Over cow-corner
Over cow-corner
“Dude,” Dean says, “this looks like a baseball bat after an encounter with a road-roller.”
Sam elbows him. “Shut up, Dean. You don’t want to piss them off any more.”
They’re surrounded by several men dressed entirely in white: cotton draw-string pants, shirts with flared collars, floppy hats. One of them is tossing a dark-red ball in his hands, staring at them even as he flickers in and out of existence. Dean hefts the cricket bat in his hands and shoots Sam a sideways glare. “This is all your fault, y’know.”
“Are you trying to blame me now? Very mature, Dean.”
“I’m just sayin’, if it wasn’t-”
“You!” barks the man holding the ball. “Fast or slow?”
Dean blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Not you, lad.” The dark eyes shift to Sam. “Well?”
“Uh, uhm...” Sam swallows. “Fast?”
The ghost nods. “Very well. You will start from this end.” He throws the ball to Sam. “And your companion will pad up to face you.”
The men begin to disperse. Dean glances at the set of equipment that’s materialised next to him: stiff white pads to be fitted from below his knees to his ankles and large, thick gloves. “I don’t know shit about this, Sam,” he says. “What are we-”
“We’ll wing it,” Sam says and sighs. “Like always.”
-
It started off simple enough: a string of disappearances around the outskirts of Philadelphia - all men, all in their mid-twenties or early-thirties. It wasn’t something that would usually catch their attention immediately, but then Bobby began to receive calls from contacts around the area of supernatural activity. Electrical disturbances, freaky weather, the works - all centred around the old Germantown cricket club ground.
“I’d love to call it a coincidence,” Bobby drawled, “but-”
“We’re on it,” Dean said.
There wasn’t much more to connect the missing men, until they found out that they had all visited, or at least hung around close by the cricket ground sometime in the week before they went missing.
“Checked up on the lore about the ground,” Sam said. “It’s got some pretty interesting history, but nothing - nothing ghost-worthy, I don’t know.”
Dean laughed from where he was reassembling his gun. “Cricket’s ghost, maybe? Man, that sport’s gotta be extinct by now, or something.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “It’s not terribly popular in the States right now, yeah, but back in the 19th century, it was all the rage here.”
Dean snorted. “Right.”
“No, really.” Sam leaned forward. “You do know that the oldest recorded international sporting event was a cricket match between the US and Canada, right? And Philadelphia... until the first World War, this place was, like, the epicentre of American cricket.”
Dean shrugged. “Whatever, man.” He slid the cartridge back in with a satisfying click. “What do you say we go and check this place out?”
They did visit the cricket ground, only to discover some twenty-odd very pissed-off ghosts barring every exit. The spirits kept coming back with alarming persistence even with all the rock salt in their arsenal, and all they had was one demand:
Play a match with us.
-
Dean finally gets the pads fixed around his legs - goddamn buckles, why couldn’t have Velcro been invented much, much earlier? - and shoves the huge gloves on. They’re stiffer than normal, and don’t give his fingers much space for movement. About the most he can do with them on is grip the handle of the cricket bat.
The friggin’ heavy cricket bat.
He’s in the middle of the ground, on one end of a rectangular strip of bare earth about a couple dozen metres long - the pitch, he remembers Sam saying - and surrounding the pitch is an expanse of lush green lawn. Three wooden sticks are stuck into both ends of the pitch, and there are smaller pieces connecting the tops of the sticks. While the other spirits have spread themselves across the ground - assuming positions, probably, who the hell knows - one is standing at the end opposite Dean, ‘padded-up’, cricket bat in hand.
Aaand that would be my partner. The spirit catches his eye and grins. Dean fights the urge to swallow and returns a watery smile. So royally screwed.
Sam’s standing at the opposite end too, nervously tossing the ball between his giant hands. “Dean-” he starts, but another spirit - damn it, just how many of them are cooped-up in this ground? - materialises behind his brother, making him jump. He’s not dressed like the other players, though; he’s wearing what looks like a weird white trenchcoat-
“Well?” he bellows. “Are you taking guard?”
Dean blinks. Since when did this sport involve swordfighting?
Sam shifts uncomfortably. “Just... just get into position with the bat, Dean.”
Dean turns to the side, stands in front of the sticks, and hefts the bat. Okay. Okay, then. He’ll do this baseball style. Some dude with huge gloves of his own is crouching at some distance behind the sticks, and yeah, that helps feed the illusion.
“Choose your guard,” shouts White Trenchcoat, and Sam winces. “Just let the bat touch the ground, Dean!”
The tip of the bat hits the earth, raising a puff of dust.
White Trenchcoat gestures expansively, and Sam... well, Sam turns his back on him and strides away from the pitch. Finally he turns around, leans forward, ball clutched in one hand. Dean grits his teeth and grips the bat harder as Sam sprints toward him, working up an impressive speed with those long legs of his. Just as Sam reaches the opposite end of the pitch, he does this weird little hop, and somehow releases the ball from a tangle of mile-long limbs.
Dean’s gripped of a crazy urgency as he lifts his bat to hit the ball - but the ball’s not even coming toward his bat’s side, oh no, it’s going the other way, and Dean swivels desperately to try and hit the ball, misses, and lands unceremoniously on his ass.
“What the hell, Sam?” he shouts, even as White Trenchcoat spreads his arms and intones, “Wide.”
One of the other spirits tosses the ball back to Sam, who’s looking a fair bit sheepish. “I’m going to have to bowl that again, sorry.”
And off goes Sam again, marking huge strides before turning and sprinting again. At least someone knows what he’s doing, Dean thinks. It’d be just like Sam to know the rules of friggin cricket. Giant geek.
This time the little red thing bounces and flies on the right side, so Dean lifts the bat up high, ready to give it a good whack. Except he’s too late on the downswing, and the ball crashes into his legs, and shit - that hurt! Maybe those godawful pads do serve a purpose after all...
“Howzzat!” comes a rousing cry from the spirits surrounding them. Dean shudders: they sound like a dozen people screaming from underwater.
“No,” says White Trenchcoat, shaking his head sanctimoniously. “Pitched outside leg.”
The hell...? There’s movement everywhere all of a sudden, spirits changing their positions, and that’s it, Dean’s had enough of this crap. He’s ready to throw this stupid bat aside and pull out their last reserve of rock salt and keep shootin’, but Sam’s already getting ready to bowl his next ball.
Sam is getting ready to bowl and yeah, Dean’s definitely strangling him after all this is over.
This time he does manage to hit the ball - it slices off the edge of his bat and races away. He stands and watches the other spirits chase after the ball, before noticing that his, uh, partner is barrelling toward him.
“Dammit, Dean! Get to the other end!”
There are a few spirits gathered at the other end, vicious grins stretching their faces, waiting for the- Oh, shit.
Dean sprints toward the opposite end, bat and goddamn stupid pads getting in the way, and Sam’s practically bouncing, screaming, “Dive, dive, dive!”
So he does, holding the bat in front of him, diving and literally sliding on his stomach as he reaches the other end of the pitch in a giant cloud of dust.
Sam helps him to his feet. Dean coughs and bats at his shirt. “Man, I like this shirt!”
“It’s not blood,” Sam says, shrugging, and okay, yeah. Maybe he’s got a point.
“Give me one good reason,” Dean says, “Just one - why we shouldn’t be hightailing it outta here, right now.”
“The missing men, Dean. I’m guessing the reason they did go missing is because they didn’t play. We just - just trust me on this, okay? Just play along for some time.”
Dean snorts. “Shyeah, the last time we ‘played along’, I got shot and you got a hammer to the ’nads.”
Sam purses his lips, gives him a full-fledged bitchface. “Dean-”
“Ready, lads?”
Sam sighs. “Just-let’s just do this, okay?”
Sam runs in to bowl the next delivery, all flailing limbs and grunting, but the other batsman calmly lifts his bat and lets it go through to the glovesman behind him. Dean raises his eyebrows. Nobody seems to be counting that against the dude, which, weird. A spectacular waste of effort. Thanks.
“How much longer, Sam,” he whispers through gritted teeth as his brother walks past him.
“Give it three more balls.”
The batsman has a swing at the next ball and misses. Again, nothing. The ball is tossed back to Sam and Dean feels like he’s cloying in place. What the hell...
The fifth ball does get hit, and this time, Dean’s ready. He starts running toward the other end just as the batsman does toward his, watching as one of the spirits collects the ball and throws it back to the glovesman.
“Dean!”
Dean looks ahead just in time to realise he’s about to collide with his partner. There’s a moment where he feels like he just got dunked in a pool of ice-cold water, and he’s still running. I just went right through the bastard. He shudders. Like the day couldn’t get any worse...
He turns to face what he hopes is the final ball of the damn exercise. More movement around him, spirits coming in and shifting positions. “That’s it, swing the bat like a Neandrathal,” the glovesman says from behind him, “the stumps will be broken before you know it.”
Oh-kaaay... Sam barrels in with the last ball, and Dean decides to damn it all to hell. He spreads his legs and hefts his bat, and as the ball bounces and flies toward him, he swings hard at it, throwing everything he has into the stroke. The wood meets leather with a satisfying thwack and the ball flies into the air, up, up, before disappearing over the edge of the ground.
Sam stares at him, while White Trenchcoat lifts his arms. “Six!”
Dean’s partner runs toward him, thumps him on the back with a gloved hand. “Right over cow-corner, mate,” he grins, before he wisps at the edges and disappears altogether.
One by one, all of the spirits disappear, until Sam and Dean are left alone in the centre of the ground. Dean grins. “We should try this sometime. Y’know, with real people. Considering I’m just awesome at it and everything.”
Sam rolls his eyes.
Finis