An End Has a Start (Dean/Carmen, Sam/Jess R) 7/10
Title: An End Has a Start - Part 7
Rating: R
Pairings: Dean/Carmen, Sam/Jess
Word Count: 6,602 (50,221 overall)
Warnings: Wishverse fic, spoilers for S1 & S2 through 2x20
Summary: After Dean wakes up in the hospital with amnesia after an apparent attempted suicide, the answers he seeks just brings more questions before turning his world completely upside down.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6
Watching his brother systematically disassemble a car wasn’t exactly how Sam had planned on spending his afternoon. At first he’d offered to help, but when Dean asked for the panel puller and found himself on the receiving end of a blank look, he told Sam to sit down somewhere and not touch anything. Dean also turned out to be not much of a talker when he worked, which was surprising to Sam, and he quickly found himself wishing he’d at least brought a book. He ended up reading through the notebook several times over, the names of each victim over the last century almost memorized.
In reality, though, Dean was keeping his mouth shut because he was worried that if he tried talking to Sam he might start gagging. The garage was well-ventilated due to all sorts of noxious fumes and chemicals they sometimes worked with, so he knew Sam couldn’t smell it, but the inside of the car reeked of burned flesh and hair. The upholstery had been stripped before Dean got the car, and he didn’t even want to imagine what the car smelled like when all the fabric and carpeting that tended to absorb these odors were still there.
The first thing Dean had done was look at the battery, which required him ripping the mangled hood off. He couldn’t help but laugh when he saw it. The police report had said that the battery had exploded, which is clearly didn’t just by looking at the lack of corresponding damage to the outside of the car, but it was even more obvious inside of it. The battery looked perfectly fine, and apart from the bits and pieces that were smashed up from hitting the light pole, the car was fine.
With nothing unusual under the hood, Dean got to work on the interior of the car. He took out the seats and removed all the interior paneling, looking at the different electricity lines running through the car, looking for frayed wiring or segments that were melted or singed.
He went to remove the paneling around the emergency brake and gearshift when Dean noticed something. “Sam? You know what a screwdriver is, right?”
“Yes,” Sam replied, tone suggesting how-dumb-do-you-think-I-am while at the same time he resisted answering by saying “vodka and orange juice.”
“Bring me a flathead.” Sam grabbed one from the table he was sitting next to, bringing it over and crouching down to see whatever Dean was doing. Dean was poking at a puddle of some black, viscous substance that had puddled under the emergency brake lever. “Does that look like anything to you?”
“Uh… oil?” Sam tried, the only thing he could think of but knowing he had to be wrong because he doubted Dean would’ve taken an interest in oil in a car and also wouldn’t ask Sam what it was.
“Doesn’t smell like oil.” Dean took the screwdriver, running the head of it through the goo to cling to the end of it and bring it up for closer inspection. “Any parts of the car that could’ve melted would have rehardened - this stuff is still… goopy.”
“You don’t think it’s fat, do you?” Sam felt queasy from the idea that the substance could have been from the victim.
Dean doubted it. “Fat would’ve congealed, right? Like bacon grease?”
“I suppose.” Dean crawled out of the car, finding a glass jar that had some nails in it. He dumped them into another container, dropping the sludge-covered screwdriver into the jar. “Whatever it is, I think it has something to do with whoever has been killing these people.”
“Maybe it’s the weapon. Like… Some sort of conductor was used to get more electricity flowing.” Sam wracked his brain for anything he could remember from the non-major physics course he had taken years ago. “The right type of conductor could make even a static shock more potent.” Sam looked at the goop, getting an idea. “Maybe someone in the chemistry department at KU could help us identify it. If it’s something that’s hard to come by, we could find places in the area that sell it, and that could help us track down the killer. All we’d need is a credit card number. Or we could just turn it into the police,” Sam suggested. “They have access to labs, so they can figure out what it is and deal with it.”
“You want to turn this over to the police?”
“We did it before.”
“Yeah but it didn’t help anything, Sam. Someone still died. And unless we figure something out there’s a Donald Cooper in Topeka who is looking to be victim number thirty five.”
Sam watched his brother for a moment, trying to put the pieces together yet again but failing. “Why are you taking this so personally, Dean? You’re not a cop. It’s not your job to try and protect these people.”
Dean clenched his jaw, palms flat against the table, leaning all of his weight into it. He didn’t know how to tell Sam about the dreams that had been plaguing him since regaining clarity in that warehouse. Didn’t know how to explain how right it felt, how natural, how somewhere in his mind there was a version of him and a version of Sam that got along, were best friends. Didn’t know how to explain that somehow the dreams and these deaths and that night in the warehouse and Dean’s sudden ability to fight, to know when someone was hiding a weapon, to read a newspaper and get a shiver down his spine because something felt wrong and have to do something about it.
“What about the card you got from Charlie?” Sam asked quietly.
“The psychic!?” Dean arched an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Why would Charlie give you the card if she didn’t think she’d be able to help?” Sam tried reasoning. “It sounds ridiculous, I know, but sometimes psychics consult at crime scenes. Maybe she could… I don’t know… Sense something from that gooey stuff or whatever. It’s not like we have a ton of options here.”
Dean’s face fell. “You’re being serious.”
“Yeah, Dean, I am.”
“Shit.” Dean didn’t know what else to say. It was insane - he didn’t believe in psychics. Psychics made him think of Miss Cleo infomercials that ran during late night television. He’d always thought psychics were for the gullible or as a last resort for the desperate. The more he thought about it, though, the more Dean realized that, while not gullible, he and Sam were most certainly desperate. “All right - we’ll go on Monday. I can’t believe I just said that.” Dean grabbed the jar, flipping off the garage lights and walking outside.
“I thought we’re going on Monday.” Sam followed his brother out to the Impala, watching Dean stick the glass jar in a cardboard box in the trunk so if it fell over it wouldn’t ooze all over the place.
“We are. It’s late, so I’m going home. Don’t want Carmen to think I’m cheating on her, especially not with you.” Dean gave him that cocky, smartass grin that Sam hated so much. “You better bring some cash tomorrow. If we’re going to get scammed from a palm reading and a nutjob looking at a crystal ball, better your money than mine.”
When Dean got home, Carmen was leaning against the corner of the the couch with her legs stretched out in front of her, using chopsticks and eating lo mein out of a delivery box. She was watching one of those Law & Order marathons that always seemed to be on some channel, a half empty bottle of beer standing on a coaster on the coffee table along with a couple more boxes of Chinese food. She was in her pajamas, tiny shorts that drew Dean’s eye right to her legs and a ratty AC/DC T-shirt that Dean liked to wear back in high school.
Dean went into the kitchen, pulling a beer out of the refrigerator and using the edge of the table in there to get the cap off. Carmen moved her legs out of the way when Dean went to sit on the couch, sitting close so when she put her legs back up her thighs were resting on his.
“I ordered that spicy chicken you like,” Carmen said, indicating the General Tso’s. She squirmed as Dean ran his fingers along the inside of her leg. “I can’t believe they needed you at the shop today.”
“Billing on the parts we ordered got fucked up,” Dean lied, not knowing how to explain to Carmen that he disassembled a dead girl’s car, found some viscous substance, and was going with Sam on Monday to see a psychic. Actually, he decided, it was probably for the best not to tell her at all. “Only me and Mike have the credit authorization.” He didn’t want to lie, but Dean wanted at least someone to think he wasn’t going insane with this near obsession. He grabbed a pair of chopsticks, pulling them out of the paper wrapper and snapping them apart as he opened the delivery box of chicken.
“Just feel like we haven’t been seeing a lot of each other lately.” Carmen switched the hand she was holding the carton in, sticking the chopsticks inside of it and grabbing the beer bottle with her free hand. She took a sip, looking at Dean thoughtfully. “Thursday you were gone all night and when I got home from work you still weren’t back and Sam was sitting by the door looking like it was the end of the world, waiting to make sure you got back okay.”
“You know how paranoid Sam can get.” Dean chewed a mouthful of Chinese food slowly, quickly trying to come up with an excuse about where he was all night. “Drew has problems holding his liquor, had a few tequila shots too many. Got him back home, kept an eye on him, went to work in the morning.”
Carmen put the bottle back down on the coffee table, suddenly looking extremely tired as she pinched the bridge of her nose, massaging the space under her eyes. “I’m sorry… I just… This time of year is always crazy at the hospital and then I worry about you on top of everything else.” She put the Chinese food down, unable to help herself as Carmen found herself crying.
Dean put his food down, wrapping his arms around Carmen as she leaned into him, pressing her face against Dean’s shoulder as her body wracked in sobs. “Shhhh,” he soothed. “It’s okay, babe. It’s okay.” Dean just held her, let her get it all out, feeling bad that he really hadn’t been around much lately. She cried until there was nothing left, breath coming out in gasps. Dean kissed the side of her face, tasting salt and wet on her cheek. Carmen turned into him, drawing his mouth to hers hungrily, trying to draw on Dean’s strength. Dean let her take it, but he wasn’t sure how much he had left to give.
Carmen put her hand on Dean’s chest, pulling away slightly. “I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “We had a man come in today… stabbing victim. He died on the table, the internal damage was just too much and there was just so much internal bleeding the doctors couldn’t stop it. It hit a little close to home.” She rested her head on Dean’s shoulder. “You get your memory back?”
“No, I haven’t,” Dean sighed. “Charlie told me not to expect anything on day one, so I’m not getting my hopes up. I’m wondering if maybe I’m better off not knowing.” They watched the television in silence, Dean feeling Carmen’s breathing even out as she calmed down. “I love you.”
“You better,” Carmen replied, and even though Dean couldn’t see it on her face, he could tell from her tone of voice that she was smiling.
+
The house was unassuming. If the address hadn’t been printed on the business card, Dean never would have guessed a self-proclaimed psychic to live there. Sitting in the Impala at the end of the driveway, he felt like an idiot for being there as he followed Sam with his eyes, his brother climbing out of the car. Where Dean dreaded getting this conversation started, Sam seemed like he couldn’t wait to get it over with.
“Are you coming?” Sam asked, voice muffled through the passenger-side window.
Dean pulled himself out of the car, getting the black goo in the jar out of the trunk before dragging himself behind Sam to the front door. They climbed the front steps, Sam giving Dean a here-goes-nothing look as his finger hovered over the doorbell. The door opened before Sam’s finger even touched the button, the screen door seperating them from the woman who must have been Missouri Moseley.
“Took you boys long enough to drop by,” she said, pushing open the screen door. Dean figured she knew that Charlie gave him her card, but he had no idea why she indicated Sam in her greeting, as well. “You better come inside - we have a lot to talk about.”
“My name’s Sam.” Dean listened to his brother introducing himself half-heartedly, looking around the living room they were being let into and once again noticing how normal it all seemed. No crystal ball, no multitude of cats, no teacups decorating every flat surface. Dean wasn’t sure if it was the lighting or if the air was dry in the house, but he could feel himself starting to develop a headache.
“I know who you both are. I saw you boys coming here some time before, Dean and Sam. I just thought you would’ve been quicker in getting to me.” She motioned vaguely at the couches. “I’m sure you’d be more comfortable if you sat down.” Missouri sat in the recliner facing the couch. “So, Dean, why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”
The way she said it was more of a command than a question, her straight-forwardness throwing Dean off balance. His brain was seeming to have a hard time keeping up, like the amnesia was making it take longer to think about things since it had that blank spot to jump over. He and Sam sat on the couch almost simultaneously, Dean putting the glass jar down on a table in front of him. “You’re the psychic - don’t you know already?”
“I have an idea. But if the reason why I think you’re here and the reason why you think you’re here aren’t the same, then, we have a whole other set of problems. Maybe you don’t want to hear why I think you should be here. Happens all the time in my work - a mother will come in, looking for a missing son. I’ll know he’s dead but she doesn’t want to hear that.”
Dean reached into his jacket, pulling the notebook out of his inside pocket and putting it on the table between him and her. “Charlie gave me your card about three weeks ago - said you would be able to help where she couldn’t. I’ve been noticing something strange for the last month or so, people dying under similar circumstances, explanations for their deaths not fitting evidence that was given. I did some research, found out this isn’t the first time it’s happened. I’ve found six other incidences in the last one hundred and four years, all following the same pattern. On December 21st and 28th then January 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, someone who has been abused as a child is killed by massive, instant electrocution on their birthday in northeastern Kansas. The towns are always the same - Atchison, Lawrence, Holton, Leavenworth, Topeka, and Oskaloosa - and always in that order.” Dean indicated the jar. “We found that stuff in Michaela Johnson’s car a couple days ago. No idea what it is or what it could be.”
Feeling like he had a right to because he was helping and he had been touched when Dean said “we found” when it was really more like “he found,” Sam spoke up. “We were hoping you could maybe touch it and see something or… however it works.”
Missouri stared between the two of them for a long while, trying to decide if they could really handle knowing or not. She decided they could, having come this far. She’d gotten bad vibes from Michaela Johnson’s death, but because she hadn’t been able to get to the actual car, she couldn’t pick up anymore than that. Missouri didn’t need to touch it to know what it was. “It’s ectoplasm.”
“Like in Ghostbusters?” Dean asked, a choked laugh escaping from his mouth. He knew she had to be nuts.
“What you have there,” Missouri said pointedly, “is the result of something very powerful and very pissed off. You came to me for answers, and I’m giving them to you. All those monsters that scared you, kept you awake at night fearing the shadows growing up, it’s all very much real. It’s a spirit murdering all those people - unless you really believe a single person could go on a century long killing spree.”
Dean’s face was pale, and Sam felt like he was possibly about to get sick. Dean couldn’t remember, but he had the dreams and his suspicions. Sam saw something when they were in Joliet that night, and as much as he danced around the subject, passed it off as a joke, he couldn’t deny what he had seen. And now Missouri Moseley, this psychic who Charlie seemed to know, was confirming that Dean not only was perfectly sane, but that they were actually trying to hunt one down, a ghost, that was killing people.
“You’re glad I told you to sit down, now, aren’t you?” Missouri grabbed the notebook from the table, leafing through the pages and pages of articles and scans about all the people that had been killed, now modified with notes by Dean or Sam about medical reports on some, birthdates on all of them. “I knew that I was supposed to help you before you showed up at my door today. It is possible to stop it - you do want to stop it, right?”
“Yeah,” Sam responded immediately, surprising himself and apparently Dean as well from the look his brother was giving him. “But… How do you kill a spirit?”
Missouri closed the notebook, holding it in her lap while smiling softly at Dean and Sam. “Would you like something to eat or drink? I could make some tea and I have chocolate chip cookies that were baked yesterday.”
“That sounds great,” Dean said, forcing himself to smile as he watched Missouri pull herself out of the chair and walk into the kitchen. He turned his gaze to Sam the second she left. “Dude, are you fucking kidding me? You think we’re going to kill a ghost?”
“Do you not believe her?” Sam asked. “After what I told you what happened, after what you said in those hypnosis sessions.”
Dean’s expression turned dark. “I never told you about those.”
“You left the tapes in the car - I pocketed them after the New Year’s party. I wanted a reason to not believe you and all I found was more proof otherwise.” Sam’s eyes flicked to the kitchen then back to Dean. “You were the one that wanted to stop these people from getting killed. You were the one that dragged me into this. We’re seeing it to the end, whether you like it or not, so either we’re going to let two more people die this month and God knows how many after that or we’re going to put an end to it.”
Dean didn’t have time to reply as Missouri came back into the room with three cups of tea and a plate of cookies. She seemed to look at them like she knew they had been fighting and possibly knew beforehand that that’s what was going to happen so she’d extrapolated herself from the situation, not needing to get involved.
“So you want to learn about the creatures that go bump in the night,” Missouri said slowly, trying to find a place to start. “Well I suppose the first thing you boys should do is not question anything I tell you, no matter how ridiculous it might seem. This stuff can be difficult to swallow the first time around - sometimes even the second. The next thing I recommend is go out and invest in some rock salt. Nothing else repels spirits and demons quite like it. Well, nothing else as readily available, anyway. There’s all sorts of symbols and sigils that work just as well if not better, but you can’t buy those in bulk down at the wholesale club, now, can you?” Missouri took a sip of her tea, putting the cup down on the table before settling into the chair and really getting into it.
Dean and Sam listened openly as she talked about vengeful spirits, how they could be quelled by either giving the spirit what it truly wanted, by trapping it permanently, or by finding the body from which it came, unearthing it, and salting then burning the remains. Sam tried not to think about how many laws desecrating a grave broke. Dean tried not to wish that this had all ended with him really being insane. She talked about how spirits didn’t like their bodies tampered with, would most assuredly fight back, and that a circle of salt as protection or rock salt shells for a shotgun was always a good idea.
She didn’t just stop after spirits, either. Missouri went on about everything she knew existed and then some she’d heard about but hadn’t been able to experience firsthand - werewolves, vampires, demons, poltergeists, to name a few. Dean and Sam looked at each other briefly, both noticing that she had failed to mention djinn and wondering if that had been intentional or not.
They learned that other people knew about these things, too. Some did it as a calling, some out of revenge, some as sort of a hobby. These people - hunters, she had called them - usually had one thing in common. They’d all been forced into knowing about the supernatural world when it violently collided with their lives, hurting or killing someone close to them. Dean felt a twinge below the scar on his stomach, wondering if it were selfish that he was there because of himself. He had wanted to know what happened on the days he couldn’t remember, and while he still couldn’t, he somehow found himself drawn to the story about Sabrina Belmont’s death in Atchison almost a month ago, and now he found himself being told that a world really existed, one he thought that he’d made up or had only existed in his nightmares.
Hours passed, but it was dark before any of them had noticed how quickly the time had gone. “It’s nearly seven now,” Missouri said, standing to stare out the window overlooking her front yard. “Best you boys be heading out now - you have a lot of stocking up to do and only two days to do it. I regret that I can’t come with you, but you have my number on that card if you need any help.”
They drove to their mother’s house in silence, an awkward tension like they were afraid that the illusion would shatter once someone spoke.
“Think we still got Dad’s old shotgun up in the attic?” Dean asked when he turned the Impala onto the street he and Sam had grown up on.
Sam never thought he’d be glad they had it. Although, he noticed, he was coming to realize a lot of things he never thought he would as of late. “You think it still works?”
Dean tried to remember the last time he’d used it, coming up with grouse hunting two maybe three years ago over in Russell County. “Probably needs to get cleaned.” Dean let out a bark of a laugh. “We’re going ghost hunting on Thursday.”
“Looks like we are.” Sam didn’t think about what would happen if they couldn’t find the body to end it once and for all - they didn’t even know who the spirit was, forget where. He knew Dean was expected to be at work the next couple days, but Sam had time to kill. He needed to find out who the ghost was and where its body could be found - only that would guarantee people getting saved.
+
It was dark out as Dean walked back to the motel. He pulled the key out of his pocket, keeping his gaze down as he opened the door lest Dad was there and wondering where he’d gone. Dean shut the door slowly, deliberately, making sure there were no audible clicks as he turned the lock.
Dean turned around, freezing when he saw a light coming from the other room. Did Sam wake up when he was gone? Maybe he’d just turned the light off and gone back to bed. He entered the room cautiously, doing his best to stay calm at what he saw.
The shtriga, the thing Dean was sure Dad was hunting, was hovering over Sam, drawing what looked to Dean like mist from Sam’s mouth and into its own. Slowly, silently, Dean grabbed at the rifle that was leaning against the wall just outside the door, holding it to the monster that was doing something to his baby brother. He cocked the gun, which got the shtriga’s attention almost instantly as it turned towards Dean with a hiss.
Dean heard the door go flying open, responding instinctually by dropping to the ground when Dad shouted, “Get out of the way!” He heard the bang of a gun, looking up to see if his dad had managed to kill it, but Dean watched the shtriga escape the way it had gotten in - the bedroom window wide open. Dean stood slowly, feeling his father brushing by him as he rushed over to Sam, now awake on the bed. “Sammy! Are you okay?”
“Dad?” Sam said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“You all right?” Dad asked, putting his hand on Sam’s head, ruffling his hair before hugging him tightly. Dean shrank guiltily when his father looked his way. “What happened?”
“I…” Dean stammered, swallowing hard. “I just went out.”
He shrank at the horrified expression on Dad’s face. “What?”
“Just for a second,” he blurted out, wishing instantly that he hadn’t. Dean didn’t have a right to be giving excuses. He’d been given orders and he disobeyed. “I’m sorry.”
“I told you not to leave this room. I told you not to let him out of your sight!” Dad yelled, Dean wincing but not letting it show, taking it like a man, like Dad would want him to. Sammy seemed distraught, not knowing what had almost happened to him because he’d been asleep, the shtriga holding him in a sort of coma.
Dad held onto Sam tighter, Dean watching, feeling dismayed by what he had done. He didn’t want to be a disappointment. He was never going to let Sammy out of his sight again.
+
The tension was palpable on the drive to Topeka. They were only on Interstate 70 for about half an hour, but each second ticked away like a day. In his lap Sam had the notebook and a regional map. The trunk of the Impala now contained a lot of rock salt and Dad’s old shotgun from before Dean was born. They both made a show of not being weirded out by how quickly and precisely Dean unassembled the gun, cleaning every piece, making sure everything was in working order, before reassembling it and making rounds out of some of the rock salt.
They hadn’t been able to identify the ghost. Sam had called Jess and even asked Mom about what they remembered seeing from Michaela Johnson’s death that day, Mom saying she hadn’t noticed and Jess had thought she saw someone in the car with Michaela but wasn’t sure. Sam went through police reports, but no one had witnessed the deaths of the other victims. Without a description of the ghost and with six different locations to choose from, they had no idea where to begin. The ghost had to have been from before 1902, but how far back, they hadn’t been able to find out. Sam’s myriad databases and scanning through microfiche for nearly twenty four hours between the two of them didn’t do any good.
“So…” Sam tried, the car stopped at a red light just outside the city. “What’s the plan here?”
Dean clenched his jaw, looking over at Sam in the passenger seat. “We need to find Donald Cooper. We can’t stop the spirit for good, but we can at least keep Donald safe. People only get killed on certain days - we can use the salt, make a ring around Donald’s house, come midnight it’s a new day and the ghost can’t do anything. Maybe tell him to get out of town in case we can’t stop it next week as well.”
“And you think that’ll work?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? Thing seems to be a stickler for rules, though, so we’re gonna force him to break them.” Dean mentally crossed his fingers. “There isn’t much else we can do.”
It was ten minutes outside the city that they found his house. It was a small one story, but the neighborhood looked nice, and having a smaller house than his neighbors gave Donald Cooper a larger yard. According to the file Sam had found, Donald was a manager at a bank in the town over, divorced, and had no children. There was an older model pickup truck in the driveway that looked to be in good shape, and there were some lights on in the house. Dean pulled the Impala into a driveway across the street from Donald’s house, backing out to turn around and park in front of a patch of trees a little farther down.
“These things have been happening at dark, right?” Sam asked.
Dean looked at the skyline, noticing that the sun was getting lower in the horizon, that time in the sunset when half of the sky looked like night and the other half of it looked like it was on fire. “Yeah,” Dean replied, climbing out of the car and trying to shut the door quietly behind him. “We should hurry up.” He went to the rear of the Impala, opening the trunk and handing a couple boxes of salt to Sam, taking a couple more for himself, and then grabbing out the dufflebag that had the shotgun and salt rounds hidden inside. “Let’s just hope Mister Cooper didn’t have plans this evening and just stays inside all night.”
“So we’re just going to make a circle around the house and then wait until midnight?” Sam wondered it was supposed to seem that easy or if there was a detail they were missing. He didn’t know if it mattered how thick the circle was supposed to be. He didn’t like the idea that screwing up would cost this man his life while they were right outside of his home.
Looking at the house, Dean worked out a strategy. “Okay - I’m going to put the duffle under the shrubs at the front of the house. We’ll start there, you going with the salt in one direction and I’ll go in the other. We need to make sure it stays unbroken.”
Sam figured that answered his own question - the ring needed to be at least thick and high enough so that if a breeze came through, it would completely break the circle. “Gotcha,” he replied, the two of them going down the driveway casually, hoping none of the neighbors would see them and call the police. The light that was on was at the other side of the house, so that combined with the fact that most of the shades were drawn left them not as worried about getting seen by Donald. They also hadn’t really considered what they’d tell the man if he caught them killing his yard and having a shotgun in a bag, sneaking around at night although promising him that they were there to save his life. Sam hoped that was a moment they wouldn’t come to, that Donald would just stay in all night, have some dinner, and go to bed completely undisturbed.
Dean dropped the bag as Sam started walking with the salt around the house. He crouched by it, pulling open the zipper and checking to make sure the rounds were loaded and everything was ready in case he needed to use it quickly. Dean hoped not, though. From what Missouri had said, the rock salt would annoy the ghost more than destroy it. The only thing short of salting and burning the corpse that would stop it was the salt ring, so at the moment, that was all they had. He didn’t like it, but it was certainly better than nothing.
Satisfied with the shotgun, Dean opened his box of salt and started to walk slowly around the house, making sure that the line was about three inches thick and high enough that it wasn’t disturbed by the blades of grass, brown and bent over from the frost they had a couple days ago. This night was unseasonably warm, Dean was able to see his breath if he looked for it but it felt like it was at least forty degrees. It took the better part of ten minutes before he met Sam at the back of the house, the two of them closing the loop and overlapping the other’s end of the circle.
“Now we wait,” Dean said, looking at his watch to keep note of the time as they walked over to where the bag was. It was completely dark now, giving them more shadows to hide in when a car passed.
Sam had the foresight to bring water and food, pulling out sandwiches he’d packed in with the shotgun after two hours of waiting. “Dude,” Sam said, an hour after the sandwiches were gone, “I don’t think I can feel my ass anymore.”
“This ground’s fucking cold,” Dean agreed. The temperature had dropped five degrees since they arrived, but it seemed to be holding steady at just above freezing.
At nine o’clock Donald Cooper’s house went dark as he went to bed. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Dean pulled out a deck of cards. “Gin?”
“Sure,” Sam replied, glad for the distraction to give his brain something to think about other than how cold the ground was through his jeans or how anxious he was for midnight to arrive.
It was ten thirty when the street lamp at the end of the driveway flickered, neither of them paying any particular attention until the temperature suddenly seemed to drop even further, the hairs on the backs of their necks standing on end as Dean’s head started to ache. He looked up, body automatically responding. In a single motion, Dean pushed Sam to the ground and grabbed the shotgun, cocking it single-handedly and firing at the form in front of the house, staring curiously, almost mockingly, at the salt ring. The figure dissipated and a light went on inside the house.
“Holy shit,” Sam exclaimed, eyes wide. “Did you see that?”
The spirit was a young boy, his style of clothing definitely older, simpler, nineteenth century at some point but Dean had always been bad at history and Sam was focused on other things as Donald Cooper came out of the front door in a robe and slippers, nervously wielding a baseball bat.
“Mister Cooper!” Sam called, getting in the man’s eyesight, hands in front of him and open in a gesture of harmlessness. “You need to get back inside - it’s not safe out here.”
“I heard a gun go off,” he replied, looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye. “Who in the hell are you?” Donald hadn’t noticed Dean yet.
“I’m…” Sam hesitated. “I’m with neighborhood watch. There’s been complaints about someone grouse hunting near homes tonight. Please just go back inside and call us if you hear or see anything.”
Dean watched Donald walk down the stairs, keeping his eyes on the closing gap between the man and the salt ring. He raised the shotgun silently, knowing that if Donald crossed the line, he needed to be quick enough to hit the spirit and then get the circle closed again with Donald inside of it or their efforts would be wasted, this man standing there in his frayed blue bathrobe and slippers talking to Sam would be dead.
And then it was there, right behind Sam, the pale image of a young boy with a murderous glint to his lifeless eyes that was barely taller than his brother’s waist. The boy flickered for a moment, and then, before Dean had a chance to shout out a warning, he was holding on to the back of Sam’s jacket, tossing him to the ground like a ragdoll while at the same time Dean felt an invisible force rip the shotgun from his hands, sending it flying down the driveway, far away from either of them. Dean started to run to his brother, eyes focused on where Sam had landed, where he had skidded through the lawn and broken the circle, but he was too slow. The ghost disappeared from sight, reappearing next to Donald at the bottom of the steps. It put its hands on Donald’s face, pulling him down to bend at the waist so their eyes met, lightning racing through the spirit and into Donald, the man not even having time to scream as his body started to shake.
The air soon filled with the stench of burning flesh then there was the sound of something bursting. Sam sat up, dazed from landing on his head, and promptly threw up in the lawn. “Sam!” Dean yelled, running over to his brother. He felt sick, too, but his body was working on automatic - they had to get out of here before the police arrived. Dean stooped down, wrapping an arm around his brother’s back and hauling Sam to his feet. “Sam, we gotta get out of here.”
Dean got Sam to the car, handing him a plastic bag that had been in the trunk before running back to the house to collect everything they’d brought. Dean pulled his cell phone out of his pocket when he got back in the car, driving away while calling 9-1-1 and giving the address, saying he’d heard someone screaming from next door. Sam stared blankly out the window the whole time, Dean wondering if he was in some sort of shock. Dean wasn’t as bothered as he’d wanted to be, some part of him feeling like he had seen people killed all the time, some in a manner that was much worse.
“We have to find where he’s buried,” Sam said quietly once they on the interstate headed back towards Lawrence.
“We will,” Dean promised. “Now that we’ve seen that son of a bitch’s face, we’ll find him.”
Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10
Rating: R
Pairings: Dean/Carmen, Sam/Jess
Word Count: 6,602 (50,221 overall)
Warnings: Wishverse fic, spoilers for S1 & S2 through 2x20
Summary: After Dean wakes up in the hospital with amnesia after an apparent attempted suicide, the answers he seeks just brings more questions before turning his world completely upside down.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6
Watching his brother systematically disassemble a car wasn’t exactly how Sam had planned on spending his afternoon. At first he’d offered to help, but when Dean asked for the panel puller and found himself on the receiving end of a blank look, he told Sam to sit down somewhere and not touch anything. Dean also turned out to be not much of a talker when he worked, which was surprising to Sam, and he quickly found himself wishing he’d at least brought a book. He ended up reading through the notebook several times over, the names of each victim over the last century almost memorized.
In reality, though, Dean was keeping his mouth shut because he was worried that if he tried talking to Sam he might start gagging. The garage was well-ventilated due to all sorts of noxious fumes and chemicals they sometimes worked with, so he knew Sam couldn’t smell it, but the inside of the car reeked of burned flesh and hair. The upholstery had been stripped before Dean got the car, and he didn’t even want to imagine what the car smelled like when all the fabric and carpeting that tended to absorb these odors were still there.
The first thing Dean had done was look at the battery, which required him ripping the mangled hood off. He couldn’t help but laugh when he saw it. The police report had said that the battery had exploded, which is clearly didn’t just by looking at the lack of corresponding damage to the outside of the car, but it was even more obvious inside of it. The battery looked perfectly fine, and apart from the bits and pieces that were smashed up from hitting the light pole, the car was fine.
With nothing unusual under the hood, Dean got to work on the interior of the car. He took out the seats and removed all the interior paneling, looking at the different electricity lines running through the car, looking for frayed wiring or segments that were melted or singed.
He went to remove the paneling around the emergency brake and gearshift when Dean noticed something. “Sam? You know what a screwdriver is, right?”
“Yes,” Sam replied, tone suggesting how-dumb-do-you-think-I-am while at the same time he resisted answering by saying “vodka and orange juice.”
“Bring me a flathead.” Sam grabbed one from the table he was sitting next to, bringing it over and crouching down to see whatever Dean was doing. Dean was poking at a puddle of some black, viscous substance that had puddled under the emergency brake lever. “Does that look like anything to you?”
“Uh… oil?” Sam tried, the only thing he could think of but knowing he had to be wrong because he doubted Dean would’ve taken an interest in oil in a car and also wouldn’t ask Sam what it was.
“Doesn’t smell like oil.” Dean took the screwdriver, running the head of it through the goo to cling to the end of it and bring it up for closer inspection. “Any parts of the car that could’ve melted would have rehardened - this stuff is still… goopy.”
“You don’t think it’s fat, do you?” Sam felt queasy from the idea that the substance could have been from the victim.
Dean doubted it. “Fat would’ve congealed, right? Like bacon grease?”
“I suppose.” Dean crawled out of the car, finding a glass jar that had some nails in it. He dumped them into another container, dropping the sludge-covered screwdriver into the jar. “Whatever it is, I think it has something to do with whoever has been killing these people.”
“Maybe it’s the weapon. Like… Some sort of conductor was used to get more electricity flowing.” Sam wracked his brain for anything he could remember from the non-major physics course he had taken years ago. “The right type of conductor could make even a static shock more potent.” Sam looked at the goop, getting an idea. “Maybe someone in the chemistry department at KU could help us identify it. If it’s something that’s hard to come by, we could find places in the area that sell it, and that could help us track down the killer. All we’d need is a credit card number. Or we could just turn it into the police,” Sam suggested. “They have access to labs, so they can figure out what it is and deal with it.”
“You want to turn this over to the police?”
“We did it before.”
“Yeah but it didn’t help anything, Sam. Someone still died. And unless we figure something out there’s a Donald Cooper in Topeka who is looking to be victim number thirty five.”
Sam watched his brother for a moment, trying to put the pieces together yet again but failing. “Why are you taking this so personally, Dean? You’re not a cop. It’s not your job to try and protect these people.”
Dean clenched his jaw, palms flat against the table, leaning all of his weight into it. He didn’t know how to tell Sam about the dreams that had been plaguing him since regaining clarity in that warehouse. Didn’t know how to explain how right it felt, how natural, how somewhere in his mind there was a version of him and a version of Sam that got along, were best friends. Didn’t know how to explain that somehow the dreams and these deaths and that night in the warehouse and Dean’s sudden ability to fight, to know when someone was hiding a weapon, to read a newspaper and get a shiver down his spine because something felt wrong and have to do something about it.
“What about the card you got from Charlie?” Sam asked quietly.
“The psychic!?” Dean arched an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Why would Charlie give you the card if she didn’t think she’d be able to help?” Sam tried reasoning. “It sounds ridiculous, I know, but sometimes psychics consult at crime scenes. Maybe she could… I don’t know… Sense something from that gooey stuff or whatever. It’s not like we have a ton of options here.”
Dean’s face fell. “You’re being serious.”
“Yeah, Dean, I am.”
“Shit.” Dean didn’t know what else to say. It was insane - he didn’t believe in psychics. Psychics made him think of Miss Cleo infomercials that ran during late night television. He’d always thought psychics were for the gullible or as a last resort for the desperate. The more he thought about it, though, the more Dean realized that, while not gullible, he and Sam were most certainly desperate. “All right - we’ll go on Monday. I can’t believe I just said that.” Dean grabbed the jar, flipping off the garage lights and walking outside.
“I thought we’re going on Monday.” Sam followed his brother out to the Impala, watching Dean stick the glass jar in a cardboard box in the trunk so if it fell over it wouldn’t ooze all over the place.
“We are. It’s late, so I’m going home. Don’t want Carmen to think I’m cheating on her, especially not with you.” Dean gave him that cocky, smartass grin that Sam hated so much. “You better bring some cash tomorrow. If we’re going to get scammed from a palm reading and a nutjob looking at a crystal ball, better your money than mine.”
When Dean got home, Carmen was leaning against the corner of the the couch with her legs stretched out in front of her, using chopsticks and eating lo mein out of a delivery box. She was watching one of those Law & Order marathons that always seemed to be on some channel, a half empty bottle of beer standing on a coaster on the coffee table along with a couple more boxes of Chinese food. She was in her pajamas, tiny shorts that drew Dean’s eye right to her legs and a ratty AC/DC T-shirt that Dean liked to wear back in high school.
Dean went into the kitchen, pulling a beer out of the refrigerator and using the edge of the table in there to get the cap off. Carmen moved her legs out of the way when Dean went to sit on the couch, sitting close so when she put her legs back up her thighs were resting on his.
“I ordered that spicy chicken you like,” Carmen said, indicating the General Tso’s. She squirmed as Dean ran his fingers along the inside of her leg. “I can’t believe they needed you at the shop today.”
“Billing on the parts we ordered got fucked up,” Dean lied, not knowing how to explain to Carmen that he disassembled a dead girl’s car, found some viscous substance, and was going with Sam on Monday to see a psychic. Actually, he decided, it was probably for the best not to tell her at all. “Only me and Mike have the credit authorization.” He didn’t want to lie, but Dean wanted at least someone to think he wasn’t going insane with this near obsession. He grabbed a pair of chopsticks, pulling them out of the paper wrapper and snapping them apart as he opened the delivery box of chicken.
“Just feel like we haven’t been seeing a lot of each other lately.” Carmen switched the hand she was holding the carton in, sticking the chopsticks inside of it and grabbing the beer bottle with her free hand. She took a sip, looking at Dean thoughtfully. “Thursday you were gone all night and when I got home from work you still weren’t back and Sam was sitting by the door looking like it was the end of the world, waiting to make sure you got back okay.”
“You know how paranoid Sam can get.” Dean chewed a mouthful of Chinese food slowly, quickly trying to come up with an excuse about where he was all night. “Drew has problems holding his liquor, had a few tequila shots too many. Got him back home, kept an eye on him, went to work in the morning.”
Carmen put the bottle back down on the coffee table, suddenly looking extremely tired as she pinched the bridge of her nose, massaging the space under her eyes. “I’m sorry… I just… This time of year is always crazy at the hospital and then I worry about you on top of everything else.” She put the Chinese food down, unable to help herself as Carmen found herself crying.
Dean put his food down, wrapping his arms around Carmen as she leaned into him, pressing her face against Dean’s shoulder as her body wracked in sobs. “Shhhh,” he soothed. “It’s okay, babe. It’s okay.” Dean just held her, let her get it all out, feeling bad that he really hadn’t been around much lately. She cried until there was nothing left, breath coming out in gasps. Dean kissed the side of her face, tasting salt and wet on her cheek. Carmen turned into him, drawing his mouth to hers hungrily, trying to draw on Dean’s strength. Dean let her take it, but he wasn’t sure how much he had left to give.
Carmen put her hand on Dean’s chest, pulling away slightly. “I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “We had a man come in today… stabbing victim. He died on the table, the internal damage was just too much and there was just so much internal bleeding the doctors couldn’t stop it. It hit a little close to home.” She rested her head on Dean’s shoulder. “You get your memory back?”
“No, I haven’t,” Dean sighed. “Charlie told me not to expect anything on day one, so I’m not getting my hopes up. I’m wondering if maybe I’m better off not knowing.” They watched the television in silence, Dean feeling Carmen’s breathing even out as she calmed down. “I love you.”
“You better,” Carmen replied, and even though Dean couldn’t see it on her face, he could tell from her tone of voice that she was smiling.
+
The house was unassuming. If the address hadn’t been printed on the business card, Dean never would have guessed a self-proclaimed psychic to live there. Sitting in the Impala at the end of the driveway, he felt like an idiot for being there as he followed Sam with his eyes, his brother climbing out of the car. Where Dean dreaded getting this conversation started, Sam seemed like he couldn’t wait to get it over with.
“Are you coming?” Sam asked, voice muffled through the passenger-side window.
Dean pulled himself out of the car, getting the black goo in the jar out of the trunk before dragging himself behind Sam to the front door. They climbed the front steps, Sam giving Dean a here-goes-nothing look as his finger hovered over the doorbell. The door opened before Sam’s finger even touched the button, the screen door seperating them from the woman who must have been Missouri Moseley.
“Took you boys long enough to drop by,” she said, pushing open the screen door. Dean figured she knew that Charlie gave him her card, but he had no idea why she indicated Sam in her greeting, as well. “You better come inside - we have a lot to talk about.”
“My name’s Sam.” Dean listened to his brother introducing himself half-heartedly, looking around the living room they were being let into and once again noticing how normal it all seemed. No crystal ball, no multitude of cats, no teacups decorating every flat surface. Dean wasn’t sure if it was the lighting or if the air was dry in the house, but he could feel himself starting to develop a headache.
“I know who you both are. I saw you boys coming here some time before, Dean and Sam. I just thought you would’ve been quicker in getting to me.” She motioned vaguely at the couches. “I’m sure you’d be more comfortable if you sat down.” Missouri sat in the recliner facing the couch. “So, Dean, why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”
The way she said it was more of a command than a question, her straight-forwardness throwing Dean off balance. His brain was seeming to have a hard time keeping up, like the amnesia was making it take longer to think about things since it had that blank spot to jump over. He and Sam sat on the couch almost simultaneously, Dean putting the glass jar down on a table in front of him. “You’re the psychic - don’t you know already?”
“I have an idea. But if the reason why I think you’re here and the reason why you think you’re here aren’t the same, then, we have a whole other set of problems. Maybe you don’t want to hear why I think you should be here. Happens all the time in my work - a mother will come in, looking for a missing son. I’ll know he’s dead but she doesn’t want to hear that.”
Dean reached into his jacket, pulling the notebook out of his inside pocket and putting it on the table between him and her. “Charlie gave me your card about three weeks ago - said you would be able to help where she couldn’t. I’ve been noticing something strange for the last month or so, people dying under similar circumstances, explanations for their deaths not fitting evidence that was given. I did some research, found out this isn’t the first time it’s happened. I’ve found six other incidences in the last one hundred and four years, all following the same pattern. On December 21st and 28th then January 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, someone who has been abused as a child is killed by massive, instant electrocution on their birthday in northeastern Kansas. The towns are always the same - Atchison, Lawrence, Holton, Leavenworth, Topeka, and Oskaloosa - and always in that order.” Dean indicated the jar. “We found that stuff in Michaela Johnson’s car a couple days ago. No idea what it is or what it could be.”
Feeling like he had a right to because he was helping and he had been touched when Dean said “we found” when it was really more like “he found,” Sam spoke up. “We were hoping you could maybe touch it and see something or… however it works.”
Missouri stared between the two of them for a long while, trying to decide if they could really handle knowing or not. She decided they could, having come this far. She’d gotten bad vibes from Michaela Johnson’s death, but because she hadn’t been able to get to the actual car, she couldn’t pick up anymore than that. Missouri didn’t need to touch it to know what it was. “It’s ectoplasm.”
“Like in Ghostbusters?” Dean asked, a choked laugh escaping from his mouth. He knew she had to be nuts.
“What you have there,” Missouri said pointedly, “is the result of something very powerful and very pissed off. You came to me for answers, and I’m giving them to you. All those monsters that scared you, kept you awake at night fearing the shadows growing up, it’s all very much real. It’s a spirit murdering all those people - unless you really believe a single person could go on a century long killing spree.”
Dean’s face was pale, and Sam felt like he was possibly about to get sick. Dean couldn’t remember, but he had the dreams and his suspicions. Sam saw something when they were in Joliet that night, and as much as he danced around the subject, passed it off as a joke, he couldn’t deny what he had seen. And now Missouri Moseley, this psychic who Charlie seemed to know, was confirming that Dean not only was perfectly sane, but that they were actually trying to hunt one down, a ghost, that was killing people.
“You’re glad I told you to sit down, now, aren’t you?” Missouri grabbed the notebook from the table, leafing through the pages and pages of articles and scans about all the people that had been killed, now modified with notes by Dean or Sam about medical reports on some, birthdates on all of them. “I knew that I was supposed to help you before you showed up at my door today. It is possible to stop it - you do want to stop it, right?”
“Yeah,” Sam responded immediately, surprising himself and apparently Dean as well from the look his brother was giving him. “But… How do you kill a spirit?”
Missouri closed the notebook, holding it in her lap while smiling softly at Dean and Sam. “Would you like something to eat or drink? I could make some tea and I have chocolate chip cookies that were baked yesterday.”
“That sounds great,” Dean said, forcing himself to smile as he watched Missouri pull herself out of the chair and walk into the kitchen. He turned his gaze to Sam the second she left. “Dude, are you fucking kidding me? You think we’re going to kill a ghost?”
“Do you not believe her?” Sam asked. “After what I told you what happened, after what you said in those hypnosis sessions.”
Dean’s expression turned dark. “I never told you about those.”
“You left the tapes in the car - I pocketed them after the New Year’s party. I wanted a reason to not believe you and all I found was more proof otherwise.” Sam’s eyes flicked to the kitchen then back to Dean. “You were the one that wanted to stop these people from getting killed. You were the one that dragged me into this. We’re seeing it to the end, whether you like it or not, so either we’re going to let two more people die this month and God knows how many after that or we’re going to put an end to it.”
Dean didn’t have time to reply as Missouri came back into the room with three cups of tea and a plate of cookies. She seemed to look at them like she knew they had been fighting and possibly knew beforehand that that’s what was going to happen so she’d extrapolated herself from the situation, not needing to get involved.
“So you want to learn about the creatures that go bump in the night,” Missouri said slowly, trying to find a place to start. “Well I suppose the first thing you boys should do is not question anything I tell you, no matter how ridiculous it might seem. This stuff can be difficult to swallow the first time around - sometimes even the second. The next thing I recommend is go out and invest in some rock salt. Nothing else repels spirits and demons quite like it. Well, nothing else as readily available, anyway. There’s all sorts of symbols and sigils that work just as well if not better, but you can’t buy those in bulk down at the wholesale club, now, can you?” Missouri took a sip of her tea, putting the cup down on the table before settling into the chair and really getting into it.
Dean and Sam listened openly as she talked about vengeful spirits, how they could be quelled by either giving the spirit what it truly wanted, by trapping it permanently, or by finding the body from which it came, unearthing it, and salting then burning the remains. Sam tried not to think about how many laws desecrating a grave broke. Dean tried not to wish that this had all ended with him really being insane. She talked about how spirits didn’t like their bodies tampered with, would most assuredly fight back, and that a circle of salt as protection or rock salt shells for a shotgun was always a good idea.
She didn’t just stop after spirits, either. Missouri went on about everything she knew existed and then some she’d heard about but hadn’t been able to experience firsthand - werewolves, vampires, demons, poltergeists, to name a few. Dean and Sam looked at each other briefly, both noticing that she had failed to mention djinn and wondering if that had been intentional or not.
They learned that other people knew about these things, too. Some did it as a calling, some out of revenge, some as sort of a hobby. These people - hunters, she had called them - usually had one thing in common. They’d all been forced into knowing about the supernatural world when it violently collided with their lives, hurting or killing someone close to them. Dean felt a twinge below the scar on his stomach, wondering if it were selfish that he was there because of himself. He had wanted to know what happened on the days he couldn’t remember, and while he still couldn’t, he somehow found himself drawn to the story about Sabrina Belmont’s death in Atchison almost a month ago, and now he found himself being told that a world really existed, one he thought that he’d made up or had only existed in his nightmares.
Hours passed, but it was dark before any of them had noticed how quickly the time had gone. “It’s nearly seven now,” Missouri said, standing to stare out the window overlooking her front yard. “Best you boys be heading out now - you have a lot of stocking up to do and only two days to do it. I regret that I can’t come with you, but you have my number on that card if you need any help.”
They drove to their mother’s house in silence, an awkward tension like they were afraid that the illusion would shatter once someone spoke.
“Think we still got Dad’s old shotgun up in the attic?” Dean asked when he turned the Impala onto the street he and Sam had grown up on.
Sam never thought he’d be glad they had it. Although, he noticed, he was coming to realize a lot of things he never thought he would as of late. “You think it still works?”
Dean tried to remember the last time he’d used it, coming up with grouse hunting two maybe three years ago over in Russell County. “Probably needs to get cleaned.” Dean let out a bark of a laugh. “We’re going ghost hunting on Thursday.”
“Looks like we are.” Sam didn’t think about what would happen if they couldn’t find the body to end it once and for all - they didn’t even know who the spirit was, forget where. He knew Dean was expected to be at work the next couple days, but Sam had time to kill. He needed to find out who the ghost was and where its body could be found - only that would guarantee people getting saved.
+
It was dark out as Dean walked back to the motel. He pulled the key out of his pocket, keeping his gaze down as he opened the door lest Dad was there and wondering where he’d gone. Dean shut the door slowly, deliberately, making sure there were no audible clicks as he turned the lock.
Dean turned around, freezing when he saw a light coming from the other room. Did Sam wake up when he was gone? Maybe he’d just turned the light off and gone back to bed. He entered the room cautiously, doing his best to stay calm at what he saw.
The shtriga, the thing Dean was sure Dad was hunting, was hovering over Sam, drawing what looked to Dean like mist from Sam’s mouth and into its own. Slowly, silently, Dean grabbed at the rifle that was leaning against the wall just outside the door, holding it to the monster that was doing something to his baby brother. He cocked the gun, which got the shtriga’s attention almost instantly as it turned towards Dean with a hiss.
Dean heard the door go flying open, responding instinctually by dropping to the ground when Dad shouted, “Get out of the way!” He heard the bang of a gun, looking up to see if his dad had managed to kill it, but Dean watched the shtriga escape the way it had gotten in - the bedroom window wide open. Dean stood slowly, feeling his father brushing by him as he rushed over to Sam, now awake on the bed. “Sammy! Are you okay?”
“Dad?” Sam said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“You all right?” Dad asked, putting his hand on Sam’s head, ruffling his hair before hugging him tightly. Dean shrank guiltily when his father looked his way. “What happened?”
“I…” Dean stammered, swallowing hard. “I just went out.”
He shrank at the horrified expression on Dad’s face. “What?”
“Just for a second,” he blurted out, wishing instantly that he hadn’t. Dean didn’t have a right to be giving excuses. He’d been given orders and he disobeyed. “I’m sorry.”
“I told you not to leave this room. I told you not to let him out of your sight!” Dad yelled, Dean wincing but not letting it show, taking it like a man, like Dad would want him to. Sammy seemed distraught, not knowing what had almost happened to him because he’d been asleep, the shtriga holding him in a sort of coma.
Dad held onto Sam tighter, Dean watching, feeling dismayed by what he had done. He didn’t want to be a disappointment. He was never going to let Sammy out of his sight again.
+
The tension was palpable on the drive to Topeka. They were only on Interstate 70 for about half an hour, but each second ticked away like a day. In his lap Sam had the notebook and a regional map. The trunk of the Impala now contained a lot of rock salt and Dad’s old shotgun from before Dean was born. They both made a show of not being weirded out by how quickly and precisely Dean unassembled the gun, cleaning every piece, making sure everything was in working order, before reassembling it and making rounds out of some of the rock salt.
They hadn’t been able to identify the ghost. Sam had called Jess and even asked Mom about what they remembered seeing from Michaela Johnson’s death that day, Mom saying she hadn’t noticed and Jess had thought she saw someone in the car with Michaela but wasn’t sure. Sam went through police reports, but no one had witnessed the deaths of the other victims. Without a description of the ghost and with six different locations to choose from, they had no idea where to begin. The ghost had to have been from before 1902, but how far back, they hadn’t been able to find out. Sam’s myriad databases and scanning through microfiche for nearly twenty four hours between the two of them didn’t do any good.
“So…” Sam tried, the car stopped at a red light just outside the city. “What’s the plan here?”
Dean clenched his jaw, looking over at Sam in the passenger seat. “We need to find Donald Cooper. We can’t stop the spirit for good, but we can at least keep Donald safe. People only get killed on certain days - we can use the salt, make a ring around Donald’s house, come midnight it’s a new day and the ghost can’t do anything. Maybe tell him to get out of town in case we can’t stop it next week as well.”
“And you think that’ll work?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? Thing seems to be a stickler for rules, though, so we’re gonna force him to break them.” Dean mentally crossed his fingers. “There isn’t much else we can do.”
It was ten minutes outside the city that they found his house. It was a small one story, but the neighborhood looked nice, and having a smaller house than his neighbors gave Donald Cooper a larger yard. According to the file Sam had found, Donald was a manager at a bank in the town over, divorced, and had no children. There was an older model pickup truck in the driveway that looked to be in good shape, and there were some lights on in the house. Dean pulled the Impala into a driveway across the street from Donald’s house, backing out to turn around and park in front of a patch of trees a little farther down.
“These things have been happening at dark, right?” Sam asked.
Dean looked at the skyline, noticing that the sun was getting lower in the horizon, that time in the sunset when half of the sky looked like night and the other half of it looked like it was on fire. “Yeah,” Dean replied, climbing out of the car and trying to shut the door quietly behind him. “We should hurry up.” He went to the rear of the Impala, opening the trunk and handing a couple boxes of salt to Sam, taking a couple more for himself, and then grabbing out the dufflebag that had the shotgun and salt rounds hidden inside. “Let’s just hope Mister Cooper didn’t have plans this evening and just stays inside all night.”
“So we’re just going to make a circle around the house and then wait until midnight?” Sam wondered it was supposed to seem that easy or if there was a detail they were missing. He didn’t know if it mattered how thick the circle was supposed to be. He didn’t like the idea that screwing up would cost this man his life while they were right outside of his home.
Looking at the house, Dean worked out a strategy. “Okay - I’m going to put the duffle under the shrubs at the front of the house. We’ll start there, you going with the salt in one direction and I’ll go in the other. We need to make sure it stays unbroken.”
Sam figured that answered his own question - the ring needed to be at least thick and high enough so that if a breeze came through, it would completely break the circle. “Gotcha,” he replied, the two of them going down the driveway casually, hoping none of the neighbors would see them and call the police. The light that was on was at the other side of the house, so that combined with the fact that most of the shades were drawn left them not as worried about getting seen by Donald. They also hadn’t really considered what they’d tell the man if he caught them killing his yard and having a shotgun in a bag, sneaking around at night although promising him that they were there to save his life. Sam hoped that was a moment they wouldn’t come to, that Donald would just stay in all night, have some dinner, and go to bed completely undisturbed.
Dean dropped the bag as Sam started walking with the salt around the house. He crouched by it, pulling open the zipper and checking to make sure the rounds were loaded and everything was ready in case he needed to use it quickly. Dean hoped not, though. From what Missouri had said, the rock salt would annoy the ghost more than destroy it. The only thing short of salting and burning the corpse that would stop it was the salt ring, so at the moment, that was all they had. He didn’t like it, but it was certainly better than nothing.
Satisfied with the shotgun, Dean opened his box of salt and started to walk slowly around the house, making sure that the line was about three inches thick and high enough that it wasn’t disturbed by the blades of grass, brown and bent over from the frost they had a couple days ago. This night was unseasonably warm, Dean was able to see his breath if he looked for it but it felt like it was at least forty degrees. It took the better part of ten minutes before he met Sam at the back of the house, the two of them closing the loop and overlapping the other’s end of the circle.
“Now we wait,” Dean said, looking at his watch to keep note of the time as they walked over to where the bag was. It was completely dark now, giving them more shadows to hide in when a car passed.
Sam had the foresight to bring water and food, pulling out sandwiches he’d packed in with the shotgun after two hours of waiting. “Dude,” Sam said, an hour after the sandwiches were gone, “I don’t think I can feel my ass anymore.”
“This ground’s fucking cold,” Dean agreed. The temperature had dropped five degrees since they arrived, but it seemed to be holding steady at just above freezing.
At nine o’clock Donald Cooper’s house went dark as he went to bed. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Dean pulled out a deck of cards. “Gin?”
“Sure,” Sam replied, glad for the distraction to give his brain something to think about other than how cold the ground was through his jeans or how anxious he was for midnight to arrive.
It was ten thirty when the street lamp at the end of the driveway flickered, neither of them paying any particular attention until the temperature suddenly seemed to drop even further, the hairs on the backs of their necks standing on end as Dean’s head started to ache. He looked up, body automatically responding. In a single motion, Dean pushed Sam to the ground and grabbed the shotgun, cocking it single-handedly and firing at the form in front of the house, staring curiously, almost mockingly, at the salt ring. The figure dissipated and a light went on inside the house.
“Holy shit,” Sam exclaimed, eyes wide. “Did you see that?”
The spirit was a young boy, his style of clothing definitely older, simpler, nineteenth century at some point but Dean had always been bad at history and Sam was focused on other things as Donald Cooper came out of the front door in a robe and slippers, nervously wielding a baseball bat.
“Mister Cooper!” Sam called, getting in the man’s eyesight, hands in front of him and open in a gesture of harmlessness. “You need to get back inside - it’s not safe out here.”
“I heard a gun go off,” he replied, looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye. “Who in the hell are you?” Donald hadn’t noticed Dean yet.
“I’m…” Sam hesitated. “I’m with neighborhood watch. There’s been complaints about someone grouse hunting near homes tonight. Please just go back inside and call us if you hear or see anything.”
Dean watched Donald walk down the stairs, keeping his eyes on the closing gap between the man and the salt ring. He raised the shotgun silently, knowing that if Donald crossed the line, he needed to be quick enough to hit the spirit and then get the circle closed again with Donald inside of it or their efforts would be wasted, this man standing there in his frayed blue bathrobe and slippers talking to Sam would be dead.
And then it was there, right behind Sam, the pale image of a young boy with a murderous glint to his lifeless eyes that was barely taller than his brother’s waist. The boy flickered for a moment, and then, before Dean had a chance to shout out a warning, he was holding on to the back of Sam’s jacket, tossing him to the ground like a ragdoll while at the same time Dean felt an invisible force rip the shotgun from his hands, sending it flying down the driveway, far away from either of them. Dean started to run to his brother, eyes focused on where Sam had landed, where he had skidded through the lawn and broken the circle, but he was too slow. The ghost disappeared from sight, reappearing next to Donald at the bottom of the steps. It put its hands on Donald’s face, pulling him down to bend at the waist so their eyes met, lightning racing through the spirit and into Donald, the man not even having time to scream as his body started to shake.
The air soon filled with the stench of burning flesh then there was the sound of something bursting. Sam sat up, dazed from landing on his head, and promptly threw up in the lawn. “Sam!” Dean yelled, running over to his brother. He felt sick, too, but his body was working on automatic - they had to get out of here before the police arrived. Dean stooped down, wrapping an arm around his brother’s back and hauling Sam to his feet. “Sam, we gotta get out of here.”
Dean got Sam to the car, handing him a plastic bag that had been in the trunk before running back to the house to collect everything they’d brought. Dean pulled his cell phone out of his pocket when he got back in the car, driving away while calling 9-1-1 and giving the address, saying he’d heard someone screaming from next door. Sam stared blankly out the window the whole time, Dean wondering if he was in some sort of shock. Dean wasn’t as bothered as he’d wanted to be, some part of him feeling like he had seen people killed all the time, some in a manner that was much worse.
“We have to find where he’s buried,” Sam said quietly once they on the interstate headed back towards Lawrence.
“We will,” Dean promised. “Now that we’ve seen that son of a bitch’s face, we’ll find him.”
Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10