be interested in," said Sam, moving to block his way. But it was a gesture he knew was in vain from the moment he made it; not only would it just rouse Dean's curiosity, but their audible discussion was bound to rouse Jess's.
When she appeared in the doorway it was stockingfoot and disheveled, her hair unbound and trailing over her shoulders. It was as Sam was accustomed to seeing her, and everything that would give Dean the wrong impression.
"You've got to love a town where the whores make house calls."
"Dean! She's a student at the university with me."
"And she's unlaced in your rooms at this time of night?" said Dean. "Congratulations, Sammy, I didn't know you had it in you."
"Dean!"
"It's all right, Sam," she said coolly, stepping forward and offering Dean her hand. "I'm Jessica."
"Unusual," said Dean, kissing her knuckles in mock Shakespearean style.
"My father was a actor."
"Of course," said Dean. "So you are disreputable."
"Not yet, but I hope to be one day," she said, taking her hand back. "Sam, you didn't tell me your brother piloted an airship. I don't think you need to worry about the cold of altitude here, though, Dean."
Dean grinned as though he'd just been paid a compliment, which Sam supposed it had been, for someone like Dean. The coat was a leather affair, comfortably worn from long use, straps and buckles binding it to his body. Sam hadn't seen it before, but nonetheless it seemed very much the sort of thing his brother would wear, impractical as it might be.
"If it's a life of disrepute you want, I'm the Winchester brother you're better off knowing," he said.
"If you're going to be this way, I'll thank you to wait another three years to visit," said Sam. "Would Dad let you get away with that?"
"Dad's not here," said Dean, "which is why I am." He paused to glance at Jess again, standing there shamelessly and watching their conversation. "Is there somewhere we can go talk?"
"I fail to see what we have to talk about," said Sam. "It's far from the first time he's gone off in his own. What saloon did you last see him in? I suggest you start there and work your way outwards through the alleys."
"Sam," said Dean, a familiar warning note in his voice. "We're going to talk about this. The only thing you get to decide is whether we do it here or someplace else."
"And you wonder why I chose to come west in the first place," said Sam tightly. He could wait for Dean to give in, but he knew from long experience that those battles of wills could be endless. "Jess, if you'll excuse us?"
"Don't rouse your landlady," was the only stipulation she made, "unless you want to explain my presence in your rooms."
"We'll be quiet," he promised her. "Won't we, Dean?"
"Quiet as church mice," Dean said, flashing her an all-too-familiar grin. She wasn't buying what he was selling, but she nodded and disappeared back into Sam's bedroom to get back to her work.
"Pretty girl," said Dean. "How did you managed to coax her inside?"
"This is not a conversation I care to have with you," said Sam, showing him the door. "Let's take a walk."
Before Sam could get him outside, Dean ran his thumb over the square of cloth at the corner of Sam's window, a perfectly formed pentacle on a red background.
"I guess old habits die hard, huh, Sammy?"
"Leave it alone, Dean," said Sam and, grabbing his coat, led Dean outside into the night.
: : :
"There are easier ways to get in touch with me than breaking into my home," said Sam, walking Dean down the deserted street. "I didn't even know you knew where I lived."
"Of course I knew, Sam," said Dean, hands in his pockets and kicking up dust. "I've always known."
"And yet for three years you stayed away."
"Technically you've only been living here for two years this past June," Dean pointed out. "You lived your first year in the residences." Sam remained silent, not feeling that kind of pedantry deserved a response. "Look, you wanted some distance between you and Dad, and I gave it to you."
"Until now," said Sam. "Why are you really here?"
"I told you, Sam, Dad's gone missing. We were supposed to rendezvous in Salem a week ago but he never showed up. I waited a couple of days to see if there would be a message, but there was nothing. Not a word."
"He might've been held up somewhere," said Sam. "It's happened before."
"He always sends word, Sam, you know he does. He knows how to use the telegraph office as well as anyone, and he knew where we were supposed to meet. Something's happened. I need your help with this one."
"I'm out, Dean," said Sam. "I'm done with that life. This, what you see here, this is my life now."
"Yeah, you're so out you keep a hunters' symbol in your window?" said Dean. "No, I know you. You're not out, you've just been dormant. But it's springtime now, Sammy, and it's time to sprout and face the sunshine."
"First of all, it's October," said Sam, "and secondly... did you just compare hunting to sunshine?"
"It was a metaphor, Sam. You know literature was never my strong suit," said Dean. "Will you help me? Just this once?"
Sam pinched his lips together and sighed through his nose, staring off into the distance while they walked aimlessly through the street. "I'm an advanced student, Dean. My absence will be noticed."
"So get your lady friend to make your excuses and apologies," said Dean. "Have you forgotten how to fake an illness? We've both done it dozens of times."
"For a day or two, perhaps," said Sam.
"A week," said Dean. "Give me a week. I'll have you back for Halloween, you have my word."
"A week," repeated Sam, "and not an hour more. I suppose I could feign a family emergency."
"This is a family emergency," said Dean. "Your father is missing, Sam. I'd think any professor worth his salt would accept that as a reason for your absence."
"Except that they might ask questions I don't care to answer," said Sam.
"Then tell them he's a drunk, just like you tell everyone else," said Dean. "A week, Sam. You and me together again, we'll figure this one out. We have to."
Sam wasn't sure what had Dean all fired up about this; it certainly wasn't the first time John Winchester had vanished from their lives only to reappear again without a word of explanation. But Dean had always been the closer to their father of the two of them and he clearly was distraught, in his way. No matter what had transpired three years ago, Dean was still his brother. He was very nearly the only family Sam had.
"Where did he go missing?"
"He was checking out Jericho station, just north of here," said Dean, grinning and clapping him on the shoulder. "Something about a ghost train; I can check my notes. It'll be just like old times, Sammy."
"That's what I'm afraid of," said Sam. "The train through San Francisco leaves at seven. We'll want to get some sleep soon if we want to be on it."
"Forget the train, I've got something better than that," said Dean, leading him up past the carriages on the street to what was clearly - and deservedly - his pride and joy.
"You have an automobile?"
"I made an automobile," Dean corrected him. "Took me six months of blood, sweat and tears up at Uncle Bobby's workshop, but it surpasses anything else on the road."
Sam had never seen anything quite like it. Far from the other automobiles he'd seen in the city, this one could be completely encased from the elements with overlapping flaps of leather and hinged pieces of brass, with a solid plate of glass at the front. A great copper boiler sat in the back surrounded by a series of mechanisms that Sam could not even begin to decipher.
"It's only got two seats," he said, for lack of an ability to articulate any other thoughts he had about the machine.
"Anything more than two is just excessive," said Dean. "The rest of the space is for storage."
"Dad always said to travel light and fast," said Sam.
"Dad never had anything like this to travel the country in," said Dean, patting his creation fondly. "Hard to strap much more than a scattergun and a pistol to the side of a horse."
"Though God knows we tried," said Sam, finally offering him a smile. "Well, it's nice to see you've been putting your free time to good use. How's Uncle Bobby?"
"Same as he's always been," said Dean. If he knew that Sam and Bobby had exchanged a few letters over the years, he didn't mention it. "Want to take it for a spin?"
"Something tells me it'll wake up the whole neighborhood," said Sam. "We'll want to wait till morning all the same."
"Forget that, my baby runs like a whisper. You just want to see your Jessica again before we go," said Dean, then held up a hand before Sam could say a word. "No, no need to explain. If there's one thing I understand, it's women."
Privately Sam thought if there was one thing Dean didn't understand, it was women, but he didn't say a word about it. Instead he just turned them about and started heading back to the boarding house he called home.
Somehow he'd always known that hunting wasn't a life he'd be able to leave behind forever. It had just caught up with him sooner than he thought it would.
: : :
Jessica saw them off, her eyes still a little fiery after her late night conversation with Sam when he returned with Dean in tow. While she had never demanded much of him, other than respect, she wasn't the least bit pleased that he wouldn't explain to her why he had to go.
"I left the window unlatched," said Sam, giving her a brotherly kiss on the cheek as Dean started up his road steamer and lingered by the door as the pressure built up. "For whenever you need to use it."
"That's why I like you best," she said, kissing his cheek in return. "Be safe, Sam. This place wouldn't be the same without you."
"As safe as I can be," he said, the only real promise he could make her under the circumstances. "I'll be back in a week at most."
"You'd better," she said, as Dean motioned for Sam to throw his sack in the storage hold and get in. "Good-bye, Sam. Good-bye, Dean."
"Be seeing you around, Good Looking," said Dean, winking at her and ducking into the vehicle before she could respond.
Sam just gave her a helpless look and joined him.
"Could you be any more inappropriate?"
"Without even breaking a sweat," said Dean, "but I was on my best behavior because she's your lady friend. It just figures you'd find someone like that."
"Like what, exactly?" said Sam. "Smart? Strong? Independent?"
"If that's what you want to call it," said Dean, navigating them down the middle of the street, narrowly missing spooking a couple of horses. "If you're so fond of her, why isn't there a ring on her finger?"
"Because she doesn't want to be known as one of those girls who went to college just to find someone to marry," said Sam. "Not that you're one to talk about fingers and rings. At least I'm not paying for it."
"You always pay for it, Sam," said Dean. "One way or another. Did I teach you nothing?"
"Nothing I found useful at Stanford," Sam lied, putting an end to that particular conversation. He wanted Dean to know about Jess, and vice versa, because he wanted a life that enveloped both of them, but not like this. Not with Dean starting off argumentative and Jess starting off affronted.
"Come on, Sam, does it have to be like this?" said Dean, picking up speed while the road was good.
"She means a lot to me, Dean," said Sam. "You could respect that. I would think you'd be the first person to encourage me to find myself an unorthodox girl."
"Hey, if you want to abandon your family forever and set up house with your Jessica, that's your business," said Dean.
Sam was silent for a few moments, a tactic that worked more often with his university friends when he wanted to move on from a particular topic. They knew Sam was closed-mouthed about many things, particularly to do with his family, and respected that boundary. (So long as they didn't have a few drinks in them, but even then they knew enough to tread carefully.) Dean had no such respect, or maybe he just didn't recognize the boundaries. They'd never really had any before.
"She is your Jess, isn't she? You're not going to try to tell me that you're attempting to remain friends while you're still students."
Sam let his silence linger a little longer, then let out a soft sigh. "She wouldn't call herself that," he said. "She'd probably sooner call me her Sam."
"I can't believe I missed all that," said Dean, and this, an answer instead of a stubborn silence, seemed to finally satisfy him. "So what do you think of my Tessa?"
"Your who?" said Sam.
"My Tessa," said Dean, patting his steering wheel. "My automobile, Sammy. What do you think of her? She's a beauty."
"I thought I was used to seeing automobiles in the city, but I've never seen one quite like this," he said. "She's got quite a bit of power."
"More than anyone else on the road," said Dean, "not that you see that many automobiles in the places I drive her. Or roads, for that matter. But Tessa, she can handle anything. I made sure of that."
"You don't miss your horse?"
"She's getting fat in Caleb's pasture," said Dean, "and seems all the happier for it. Sure, she could go a few places Tessa can't go, and she cornered better, I'll tell you that much, but Tessa's got some tricks up her sleeve that'll knock your boots off, Sammy."
"Well, let's save those for another day," he said. "I'd like to make it to Jericho Station alive, if it's all the same to you."
"Well then sit tight, because even at Tessa's speed, we still have a long way to go."
Jericho Station, California
There was a shoddy little hotel, a dry goods store, a blacksmith and a saloon: that was all that had risen from the earth around Jericho Station. It was a familiar sight, not from Sam's recent life but from all the years before it. Palo Alto was barely more than the college it held, but it was still substantially more than this.
"I've got our old army tent," said Dean, leaning on his automobile door as he surveyed the scene, "unless you want to brave that hotel."
"I think that's the sort of place where you can expect to find people vying for your company, and the dollars in your pocket," said Sam, but still, it was a hotel and thus likely better than the tent Dean carried, no matter what the clientele. "We'll have to ask if Dad's been here, of course."
"You let me worry about that," said Dean. "You don't even know what he looks like anymore. You can make yourself useful asking around the station to see if this legend people have written home about is something they made up."
"What does he look like, then?" said Sam, not letting Dean get away with just that. "If I don't know what he looks like, then what does he look like now?"
"You gave him a lot of gray when you took off, Sam."
"Me? I turned him gray?" sputtered Sam. "After everything we've seen and done, you think you can put that on me?"
"I just call it like I see it, Sam," he said, leaning against Tessa and crossing his arms. "He looks older than you remember him. But then again, so do you."
"That's because you remember the boy I used to be," said Sam sharply. "Shall I meet you back here?"
"Meet me in the saloon," said Dean, completely missing the way Sam bristled at the orders. "We'll both have some questions to ask there, and I could sure use a beer after that drive." And, it remained unsaid, after this conversation.
Sam tipped his hat at him and headed round the front side of the station, not looking back. If John Winchester had aged over the past three years, it was on his own head and not on Sam's.
"Excuse me," he said, at the first gentleman he passed, but was soundly ignored. Not entirely unsurprisingly; he didn't always have the time for strangers stopping him in public places either. Better to target the people who were here regularly, and to that end went straight for the station guard. In his experience, in a lightly trafficked station like this one, they were usually eager for a chat.
"Excuse me," he said. "I was wondering about something, and was hoping you might be able to sate my curiosity."
"Well, I'll do what I can," he said, "but unless it's to do with the railroad, I'm not sure I can help you."
"Oh, it does," Sam assured him. "This might seem like a silly question, but I received a letter from my sister some time ago, after she and her husband traveled through to Portland, and she mentioned that she heard the strangest tale of a ghost train that travels through this station."
"Oh, that old story," he said. "You're certainly not the first chap to come through here asking about it. Rubbish if you ask me, though."
"So there is a tale to be told then," said Sam. "My sister's so fanciful sometimes, I thought she might've made it all up."
"Oh no, that tale's been told around here ever since they laid these tracks down," he said. "Some kind of ghost locomotive that whisks its way through here in the dead of night. I never paid the stories much mind."
"So you've never seen it then," said Sam. "Not that I put much stock in those stories either, of course, but my sister was so insistent."
"Neither hide nor hair," he said. "People like to tell stories, that's all it is. A place isn't interesting till it's had a ghost story told about it. Not that this place could be made interesting even with one."
"Well, thank you for your time," said Sam, tipping his hat to him and turning away.
"That's not how the story goes, you know."
He hadn't realized that anyone had been listening in on their conversation, but he wasn't sorry that someone had been. A young lady, as it turned out, looking somewhat intrigued - or was it amused? - by what she'd overheard.
"You've heard the story then?" he said. "My sister was vague on the details but she seemed quite taken with it."
"He's got it all wrong," she said, motioning for Sam to walk with her, "though stories always do get bent and twisted with the retelling. Come, sit with me while I wait for the train and I'll tell it to you properly."
"Of course," he said, joining her on the bench in front of the grand station clock, poised at five minutes to six. "You're here on your own?"
"My brother will be joining me," she said briskly, seeming quite unconcerned about his absence. "He had to take a later train - business, you understand - but he'll be here any time now. Perhaps even on this next one."
"Of course," said Sam, removing his hat. "And the ghost story?"
"It's not a ghost train at all," she said, "though the ghost does come late at night, so at least people are still telling that part right. It's a ghost on a train - the overnight from San Francisco. It's very specific."
"Fascinating," said Sam. "I'd love to hear all the details. When I next visit my sister, I'm sure she'd be absolutely rapt. Not that I should be encouraging her fascination, but I feel it's my duty as her brother to indulge her whims."
"I'm sure your sister and my brother would get along famously," she said with a bright, guileless smile. "The way I heard it, it's the ghost of a young woman they call Connie - though to be fair, I've also heard her called Carrie, and even Charlie - who was killed nearby while they were constructing the railroad."
"Murdered?"
"An accident, or so they say. There are all sorts of mishaps people will call an accident when it's convenient. Now, when the mood strikes her, she'll stalk this very station and choose one unwary traveler to whisk away on the midnight train with her. Somewhere between Jericho Station and Atlas Station, whomever she's chosen vanishes forever."
"And you believe this happens?" said Sam. "Perhaps you know someone they claim it's happened to?"
"No, not at all," she said, smiling again, her lashes slightly lowered. "It's as though someone developed a recipe for the perfect story and used it to tell this tale, don't you think? Drama, revenge and vanishings. They say she always chooses someone who's traveling alone as her victim, so that not a soul notices they're missing until far too late."
"It certainly makes me reconsider traveling alone," said Sam. "And also grateful my sister was traveling with her husband, whether there's any merit to this story or not."
"Well, even if it's single travelers she's after, I'm quite certain my brother is still quite safe," she said. "He's a great bull of a man; no target for anybody, particularly not a wisp of a girl ghost."
"I don't suppose our material laws apply to the supernatural," said Sam, careful not to reveal any actual knowledge. "A wisp of a girl ghost might be more powerful than you think."
"Are you trying to frighten me?" she said with a girlish smile. "If so, you'll have to try harder than that. I have got brothers, after all."
"Not on purpose, I assure you," said Sam quickly, though he matched her smile, just for a moment. He could hear an approaching thunder behind them, then a great whistle, the sound of a train arriving on time. "I expect that's for you," he said, standing up and offering her a hand to help her up as well. "Thank you for your time--"
"Margaret," she supplied.
"Thank you for your time, Margaret. That's just the story I was looking for."
"It was my pleasure," she said. "Thank you for keeping me company while I waited for the train, Sam."
"Would you like me to stay with you until you determine whether or not your brother is on board?"
"Oh, that won't be necessary," she assured him. "I've waited for him before, and if he's not aboard then I'll wait for him again. But thank you for the offer all the same."
"As you wish," said Sam, and tipped his hat at her before getting out of the way of the platform as the train arrived at the station.
: : :
"So we've got a name," said Dean. "Sort of. Possibly. If it's not actually something else entirely, and if our girl ghost is not actually a man named Charlie. We've worked with less."
His trip to the hotel had been nearly as fruitful as Sam's to the platform, if in a different direction. He'd not only found someone to give him the location of the nearest churchyard, he also had a roughly sketched map of how to reach it. The path and location were barely more than scrawls on the slip of newsprint, but it was a treasure all the same.
"Of course, they think we're proper and God-fearing men now," said Dean, "but we're both used to that. Or has it been so long you've forgotten?"
"I haven't forgotten," said Sam. And even if he had, he'd always had stronger faith than Dean to begin with. A God-fearing man was not a difficult role for him to play. "You could have tried harder to get us a room. The hotel looked clean enough."
"Even I can't make a room exist where there wasn't one before," said Dean. "You've just gone soft, Sam. We've spent more nights on the ground than we ever did in a bed."
"That doesn't mean I have to like it," said Sam. "It's nice having a home with a bed, Dean. I'm looking forward to being back in it."
"With someone like your Jessica in it, I can't say I blame you, Sammy," said Dean, pressing the crude map into Sam's hand and reaching into his automobile for what Sam knew was going to be their home for the night. Maybe the same tent he'd been sleeping in on and off for most of his life.
"It's not as sordid as you make it out to be, you know," he said. "Jess and I do a lot of interesting work together."
"Is that what you call it so nobody catches on?"
"I don't know why I tell you anything," muttered Sam.
"Actually, you don't tell me anything," said Dean, emerging triumphant with an armful of canvas and poles and pressing it into Sam's arms. "Sorry, I stopped worrying about folding things properly when I found I had more space to haul things around in."
"That explains your clothing," said Sam, giving it a judgmental once over even though the condition was no different from when they were growing up. Very little in their lives had ever had a woman's touch, and their clothing was no exception.
Though admittedly, in the years since Sam had last seen him Dean had definitely taken a turn for the more unconventional. Sam would never admit, to Dean or anyone else, that it suited him.
"Shut your piehole and set up the tent," said Dean, finding one more pole wedged in with the knives and yanking it out. "You'll probably need this."
Sam put it, and the rest of the tent, on the ground in the middle of the clearing they'd claimed for the night.
"I have no idea how you've managed on your own."
"Sleeping in my Tessa, a lot of the time," he said. "The tent's nice enough, though. It's not like that one Dad used to make us sleep in, barely room to sit up."
"Dad liked to pack light."
It was practically the mantra of their youth. At first, it was nothing they couldn't fling into the boxcar of a moving train. Then it was nothing that would slow down a horse. Even after Sam had a home of his own - or a couple of rooms of his own, which was closer to the truth - he still found the habit a hard one to shake. If there was clutter accumulation in his current accommodation, it belonged almost entirely to Jess.
"That's because Dad never had anything as extraordinary as my automobile," said Dean.
"So," said Sam.
"So?"
"You never told me," said Sam. "Was he here? Did Dad ever show up in Jericho Station?"
"Maybe," said Dean with a half shrug, closing the door of the automobile. "Maybe not. The bartender at the saloon said he thought he remembered him, but Dad doesn't exactly stick out. He likes not to be remembered."
"What about the hotel?"
"None of his usual aliases ever checked in," said Dean. "If he was here - which he almost certainly was - he probably did the same thing we are. Maybe even in this exact spot. What I can tell you for sure is there's no sign of him here now; this town's not big enough to hide in."
Sam looked around for the remains of a campfire, even though the odds of them choosing the same patch of land were slim. He found two without having to do more than turn in a circle, and no reason to believe that either belonged to their father.
"How is he?"
"Do you really care, or do you just think you should ask?"
Sam smoothed out the map against this thigh, traced a trail with his fingertip from one edge of the paper to the other in the dying light. It didn't look far, but on a map with no scale and no landmarks it could be one mile or twenty.
"Will there be someone at the church tomorrow?" he said finally.
"Does it matter?" said Dean. "If the records are there, we'll get our hands on them, and if they're not we have a whole boneyard to explore."
There were some parts of the job that Sam missed even less than others.
"Please tell me you've got a device that will do that part of the job for us?" he said, turning the map on an angle to match the lie of the land.
"A device that will systematically tour graveyards and read tombstones?" said Dean. "In your dreams, Sammy."
"I'd settle for something that can dig in the dark of night."
"I could do that," said Dean, "but it would be neither quiet nor portable. Sometimes elbow grease is still the best alternative. You aren't scared of a little hard work, are you? Have you gone all soft on me?"
"I haven't spent much time these past three years digging up graves, no," said Sam. But that didn't mean he didn't still know how, couldn't still feel the first jarring shovelfuls of earth, and the way they made his biceps ache with the strain.
"Don't worry, it's like riding a bicycle," said Dean. "Something I'm sure you have had lots of experience with these past few years."
"Worry isn't the word I would use to describe what I'm feeling right now."
"Is that so? Then what word would you use?"
Sam opened the vehicle door again and carefully placed his frock coat inside, safe from the elements and his brother's neglect for proper preservation. He wouldn't be needing it here where they were alone, and probably not until they reached the church tomorrow, however they planned on getting there.
He'd barely reunited with his brother, barely begun this hunt, but already he could feel the transformation in himself, not into someone new, and not into someone more like his brother, but into a person he'd been suppressing with his home and his manners and his education. It was an uneasy sensation, not feeling entirely at home with any of who he was, had been, or eventually would be.
"That tent's not going to erect itself, Sam," said Dean as Sam shut up the car and rolled up his sleeves.
"Something else you need to work on," muttered Sam, and set to work, whistling a popular tune. At least, it was a popular tune in his head. By the time it came out of him it was so unrecognizable that he could see his brother wince. That just made him whistle louder.
"You gonna do that all night?" said Dean. "You're going to attract bullfrogs or something."
"Jessica never minds my whistling."
"Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, then, but your lady friend is tone deaf," said Dean.
"Maybe she is," said Sam. "Maybe we're perfect together."
"How can you be perfect together when she doesn't even know you?" said Dean. "I know you better than her, Sam. I know you better than anyone."
"Do you?" said Sam, under his breath, setting up tent poles with the ease of someone who'd done it a hundred times, even though it had been years. Some things imprinted themselves so deeply you were never rid of them.
While he did that, Dean built up the fire, and there was very little else to say before they called it a night.
: : :
They managed to take Tessa to the church because the trail was wide and clear, and because, as Sam was quickly learning, Dean never walked anywhere he could drive. Tessa might've run pretty quiet, compared to some automobiles Sam had encountered, but she still made sneaking up on anybody a more dicey prospect, particularly over rough terrain.
"Anybody home?" said Dean, pushing open the heavy wooden doors with both hands then standing right between them. If there was anyone in the church, there was no way they could miss him.
"I think it's just you and God," said Sam, urging him forward.
"Well then I hope God doesn't mind a little bit of petty espionage," said Dean, striding between the crooked wooden pews, heels kicking up a faint trail of dust.
"No more than he's minded any other time you've done it, anyway," said Sam, following more delicately, careful on the worn wooden floors. The thin sheen of dust on them was a result of the location and not a lack of care. "But that's between you and your maker."
"Don't you start," said Dean, peering in the chapel and then the office. "Hell, we didn't even have to pick a lock."
"Don't say hell in a church, Dean," said Sam. "At least, not out of its proper context."
"Hey, a person could argue we're doing God's work, if he wanted to," said Dean. "Pastor Jim would." Having determined there really was no one else around, he didn't even pretend he wasn't searching for records. "You know we're probably going to have to search the graveyard."
"I've been bracing myself," admitted Sam, finally meeting him at the door to the church office, where Dean was, far from making a mess, efficiently and systematically making his way through every drawer.
"Aw, Sammy, you used to like them," he said. "Remember how we used to play hide and go seek when Dad was burning bodies?"
"I always found the better hiding places," said Sam. "You could never stay still long enough. All I had to do was wait you out."
"Good times," said Dean, leafing through a hand-bound book. "I've got death records."
"You have my attention," said Sam, coming inside to look over his shoulder. Of the two of them, he'd always been better at deciphering handwriting. "We're looking for something from when the railroad came through. 1860?"
"Within a couple of years of that, anyway," said Dean. "Connie. Connie. Connie. I don't see anything."
"It's probably short of something," said Sam. "Try Constance. Constance something." What was the other name Margaret had given him? "Or Carrie. Caroline."
"What do you think I'm doing?" said Dean, looking again through the very short list of names. "There's nothing here, Sam."
"Well, it was worth a shot," said Sam, reaching over his shoulder to gently close the book in his hands. Not that he didn't trust Dean's skills, but he hadn't spotted anything even resembling the name in question. Let's go back outside, Dean. We shouldn't intrude any more than we absolutely need to."
Far from intruding, Dean took the time to make sure everything was back in its place before they moved on to investigate the graveyard, and it couldn't just be because he didn't want to leave any evidence of their visit. There was nothing that could have led back to them, particularly once they left town.
"You take the left side and I'll take the right," said Sam, pushing open the iron gate with one hand. The lingering creak suggested it was a place not visited all that regularly, or if it was, then one no one took the time anymore to care for. Which, as it tended to turn out, was ultimately to their benefit.
It didn't even feel ghoulish anymore, stalking the rows of tombstones, brushing aside debris and tracing old lettering with his fingertips. At least here nothing was so old that it was worn down to the wood, lettering too weather-beaten to read.
"I don't see anything," he said a little while later, looking across the rows to where Dean was squatting down, carefully moving some dead flowers.
"Me neither," said Dean, standing up again, returning the flowers to where they'd been moldering. "If it was a just a nickname, then we're clean out of luck."
"Have you got any other ideas?" said Sam, surveying the graveyard with a glance one last time. Surely there were other churches, other graveyards, but the further afield they went, the less likely they were to find her. This place was their first and best hope.
"Not right this second," said Dean, "but a beer would probably help. Let's head back to the saloon, Sam, and take stock of our options."
Sam just hoped 'take stock of our options' was actually a case-related suggestion and not a new euphemism for any one of Dean's favorite activities, most of which could be conducted in any saloon in the country.
: : :
Ultimately, and inevitably, they ended up back at the train platform some time long after dark, after a few beers and a lot of conversation. Ostensibly they were looking for a flash of inspiration, though Dean also insisted that they try to take a good look at the tracks themselves. Sam, in turn, insisted they wait for the latest train to head through before they stepped onto said tracks.
"God, those things creep my out," said Dean, shuddering dramatically as he sneaked a glance at the ticket-taking automaton, ticking away as its arm raised and lowered with each passenger.
"I never understood that," said Sam. "I always thought they should've been just your thing." And though it was something he had no way of knowing, based on his own childhood toys Sam suspected they were something that had fascinated Dean once. "In fact, I'm surprised you haven't built one of your own."
"They've got dead eyes," said Dean, like that should have been enough explanation in and of itself. "The guts of them are astounding - God I'd like to get my hands inside some of them - but you look at them bobbing back and forth and it's just kind of creepy, don't you think?"
"I guess I never really thought about it that much," said Sam, taking his time walking the length of the station while they waited for the train to pull out again. They were ubiquitous, after all. He didn't think about them much more than he though about shoes, or trains. "They do something that needs to be done."
"Not really," said Dean, shoving his hands in his pockets and scaring the patrons as he rocked right on the edge of the platform, watching the caboose pass him by.
"Wait, do you hear something?" said Sam, a sound from up the tracks catching his attention, just for a second.
"What, you mean like a train?" said Dean. "Yes, I hear a train. In fact, I hear a very loud train, Sammy.
"No, not the train," said Sam. "Something under the train, or maybe on the--" It came again, just loud enough to make out this time, a shrill cry of his name.
"Sam! Saaaaaaam!"
"Okay, that time I heard it," said Dean. "I don't suppose you have an explanation?"
"Oh dear God, that was her," he said, "that was the woman I met, Dean! That's Margaret!"
"Hell of a way to say good-bye."
But Margaret never had any intention of boarding a train, and if she had she certainly wouldn't be shrieking Sam's name out an open window, loud enough for him to hear over the ground of machinery and the rattling of the wheels on the tracks.
"She's not saying good-bye, she's--" Sam didn't even bother to finish the sentence before tugging on Dean's leather sleeve, yanking hard enough to draw Dean into racing back across the station with him to where they'd left Tessa. "She wasn't supposed to be on a train, she was waiting for her brother. Dean, something dragged her onto that train."
"Good thing Tessa takes under a minute to warm up," said Dean, though it was the longest minute Sam had ever had to wait through. "Grab your scattergun, Sam, and let's catch this bastard."
"Can you catch the train, Dean?" Sam asked as Dean spun around the station and started heading north-east alongside the tracks.
"Hell yes, I can," he said. "Tessa can catch anything on land. Just hold on tight, Sammy, it's gonna be a bumpy ride."
Bumpy ride was certainly not overstating the case. Sam always felt that any time he was in Tessa and off the well-traveled roads it was a bumpy ride, but that was nothing compared to racing along the barely cleared spans of land next to the train tracks. He'd swear they felt every pebble, every root, every lost tool along the way.
The locomotive was picking up speed fast, but so was Dean, pushing Tessa to limits Sam hadn't even realized she could approach. It wasn't long before they were passing the tail end of it, then the car before that, then the car before that, passengers looking out the window and pointing at the madmen trying to race them.
Sam couldn't hear the cries of his name anymore over the rattling of the automobile and the grinding of the train and the wind in his ears, but he was watching as closely as he ever watched anything. He would know when they reached her.
"Dean, look out!" said Sam, the headlamps on Dean's car barely illuminating the brush in time for Dean to swerve around it, nearly sending Sam flying right out of the vehicle.
They were right there now, keeping pace with the train and pulling in alongside the car where Sam could finally, faintly, hear someone crying out his name again.
"Sam, you're going to have to jump," said Dean, giving his hip an encouraging push.
"Are you kidding me?" said Sam. "I can't jump that, Dean! It's suicide!"
He'd been hopping trains since he was a kid, but never a train going at this kind of speed, and very rarely anything but a boxcar.
"I don't see any other choice," Dean shouted over the wind, one hand on the steering column and the other grappling for something next to his seat. "Here," he said, yanking on a lever and sending an unsteady telescopic pole out from the frame of the vehicle. "This should help."
"A little warning next time?" Sam shouted back, beginning to brace himself against the side of the car. "For a moment I worried you were going to eject my seat!"
"Good idea," said Dean as the pole hooked firmly onto the stairway of the passenger car, holding the two vehicles as close and steady as they were going to get. "I'll work on that next."
For the moment the only thing Dean needed to work on was keeping his speed steady with the locomotive so it didn't become a suicide mission. Sam took a deep breath, tried not to close his eyes, and flung himself across the narrow space between himself and the train.
He thought he heard Dean tell him to hurry, that he could travel alongside the train only as long as the trail remained clear, but there were some things that just didn't need to be said.
: : :
"Sam!"
Sam forced the door open with his shoulder, by this point startling neither the flickering female form nor her victim, the only occupants of this dimly lit passenger car.
"Are you all right, Margaret?"
"Do I look all right?" she said, trapped against the wall right beneath a lantern as the ghost turned her attention to the invader. Sam raised his scattergun and blasted salt right through her, the ghost tearing up into wisps of smoke that swirled and vanished.
"Come on, we've got to get out of here!"
Margaret practically fell away from the wall, the force that had been holding her there releasing her when the spray of salt from Sam's gun hit true.
"Get out of here where?" she said breathlessly, barely avoiding falling to her knees as the floor rocked beneath her. "We're on a train!"
"My brother's waiting," he said, reaching for her arm, but before they could go anywhere the ghost coalesced across the car from them and Sam found himself skidding back on his heels away from the girl he'd arrived to rescue.
"Damn it," he swore, struggling to raise the scattergun again against the counter-efforts of an unseen force.
"Sam!"
The fact that they were both still on the train, that she hadn't vanished like the ghost victims were purported to do, had to mean something, but Sam didn't have the time to figure out just what that was. He could only guess that the ghost was waiting for something, and Sam had to get them both off this train before that something arrived.
There was a splintering crack from outside the passenger car and Sam felt his stomach drop out. He couldn't even look, could only listen until the telltale sounds of Dean's still-running automobile filtered through the rest of the ambient noise. Only then did Sam start breathing again.
He fired his gun without aiming, counting on the scatter effect to sent at least a few particles through the phantom, and finally was able to look out the window to see an intact Tessa and an intact brother, the remains of a sign in pieces inside and over the top of her.
"We're slowing down!"
Unless some cattle had wandered onto the track, there was only one reason to begin slowing down, and that was if they were approaching the next station. One detail of the story sudden became the only one that mattered: Connie's victims always disappeared at some point before the train pulled in.
"We need to get out of here the same way I came in," he said and grabbed her arm, physically hauling her to the open door which was swinging wildly with the motion of the train.
"She's going to come back!"
"That's why we need to get out of here," said Sam, holding the door open bodily, Margaret in one hand and his scattergun in the other. "You need to jump."
"I need to what?"
Jumping onto the train had been a dicey prospect. Jumping off it didn't seem much better, even with the continued slowing of the train.
"We don't have much time."
Sam would've pushed her if he had to, but in the end she hiked up her skirts and took a deep breath and hurled herself into the open vehicle landing hard right next to Dean.
His back still braced against the door, Sam fired again, and then again when the spirit returned too quickly for him to make a break for the automobile still racing along the shoulder next to him.
"Sam, come on, I'm running out of road!"
"I'm trying," he shouted back, reloading with a slam of the double barrel and firing again, right through her.
This time when he nailed her with the last of his salt rounds, Connie didn't immediately begin to coalesce somewhere else on the car. Sam took the small blessing for what it was and used those precious few moments - after all, he didn't know how many he was going to get - to make a leap of faith back into Dean's steamer.
The moment Margaret and Sam were in the car Dean slammed the lever back down again and the arm that had been keeping him latched to the train - now warped and buckled from the strain - retracted back halfway, just enough to let them go. It was barely in time.
They were still going at a respectable speed when another signpost loomed in the darkness directly in front of them. Dean swerved to avoid it, but ended up skidding down a shallow embankment instead, coming to a very sudden stop at the bottom.
The automobile sputtered to a stop and for a few moments there was only the sound of the retreating train, the birds of night-time in the nearby trees, and a lot of heavy breathing.
"Everyone all right?" said Dean finally.
"I think so," said Sam, not daring to move for a moment. When he did, though, he discovered that everything seemed to be in working order. "Margaret?"
"I'm here," she said, though Sam could tell that already from the way her body was pressed up against his. What he hadn't been certain of was whether that body was still intact.
The sound of the train grew quieter as it finished pulling in to the next station, until all they were left with were the noises of one another.
"She didn't come with us, did she?" said Dean.
"Of course I did," said Margaret. "I was practically hurled into this... automobile."
"No, not you, sweetheart," said Dean. "The ghost."
If she had, though, they would have almost certainly known it by now; the ghost on the train had been anything but subtle.
"I think she disappeared just before I got off the train," said Sam. "Either she gave up, or--"
"Or she didn't want to arrive at the station," said Dean, finally pushing open the door to his side of the vehicle and stumbling out. "Oh, my poor darling. Don't worry, I'll get you fixed up right."
Sam climbed out the way he'd come in then opened the door - forcing a branch out of the way in the process - and offered Margaret his hand.
"Where are we?" she said, smoothing her skirts as soon as Sam let go of her hand.
"Well, according to that sign we just managed not to plow out of the ground, we're a mile out of Atlas Station," said Dean. "At least, I think that's what it said. I lost one of my headlamps in the first crash."
"How's Tessa?" said Sam, carefully closing the door.
"Tessa? Who's Tessa?" said Margaret, eyeing the automobile as though they might have a young lady stashed somewhere inside. Sam couldn't deny that, if they unloaded all their gear, there would be more than enough room for one.
"Tessa's this sweet lady," said Dean, caressing the driver's-side door.
"You named your automobile Tessa?"
"After Nikola Tesla," said Dean, "and if you don't know who that is, I don't want to hear it." Margaret didn't answer him either way. "With a little elbow grease she'll be fine, but I don't think we're going anywhere till daylight. I hope you don't mind camping, Margie."
"Margaret," she said primly. "And we could walk into Atlas Station."
"By all means, be my guest," said Dean broadly. "You're the one who was just attacked by a spirit, but if you want to walk a mile in the dark back to the very train she dragged you onto, that's certainly your choice to make."
She huffed, but she didn't go anywhere.
"That's what I thought," said Dean. "Sammy, you want to get the camping gear out while I... entertain your friend?"
"I've got a better idea," said Sam. "Why don't you get the camping gear out while Margaret and I take a walk to settle our nerves."
"Settle your nerves?" said Dean. "I'm the one who had to drive!"
"Dean...." said Sam, shaking his head, just a tiny flick from side to side.
Margaret moved closer to his side, which Sam took as an acceptance of his unspoken invitation. He offered her his arm which she took at once, though she didn't smile as she did. Sam couldn't have expected that much, not after everything, though at least Margaret wasn't trembling as she clutched him.
"I think my brother needs a few moments alone with Tessa anyway," he said softly as he led her away from the site of their little mishap, towards the edge of the woods where the songbirds seemed to linger. In fact, he imagined Dean shedding a tear or two the moment they were out of sight.
"He does seem to have an unnatural attachment to it," said Margaret, looking back over her shoulder only for a moment. "I haven't thanked you yet for saving my life. I can't imagine anyone else doing what you did."
"Well, my family has never been known for making the safe choice," said Sam ruefully. "Are you all right? She didn't hurt you, did she?"
"Other than a few bumps and bruises, I'm quite all right," she assured him. "I haven't any idea what she was planning to do with me, but she didn't seem to want to hurt me."
Sam didn't want to say that he was virtually certain the spirit did want to hurt her, but lost the opportunity before she could. The people who disappeared, after all, had to have gone somewhere, and Sam would bet good money it wasn't any place they wanted to be.
"We don't want to go far," he said, though he expected she wouldn't need to be told that. The light of the moon could only illuminate their way so far.
"Well, I didn't think you were going to lead me off into the woods without so much as a chaperone," she said, her voice lightly suggesting that perhaps she though he might do just that. That in fact, she might welcome it.
Sam coughed politely and decided the best course of action was to avoid the subject altogether. It certainly wouldn't be the first time someone they'd rescued had been overly grateful, but that was something he remembered Dean having more of a history of taking advantage of than Sam.
"Oh, what's that?" he said, grateful to spot an unusual mound just inside the first line of trees to distract them from the obvious course of the conversation. "Though I suppose we shouldn't investigate, not at this time of night."
"Of course we should," said Margaret, clutching his arm a little tighter. "And you'll not leave my side while we do, will you?"
So much for a change of subject. But the closer they got the more suspicious Sam grew of the oddly shaped mound of dead grasses near the trees. It was certainly an unnatural growth, and though that was nothing unusual this close to the railway, where there were still many artifacts of their passage, he was too curious now to let it go.
He knelt down and pushed the grasses aside with one hand and discovered, just barely discernable in the dim light, what was unmistakably a wooden grave marker. He couldn't read the words inscribed on it, but he suddenly felt quite certain he knew what they were going to be.
"We need to get back to Dean. Now."
Next Part | Master Post
PRESENT DAY
Stanford University, 1905
Sam had never known anyone quite like Jessica Moore, which he was selfishly glad for because there was just one of her and she was his, as much as Jessica Moore was anybody's.
"You'll be missed soon," he said, glancing at his open window, cool night air fluttering the curtains and blowing a pile of papers askew. "Your new housemate has a wagging tongue."
"Do you think she's going to be picking my lock and checking my bed now?" said Jess breezily, putting her tweezers down and pushing her magnifying spectacles up onto her forehead. "I've not been missed before and I'll not be missed now. We have until just before dawn, as always."
Till dawn was still never quite long enough.
"Do you hear something?" he said, cocking his ear towards the sitting room. "I didn't forget to lock my doors, did I?"
"Sam Winchester forgetting to do something? Perish the thought," she said, reaching for her tinted goggles. "Pass me the soldering rod, would you?"
"I wish you wouldn't set things on fire in my bedroom," he said, kissing her hair before listening for the indistinct noise again, this time following it to the bedroom door. Three years and change at Stanford and still he was attuned to the smallest disturbance; some things you just never shook. Some things you didn't try too hard to.
"I thought you liked it when things got hot in here," she called at his back as he poked his head into the darkened sitting room. It was a moment before the barely discernable shadow by the door caught his attention, but less than a moment after that for him to stalk across the room and reach for the intruder.
He might have left the life, but he hadn't forgotten anything. Neither, apparently, had the intruder. Three moves had Sam on his back. A fourth had the intruder on his.
"Dean?" said Sam, as the fluttering of the curtains and the fortuitous movement of a cloud settled a beam of moonlight directly on his brother's face. Dean just grinned up at him and, in Sam's moment of weakness, pushed him off.
"Little brother," he said, getting to his feet and brushing imaginary dirt off his trousers. "It's good to see you again."
"Dean, what are you doing here?" he hissed, rolling right to his feet again, his eyes darting to the open bedroom door. "You can't be here."
"Since when can't I pay my little brother a visit?" said Dean, his gaze following Sam's to the bedroom door. "Did I interrupt something, is that it?"
"Nothing you'd be interested in," said Sam, moving to block his way. But it was a gesture he knew was in vain from the moment he made it; not only would it just rouse Dean's curiosity, but their audible discussion was bound to rouse Jess's.
When she appeared in the doorway it was stockingfoot and disheveled, her hair unbound and trailing over her shoulders. It was as Sam was accustomed to seeing her, and everything that would give Dean the wrong impression.
"You've got to love a town where the whores make house calls."
"Dean! She's a student at the university with me."
"And she's unlaced in your rooms at this time of night?" said Dean. "Congratulations, Sammy, I didn't know you had it in you."
"Dean!"
"It's all right, Sam," she said coolly, stepping forward and offering Dean her hand. "I'm Jessica."
"Unusual," said Dean, kissing her knuckles in mock Shakespearean style.
"My father was a actor."
"Of course," said Dean. "So you are disreputable."
"Not yet, but I hope to be one day," she said, taking her hand back. "Sam, you didn't tell me your brother piloted an airship. I don't think you need to worry about the cold of altitude here, though, Dean."
Dean grinned as though he'd just been paid a compliment, which Sam supposed it had been, for someone like Dean. The coat was a leather affair, comfortably worn from long use, straps and buckles binding it to his body. Sam hadn't seen it before, but nonetheless it seemed very much the sort of thing his brother would wear, impractical as it might be.
"If it's a life of disrepute you want, I'm the Winchester brother you're better off knowing," he said.
"If you're going to be this way, I'll thank you to wait another three years to visit," said Sam. "Would Dad let you get away with that?"
"Dad's not here," said Dean, "which is why I am." He paused to glance at Jess again, standing there shamelessly and watching their conversation. "Is there somewhere we can go talk?"
"I fail to see what we have to talk about," said Sam. "It's far from the first time he's gone off in his own. What saloon did you last see him in? I suggest you start there and work your way outwards through the alleys."
"Sam," said Dean, a familiar warning note in his voice. "We're going to talk about this. The only thing you get to decide is whether we do it here or someplace else."
"And you wonder why I chose to come west in the first place," said Sam tightly. He could wait for Dean to give in, but he knew from long experience that those battles of wills could be endless. "Jess, if you'll excuse us?"
"Don't rouse your landlady," was the only stipulation she made, "unless you want to explain my presence in your rooms."
"We'll be quiet," he promised her. "Won't we, Dean?"
"Quiet as church mice," Dean said, flashing her an all-too-familiar grin. She wasn't buying what he was selling, but she nodded and disappeared back into Sam's bedroom to get back to her work.
"Pretty girl," said Dean. "How did you managed to coax her inside?"
"This is not a conversation I care to have with you," said Sam, showing him the door. "Let's take a walk."
Before Sam could get him outside, Dean ran his thumb over the square of cloth at the corner of Sam's window, a perfectly formed pentacle on a red background.
"I guess old habits die hard, huh, Sammy?"
"Leave it alone, Dean," said Sam and, grabbing his coat, led Dean outside into the night.
: : :
"There are easier ways to get in touch with me than breaking into my home," said Sam, walking Dean down the deserted street. "I didn't even know you knew where I lived."
"Of course I knew, Sam," said Dean, hands in his pockets and kicking up dust. "I've always known."
"And yet for three years you stayed away."
"Technically you've only been living here for two years this past June," Dean pointed out. "You lived your first year in the residences." Sam remained silent, not feeling that kind of pedantry deserved a response. "Look, you wanted some distance between you and Dad, and I gave it to you."
"Until now," said Sam. "Why are you really here?"
"I told you, Sam, Dad's gone missing. We were supposed to rendezvous in Salem a week ago but he never showed up. I waited a couple of days to see if there would be a message, but there was nothing. Not a word."
"He might've been held up somewhere," said Sam. "It's happened before."
"He always sends word, Sam, you know he does. He knows how to use the telegraph office as well as anyone, and he knew where we were supposed to meet. Something's happened. I need your help with this one."
"I'm out, Dean," said Sam. "I'm done with that life. This, what you see here, this is my life now."
"Yeah, you're so out you keep a hunters' symbol in your window?" said Dean. "No, I know you. You're not out, you've just been dormant. But it's springtime now, Sammy, and it's time to sprout and face the sunshine."
"First of all, it's October," said Sam, "and secondly... did you just compare hunting to sunshine?"
"It was a metaphor, Sam. You know literature was never my strong suit," said Dean. "Will you help me? Just this once?"
Sam pinched his lips together and sighed through his nose, staring off into the distance while they walked aimlessly through the street. "I'm an advanced student, Dean. My absence will be noticed."
"So get your lady friend to make your excuses and apologies," said Dean. "Have you forgotten how to fake an illness? We've both done it dozens of times."
"For a day or two, perhaps," said Sam.
"A week," said Dean. "Give me a week. I'll have you back for Halloween, you have my word."
"A week," repeated Sam, "and not an hour more. I suppose I could feign a family emergency."
"This is a family emergency," said Dean. "Your father is missing, Sam. I'd think any professor worth his salt would accept that as a reason for your absence."
"Except that they might ask questions I don't care to answer," said Sam.
"Then tell them he's a drunk, just like you tell everyone else," said Dean. "A week, Sam. You and me together again, we'll figure this one out. We have to."
Sam wasn't sure what had Dean all fired up about this; it certainly wasn't the first time John Winchester had vanished from their lives only to reappear again without a word of explanation. But Dean had always been the closer to their father of the two of them and he clearly was distraught, in his way. No matter what had transpired three years ago, Dean was still his brother. He was very nearly the only family Sam had.
"Where did he go missing?"
"He was checking out Jericho station, just north of here," said Dean, grinning and clapping him on the shoulder. "Something about a ghost train; I can check my notes. It'll be just like old times, Sammy."
"That's what I'm afraid of," said Sam. "The train through San Francisco leaves at seven. We'll want to get some sleep soon if we want to be on it."
"Forget the train, I've got something better than that," said Dean, leading him up past the carriages on the street to what was clearly - and deservedly - his pride and joy.
"You have an automobile?"
"I made an automobile," Dean corrected him. "Took me six months of blood, sweat and tears up at Uncle Bobby's workshop, but it surpasses anything else on the road."
Sam had never seen anything quite like it. Far from the other automobiles he'd seen in the city, this one could be completely encased from the elements with overlapping flaps of leather and hinged pieces of brass, with a solid plate of glass at the front. A great copper boiler sat in the back surrounded by a series of mechanisms that Sam could not even begin to decipher.
"It's only got two seats," he said, for lack of an ability to articulate any other thoughts he had about the machine.
"Anything more than two is just excessive," said Dean. "The rest of the space is for storage."
"Dad always said to travel light and fast," said Sam.
"Dad never had anything like this to travel the country in," said Dean, patting his creation fondly. "Hard to strap much more than a scattergun and a pistol to the side of a horse."
"Though God knows we tried," said Sam, finally offering him a smile. "Well, it's nice to see you've been putting your free time to good use. How's Uncle Bobby?"
"Same as he's always been," said Dean. If he knew that Sam and Bobby had exchanged a few letters over the years, he didn't mention it. "Want to take it for a spin?"
"Something tells me it'll wake up the whole neighborhood," said Sam. "We'll want to wait till morning all the same."
"Forget that, my baby runs like a whisper. You just want to see your Jessica again before we go," said Dean, then held up a hand before Sam could say a word. "No, no need to explain. If there's one thing I understand, it's women."
Privately Sam thought if there was one thing Dean didn't understand, it was women, but he didn't say a word about it. Instead he just turned them about and started heading back to the boarding house he called home.
Somehow he'd always known that hunting wasn't a life he'd be able to leave behind forever. It had just caught up with him sooner than he thought it would.
: : :
Jessica saw them off, her eyes still a little fiery after her late night conversation with Sam when he returned with Dean in tow. While she had never demanded much of him, other than respect, she wasn't the least bit pleased that he wouldn't explain to her why he had to go.
"I left the window unlatched," said Sam, giving her a brotherly kiss on the cheek as Dean started up his road steamer and lingered by the door as the pressure built up. "For whenever you need to use it."
"That's why I like you best," she said, kissing his cheek in return. "Be safe, Sam. This place wouldn't be the same without you."
"As safe as I can be," he said, the only real promise he could make her under the circumstances. "I'll be back in a week at most."
"You'd better," she said, as Dean motioned for Sam to throw his sack in the storage hold and get in. "Good-bye, Sam. Good-bye, Dean."
"Be seeing you around, Good Looking," said Dean, winking at her and ducking into the vehicle before she could respond.
Sam just gave her a helpless look and joined him.
"Could you be any more inappropriate?"
"Without even breaking a sweat," said Dean, "but I was on my best behavior because she's your lady friend. It just figures you'd find someone like that."
"Like what, exactly?" said Sam. "Smart? Strong? Independent?"
"If that's what you want to call it," said Dean, navigating them down the middle of the street, narrowly missing spooking a couple of horses. "If you're so fond of her, why isn't there a ring on her finger?"
"Because she doesn't want to be known as one of those girls who went to college just to find someone to marry," said Sam. "Not that you're one to talk about fingers and rings. At least I'm not paying for it."
"You always pay for it, Sam," said Dean. "One way or another. Did I teach you nothing?"
"Nothing I found useful at Stanford," Sam lied, putting an end to that particular conversation. He wanted Dean to know about Jess, and vice versa, because he wanted a life that enveloped both of them, but not like this. Not with Dean starting off argumentative and Jess starting off affronted.
"Come on, Sam, does it have to be like this?" said Dean, picking up speed while the road was good.
"She means a lot to me, Dean," said Sam. "You could respect that. I would think you'd be the first person to encourage me to find myself an unorthodox girl."
"Hey, if you want to abandon your family forever and set up house with your Jessica, that's your business," said Dean.
Sam was silent for a few moments, a tactic that worked more often with his university friends when he wanted to move on from a particular topic. They knew Sam was closed-mouthed about many things, particularly to do with his family, and respected that boundary. (So long as they didn't have a few drinks in them, but even then they knew enough to tread carefully.) Dean had no such respect, or maybe he just didn't recognize the boundaries. They'd never really had any before.
"She is your Jess, isn't she? You're not going to try to tell me that you're attempting to remain friends while you're still students."
Sam let his silence linger a little longer, then let out a soft sigh. "She wouldn't call herself that," he said. "She'd probably sooner call me her Sam."
"I can't believe I missed all that," said Dean, and this, an answer instead of a stubborn silence, seemed to finally satisfy him. "So what do you think of my Tessa?"
"Your who?" said Sam.
"My Tessa," said Dean, patting his steering wheel. "My automobile, Sammy. What do you think of her? She's a beauty."
"I thought I was used to seeing automobiles in the city, but I've never seen one quite like this," he said. "She's got quite a bit of power."
"More than anyone else on the road," said Dean, "not that you see that many automobiles in the places I drive her. Or roads, for that matter. But Tessa, she can handle anything. I made sure of that."
"You don't miss your horse?"
"She's getting fat in Caleb's pasture," said Dean, "and seems all the happier for it. Sure, she could go a few places Tessa can't go, and she cornered better, I'll tell you that much, but Tessa's got some tricks up her sleeve that'll knock your boots off, Sammy."
"Well, let's save those for another day," he said. "I'd like to make it to Jericho Station alive, if it's all the same to you."
"Well then sit tight, because even at Tessa's speed, we still have a long way to go."
Jericho Station, California
There was a shoddy little hotel, a dry goods store, a blacksmith and a saloon: that was all that had risen from the earth around Jericho Station. It was a familiar sight, not from Sam's recent life but from all the years before it. Palo Alto was barely more than the college it held, but it was still substantially more than this.
"I've got our old army tent," said Dean, leaning on his automobile door as he surveyed the scene, "unless you want to brave that hotel."
"I think that's the sort of place where you can expect to find people vying for your company, and the dollars in your pocket," said Sam, but still, it was a hotel and thus likely better than the tent Dean carried, no matter what the clientele. "We'll have to ask if Dad's been here, of course."
"You let me worry about that," said Dean. "You don't even know what he looks like anymore. You can make yourself useful asking around the station to see if this legend people have written home about is something they made up."
"What does he look like, then?" said Sam, not letting Dean get away with just that. "If I don't know what he looks like, then what does he look like now?"
"You gave him a lot of gray when you took off, Sam."
"Me? I turned him gray?" sputtered Sam. "After everything we've seen and done, you think you can put that on me?"
"I just call it like I see it, Sam," he said, leaning against Tessa and crossing his arms. "He looks older than you remember him. But then again, so do you."
"That's because you remember the boy I used to be," said Sam sharply. "Shall I meet you back here?"
"Meet me in the saloon," said Dean, completely missing the way Sam bristled at the orders. "We'll both have some questions to ask there, and I could sure use a beer after that drive." And, it remained unsaid, after this conversation.
Sam tipped his hat at him and headed round the front side of the station, not looking back. If John Winchester had aged over the past three years, it was on his own head and not on Sam's.
"Excuse me," he said, at the first gentleman he passed, but was soundly ignored. Not entirely unsurprisingly; he didn't always have the time for strangers stopping him in public places either. Better to target the people who were here regularly, and to that end went straight for the station guard. In his experience, in a lightly trafficked station like this one, they were usually eager for a chat.
"Excuse me," he said. "I was wondering about something, and was hoping you might be able to sate my curiosity."
"Well, I'll do what I can," he said, "but unless it's to do with the railroad, I'm not sure I can help you."
"Oh, it does," Sam assured him. "This might seem like a silly question, but I received a letter from my sister some time ago, after she and her husband traveled through to Portland, and she mentioned that she heard the strangest tale of a ghost train that travels through this station."
"Oh, that old story," he said. "You're certainly not the first chap to come through here asking about it. Rubbish if you ask me, though."
"So there is a tale to be told then," said Sam. "My sister's so fanciful sometimes, I thought she might've made it all up."
"Oh no, that tale's been told around here ever since they laid these tracks down," he said. "Some kind of ghost locomotive that whisks its way through here in the dead of night. I never paid the stories much mind."
"So you've never seen it then," said Sam. "Not that I put much stock in those stories either, of course, but my sister was so insistent."
"Neither hide nor hair," he said. "People like to tell stories, that's all it is. A place isn't interesting till it's had a ghost story told about it. Not that this place could be made interesting even with one."
"Well, thank you for your time," said Sam, tipping his hat to him and turning away.
"That's not how the story goes, you know."
He hadn't realized that anyone had been listening in on their conversation, but he wasn't sorry that someone had been. A young lady, as it turned out, looking somewhat intrigued - or was it amused? - by what she'd overheard.
"You've heard the story then?" he said. "My sister was vague on the details but she seemed quite taken with it."
"He's got it all wrong," she said, motioning for Sam to walk with her, "though stories always do get bent and twisted with the retelling. Come, sit with me while I wait for the train and I'll tell it to you properly."
"Of course," he said, joining her on the bench in front of the grand station clock, poised at five minutes to six. "You're here on your own?"
"My brother will be joining me," she said briskly, seeming quite unconcerned about his absence. "He had to take a later train - business, you understand - but he'll be here any time now. Perhaps even on this next one."
"Of course," said Sam, removing his hat. "And the ghost story?"
"It's not a ghost train at all," she said, "though the ghost does come late at night, so at least people are still telling that part right. It's a ghost on a train - the overnight from San Francisco. It's very specific."
"Fascinating," said Sam. "I'd love to hear all the details. When I next visit my sister, I'm sure she'd be absolutely rapt. Not that I should be encouraging her fascination, but I feel it's my duty as her brother to indulge her whims."
"I'm sure your sister and my brother would get along famously," she said with a bright, guileless smile. "The way I heard it, it's the ghost of a young woman they call Connie - though to be fair, I've also heard her called Carrie, and even Charlie - who was killed nearby while they were constructing the railroad."
"Murdered?"
"An accident, or so they say. There are all sorts of mishaps people will call an accident when it's convenient. Now, when the mood strikes her, she'll stalk this very station and choose one unwary traveler to whisk away on the midnight train with her. Somewhere between Jericho Station and Atlas Station, whomever she's chosen vanishes forever."
"And you believe this happens?" said Sam. "Perhaps you know someone they claim it's happened to?"
"No, not at all," she said, smiling again, her lashes slightly lowered. "It's as though someone developed a recipe for the perfect story and used it to tell this tale, don't you think? Drama, revenge and vanishings. They say she always chooses someone who's traveling alone as her victim, so that not a soul notices they're missing until far too late."
"It certainly makes me reconsider traveling alone," said Sam. "And also grateful my sister was traveling with her husband, whether there's any merit to this story or not."
"Well, even if it's single travelers she's after, I'm quite certain my brother is still quite safe," she said. "He's a great bull of a man; no target for anybody, particularly not a wisp of a girl ghost."
"I don't suppose our material laws apply to the supernatural," said Sam, careful not to reveal any actual knowledge. "A wisp of a girl ghost might be more powerful than you think."
"Are you trying to frighten me?" she said with a girlish smile. "If so, you'll have to try harder than that. I have got brothers, after all."
"Not on purpose, I assure you," said Sam quickly, though he matched her smile, just for a moment. He could hear an approaching thunder behind them, then a great whistle, the sound of a train arriving on time. "I expect that's for you," he said, standing up and offering her a hand to help her up as well. "Thank you for your time--"
"Margaret," she supplied.
"Thank you for your time, Margaret. That's just the story I was looking for."
"It was my pleasure," she said. "Thank you for keeping me company while I waited for the train, Sam."
"Would you like me to stay with you until you determine whether or not your brother is on board?"
"Oh, that won't be necessary," she assured him. "I've waited for him before, and if he's not aboard then I'll wait for him again. But thank you for the offer all the same."
"As you wish," said Sam, and tipped his hat at her before getting out of the way of the platform as the train arrived at the station.
: : :
"So we've got a name," said Dean. "Sort of. Possibly. If it's not actually something else entirely, and if our girl ghost is not actually a man named Charlie. We've worked with less."
His trip to the hotel had been nearly as fruitful as Sam's to the platform, if in a different direction. He'd not only found someone to give him the location of the nearest churchyard, he also had a roughly sketched map of how to reach it. The path and location were barely more than scrawls on the slip of newsprint, but it was a treasure all the same.
"Of course, they think we're proper and God-fearing men now," said Dean, "but we're both used to that. Or has it been so long you've forgotten?"
"I haven't forgotten," said Sam. And even if he had, he'd always had stronger faith than Dean to begin with. A God-fearing man was not a difficult role for him to play. "You could have tried harder to get us a room. The hotel looked clean enough."
"Even I can't make a room exist where there wasn't one before," said Dean. "You've just gone soft, Sam. We've spent more nights on the ground than we ever did in a bed."
"That doesn't mean I have to like it," said Sam. "It's nice having a home with a bed, Dean. I'm looking forward to being back in it."
"With someone like your Jessica in it, I can't say I blame you, Sammy," said Dean, pressing the crude map into Sam's hand and reaching into his automobile for what Sam knew was going to be their home for the night. Maybe the same tent he'd been sleeping in on and off for most of his life.
"It's not as sordid as you make it out to be, you know," he said. "Jess and I do a lot of interesting work together."
"Is that what you call it so nobody catches on?"
"I don't know why I tell you anything," muttered Sam.
"Actually, you don't tell me anything," said Dean, emerging triumphant with an armful of canvas and poles and pressing it into Sam's arms. "Sorry, I stopped worrying about folding things properly when I found I had more space to haul things around in."
"That explains your clothing," said Sam, giving it a judgmental once over even though the condition was no different from when they were growing up. Very little in their lives had ever had a woman's touch, and their clothing was no exception.
Though admittedly, in the years since Sam had last seen him Dean had definitely taken a turn for the more unconventional. Sam would never admit, to Dean or anyone else, that it suited him.
"Shut your piehole and set up the tent," said Dean, finding one more pole wedged in with the knives and yanking it out. "You'll probably need this."
Sam put it, and the rest of the tent, on the ground in the middle of the clearing they'd claimed for the night.
"I have no idea how you've managed on your own."
"Sleeping in my Tessa, a lot of the time," he said. "The tent's nice enough, though. It's not like that one Dad used to make us sleep in, barely room to sit up."
"Dad liked to pack light."
It was practically the mantra of their youth. At first, it was nothing they couldn't fling into the boxcar of a moving train. Then it was nothing that would slow down a horse. Even after Sam had a home of his own - or a couple of rooms of his own, which was closer to the truth - he still found the habit a hard one to shake. If there was clutter accumulation in his current accommodation, it belonged almost entirely to Jess.
"That's because Dad never had anything as extraordinary as my automobile," said Dean.
"So," said Sam.
"So?"
"You never told me," said Sam. "Was he here? Did Dad ever show up in Jericho Station?"
"Maybe," said Dean with a half shrug, closing the door of the automobile. "Maybe not. The bartender at the saloon said he thought he remembered him, but Dad doesn't exactly stick out. He likes not to be remembered."
"What about the hotel?"
"None of his usual aliases ever checked in," said Dean. "If he was here - which he almost certainly was - he probably did the same thing we are. Maybe even in this exact spot. What I can tell you for sure is there's no sign of him here now; this town's not big enough to hide in."
Sam looked around for the remains of a campfire, even though the odds of them choosing the same patch of land were slim. He found two without having to do more than turn in a circle, and no reason to believe that either belonged to their father.
"How is he?"
"Do you really care, or do you just think you should ask?"
Sam smoothed out the map against this thigh, traced a trail with his fingertip from one edge of the paper to the other in the dying light. It didn't look far, but on a map with no scale and no landmarks it could be one mile or twenty.
"Will there be someone at the church tomorrow?" he said finally.
"Does it matter?" said Dean. "If the records are there, we'll get our hands on them, and if they're not we have a whole boneyard to explore."
There were some parts of the job that Sam missed even less than others.
"Please tell me you've got a device that will do that part of the job for us?" he said, turning the map on an angle to match the lie of the land.
"A device that will systematically tour graveyards and read tombstones?" said Dean. "In your dreams, Sammy."
"I'd settle for something that can dig in the dark of night."
"I could do that," said Dean, "but it would be neither quiet nor portable. Sometimes elbow grease is still the best alternative. You aren't scared of a little hard work, are you? Have you gone all soft on me?"
"I haven't spent much time these past three years digging up graves, no," said Sam. But that didn't mean he didn't still know how, couldn't still feel the first jarring shovelfuls of earth, and the way they made his biceps ache with the strain.
"Don't worry, it's like riding a bicycle," said Dean. "Something I'm sure you have had lots of experience with these past few years."
"Worry isn't the word I would use to describe what I'm feeling right now."
"Is that so? Then what word would you use?"
Sam opened the vehicle door again and carefully placed his frock coat inside, safe from the elements and his brother's neglect for proper preservation. He wouldn't be needing it here where they were alone, and probably not until they reached the church tomorrow, however they planned on getting there.
He'd barely reunited with his brother, barely begun this hunt, but already he could feel the transformation in himself, not into someone new, and not into someone more like his brother, but into a person he'd been suppressing with his home and his manners and his education. It was an uneasy sensation, not feeling entirely at home with any of who he was, had been, or eventually would be.
"That tent's not going to erect itself, Sam," said Dean as Sam shut up the car and rolled up his sleeves.
"Something else you need to work on," muttered Sam, and set to work, whistling a popular tune. At least, it was a popular tune in his head. By the time it came out of him it was so unrecognizable that he could see his brother wince. That just made him whistle louder.
"You gonna do that all night?" said Dean. "You're going to attract bullfrogs or something."
"Jessica never minds my whistling."
"Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, then, but your lady friend is tone deaf," said Dean.
"Maybe she is," said Sam. "Maybe we're perfect together."
"How can you be perfect together when she doesn't even know you?" said Dean. "I know you better than her, Sam. I know you better than anyone."
"Do you?" said Sam, under his breath, setting up tent poles with the ease of someone who'd done it a hundred times, even though it had been years. Some things imprinted themselves so deeply you were never rid of them.
While he did that, Dean built up the fire, and there was very little else to say before they called it a night.
: : :
They managed to take Tessa to the church because the trail was wide and clear, and because, as Sam was quickly learning, Dean never walked anywhere he could drive. Tessa might've run pretty quiet, compared to some automobiles Sam had encountered, but she still made sneaking up on anybody a more dicey prospect, particularly over rough terrain.
"Anybody home?" said Dean, pushing open the heavy wooden doors with both hands then standing right between them. If there was anyone in the church, there was no way they could miss him.
"I think it's just you and God," said Sam, urging him forward.
"Well then I hope God doesn't mind a little bit of petty espionage," said Dean, striding between the crooked wooden pews, heels kicking up a faint trail of dust.
"No more than he's minded any other time you've done it, anyway," said Sam, following more delicately, careful on the worn wooden floors. The thin sheen of dust on them was a result of the location and not a lack of care. "But that's between you and your maker."
"Don't you start," said Dean, peering in the chapel and then the office. "Hell, we didn't even have to pick a lock."
"Don't say hell in a church, Dean," said Sam. "At least, not out of its proper context."
"Hey, a person could argue we're doing God's work, if he wanted to," said Dean. "Pastor Jim would." Having determined there really was no one else around, he didn't even pretend he wasn't searching for records. "You know we're probably going to have to search the graveyard."
"I've been bracing myself," admitted Sam, finally meeting him at the door to the church office, where Dean was, far from making a mess, efficiently and systematically making his way through every drawer.
"Aw, Sammy, you used to like them," he said. "Remember how we used to play hide and go seek when Dad was burning bodies?"
"I always found the better hiding places," said Sam. "You could never stay still long enough. All I had to do was wait you out."
"Good times," said Dean, leafing through a hand-bound book. "I've got death records."
"You have my attention," said Sam, coming inside to look over his shoulder. Of the two of them, he'd always been better at deciphering handwriting. "We're looking for something from when the railroad came through. 1860?"
"Within a couple of years of that, anyway," said Dean. "Connie. Connie. Connie. I don't see anything."
"It's probably short of something," said Sam. "Try Constance. Constance something." What was the other name Margaret had given him? "Or Carrie. Caroline."
"What do you think I'm doing?" said Dean, looking again through the very short list of names. "There's nothing here, Sam."
"Well, it was worth a shot," said Sam, reaching over his shoulder to gently close the book in his hands. Not that he didn't trust Dean's skills, but he hadn't spotted anything even resembling the name in question. Let's go back outside, Dean. We shouldn't intrude any more than we absolutely need to."
Far from intruding, Dean took the time to make sure everything was back in its place before they moved on to investigate the graveyard, and it couldn't just be because he didn't want to leave any evidence of their visit. There was nothing that could have led back to them, particularly once they left town.
"You take the left side and I'll take the right," said Sam, pushing open the iron gate with one hand. The lingering creak suggested it was a place not visited all that regularly, or if it was, then one no one took the time anymore to care for. Which, as it tended to turn out, was ultimately to their benefit.
It didn't even feel ghoulish anymore, stalking the rows of tombstones, brushing aside debris and tracing old lettering with his fingertips. At least here nothing was so old that it was worn down to the wood, lettering too weather-beaten to read.
"I don't see anything," he said a little while later, looking across the rows to where Dean was squatting down, carefully moving some dead flowers.
"Me neither," said Dean, standing up again, returning the flowers to where they'd been moldering. "If it was a just a nickname, then we're clean out of luck."
"Have you got any other ideas?" said Sam, surveying the graveyard with a glance one last time. Surely there were other churches, other graveyards, but the further afield they went, the less likely they were to find her. This place was their first and best hope.
"Not right this second," said Dean, "but a beer would probably help. Let's head back to the saloon, Sam, and take stock of our options."
Sam just hoped 'take stock of our options' was actually a case-related suggestion and not a new euphemism for any one of Dean's favorite activities, most of which could be conducted in any saloon in the country.
: : :
Ultimately, and inevitably, they ended up back at the train platform some time long after dark, after a few beers and a lot of conversation. Ostensibly they were looking for a flash of inspiration, though Dean also insisted that they try to take a good look at the tracks themselves. Sam, in turn, insisted they wait for the latest train to head through before they stepped onto said tracks.
"God, those things creep my out," said Dean, shuddering dramatically as he sneaked a glance at the ticket-taking automaton, ticking away as its arm raised and lowered with each passenger.
"I never understood that," said Sam. "I always thought they should've been just your thing." And though it was something he had no way of knowing, based on his own childhood toys Sam suspected they were something that had fascinated Dean once. "In fact, I'm surprised you haven't built one of your own."
"They've got dead eyes," said Dean, like that should have been enough explanation in and of itself. "The guts of them are astounding - God I'd like to get my hands inside some of them - but you look at them bobbing back and forth and it's just kind of creepy, don't you think?"
"I guess I never really thought about it that much," said Sam, taking his time walking the length of the station while they waited for the train to pull out again. They were ubiquitous, after all. He didn't think about them much more than he though about shoes, or trains. "They do something that needs to be done."
"Not really," said Dean, shoving his hands in his pockets and scaring the patrons as he rocked right on the edge of the platform, watching the caboose pass him by.
"Wait, do you hear something?" said Sam, a sound from up the tracks catching his attention, just for a second.
"What, you mean like a train?" said Dean. "Yes, I hear a train. In fact, I hear a very loud train, Sammy.
"No, not the train," said Sam. "Something under the train, or maybe on the--" It came again, just loud enough to make out this time, a shrill cry of his name.
"Sam! Saaaaaaam!"
"Okay, that time I heard it," said Dean. "I don't suppose you have an explanation?"
"Oh dear God, that was her," he said, "that was the woman I met, Dean! That's Margaret!"
"Hell of a way to say good-bye."
But Margaret never had any intention of boarding a train, and if she had she certainly wouldn't be shrieking Sam's name out an open window, loud enough for him to hear over the ground of machinery and the rattling of the wheels on the tracks.
"She's not saying good-bye, she's--" Sam didn't even bother to finish the sentence before tugging on Dean's leather sleeve, yanking hard enough to draw Dean into racing back across the station with him to where they'd left Tessa. "She wasn't supposed to be on a train, she was waiting for her brother. Dean, something dragged her onto that train."
"Good thing Tessa takes under a minute to warm up," said Dean, though it was the longest minute Sam had ever had to wait through. "Grab your scattergun, Sam, and let's catch this bastard."
"Can you catch the train, Dean?" Sam asked as Dean spun around the station and started heading north-east alongside the tracks.
"Hell yes, I can," he said. "Tessa can catch anything on land. Just hold on tight, Sammy, it's gonna be a bumpy ride."
Bumpy ride was certainly not overstating the case. Sam always felt that any time he was in Tessa and off the well-traveled roads it was a bumpy ride, but that was nothing compared to racing along the barely cleared spans of land next to the train tracks. He'd swear they felt every pebble, every root, every lost tool along the way.
The locomotive was picking up speed fast, but so was Dean, pushing Tessa to limits Sam hadn't even realized she could approach. It wasn't long before they were passing the tail end of it, then the car before that, then the car before that, passengers looking out the window and pointing at the madmen trying to race them.
Sam couldn't hear the cries of his name anymore over the rattling of the automobile and the grinding of the train and the wind in his ears, but he was watching as closely as he ever watched anything. He would know when they reached her.
"Dean, look out!" said Sam, the headlamps on Dean's car barely illuminating the brush in time for Dean to swerve around it, nearly sending Sam flying right out of the vehicle.
They were right there now, keeping pace with the train and pulling in alongside the car where Sam could finally, faintly, hear someone crying out his name again.
"Sam, you're going to have to jump," said Dean, giving his hip an encouraging push.
"Are you kidding me?" said Sam. "I can't jump that, Dean! It's suicide!"
He'd been hopping trains since he was a kid, but never a train going at this kind of speed, and very rarely anything but a boxcar.
"I don't see any other choice," Dean shouted over the wind, one hand on the steering column and the other grappling for something next to his seat. "Here," he said, yanking on a lever and sending an unsteady telescopic pole out from the frame of the vehicle. "This should help."
"A little warning next time?" Sam shouted back, beginning to brace himself against the side of the car. "For a moment I worried you were going to eject my seat!"
"Good idea," said Dean as the pole hooked firmly onto the stairway of the passenger car, holding the two vehicles as close and steady as they were going to get. "I'll work on that next."
For the moment the only thing Dean needed to work on was keeping his speed steady with the locomotive so it didn't become a suicide mission. Sam took a deep breath, tried not to close his eyes, and flung himself across the narrow space between himself and the train.
He thought he heard Dean tell him to hurry, that he could travel alongside the train only as long as the trail remained clear, but there were some things that just didn't need to be said.
: : :
"Sam!"
Sam forced the door open with his shoulder, by this point startling neither the flickering female form nor her victim, the only occupants of this dimly lit passenger car.
"Are you all right, Margaret?"
"Do I look all right?" she said, trapped against the wall right beneath a lantern as the ghost turned her attention to the invader. Sam raised his scattergun and blasted salt right through her, the ghost tearing up into wisps of smoke that swirled and vanished.
"Come on, we've got to get out of here!"
Margaret practically fell away from the wall, the force that had been holding her there releasing her when the spray of salt from Sam's gun hit true.
"Get out of here where?" she said breathlessly, barely avoiding falling to her knees as the floor rocked beneath her. "We're on a train!"
"My brother's waiting," he said, reaching for her arm, but before they could go anywhere the ghost coalesced across the car from them and Sam found himself skidding back on his heels away from the girl he'd arrived to rescue.
"Damn it," he swore, struggling to raise the scattergun again against the counter-efforts of an unseen force.
"Sam!"
The fact that they were both still on the train, that she hadn't vanished like the ghost victims were purported to do, had to mean something, but Sam didn't have the time to figure out just what that was. He could only guess that the ghost was waiting for something, and Sam had to get them both off this train before that something arrived.
There was a splintering crack from outside the passenger car and Sam felt his stomach drop out. He couldn't even look, could only listen until the telltale sounds of Dean's still-running automobile filtered through the rest of the ambient noise. Only then did Sam start breathing again.
He fired his gun without aiming, counting on the scatter effect to sent at least a few particles through the phantom, and finally was able to look out the window to see an intact Tessa and an intact brother, the remains of a sign in pieces inside and over the top of her.
"We're slowing down!"
Unless some cattle had wandered onto the track, there was only one reason to begin slowing down, and that was if they were approaching the next station. One detail of the story sudden became the only one that mattered: Connie's victims always disappeared at some point before the train pulled in.
"We need to get out of here the same way I came in," he said and grabbed her arm, physically hauling her to the open door which was swinging wildly with the motion of the train.
"She's going to come back!"
"That's why we need to get out of here," said Sam, holding the door open bodily, Margaret in one hand and his scattergun in the other. "You need to jump."
"I need to what?"
Jumping onto the train had been a dicey prospect. Jumping off it didn't seem much better, even with the continued slowing of the train.
"We don't have much time."
Sam would've pushed her if he had to, but in the end she hiked up her skirts and took a deep breath and hurled herself into the open vehicle landing hard right next to Dean.
His back still braced against the door, Sam fired again, and then again when the spirit returned too quickly for him to make a break for the automobile still racing along the shoulder next to him.
"Sam, come on, I'm running out of road!"
"I'm trying," he shouted back, reloading with a slam of the double barrel and firing again, right through her.
This time when he nailed her with the last of his salt rounds, Connie didn't immediately begin to coalesce somewhere else on the car. Sam took the small blessing for what it was and used those precious few moments - after all, he didn't know how many he was going to get - to make a leap of faith back into Dean's steamer.
The moment Margaret and Sam were in the car Dean slammed the lever back down again and the arm that had been keeping him latched to the train - now warped and buckled from the strain - retracted back halfway, just enough to let them go. It was barely in time.
They were still going at a respectable speed when another signpost loomed in the darkness directly in front of them. Dean swerved to avoid it, but ended up skidding down a shallow embankment instead, coming to a very sudden stop at the bottom.
The automobile sputtered to a stop and for a few moments there was only the sound of the retreating train, the birds of night-time in the nearby trees, and a lot of heavy breathing.
"Everyone all right?" said Dean finally.
"I think so," said Sam, not daring to move for a moment. When he did, though, he discovered that everything seemed to be in working order. "Margaret?"
"I'm here," she said, though Sam could tell that already from the way her body was pressed up against his. What he hadn't been certain of was whether that body was still intact.
The sound of the train grew quieter as it finished pulling in to the next station, until all they were left with were the noises of one another.
"She didn't come with us, did she?" said Dean.
"Of course I did," said Margaret. "I was practically hurled into this... automobile."
"No, not you, sweetheart," said Dean. "The ghost."
If she had, though, they would have almost certainly known it by now; the ghost on the train had been anything but subtle.
"I think she disappeared just before I got off the train," said Sam. "Either she gave up, or--"
"Or she didn't want to arrive at the station," said Dean, finally pushing open the door to his side of the vehicle and stumbling out. "Oh, my poor darling. Don't worry, I'll get you fixed up right."
Sam climbed out the way he'd come in then opened the door - forcing a branch out of the way in the process - and offered Margaret his hand.
"Where are we?" she said, smoothing her skirts as soon as Sam let go of her hand.
"Well, according to that sign we just managed not to plow out of the ground, we're a mile out of Atlas Station," said Dean. "At least, I think that's what it said. I lost one of my headlamps in the first crash."
"How's Tessa?" said Sam, carefully closing the door.
"Tessa? Who's Tessa?" said Margaret, eyeing the automobile as though they might have a young lady stashed somewhere inside. Sam couldn't deny that, if they unloaded all their gear, there would be more than enough room for one.
"Tessa's this sweet lady," said Dean, caressing the driver's-side door.
"You named your automobile Tessa?"
"After Nikola Tesla," said Dean, "and if you don't know who that is, I don't want to hear it." Margaret didn't answer him either way. "With a little elbow grease she'll be fine, but I don't think we're going anywhere till daylight. I hope you don't mind camping, Margie."
"Margaret," she said primly. "And we could walk into Atlas Station."
"By all means, be my guest," said Dean broadly. "You're the one who was just attacked by a spirit, but if you want to walk a mile in the dark back to the very train she dragged you onto, that's certainly your choice to make."
She huffed, but she didn't go anywhere.
"That's what I thought," said Dean. "Sammy, you want to get the camping gear out while I... entertain your friend?"
"I've got a better idea," said Sam. "Why don't you get the camping gear out while Margaret and I take a walk to settle our nerves."
"Settle your nerves?" said Dean. "I'm the one who had to drive!"
"Dean...." said Sam, shaking his head, just a tiny flick from side to side.
Margaret moved closer to his side, which Sam took as an acceptance of his unspoken invitation. He offered her his arm which she took at once, though she didn't smile as she did. Sam couldn't have expected that much, not after everything, though at least Margaret wasn't trembling as she clutched him.
"I think my brother needs a few moments alone with Tessa anyway," he said softly as he led her away from the site of their little mishap, towards the edge of the woods where the songbirds seemed to linger. In fact, he imagined Dean shedding a tear or two the moment they were out of sight.
"He does seem to have an unnatural attachment to it," said Margaret, looking back over her shoulder only for a moment. "I haven't thanked you yet for saving my life. I can't imagine anyone else doing what you did."
"Well, my family has never been known for making the safe choice," said Sam ruefully. "Are you all right? She didn't hurt you, did she?"
"Other than a few bumps and bruises, I'm quite all right," she assured him. "I haven't any idea what she was planning to do with me, but she didn't seem to want to hurt me."
Sam didn't want to say that he was virtually certain the spirit did want to hurt her, but lost the opportunity before she could. The people who disappeared, after all, had to have gone somewhere, and Sam would bet good money it wasn't any place they wanted to be.
"We don't want to go far," he said, though he expected she wouldn't need to be told that. The light of the moon could only illuminate their way so far.
"Well, I didn't think you were going to lead me off into the woods without so much as a chaperone," she said, her voice lightly suggesting that perhaps she though he might do just that. That in fact, she might welcome it.
Sam coughed politely and decided the best course of action was to avoid the subject altogether. It certainly wouldn't be the first time someone they'd rescued had been overly grateful, but that was something he remembered Dean having more of a history of taking advantage of than Sam.
"Oh, what's that?" he said, grateful to spot an unusual mound just inside the first line of trees to distract them from the obvious course of the conversation. "Though I suppose we shouldn't investigate, not at this time of night."
"Of course we should," said Margaret, clutching his arm a little tighter. "And you'll not leave my side while we do, will you?"
So much for a change of subject. But the closer they got the more suspicious Sam grew of the oddly shaped mound of dead grasses near the trees. It was certainly an unnatural growth, and though that was nothing unusual this close to the railway, where there were still many artifacts of their passage, he was too curious now to let it go.
He knelt down and pushed the grasses aside with one hand and discovered, just barely discernable in the dim light, what was unmistakably a wooden grave marker. He couldn't read the words inscribed on it, but he suddenly felt quite certain he knew what they were going to be.
"We need to get back to Dean. Now."
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