(no subject)
Title: Beach Blanket Poltergeist (1/3)
Author: hansbekhart
Rating: R
Summary: They come from the north, exhausted by the sprawling highways and overpasses of Silicon Valley.
Notes: Everything you're about to read is true. Well, most of it. The things Sam and Dean hunt and the places they go are all based on real events and locations in Santa Cruz, California. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching all of this and once the entire story is posted, there will be an additional link to my sources and credits. In the spirit of going totally overboard, there is also an official soundtrack. I had some really great people helping me on this story, whom I'll thank in detail in my notes, but an extra shout out to fatale and shored, who were invaluable. There are three complete chapters, and I'll be posting one a day until the end. There's a link to the next chapter at the bottom.
They come from the north, exhausted by the sprawling highways and overpasses of Silicon Valley. They put miles between them and the cantankerous spirit of a Gold Rush miner who threw them around a bit and went grumbling into his long overdue rest, salted and burned. It is hot in the mountains above Napa but it grows cooler the closer they get to the ocean. Sam takes over the driving somewhere past San Francisco, when Dean finally throws up his hand in disgust at six lanes of traffic and hardly a driver who knows what he's doing.
Dean falls asleep in Hayward, his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face. His chin sinks down into his chest, giving him a triple chin that Dean would absolutely take a picture of if Sam sleeping that way. Sam glances at his brother and then away, grinning. He is almost to Los Gatos when he finally gives in and digs his camera phone out of his pocket.
Sam knows the area well; Palo Alto and Stanford lie inland and if he left 101 at Embarcadero, he'd be back at his old apartment in no time. Jess had been a native to the area and had driven him all over in the early days of their relationship. They'd made the trip over the mountains several times to escape the heat of Silicon Valley in the summer or to eat the best Mexican food Sam had ever had. Even the air smells the same, that mixture of smog and eucalyptus and the promise of the ocean. Sam cranks the window down and breathes deeply, something easing and tightening in his chest at the same time.
He stops for gas and snacks before they hit the Santa Cruz Mountains. Dean is awake when Sam walks back to the car, staring blearily out the window at the cars passing by. He meets Sam's eyes and tracks him all the way across the parking lot, his gaze expressionless. The car door shrieks when Sam opens it and slides inside.
"Where are we?" Dean grumbles, starting to life and rubbing a hand over his face.
"Los Gatos," Sam replies. "About a half an hour outside of Santa Cruz," he adds when Dean gives him a dark look. He says it the way the natives do, blurring it together into one word, unconsciously: Sannacruz. He tosses Dean the newspaper without looking at him, most of his attention saved for his soda. He watches it fizz rather than watch Dean unfold the paper and scan the front page.
"Apple Rivers -- seriously? -- 20 years old, found murdered in Mission Plaza last night. No witnesses, no leads. Body was slashed, mutilated and partially dismembered." He glances over at Sam. "That makes five bodies in two weeks, all women, all murdered in the same little courtyard thing outside of Holy Cross Church. The town thinks it has another serial killer. Not exactly a rare occurrence for the area."
"Yeah," Sam says. "But they don't know what we do."
They had been tipped off when the second death had hit the papers with the only lead that the case had so far: a tiny bit of wire that had broken off in the girl's eye socket. Hand-forged, rusted so badly that it was little more than dust, more than a hundred years old. The name of the town had sparked some connection in Dean's brain that sent him leafing through Dad's journal to find a page with POGONIP scrawled across the top in dark letters.
"You sure this isn't just some serial killer?" Dean had griped, even though the link had been made in Dad's journal, normally Dean’s bible. "It's not like they haven't had a million of them in Santa Cruz." They had come anyway, regardless of Dean's inexplicable need to hustle them as far away from California as possible. He wouldn't shut up about how much he hated California until Sam asked him why.
Sam digs his phone out of his pocket as they pull out of the parking lot, Dean back at the wheel, and passes it over without a word. The Impala idles for a long moment at the intersection as Dean frowns down at his own triple chin, now the background for Sam's phone.
Sam barely sees Dean's hand fly out and clip him along the head, but he laughs hard anyway and plucks his phone from the ground where Dean threw it.
They take Summit Road through the mountains, the Impala swinging madly, seduced by tight curves and lifts of interminable hills and dragging eucalyptus. The light is cool and dappled and Dean puts his face outside the window to see if he can smell the ocean. Signs for back road churches, sedate horses in hand-built corrals, fields of baby Christmas trees roll past them as the ocean grows ever closer. They don't talk. Dean eats Cheetos and Sam plows his way through a water bottle and a half before they get to Old San Jose Rd, the turn coming suddenly and knocking Dean's Cheetos off his lap.
"Dude!" he says, flinging up a hand. Sam laughs until Dean leans over and rubs orange crumbs all over his clean shirt.
"Bitch!" Sam returns, and pushes his brother into the window.
Santa Cruz in the summertime is all greens and golds, loamy earth and ferns that haven't seen the sun since the redwoods that cover them were young, hundreds of years ago. The Impala passes through shafts of sunlight and the air around them is cool and dry, mottled with dust. They crest a hill and there is the ocean, laid out before them, too far off to glitter in the sunlight. Sam grins when he sees it, but Dean's attention is on the mountain.
It's early afternoon when they pass a park that has three enormous blue balls rolling down a grassy hill. Dean, whose sense of humor still hovers around the level of a small child's, cracks up. They roll into a town that seems to be teeming with children, hefting backpacks and shouting to each other. The Impala attracts attention and Dean huffs an appreciative sort of laugh when they get in line behind several gleaming muscle cars waiting for the light to change.
Old San Jose drops them off on the other side of town from their destination, so they make for the motel first. It overlooks a long stretch of beach and a small cluster of buildings in various pastel shades and covered in a ridiculous amount of gables and plants. Across the river stretches an old wooden trestle, crisscrossing redwood beams breaking up the view down the river. It's so picturesque that Dean actually sneers at it, looking around himself with something approaching disbelief.
The scent of kelp and salt clings to their room and Dean wrinkles his nose. "You wanna go hit the parents?" Dean asks.
"I'd like to check out the church while we're out," Sam says. “There could be some sort of spirit hanging around there.”
Dean nods. "Or," he says slowly, as though the thought has just occured to him, "it could be a serial killer and not our deal."
Sam frowns at him, frustrated. "What is your problem, Dean? You’ve been acting really weird lately."
Dean smirks at him. "Nothin'. Come on, Sammy, let's hit the road."
Apple Rivers' parents turn out to be an older hippie couple who introduce themselves as Dharmananda and Phoenix. Neither appears to have shaved in at least five years and Sam barely holds back a grin as Dean utterly fails to cope. They're FBI agents today and Sam conducts most of the interview, as Dean doesn't seem to be able to say any of the names of the River family without losing control.
"Had your daughter mentioned anything ... out of the ordinary lately?" Sam asks, sympathetic face on. They accept two mugs of tea that smell like gasoline and taste like gunpowder and out of the corner of his eye, Sam watches Dean struggle not to make faces.
"Nothing," Phoenix says, pushing a shock of bright copper hair back from her pale face. Her eyes, reddened and lined, are almost steady as she speaks in a low, even voice. "She never mentioned anything like that. She would have told us if there had been anybody following her or giving her trouble."
"Your daughter lived at home?" Dean asks.
Phoenix nods without looking at them, gulping her tea. “Rent’s a bitch here,” she says frankly. “Apple goes - went to UCSC, it’s a lot of money on top of that. We were helping her with tuition if she lived at home to keep the cost down. We ... we liked having her here, with us ...”
"What sort of people was she involved with?" Sam asks gently.
Dharmananda had hovered over his wife's shoulder up to this point, moving restlessly around the room but always returning to Phoenix's side. He puts a hand down protectively on her shoulder and scowls at them. "Good kids," he says forcefully. "Mostly her friends from high school. We've known them all for years and that's exactly what we told the other cops. She wasn't involved in a gang and she wasn't a Satanist. She was a good girl."
"Daddy doth protest a bit much," Dean says later, in the car.
"No," Sam says slowly. "I think that was genuine."
Dean is silent for a moment, pondering the case or boobs or the meaning of life, Sam doesn't know. "So she wasn't a Satanist, which probably rules out some sort of demon."
"Unless the victims were being targeted by Satanists," Sam replies.
"In which case we should find signs of that at the site," Dean counters. "What else would it be? You said that there's a large Hispanic population here. It could be a chupacabra."
"Could also be related to the church. We should look into the history of it after we see it."
"That’s all yours, college boy," Dean grumbles.
Dean is silent as they drive and that in itself would be unsettling to Sam. The clear light that filters in through the Impala's windows picks up the tense line of his jaw, the stubble that covers his skin. They haven't slept well lately; the miner had tossed them around pretty well and Sam had to relocate Dean's shoulder. Dean still looks terrible even when he's in the car, his own personal comfort zone.
"So what’s your problem, Dean?" Sam asks finally. Dean looks at him and then away, his mouth quirking.
"Nothing, like I said. Man, look at this traffic. This sucks." His posture is relaxed, one arm hanging over the front seat of the Impala behind Sam's back, the faintest smile touching his lips, but he's looking at their surroundings as though they’re going to rear up and attack him.
Sam wants to reach for him, clap a hand around the back of his neck or something, but there’s a hell of a personal chasm between the two of them that sprung up when he left for college that Sam doesn’t know how to bridge, even after all these months on the road.
A guy could break something trying to get to Dean, Sam thinks sourly, and settles deeper into his seat.
Mission Plaza is sunny, hot, and full of official looking people. Yellow tape strings a clear line of demarcation around where Apple Rivers died, an impressive spatter of blood still soaking the ground. Dean whistles, as insensitive to Apple's murder as he was to her parents, and digs his Walkman-cum-EMF reader out of the trunk. He ignores Sam's snort of derision and they trace their way around the park, drawing nonchalantly close to study a sign post that reads May Peace prevail on Earth in four different languages. Sam expects Dean to sneer at it, but he says nothing. The cops look at them suspiciously, but only until their gazes move on to the next pedestrian hovering cautiously around the edge of the park.
"Cruciform," Dean says softly, with the slightest nod of his head towards the blood splatter.
"Yeah," Sam says. He had noticed.
Sam follows Dean's lead but his thoughts keep wandering. He can hear the beat of some enormous heart on the edge of his consciousness, feels it pulse and wash forward and back like an ocean wave, like a caress. As if in reaction, Dean maintains a nearly feral attention to the EMF reader and his surroundings, examining everything he can reach without attracting attention. He crouches just a little bit as he walks, a posture learned nearly at Dad's knee and certainly with his approval.
The meter goes up the closer they get to the church and when they step though the arches about thirty feet before the church façade, it's as though ice water has been poured over Sam's head, extinguishing the unnatural contentment that had wrapped itself around him. He shivers and nudges Dean. "Good feeling gone," he murmurs, and Dean looks at him as though he's an idiot.
"I think we've found our problem," Dean says grimly.
“Haunted church?” Sam asks, retreating back between the arch to the safety on the other side.
“Could be,” Dean says thoughtfully. “She wasn’t anywhere near the church when she died.” He stares down at the EMF reader as if it holds the answers.
“What about cursed Indian ground?” Sam says, tipping his head back to stare at the sky.
Dean shrugs. “Come on, dude, I’m done with this. Let’s get out of here.”
They retreat back to the motel. Sam sits out on the balcony and enjoys the view and the free wireless while Dean showers. There are few better sounds than the noise of children playing at a distance, their shouts echoing off the swell of saltwater, mimicked by the seagulls that land on the balcony's railing and stare blankly at Sam. "Mine?" Sam asks them, and then feels stupid for referencing a children's movie twice in one day.
Dean shuffles out onto the balcony after a while. There is a towel slung low around his hips and another in his hand, which he uses to dry his hair but not the beads of water still clinging to his chest and stomach. "Find anything?" he asks.
"Yeah," Sam replies. "A lot. Maybe a lot more than we bargained for, actually. I've definitely found our ghost, by the way. Holy Cross was built on top of what used to be one of the missions that the Spanish built all along the coastline. They were basically frontier posts for Spanish colonies back then; this one in particular was built by Franciscan monks in, uh, 1791."
"I know you're getting to the point soon," Dean says, peering at Sam from between folds of terrycloth. Sam smacks him hard on the shoulder and continues, ignoring Dean's bark of laughter.
"The point is, one of the friars, Father Andres Quintana, was famous for abusing the native women ... for beating them with a wire-tipped horsewhip," Sam said significantly. "And - get this - one night in 1812, the Mission laborers rose up and murdered him by crushing his testicles. Then they just put him back in bed as though nothing had happened. Nobody even knew he was murdered until several years later, when one of the conspirators spilled the beans."
Dean winces. "He got his balls mashed? What the hell, man. That is a fucked up way to die. I’d rather be smothered in a demon’s asshole. It sounds like our guy, all right. Does it say where he’s buried?"
"Well," Sam says, "the mission fell into disrepair around 1840 ... the church that sits on top of it now wasn't built until 1891, so I'd guess that they moved the bodies to some other cemetery in the area, which will be a bitch to figure out exactly where. There was an earthquake after Quintana's death that destroyed most of the records."
"Super," Dean says. "Any guesses?"
"Um. The mission cemetery lay along the east side of the old mission church, going from the southeast corner all the way to the northeast. There was another church built on the site in 1858 and most of the graves were moved then, so hopefully he's - oh."
Dean glances up. "'Oh' doesn't sound good."
"This article says specifically that Quintana's bones were found and then reinterred in 1885 …" Sam glances up and meets Dean's eyes. "… in a stone casket underneath the floor of the new church."
Dean laughs. He finally lets up on his hair and starts absentmindedly rubbing the towel over his chest. "All right, that'll be a blast. So to speak. Hey, you remember that time in Jersey, when you fell through the chapel floor?"
"Vividly," Sam says dryly. He had spent two hours back at the motel that night lying on his stomach as their dad had picked splinters out of his bare ass and Dean mocked him from the corner.
Dean cackles to himself and then says, "So what did you mean by more than we bargained for, anyway?"
"It's like this town is tailor-made for us, Dean," Sam says softly. "I went looking for articles about the mission and just while you were in the shower, I found about a hundred other things that would be worth checking out. Santa Cruz used to be known as the Murder Capital of the World because there was a mass murderer and two separate serial killers operating in the area in the early 1970's. Hitchcock's "The Birds" was based on a freak incident just a few miles away from where we're sitting now; the house that inspired "Psycho" is here and was a stomping ground for Satanists, there's a White Lady on Graham Hill Road, a ghost called Pogonip and an Indian curse over the entire area. I'm telling you, man, I think there's something deeper going on here."
Dean is silent for a long moment, his fingers folded in his lap, before he gets up and vanishes back into the room without a word. The sky is plastered against the glass and the only motion that Sam can see in it is the swoop of sea gulls above the ocean. He follows Dean inside to find his brother getting dressed, jaw firmed, eyes blank. Dean doesn't look at him as he tugs his jeans up and squats by their duffle bags for a clean shirt.
"Is there something that you're hiding from me?" Sam asks finally, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. "Is this going to be like the shtriga, where I find out you have some guilt complex relating to letting me watch "Psycho" as a little kid? I didn't have nightmares about that until you dressed up as Norman Bates and scared the crap out of me in the shower."
Dean glances up at him and smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "That's a pretty long list, Sammy boy. Sounds like that's something that would take us way too long to really check out."
"Wouldn't it be worth it, if it ended up saving people's lives?" Sam asks.
"Which shirt?" Dean asks, holding up two identical shirts. "There were some smokin' girls down there. If we're gonna go get dinner soon, I'd like to dress to impress."
"Dean," is all that Sam needs to say.
"Look, dude," Dean says, bracing his palms on his knees to stand. He walks over to Sam and claps a hand on his shoulder. "I get it. You miss the Joe College thing - especially with all of the babes around, jeez. Man, it was bad enough that you held out on me about frat parties, now I find out that California is some sort of babe mecca or something. You wanna find some surfer chick to bang, all you gotta do is say so, dude. You don't need to make up ghost stories."
"Dean," Sam says again, slowly. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Dean cups his hands in front of his bare chest and winks before turning back and selecting an entirely different t-shirt to wear. He says nothing further and Sam lets it go.
They have dinner in a place with a cheesy bar that is thatched with straw to look like a hut but long windows that look over where Soquel Creek empties out into the Pacific Ocean. It's sunset and the light blinds them at first, but by the time Dean gets the waitress' number, it's bearable and they're settled in with cheeseburgers and onion rings.
Dean takes a long pull of his beer - the waitress gave them the second round on the house - and says, "So what's the plan, Sammy boy? I don't really feel like blowing a hole through a church floor tonight."
"There has to be another way down there," Sam says thoughtfully. He rests his chin on the heel of his palm and stares out into middle distance, unappreciative of the scenic beauty. Faintly, he can hear the bark of sea lions. "Ok, so if he's buried underneath the church, then there has to be other tombs down there. The other friars that served the mission were probably reinterred below Holy Cross as well, right?"
"So we're talking about a crypt below the church," Dean says, looking interested. "That'd be easier to deal with, especially since we ran out of dynamite back in Oregon. Although I bet Caleb's pipe bomb recipe would -"
"Dean, we're not blowing up the church," Sam says severely. Dean's answering grin is half rueful, half defensive.
"Live a little, Sammy," he says, his eyes on their waitress. "You know, maybe I could hook you up. I bet she's got hot friends. Quit lookin' at me like that, man. What, you’d rather hold hands and talk about your feelings?"
"Normal human beings talk about their feelings," Sam says, eyebrow arched. "Is that why you don't?"
Dean frowns. "Don't what?" he asks.
"Don't be stupid," Sam shoots back, "Talk about your feelings. Ever.”
Something quick and fleeting crosses Dean’s face, but it’s gone so quickly that Sam only sees it because he is looking for it; so quickly that he isn’t sure if Dean was even aware of it.
His brother grins. "That's because the only feelings I need sound like this: oh, Dean." To Sam's embarrassment, Dean throws his head back and moans, thrusting his pelvis up in an obscene motion that is, thankfully, mostly covered by their table. His hands come up to grab at invisible titties and he doesn't quit it even when Sam throws a French fry at his head and hisses furiously at him to stop.
His brother's mock orgasm is shamelessly loud and only slightly muffled by Sam's hand clapped over Dean's mouth. He can feel Dean's body shaking with laughter underneath his fingers before Dean's mouth opens wide and licks a wet, disgusting stripe up Sam's hand. He leans back in his chair when Sam pulls away in disgust and tips a wink at their waitress. "That's a little preview just for you, sweetheart."
Unbelievably, she laughs, blushing.
Sometimes, Sam really hates his brother.
They are silent on the ride to Holy Cross, an easy silence that has been trained into them over the years. "Like riding a bicycle," Dean said to Sam that night he appeared in Palo Alto after two years of nothing, two years of normal and safe before Sam had slipped the mask off and discovered that it felt better then ever to not to wear it. Dad and Dean had always shielded Sam and kept him safe, left him on the outskirts with a shotgun to keep watch instead of on the front lines with them but in spite of that, Sam falls into step easily when they are on the hunt, focus narrowing and widening to take in all and absorb it without thought.
They’re good at what they do. The Impala purrs as Dean slides into an empty parking spot alongside the Mission Chapel and they gather their weapons from the trunk. Salt, lighter fluid, crosses, a shotgun loaded with rock salt apiece and a handgun for Dean, just in case. Knives and a sledgehammer, heavy in Sam's hand until he throws it into the duffel bag. The weight of their arsenal on his shoulder feels good, natural, and he falls into step with his brother as they move across the plaza, boots slapping on stone echoed by the impassive fountain. Nothing stirs.
Dean pauses before they reach the arches. He turns and looks at Sam, his face serious. “Hey,” he says, and Sam stops. “You think that you could really die, getting your balls crushed? I mean, I could see it if you get ‘em ripped completely off, but just crushed?”
“Dean,” Sam says, after a beat. “What the hell.” He shakes his head and keeps walking.
“Seriously, though,” Dean insists, stepping quickly to catch up. “It’s bugging the shit out of me.”
They step under the stone arch without fear of discovery or attack. They hold their guns at ready out of habit, no questions asked as Sam lays his gun at his side to pick the lock of the church doors and Dean stands at his heels, covering his brother's exposed back. They are inside in seconds.
They stand ready beneath the entryway for breathless seconds before moving to flank the redwood baptismal font. They pause only for a second to dip their fingers in the water and cross themselves.
Holy Cross Church is an enormous, narrow building with cathedral ceilings painted with elaborate gold ikons of saints that look fiercely down upon the parishioners below. The altar is huge and intimidating, crowned by a larger than life statue of Jesus upon his cross, flanked by weeping angels. Dean nods upwards; the heavy chandeliers high above their head are swaying through the still cloistered air, throwing an ever widening shadow across the ground. The darkness behind Jesus' twisted body writhes.
They turn as one and see the spirit of Father Andres Quintana above them in the organ loft, whip raised, face bloodied and furious. He stands with his legs wide as though he has both feet planted on the railing instead of hanging in the air, blood staining his habit and running in sickening drops down the iron rail. His mouth is open in a deafening howl of hatred and pain.
"Jesus," Dean begins to say, and then Quintana is gone.
There is only the barest flicker of movement to warn them and then Quintana's arm comes down and brings the whip across Sam's back. A burning explosion of pain blossoms across his back, so much more intense and terrifying than Sam could have dreamed, each hook catching and tearing at his flesh. He screams. His legs drop out from under him and then Dean is there, shotgun deafening. Dean's hands are under his arms, pushing him back, and all that Sam can see are shadows dancing across gleaming wood. Quintana is faster than them, bigger. The rotten cloth that covers his body reeks of dust and the heavy stench of blood. Quintana's whip cuts through the air and takes out a chunk of the pew beside Dean's hand before he vanishes again. They are in motion immediately, not waiting for another attack; Dean propels Sam towards the altar and the alcoves behind it. They’re running full tilt up the aisle and when Quintana reappears directly before them, there’s no time to react, much less dodge.
The whip catches Dean on the left side of the face. He slips and goes down hard against the edge of a pew, the crack of his skull against the polished edge eclipsed by Sam's own gun. Dean chants angry curses as he hauls himself to his feet and they scrabble towards the altar.
In 1989, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay Area. It originated ten miles above Santa Cruz and killed an estimated 67 people. Dean had turned ten that year and had been transfixed by the sight of that red car on their television screen, teetering on the edge of the collapsed Bay Bridge. The damage to Santa Cruz county had been so widespread that when a wall below Holy Cross had been torn open to reveal a series of catacombs that had been sealed tightly for over a century, it had simply been noted, plastered over, and then forgotten.
It is this that they are making for.
Dean kicks the alcove door open rather than waste time picking the lock and Sam is on his knees as soon as they are through, laying down a thick line of salt along the doorway. "You think that'll keep him?" Sam asks, but Dean only grunts and angrily swipes blood out of his eyes.
"Come on," he says, but Sam grabs his ankle.
"How's your head?"
Dean glares at him. "It's fine, come on, we don't -"
"How's your head?" Sam says again, cutting Dean off.
"How's your back?" Dean counters, and then relents. "I didn't get knocked out, I can move around fine, my fucking head just hurts. Can we go salt and burn this asshole or do you want to make sure that my diaper is dry, too?"
"Fine," Sam mutters, "Excuse me for being concerned. Let's go."
He digs their flashlights out of the duffel bag and holds one out for Dean to take. They're in a narrow corridor and Sam fumbles for the lights. Dean, impatient, clicks on his flashlight and -
"Did you see that?" Dean's voice is low and intent. There is a highlight on his nose and forehead from the flashlight but the rest of his body is invisible in the gloom.
"See what?" Sam asks. "Is it Quintana?"
"No, too small - could've sworn there was someone standing at the bottom of the stairs - "
Dean lapses into silence and they stand ready, every muscle straining towards reaction. The stairwell below them is silent. The only thing that they can hear is each other's labored breathing.
Dean takes point, sliding forward along the wall, his movements quick and economic. Sam follows, duck-walking backwards down the steps, gun and attention trained on the door leading back to the church. There is a storage room at the bottom of the stairs piled high with folded tables and brightly colored posters made out of felt and behind them, a pale crack in the wall that was never painted to match the rest of the room. Together, they clear a space to work. Dean takes the sledgehammer from Sam.
Even dazed and bloody, taking down the wall is quick work. The plaster covers a badly patched crack that runs from the ceiling to the floor. The flashlight shakes in Sam's hand as the wound on his back reminds him of its presence, his first adrenaline surge fading. He can feel his shirt sticking to his skin as the cloth is soaked through with blood and sweat; every movement of his shoulders feels as though it is splitting his skin wide open. "Hurry up," Sam grits out between his teeth.
Dean spares a quick, irritated glance over his shoulder and smears a hand over his face. "Don't rush genius," he says, and the wall comes down.
They reel back from the smell. Even high on the hill, away from the flood plains that used to cover downtown Santa Cruz, the ground has had over a century to absorb winter rains. It’s a heavy smell, almost physical in its presence, chilled by the lack of sun that never reaches into its depths. Another swing widens the crack, knocks bricks from their places and sends them spinning into blackness. And in the dark, as Sam brings his flashlight up below his gun the way their father taught them, he sees the shine of eyes.
He doesn't drop the gun, but it's a close thing. His voice rings out, warningly: "Dean." His eyes don't waver from the figure that stands improbably opposite them, dark skin a blur to the flashlight, but he can see Dean heft the sledgehammer as if he can use it against the spirit. It is still and it holds their gaze and then flickers out of sight.
"What the fuck," Dean breathes.
"That wasn't Quintana," Sam echoes.
There is a rough hewn stairway below them and they descend into Stygian darkness that pays no heed to their meager light. Cobwebs disintegrate as they brush Sam's skin, dust settling on their clothes. Even the sound of Dean's boots on stone seems swallowed up by the catacombs.
"Something's wrong," Sam says. "There's no way there should be so many tunnels down here. The mission was only active for fifty years or so, there shouldn't be more than a handful of priests buried down here."
"There it is again," Dean growls. He swings his shotgun towards the ghost but it’s gone before the motion is complete.
Sam wants to say, it's quiet. Wants Dean to reply, too quiet. Except that it isn't quiet, not really; there is a sound that waits on the edge of his consciousness as they move through endless corridors, past endless coffins piled haphazardly atop one another. It sounds almost like breathing, or an enormous heartbeat, or the ocean; it swallows all sound and thought just like the darkness has swallowed them. Hours have passed, or minutes, and although Quintana's spirit hasn't found them, they can't seem to find Quintana's bones. Every noise makes them jump, convinced that the line of salt didn’t stop Quintana. Every shift of dirt beneath their feet sounds like his whip slicing through the air, invisible in the catacombs. Their flashlights reveal narrow walls that glisten under the shine of light, little flecks of white among that dirt that look like teeth or the bones of children and every once in a while find wet black eyes that stare silently at them.
Sam stumbles and nearly goes down, dizzy with pain and claustrophobia, and Dean grabs his shoulder and presses him against the wall. Dean's fingers clench on his shirt and then turn him around, silently examining the torn fabric of Sam's jacket, the shirt beneath.
“This sucks,” he grunts wearily and drops his head onto Sam’s shoulder.
“You can’t even see straight, can you?” Sam pants. Dean is silent, his fingers still gripping the hem of Sam’s t-shirt. “I knew you weren’t ok, why can’t you just -”
“Can’t do anything about it right now, can I?” Dean says through gritted teeth. Sam has no reply for that.
He’s tired. They’re both tired, the sort of bone-deep exhaustion that normally only hits Sam hours after a hunt, when the adrenaline has worn off and his brain is finished rehashing everything that happened. And Sam hates being mindfucked by what they hunt, hates his perceptions being screwed with, hates doubting his own capabilities, it drives him insane. Their flashlights flicker and for a long moment Sam holds his breath like he hasn’t done since he was a child. They stay lit and he lets his head fall forward against the wall with a grateful hiss and for a moment, the world goes gray.
He comes back to himself when Dean grabs the back of his skull and shakes it. “You think I’m messed up?” he mutters against Sam’s shoulder blade. “Look who’s talking, pass-out boy.”
Sam rolls off of the wall with a concentrated effort, one hand going to steady Dean when his brother reels drunkenly towards the opposite wall. “Pass-out boy?” he asks. “That’s all you can come up with? You really do have a concussion.”
It’s a long moment before Sam is alert enough to feel how tense Dean is beneath his hand, to notice how Dean has gone still and watchful like a dog. His attention turns away from Sam so quickly that Sam almost forgets how Dean had nearly fallen only a moment ago. When Sam turns and sees what Dean’s already noticed, adrenaline rushes back into his body like a shot.
Standing at some distance from them is a small child with dark skin and a rounded belly, wrapped in striped burlap cloth belted around the middle. It stares at them with empty, lifeless eyes, its mouth bruised and face smeared with dirt. A man with feathers in his hair appears behind the child, blood still dripping from the jagged weals that cross his face. Then a woman with heavy, bare breasts; another child; then an old man, their eyes fixed uncaring upon the barrels of the Winchester’s shotguns until, as one, they raise their hands - and point.
“What the shit?” Dean hisses.
“I think - I think they’re trying to help us,” Sam says disbelievingly.
Dean blinks rapidly, his focus unwavering. “Help us.”
They edge forward slowly. The ghosts’ faces turn with them, the rest of their bodies perfectly still but for the slightest refracting light at the edges of their forms. Dean dashes into the corridor first, arms straight and gun out, and in the distance they see the slap of small bare feet against the earth bright against the glare of the flashlight. Another child, a little boy naked to the waist, skids to a halt and pivots without seeming to move a muscle and raises his arm into the darkness.
They follow where he points and each time there is a choice, an uncertain path, there is a spirit waiting for them with one hand outstretched, showing them what they hope is the way to Quintana’s tomb. As they run, exhaustion momentarily forgotten, something grows beneath their feet. It is a sound that Sam hears inside his own head first, then in his teeth but he doesn’t realize what it is until the ground ripples beneath them and sends both of them to their knees, Dean’s flashlight clattering out of his hand.
“It’s a fucking earthquake!” Sam gasps.
Dean’s head snaps towards him, his expression nearly invisible but for the light thrown back from Sam’s flashlight. “What? What the fuck do we do?”
“I don’t know - there weren’t any when I was at Stanford, only the little ones that you can’t even feel,” Sam says, getting shakily to his feet. “This doesn’t feel right, Dean -”
“No shit, it’s a friggin’ earthquake!” His brother’s voice is definitely panicked this time, the flat incomprehension of a man who has never lived in an earthquake state for more than a week or two at a time.
“No, I mean -” Another tremor throws Dean back onto the ground and Sam can hear him swearing. Sam holds his own feet with barely more than the will to stay upright and grits the rest of the sentence out between his teeth. “I mean, it doesn’t feel natural - it feels like there’s something controlling this. There’s something trying to keep us away from Quintana’s grave.”
“Fucking great!” Dean shouts. He slams the flat of his hand against the ground and then scrambles up as soon as there is a respite. “Let’s get this over with before the place comes down on our heads.”
It’s almost anticlimactic when they find Quintana’s tomb. They skid around a corner and it’s nearly blocking their path. Sam barrels into it at belly-height and Dean laughs at him even as they set the crowbars at either end of the stone cover and heave. Sam can feel eyes on them, the eyes of whatever set the earthquake in their path as well as the eyes of the Mission’s victims. The Indians gather at their shoulders and crowd the narrow corridor as Dean and Sam sweat and grunt and murmur insults and incentives together and finally, finally shift the heavy stone away.
It’s just a grave, like all of the hundreds that they’ve seen and desecrated in their lives. Quintana is little more than dust, brittle bones crossed over themselves, the faintest scraps of fabric still clinging to what had been his shoulders.
“You have been way more trouble than you’re worth, padre,” Dean says as he uncaps the gas can. They watch him burn with grim expressions. The blue flame burns away the darkness around them and rarely has Sam ever been so glad to see his brother’s face. Dean glances up at him and smirks and for a long moment they simply grin at each other, elated that the job is done.
Sam is on his face in the dirt before either of them even register the earthquake. Dean shouts his name and then there are rocks raining down onto their heads and the very earth is churning. Their flashlights are on the ground. All that Sam can see is dust and his brother crawling towards him. There are Indians all around them, so close that their feet brush against Sam’s sleeve and they raise their arms in unison and open their mouths wide.
There is no word for the sound that they make.
Sam scrambles to cover his ears, teeth bared against the noise. Dean crouches over him, one hand curled over his own head and the other placed protectively around Sam’s back. He thinks that Dean is screaming something but it’s impossible to hear over the roar of earth and for a wild moment Sam wants to reach up and grab Dean by the back of his neck and haul him close until he can hear. He would be ok if his brother’s voice was the last thing he ever heard.
The spirits’ mouths widen until they are caricatures of the human beings that they used to be, sucking the darkness into themselves until finally, finally Sam realizes that he can see again. That there are still flames licking the sides of Quintana’s tomb.
That the earthquake has stopped.
The spirits turn their faces down to Sam and Dean, silent. They are losing shape and solidity, their faces still empty but changed somehow. Dean’s fingers grip Sam’s arm painfully. He is staring up into the faces of their saviors, his jaw tight. Sam passes him the flashlight and they help each other to stand. Dean’s fingers are shaking and he keeps one hand wrapped around Sam’s bicep as they pass through the spirits. There’s something in the corner of Sam’s vision that he can almost focus on, something green and curvy and it almost looks like a girl with brown hair, but it’s gone before Sam can do more than turn his head to look.
Whatever kept them lost in Holy Cross’ catacombs seems to have died with Quintana’s spirit. It’s barely fifteen minutes before they see light from the storage room below the church spilling down the staircase. There is nothing out of place, not even a single goddamn box spilled over and they mount the stairs to the church proper with wary relief. We could have died down there, Sam thinks, but doesn’t say anything.
Outside, they discover that it isn’t even dawn yet. There is the hint of it on the opposite side of the horizon from the ocean but the sky is still a miserable lingering grey. They hobble across the park to the Impala and sit gingerly on the hood. Dean digs a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.
“When did you start smoking?” Sam asks in disbelief.
“When did you start being a whiny bitch?” Dean asks in reply, and then adds as an afterthought: “Oh, it was when you were born.”
On the edge of the square, there is a girl watching them. She has on a green jacket that’s much too thick for the summer weather, bell bottoms, and long brown hair parted down the middle. They don’t see her until they’re inside the Impala, pulling slowly away from the curb, when Sam glances up to see her sitting on the steps of the church, and knows that it was her that he had seen in the catacombs.
Staircases have rarely looked so intimidating to Sam and Dean. The sun rises as they make their way to Capitola-by-the-Sea, rolling down the cliffs above the village in utter silence. Dean curses Sam’s choice of their third floor motel room up every step he drags himself.
“Give me Nebraska,” he gasps. “Give me Illinois. Give me Kentucky, ferchrissake. Anywhere that isn’t a goddamn hill or mountain and all the motels are on the ground like they’re supposed to be.”
Sam’s laugh is breathless, nearly a gasp. “You don’t get a view like this in Illinois.”
“Hey, I happen to like cornfields,” Dean says.
He collapses on the closest bed as soon as they’re inside, the door locked behind them and blessed before Sam feels comfortable trying to shed his jacket. He gets one sleeve almost all the way off before Dean motions him over. “That’s seriously pathetic. Let me do it, dude.”
Dean herds Sam into the bathroom before pulling Sam’s t-shirt over his head. Seated on the toilet, Sam watches his brother’s face in the mirror as Dean examines his back. In the harsh light, the gash that cuts across the left side of Dean’s face looks nearly as bad as the one on Sam’s back: it leads from his temple down across the apple of his cheekbone and hooks upwards to end up close to his mouth. There’s dried blood smeared just about everywhere in their hair and clothing, worse than Chicago had been. Sam didn’t come out of the confrontation with Quintana so easily himself; he rests his forehead against the counter when Dean goes to get the first aid kit and nearly greys out again.
The clatter of the box on the counter brings Sam back to awareness. “Wake up, princess,” Dean says, holding up a suture kit. “Unless you want to do this yourself tomorrow.”
“Wait wait wait,” Sam says, holding up a feeble hand. “Half an hour ago, you couldn’t even see straight to drive. You think I’m gonna let you stick me with a needle while you’re like that?”
Dean shrugs, lips pursed. “Wouldn’t be the first time, but suit yourself.”
He turns away towards the mirror, digging out the rest of their suturing supplies. He ignores Sam’s hand but turns his head over his shoulder when Sam grabs his elbow. “Wait again,” Sam says slowly. “You’re not going to try and stitch yourself up, are you?”
Dean frowns at him. “Why not?”
Sam blinks, mouth open. “Because you have a concussion? Did you forget what I just said about not being able to drive thirty minutes ago? If I’m not going to let you stick needles in my back, what makes you think I’ll let you stick needles in your own face? It doesn’t even look all that deep, man.”
Dean stares at himself in the mirror, brow furrowed as though he’s pondering the merits of what Sam is saying. He’s not reacting slowly enough that Sam can see the gears in his head turning, but it’s close. “Let me do it, Dean,” Sam says, exasperated. That earns him another frown, but Dean parks his butt on the counter without a word and waits for Sam to do something.
He keeps his eyes fixed on Sam’s face while Sam wets a hand towel through and dabs carefully at the dried blood. The slash reopens and begins to bleed again sluggishly. Dean blinks hard but doesn’t flinch away from Sam’s hands. “I don’t think you need stitches,” Sam murmurs when the wound is finally cleaned and swabbed with alcohol. “I can put some butterfly strips on it to keep the edges together and put a bandage on top to keep it clean.”
“Whatever,” Dean says faintly.
Up close, Dean smells awful, like soot and sweat and the oily stench of what they burned tonight. There’s mud smeared across his face and his eyes are so wide that he looks like nothing so much as a kid that’s been caught rolling around in the dirt and is being punished for it.
Sam’s attention is focused so completely on taping the gash closed that he misses seeing the deep discomfort in Dean’s eyes, the way that his mouth twitches as Sam’s fingers stray close to any hurt. When Sam pulls back to examine his handiwork, Dean swallows and hardens his face.
He holds his hands out parallel to the ground, palms facing downward. They’re perfectly steady and he raises his eyebrows at Sam. “Sit down on the goddamn toilet and let me take care of your back, Sammy. If that gets infected, it’ll be me who has to take care of your sorry ass.”
It takes a long time. Dean is nothing if not thorough, setting out what he needs in an orderly manner that Sam wouldn’t have credited him with. He pops a tablet of Panadol Rapid out of its box and Sam swallows it dry. The towel that Sam had used on Dean is filthy, so Dean grabs a new one. He curves one hand around the ball of Sam’s shoulder to keep Sam still while he works. Occasionally Sam can feel his thumb stroke over his skin, back and forth, comfortingly.
The Panadol is already working its way through Sam’s system when Dean tears open the suture pack with his teeth and carefully aligns the needle between the legs of the tweezers. “Hey, how’re you doing? That stuff kicking in yet or do you want me to see what’s in the minifridge out there?” he asks.
Sam shakes his head, woozy. “I’m good.” He wants to lean forward and rest on the counter again, or lean backwards and let Dean support him, so he settles for lolling his head to the side to rest against Dean’s forearm. “That ok?” he asks, closing his eyes.
He can feel Dean’s arms twitch just a little as Dean laughs. “Yeah. You’re fine.”
Quintana’s whip had cut deeply into Sam’s back, going crooked at his shoulder blade and continuing down across his spine to the middle of his ribs. Sam presses his face into the crook of Dean’s arm and breathes deeply. The curve of the suture needle feels more like pinches than anything else, any pain that there might be overshadowed by the Panadol and the warmth of Dean’s skin against his own.
“You’re good at this,” he mumbles.
Dean scoffs. “Of course I am. Had enough practice at it, haven’t I? I swear, I used to think that the only way I’d ever get Dad to a hospital was if something tore off a friggin’ limb.”
“You used to patch Dad up after hunts?”
Dean is silent for so long that Sam opens his eyes, looking into the mirror to see an unreadable expression on his brother’s face . “After a lot of things,” he says eventually.
“What do you mean?” Sam asks.
Dean glances up and sees Sam’s face in the mirror, watching him intently. His eyebrowse rise. “Don’t you remember?”
“No,” Sam says, and suddenly does: a flash of memory, barely more than the heavy scent of alcohol and the glint of a broken glass on the floor, Dean’s voice rough with impending puberty ordering him to get back in your room, Sammy.
“Anyway, it wasn’t like there was anybody else to do it, was there?” Dean is saying, his attention back on the task at hand. “Caleb’s a good teacher, we never came across anything I couldn’t handle. All right, I think you’re good with the whole not bleeding to death thing.”
Sam stands and stretches, as best as he’s able. “Thank god,” he says, “I’m exhausted.” He staggers towards the door, but Dean’s voice stops him at the threshold.
“Sammy. You saw that girl outside the church, right? The one that looked like she stepped right off the corner of Haight and Ashbury or something?”
Sam nods. “Yeah, I saw her. She was in the catacombs with us. She didn’t exactly look ... contemporary with the rest of the spirits down there. There’s gotta be some sort of connection there, though. It’s just weird.”
Dean is silent for a long moment, staring at Sam. “What?” Sam says eventually, but Dean only shakes his head.
“Nothing. You really think there’s something bigger here? Something more than just Quintana’s ghost and whatever the hell was in the catacombs helping us?”
“That earthquake wasn’t natural,” Sam says firmly. “The rest of the church wasn’t even touched by it. It was only underground, where we were. Something was trying to stop us from getting to Quintana’s tomb.”
Dean nods, not looking at Sam. “Ok,” he says. “If you want to, we can stick around for a few more days, see what else we can dig up. All right?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, cool. Ok.”
“But,” Dean says sternly, holding up one finger, “we need at least a day of downtime, dude. I feel like I’m not gonna be able to walk for a week.”
“I’m not going anywhere near that one, man,” Sam laughs. “You keep your gay sexcapades to yourself, ok?”
He ducks out of the bathroom and shuts the door behind himself before Dean can respond. There is silence and then through the door, he hears the shower start up. The sunrise has turned their room into an ocean of pale light that shifts through the slats of the blinds and already the air is nearly stifling. All that Sam can manage is to slide his jeans off before collapsing face first onto the bed farthest from the window. He’s fast asleep before the growing daylight can begin to bother him, so it never occurs to him to look out the window, where hundreds of invisible hands press against the glass.
Part 2
Author: hansbekhart
Rating: R
Summary: They come from the north, exhausted by the sprawling highways and overpasses of Silicon Valley.
Notes: Everything you're about to read is true. Well, most of it. The things Sam and Dean hunt and the places they go are all based on real events and locations in Santa Cruz, California. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching all of this and once the entire story is posted, there will be an additional link to my sources and credits. In the spirit of going totally overboard, there is also an official soundtrack. I had some really great people helping me on this story, whom I'll thank in detail in my notes, but an extra shout out to fatale and shored, who were invaluable. There are three complete chapters, and I'll be posting one a day until the end. There's a link to the next chapter at the bottom.
They come from the north, exhausted by the sprawling highways and overpasses of Silicon Valley. They put miles between them and the cantankerous spirit of a Gold Rush miner who threw them around a bit and went grumbling into his long overdue rest, salted and burned. It is hot in the mountains above Napa but it grows cooler the closer they get to the ocean. Sam takes over the driving somewhere past San Francisco, when Dean finally throws up his hand in disgust at six lanes of traffic and hardly a driver who knows what he's doing.
Dean falls asleep in Hayward, his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face. His chin sinks down into his chest, giving him a triple chin that Dean would absolutely take a picture of if Sam sleeping that way. Sam glances at his brother and then away, grinning. He is almost to Los Gatos when he finally gives in and digs his camera phone out of his pocket.
Sam knows the area well; Palo Alto and Stanford lie inland and if he left 101 at Embarcadero, he'd be back at his old apartment in no time. Jess had been a native to the area and had driven him all over in the early days of their relationship. They'd made the trip over the mountains several times to escape the heat of Silicon Valley in the summer or to eat the best Mexican food Sam had ever had. Even the air smells the same, that mixture of smog and eucalyptus and the promise of the ocean. Sam cranks the window down and breathes deeply, something easing and tightening in his chest at the same time.
He stops for gas and snacks before they hit the Santa Cruz Mountains. Dean is awake when Sam walks back to the car, staring blearily out the window at the cars passing by. He meets Sam's eyes and tracks him all the way across the parking lot, his gaze expressionless. The car door shrieks when Sam opens it and slides inside.
"Where are we?" Dean grumbles, starting to life and rubbing a hand over his face.
"Los Gatos," Sam replies. "About a half an hour outside of Santa Cruz," he adds when Dean gives him a dark look. He says it the way the natives do, blurring it together into one word, unconsciously: Sannacruz. He tosses Dean the newspaper without looking at him, most of his attention saved for his soda. He watches it fizz rather than watch Dean unfold the paper and scan the front page.
"Apple Rivers -- seriously? -- 20 years old, found murdered in Mission Plaza last night. No witnesses, no leads. Body was slashed, mutilated and partially dismembered." He glances over at Sam. "That makes five bodies in two weeks, all women, all murdered in the same little courtyard thing outside of Holy Cross Church. The town thinks it has another serial killer. Not exactly a rare occurrence for the area."
"Yeah," Sam says. "But they don't know what we do."
They had been tipped off when the second death had hit the papers with the only lead that the case had so far: a tiny bit of wire that had broken off in the girl's eye socket. Hand-forged, rusted so badly that it was little more than dust, more than a hundred years old. The name of the town had sparked some connection in Dean's brain that sent him leafing through Dad's journal to find a page with POGONIP scrawled across the top in dark letters.
"You sure this isn't just some serial killer?" Dean had griped, even though the link had been made in Dad's journal, normally Dean’s bible. "It's not like they haven't had a million of them in Santa Cruz." They had come anyway, regardless of Dean's inexplicable need to hustle them as far away from California as possible. He wouldn't shut up about how much he hated California until Sam asked him why.
Sam digs his phone out of his pocket as they pull out of the parking lot, Dean back at the wheel, and passes it over without a word. The Impala idles for a long moment at the intersection as Dean frowns down at his own triple chin, now the background for Sam's phone.
Sam barely sees Dean's hand fly out and clip him along the head, but he laughs hard anyway and plucks his phone from the ground where Dean threw it.
They take Summit Road through the mountains, the Impala swinging madly, seduced by tight curves and lifts of interminable hills and dragging eucalyptus. The light is cool and dappled and Dean puts his face outside the window to see if he can smell the ocean. Signs for back road churches, sedate horses in hand-built corrals, fields of baby Christmas trees roll past them as the ocean grows ever closer. They don't talk. Dean eats Cheetos and Sam plows his way through a water bottle and a half before they get to Old San Jose Rd, the turn coming suddenly and knocking Dean's Cheetos off his lap.
"Dude!" he says, flinging up a hand. Sam laughs until Dean leans over and rubs orange crumbs all over his clean shirt.
"Bitch!" Sam returns, and pushes his brother into the window.
Santa Cruz in the summertime is all greens and golds, loamy earth and ferns that haven't seen the sun since the redwoods that cover them were young, hundreds of years ago. The Impala passes through shafts of sunlight and the air around them is cool and dry, mottled with dust. They crest a hill and there is the ocean, laid out before them, too far off to glitter in the sunlight. Sam grins when he sees it, but Dean's attention is on the mountain.
It's early afternoon when they pass a park that has three enormous blue balls rolling down a grassy hill. Dean, whose sense of humor still hovers around the level of a small child's, cracks up. They roll into a town that seems to be teeming with children, hefting backpacks and shouting to each other. The Impala attracts attention and Dean huffs an appreciative sort of laugh when they get in line behind several gleaming muscle cars waiting for the light to change.
Old San Jose drops them off on the other side of town from their destination, so they make for the motel first. It overlooks a long stretch of beach and a small cluster of buildings in various pastel shades and covered in a ridiculous amount of gables and plants. Across the river stretches an old wooden trestle, crisscrossing redwood beams breaking up the view down the river. It's so picturesque that Dean actually sneers at it, looking around himself with something approaching disbelief.
The scent of kelp and salt clings to their room and Dean wrinkles his nose. "You wanna go hit the parents?" Dean asks.
"I'd like to check out the church while we're out," Sam says. “There could be some sort of spirit hanging around there.”
Dean nods. "Or," he says slowly, as though the thought has just occured to him, "it could be a serial killer and not our deal."
Sam frowns at him, frustrated. "What is your problem, Dean? You’ve been acting really weird lately."
Dean smirks at him. "Nothin'. Come on, Sammy, let's hit the road."
Apple Rivers' parents turn out to be an older hippie couple who introduce themselves as Dharmananda and Phoenix. Neither appears to have shaved in at least five years and Sam barely holds back a grin as Dean utterly fails to cope. They're FBI agents today and Sam conducts most of the interview, as Dean doesn't seem to be able to say any of the names of the River family without losing control.
"Had your daughter mentioned anything ... out of the ordinary lately?" Sam asks, sympathetic face on. They accept two mugs of tea that smell like gasoline and taste like gunpowder and out of the corner of his eye, Sam watches Dean struggle not to make faces.
"Nothing," Phoenix says, pushing a shock of bright copper hair back from her pale face. Her eyes, reddened and lined, are almost steady as she speaks in a low, even voice. "She never mentioned anything like that. She would have told us if there had been anybody following her or giving her trouble."
"Your daughter lived at home?" Dean asks.
Phoenix nods without looking at them, gulping her tea. “Rent’s a bitch here,” she says frankly. “Apple goes - went to UCSC, it’s a lot of money on top of that. We were helping her with tuition if she lived at home to keep the cost down. We ... we liked having her here, with us ...”
"What sort of people was she involved with?" Sam asks gently.
Dharmananda had hovered over his wife's shoulder up to this point, moving restlessly around the room but always returning to Phoenix's side. He puts a hand down protectively on her shoulder and scowls at them. "Good kids," he says forcefully. "Mostly her friends from high school. We've known them all for years and that's exactly what we told the other cops. She wasn't involved in a gang and she wasn't a Satanist. She was a good girl."
"Daddy doth protest a bit much," Dean says later, in the car.
"No," Sam says slowly. "I think that was genuine."
Dean is silent for a moment, pondering the case or boobs or the meaning of life, Sam doesn't know. "So she wasn't a Satanist, which probably rules out some sort of demon."
"Unless the victims were being targeted by Satanists," Sam replies.
"In which case we should find signs of that at the site," Dean counters. "What else would it be? You said that there's a large Hispanic population here. It could be a chupacabra."
"Could also be related to the church. We should look into the history of it after we see it."
"That’s all yours, college boy," Dean grumbles.
Dean is silent as they drive and that in itself would be unsettling to Sam. The clear light that filters in through the Impala's windows picks up the tense line of his jaw, the stubble that covers his skin. They haven't slept well lately; the miner had tossed them around pretty well and Sam had to relocate Dean's shoulder. Dean still looks terrible even when he's in the car, his own personal comfort zone.
"So what’s your problem, Dean?" Sam asks finally. Dean looks at him and then away, his mouth quirking.
"Nothing, like I said. Man, look at this traffic. This sucks." His posture is relaxed, one arm hanging over the front seat of the Impala behind Sam's back, the faintest smile touching his lips, but he's looking at their surroundings as though they’re going to rear up and attack him.
Sam wants to reach for him, clap a hand around the back of his neck or something, but there’s a hell of a personal chasm between the two of them that sprung up when he left for college that Sam doesn’t know how to bridge, even after all these months on the road.
A guy could break something trying to get to Dean, Sam thinks sourly, and settles deeper into his seat.
Mission Plaza is sunny, hot, and full of official looking people. Yellow tape strings a clear line of demarcation around where Apple Rivers died, an impressive spatter of blood still soaking the ground. Dean whistles, as insensitive to Apple's murder as he was to her parents, and digs his Walkman-cum-EMF reader out of the trunk. He ignores Sam's snort of derision and they trace their way around the park, drawing nonchalantly close to study a sign post that reads May Peace prevail on Earth in four different languages. Sam expects Dean to sneer at it, but he says nothing. The cops look at them suspiciously, but only until their gazes move on to the next pedestrian hovering cautiously around the edge of the park.
"Cruciform," Dean says softly, with the slightest nod of his head towards the blood splatter.
"Yeah," Sam says. He had noticed.
Sam follows Dean's lead but his thoughts keep wandering. He can hear the beat of some enormous heart on the edge of his consciousness, feels it pulse and wash forward and back like an ocean wave, like a caress. As if in reaction, Dean maintains a nearly feral attention to the EMF reader and his surroundings, examining everything he can reach without attracting attention. He crouches just a little bit as he walks, a posture learned nearly at Dad's knee and certainly with his approval.
The meter goes up the closer they get to the church and when they step though the arches about thirty feet before the church façade, it's as though ice water has been poured over Sam's head, extinguishing the unnatural contentment that had wrapped itself around him. He shivers and nudges Dean. "Good feeling gone," he murmurs, and Dean looks at him as though he's an idiot.
"I think we've found our problem," Dean says grimly.
“Haunted church?” Sam asks, retreating back between the arch to the safety on the other side.
“Could be,” Dean says thoughtfully. “She wasn’t anywhere near the church when she died.” He stares down at the EMF reader as if it holds the answers.
“What about cursed Indian ground?” Sam says, tipping his head back to stare at the sky.
Dean shrugs. “Come on, dude, I’m done with this. Let’s get out of here.”
They retreat back to the motel. Sam sits out on the balcony and enjoys the view and the free wireless while Dean showers. There are few better sounds than the noise of children playing at a distance, their shouts echoing off the swell of saltwater, mimicked by the seagulls that land on the balcony's railing and stare blankly at Sam. "Mine?" Sam asks them, and then feels stupid for referencing a children's movie twice in one day.
Dean shuffles out onto the balcony after a while. There is a towel slung low around his hips and another in his hand, which he uses to dry his hair but not the beads of water still clinging to his chest and stomach. "Find anything?" he asks.
"Yeah," Sam replies. "A lot. Maybe a lot more than we bargained for, actually. I've definitely found our ghost, by the way. Holy Cross was built on top of what used to be one of the missions that the Spanish built all along the coastline. They were basically frontier posts for Spanish colonies back then; this one in particular was built by Franciscan monks in, uh, 1791."
"I know you're getting to the point soon," Dean says, peering at Sam from between folds of terrycloth. Sam smacks him hard on the shoulder and continues, ignoring Dean's bark of laughter.
"The point is, one of the friars, Father Andres Quintana, was famous for abusing the native women ... for beating them with a wire-tipped horsewhip," Sam said significantly. "And - get this - one night in 1812, the Mission laborers rose up and murdered him by crushing his testicles. Then they just put him back in bed as though nothing had happened. Nobody even knew he was murdered until several years later, when one of the conspirators spilled the beans."
Dean winces. "He got his balls mashed? What the hell, man. That is a fucked up way to die. I’d rather be smothered in a demon’s asshole. It sounds like our guy, all right. Does it say where he’s buried?"
"Well," Sam says, "the mission fell into disrepair around 1840 ... the church that sits on top of it now wasn't built until 1891, so I'd guess that they moved the bodies to some other cemetery in the area, which will be a bitch to figure out exactly where. There was an earthquake after Quintana's death that destroyed most of the records."
"Super," Dean says. "Any guesses?"
"Um. The mission cemetery lay along the east side of the old mission church, going from the southeast corner all the way to the northeast. There was another church built on the site in 1858 and most of the graves were moved then, so hopefully he's - oh."
Dean glances up. "'Oh' doesn't sound good."
"This article says specifically that Quintana's bones were found and then reinterred in 1885 …" Sam glances up and meets Dean's eyes. "… in a stone casket underneath the floor of the new church."
Dean laughs. He finally lets up on his hair and starts absentmindedly rubbing the towel over his chest. "All right, that'll be a blast. So to speak. Hey, you remember that time in Jersey, when you fell through the chapel floor?"
"Vividly," Sam says dryly. He had spent two hours back at the motel that night lying on his stomach as their dad had picked splinters out of his bare ass and Dean mocked him from the corner.
Dean cackles to himself and then says, "So what did you mean by more than we bargained for, anyway?"
"It's like this town is tailor-made for us, Dean," Sam says softly. "I went looking for articles about the mission and just while you were in the shower, I found about a hundred other things that would be worth checking out. Santa Cruz used to be known as the Murder Capital of the World because there was a mass murderer and two separate serial killers operating in the area in the early 1970's. Hitchcock's "The Birds" was based on a freak incident just a few miles away from where we're sitting now; the house that inspired "Psycho" is here and was a stomping ground for Satanists, there's a White Lady on Graham Hill Road, a ghost called Pogonip and an Indian curse over the entire area. I'm telling you, man, I think there's something deeper going on here."
Dean is silent for a long moment, his fingers folded in his lap, before he gets up and vanishes back into the room without a word. The sky is plastered against the glass and the only motion that Sam can see in it is the swoop of sea gulls above the ocean. He follows Dean inside to find his brother getting dressed, jaw firmed, eyes blank. Dean doesn't look at him as he tugs his jeans up and squats by their duffle bags for a clean shirt.
"Is there something that you're hiding from me?" Sam asks finally, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. "Is this going to be like the shtriga, where I find out you have some guilt complex relating to letting me watch "Psycho" as a little kid? I didn't have nightmares about that until you dressed up as Norman Bates and scared the crap out of me in the shower."
Dean glances up at him and smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "That's a pretty long list, Sammy boy. Sounds like that's something that would take us way too long to really check out."
"Wouldn't it be worth it, if it ended up saving people's lives?" Sam asks.
"Which shirt?" Dean asks, holding up two identical shirts. "There were some smokin' girls down there. If we're gonna go get dinner soon, I'd like to dress to impress."
"Dean," is all that Sam needs to say.
"Look, dude," Dean says, bracing his palms on his knees to stand. He walks over to Sam and claps a hand on his shoulder. "I get it. You miss the Joe College thing - especially with all of the babes around, jeez. Man, it was bad enough that you held out on me about frat parties, now I find out that California is some sort of babe mecca or something. You wanna find some surfer chick to bang, all you gotta do is say so, dude. You don't need to make up ghost stories."
"Dean," Sam says again, slowly. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Dean cups his hands in front of his bare chest and winks before turning back and selecting an entirely different t-shirt to wear. He says nothing further and Sam lets it go.
They have dinner in a place with a cheesy bar that is thatched with straw to look like a hut but long windows that look over where Soquel Creek empties out into the Pacific Ocean. It's sunset and the light blinds them at first, but by the time Dean gets the waitress' number, it's bearable and they're settled in with cheeseburgers and onion rings.
Dean takes a long pull of his beer - the waitress gave them the second round on the house - and says, "So what's the plan, Sammy boy? I don't really feel like blowing a hole through a church floor tonight."
"There has to be another way down there," Sam says thoughtfully. He rests his chin on the heel of his palm and stares out into middle distance, unappreciative of the scenic beauty. Faintly, he can hear the bark of sea lions. "Ok, so if he's buried underneath the church, then there has to be other tombs down there. The other friars that served the mission were probably reinterred below Holy Cross as well, right?"
"So we're talking about a crypt below the church," Dean says, looking interested. "That'd be easier to deal with, especially since we ran out of dynamite back in Oregon. Although I bet Caleb's pipe bomb recipe would -"
"Dean, we're not blowing up the church," Sam says severely. Dean's answering grin is half rueful, half defensive.
"Live a little, Sammy," he says, his eyes on their waitress. "You know, maybe I could hook you up. I bet she's got hot friends. Quit lookin' at me like that, man. What, you’d rather hold hands and talk about your feelings?"
"Normal human beings talk about their feelings," Sam says, eyebrow arched. "Is that why you don't?"
Dean frowns. "Don't what?" he asks.
"Don't be stupid," Sam shoots back, "Talk about your feelings. Ever.”
Something quick and fleeting crosses Dean’s face, but it’s gone so quickly that Sam only sees it because he is looking for it; so quickly that he isn’t sure if Dean was even aware of it.
His brother grins. "That's because the only feelings I need sound like this: oh, Dean." To Sam's embarrassment, Dean throws his head back and moans, thrusting his pelvis up in an obscene motion that is, thankfully, mostly covered by their table. His hands come up to grab at invisible titties and he doesn't quit it even when Sam throws a French fry at his head and hisses furiously at him to stop.
His brother's mock orgasm is shamelessly loud and only slightly muffled by Sam's hand clapped over Dean's mouth. He can feel Dean's body shaking with laughter underneath his fingers before Dean's mouth opens wide and licks a wet, disgusting stripe up Sam's hand. He leans back in his chair when Sam pulls away in disgust and tips a wink at their waitress. "That's a little preview just for you, sweetheart."
Unbelievably, she laughs, blushing.
Sometimes, Sam really hates his brother.
They are silent on the ride to Holy Cross, an easy silence that has been trained into them over the years. "Like riding a bicycle," Dean said to Sam that night he appeared in Palo Alto after two years of nothing, two years of normal and safe before Sam had slipped the mask off and discovered that it felt better then ever to not to wear it. Dad and Dean had always shielded Sam and kept him safe, left him on the outskirts with a shotgun to keep watch instead of on the front lines with them but in spite of that, Sam falls into step easily when they are on the hunt, focus narrowing and widening to take in all and absorb it without thought.
They’re good at what they do. The Impala purrs as Dean slides into an empty parking spot alongside the Mission Chapel and they gather their weapons from the trunk. Salt, lighter fluid, crosses, a shotgun loaded with rock salt apiece and a handgun for Dean, just in case. Knives and a sledgehammer, heavy in Sam's hand until he throws it into the duffel bag. The weight of their arsenal on his shoulder feels good, natural, and he falls into step with his brother as they move across the plaza, boots slapping on stone echoed by the impassive fountain. Nothing stirs.
Dean pauses before they reach the arches. He turns and looks at Sam, his face serious. “Hey,” he says, and Sam stops. “You think that you could really die, getting your balls crushed? I mean, I could see it if you get ‘em ripped completely off, but just crushed?”
“Dean,” Sam says, after a beat. “What the hell.” He shakes his head and keeps walking.
“Seriously, though,” Dean insists, stepping quickly to catch up. “It’s bugging the shit out of me.”
They step under the stone arch without fear of discovery or attack. They hold their guns at ready out of habit, no questions asked as Sam lays his gun at his side to pick the lock of the church doors and Dean stands at his heels, covering his brother's exposed back. They are inside in seconds.
They stand ready beneath the entryway for breathless seconds before moving to flank the redwood baptismal font. They pause only for a second to dip their fingers in the water and cross themselves.
Holy Cross Church is an enormous, narrow building with cathedral ceilings painted with elaborate gold ikons of saints that look fiercely down upon the parishioners below. The altar is huge and intimidating, crowned by a larger than life statue of Jesus upon his cross, flanked by weeping angels. Dean nods upwards; the heavy chandeliers high above their head are swaying through the still cloistered air, throwing an ever widening shadow across the ground. The darkness behind Jesus' twisted body writhes.
They turn as one and see the spirit of Father Andres Quintana above them in the organ loft, whip raised, face bloodied and furious. He stands with his legs wide as though he has both feet planted on the railing instead of hanging in the air, blood staining his habit and running in sickening drops down the iron rail. His mouth is open in a deafening howl of hatred and pain.
"Jesus," Dean begins to say, and then Quintana is gone.
There is only the barest flicker of movement to warn them and then Quintana's arm comes down and brings the whip across Sam's back. A burning explosion of pain blossoms across his back, so much more intense and terrifying than Sam could have dreamed, each hook catching and tearing at his flesh. He screams. His legs drop out from under him and then Dean is there, shotgun deafening. Dean's hands are under his arms, pushing him back, and all that Sam can see are shadows dancing across gleaming wood. Quintana is faster than them, bigger. The rotten cloth that covers his body reeks of dust and the heavy stench of blood. Quintana's whip cuts through the air and takes out a chunk of the pew beside Dean's hand before he vanishes again. They are in motion immediately, not waiting for another attack; Dean propels Sam towards the altar and the alcoves behind it. They’re running full tilt up the aisle and when Quintana reappears directly before them, there’s no time to react, much less dodge.
The whip catches Dean on the left side of the face. He slips and goes down hard against the edge of a pew, the crack of his skull against the polished edge eclipsed by Sam's own gun. Dean chants angry curses as he hauls himself to his feet and they scrabble towards the altar.
In 1989, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay Area. It originated ten miles above Santa Cruz and killed an estimated 67 people. Dean had turned ten that year and had been transfixed by the sight of that red car on their television screen, teetering on the edge of the collapsed Bay Bridge. The damage to Santa Cruz county had been so widespread that when a wall below Holy Cross had been torn open to reveal a series of catacombs that had been sealed tightly for over a century, it had simply been noted, plastered over, and then forgotten.
It is this that they are making for.
Dean kicks the alcove door open rather than waste time picking the lock and Sam is on his knees as soon as they are through, laying down a thick line of salt along the doorway. "You think that'll keep him?" Sam asks, but Dean only grunts and angrily swipes blood out of his eyes.
"Come on," he says, but Sam grabs his ankle.
"How's your head?"
Dean glares at him. "It's fine, come on, we don't -"
"How's your head?" Sam says again, cutting Dean off.
"How's your back?" Dean counters, and then relents. "I didn't get knocked out, I can move around fine, my fucking head just hurts. Can we go salt and burn this asshole or do you want to make sure that my diaper is dry, too?"
"Fine," Sam mutters, "Excuse me for being concerned. Let's go."
He digs their flashlights out of the duffel bag and holds one out for Dean to take. They're in a narrow corridor and Sam fumbles for the lights. Dean, impatient, clicks on his flashlight and -
"Did you see that?" Dean's voice is low and intent. There is a highlight on his nose and forehead from the flashlight but the rest of his body is invisible in the gloom.
"See what?" Sam asks. "Is it Quintana?"
"No, too small - could've sworn there was someone standing at the bottom of the stairs - "
Dean lapses into silence and they stand ready, every muscle straining towards reaction. The stairwell below them is silent. The only thing that they can hear is each other's labored breathing.
Dean takes point, sliding forward along the wall, his movements quick and economic. Sam follows, duck-walking backwards down the steps, gun and attention trained on the door leading back to the church. There is a storage room at the bottom of the stairs piled high with folded tables and brightly colored posters made out of felt and behind them, a pale crack in the wall that was never painted to match the rest of the room. Together, they clear a space to work. Dean takes the sledgehammer from Sam.
Even dazed and bloody, taking down the wall is quick work. The plaster covers a badly patched crack that runs from the ceiling to the floor. The flashlight shakes in Sam's hand as the wound on his back reminds him of its presence, his first adrenaline surge fading. He can feel his shirt sticking to his skin as the cloth is soaked through with blood and sweat; every movement of his shoulders feels as though it is splitting his skin wide open. "Hurry up," Sam grits out between his teeth.
Dean spares a quick, irritated glance over his shoulder and smears a hand over his face. "Don't rush genius," he says, and the wall comes down.
They reel back from the smell. Even high on the hill, away from the flood plains that used to cover downtown Santa Cruz, the ground has had over a century to absorb winter rains. It’s a heavy smell, almost physical in its presence, chilled by the lack of sun that never reaches into its depths. Another swing widens the crack, knocks bricks from their places and sends them spinning into blackness. And in the dark, as Sam brings his flashlight up below his gun the way their father taught them, he sees the shine of eyes.
He doesn't drop the gun, but it's a close thing. His voice rings out, warningly: "Dean." His eyes don't waver from the figure that stands improbably opposite them, dark skin a blur to the flashlight, but he can see Dean heft the sledgehammer as if he can use it against the spirit. It is still and it holds their gaze and then flickers out of sight.
"What the fuck," Dean breathes.
"That wasn't Quintana," Sam echoes.
There is a rough hewn stairway below them and they descend into Stygian darkness that pays no heed to their meager light. Cobwebs disintegrate as they brush Sam's skin, dust settling on their clothes. Even the sound of Dean's boots on stone seems swallowed up by the catacombs.
"Something's wrong," Sam says. "There's no way there should be so many tunnels down here. The mission was only active for fifty years or so, there shouldn't be more than a handful of priests buried down here."
"There it is again," Dean growls. He swings his shotgun towards the ghost but it’s gone before the motion is complete.
Sam wants to say, it's quiet. Wants Dean to reply, too quiet. Except that it isn't quiet, not really; there is a sound that waits on the edge of his consciousness as they move through endless corridors, past endless coffins piled haphazardly atop one another. It sounds almost like breathing, or an enormous heartbeat, or the ocean; it swallows all sound and thought just like the darkness has swallowed them. Hours have passed, or minutes, and although Quintana's spirit hasn't found them, they can't seem to find Quintana's bones. Every noise makes them jump, convinced that the line of salt didn’t stop Quintana. Every shift of dirt beneath their feet sounds like his whip slicing through the air, invisible in the catacombs. Their flashlights reveal narrow walls that glisten under the shine of light, little flecks of white among that dirt that look like teeth or the bones of children and every once in a while find wet black eyes that stare silently at them.
Sam stumbles and nearly goes down, dizzy with pain and claustrophobia, and Dean grabs his shoulder and presses him against the wall. Dean's fingers clench on his shirt and then turn him around, silently examining the torn fabric of Sam's jacket, the shirt beneath.
“This sucks,” he grunts wearily and drops his head onto Sam’s shoulder.
“You can’t even see straight, can you?” Sam pants. Dean is silent, his fingers still gripping the hem of Sam’s t-shirt. “I knew you weren’t ok, why can’t you just -”
“Can’t do anything about it right now, can I?” Dean says through gritted teeth. Sam has no reply for that.
He’s tired. They’re both tired, the sort of bone-deep exhaustion that normally only hits Sam hours after a hunt, when the adrenaline has worn off and his brain is finished rehashing everything that happened. And Sam hates being mindfucked by what they hunt, hates his perceptions being screwed with, hates doubting his own capabilities, it drives him insane. Their flashlights flicker and for a long moment Sam holds his breath like he hasn’t done since he was a child. They stay lit and he lets his head fall forward against the wall with a grateful hiss and for a moment, the world goes gray.
He comes back to himself when Dean grabs the back of his skull and shakes it. “You think I’m messed up?” he mutters against Sam’s shoulder blade. “Look who’s talking, pass-out boy.”
Sam rolls off of the wall with a concentrated effort, one hand going to steady Dean when his brother reels drunkenly towards the opposite wall. “Pass-out boy?” he asks. “That’s all you can come up with? You really do have a concussion.”
It’s a long moment before Sam is alert enough to feel how tense Dean is beneath his hand, to notice how Dean has gone still and watchful like a dog. His attention turns away from Sam so quickly that Sam almost forgets how Dean had nearly fallen only a moment ago. When Sam turns and sees what Dean’s already noticed, adrenaline rushes back into his body like a shot.
Standing at some distance from them is a small child with dark skin and a rounded belly, wrapped in striped burlap cloth belted around the middle. It stares at them with empty, lifeless eyes, its mouth bruised and face smeared with dirt. A man with feathers in his hair appears behind the child, blood still dripping from the jagged weals that cross his face. Then a woman with heavy, bare breasts; another child; then an old man, their eyes fixed uncaring upon the barrels of the Winchester’s shotguns until, as one, they raise their hands - and point.
“What the shit?” Dean hisses.
“I think - I think they’re trying to help us,” Sam says disbelievingly.
Dean blinks rapidly, his focus unwavering. “Help us.”
They edge forward slowly. The ghosts’ faces turn with them, the rest of their bodies perfectly still but for the slightest refracting light at the edges of their forms. Dean dashes into the corridor first, arms straight and gun out, and in the distance they see the slap of small bare feet against the earth bright against the glare of the flashlight. Another child, a little boy naked to the waist, skids to a halt and pivots without seeming to move a muscle and raises his arm into the darkness.
They follow where he points and each time there is a choice, an uncertain path, there is a spirit waiting for them with one hand outstretched, showing them what they hope is the way to Quintana’s tomb. As they run, exhaustion momentarily forgotten, something grows beneath their feet. It is a sound that Sam hears inside his own head first, then in his teeth but he doesn’t realize what it is until the ground ripples beneath them and sends both of them to their knees, Dean’s flashlight clattering out of his hand.
“It’s a fucking earthquake!” Sam gasps.
Dean’s head snaps towards him, his expression nearly invisible but for the light thrown back from Sam’s flashlight. “What? What the fuck do we do?”
“I don’t know - there weren’t any when I was at Stanford, only the little ones that you can’t even feel,” Sam says, getting shakily to his feet. “This doesn’t feel right, Dean -”
“No shit, it’s a friggin’ earthquake!” His brother’s voice is definitely panicked this time, the flat incomprehension of a man who has never lived in an earthquake state for more than a week or two at a time.
“No, I mean -” Another tremor throws Dean back onto the ground and Sam can hear him swearing. Sam holds his own feet with barely more than the will to stay upright and grits the rest of the sentence out between his teeth. “I mean, it doesn’t feel natural - it feels like there’s something controlling this. There’s something trying to keep us away from Quintana’s grave.”
“Fucking great!” Dean shouts. He slams the flat of his hand against the ground and then scrambles up as soon as there is a respite. “Let’s get this over with before the place comes down on our heads.”
It’s almost anticlimactic when they find Quintana’s tomb. They skid around a corner and it’s nearly blocking their path. Sam barrels into it at belly-height and Dean laughs at him even as they set the crowbars at either end of the stone cover and heave. Sam can feel eyes on them, the eyes of whatever set the earthquake in their path as well as the eyes of the Mission’s victims. The Indians gather at their shoulders and crowd the narrow corridor as Dean and Sam sweat and grunt and murmur insults and incentives together and finally, finally shift the heavy stone away.
It’s just a grave, like all of the hundreds that they’ve seen and desecrated in their lives. Quintana is little more than dust, brittle bones crossed over themselves, the faintest scraps of fabric still clinging to what had been his shoulders.
“You have been way more trouble than you’re worth, padre,” Dean says as he uncaps the gas can. They watch him burn with grim expressions. The blue flame burns away the darkness around them and rarely has Sam ever been so glad to see his brother’s face. Dean glances up at him and smirks and for a long moment they simply grin at each other, elated that the job is done.
Sam is on his face in the dirt before either of them even register the earthquake. Dean shouts his name and then there are rocks raining down onto their heads and the very earth is churning. Their flashlights are on the ground. All that Sam can see is dust and his brother crawling towards him. There are Indians all around them, so close that their feet brush against Sam’s sleeve and they raise their arms in unison and open their mouths wide.
There is no word for the sound that they make.
Sam scrambles to cover his ears, teeth bared against the noise. Dean crouches over him, one hand curled over his own head and the other placed protectively around Sam’s back. He thinks that Dean is screaming something but it’s impossible to hear over the roar of earth and for a wild moment Sam wants to reach up and grab Dean by the back of his neck and haul him close until he can hear. He would be ok if his brother’s voice was the last thing he ever heard.
The spirits’ mouths widen until they are caricatures of the human beings that they used to be, sucking the darkness into themselves until finally, finally Sam realizes that he can see again. That there are still flames licking the sides of Quintana’s tomb.
That the earthquake has stopped.
The spirits turn their faces down to Sam and Dean, silent. They are losing shape and solidity, their faces still empty but changed somehow. Dean’s fingers grip Sam’s arm painfully. He is staring up into the faces of their saviors, his jaw tight. Sam passes him the flashlight and they help each other to stand. Dean’s fingers are shaking and he keeps one hand wrapped around Sam’s bicep as they pass through the spirits. There’s something in the corner of Sam’s vision that he can almost focus on, something green and curvy and it almost looks like a girl with brown hair, but it’s gone before Sam can do more than turn his head to look.
Whatever kept them lost in Holy Cross’ catacombs seems to have died with Quintana’s spirit. It’s barely fifteen minutes before they see light from the storage room below the church spilling down the staircase. There is nothing out of place, not even a single goddamn box spilled over and they mount the stairs to the church proper with wary relief. We could have died down there, Sam thinks, but doesn’t say anything.
Outside, they discover that it isn’t even dawn yet. There is the hint of it on the opposite side of the horizon from the ocean but the sky is still a miserable lingering grey. They hobble across the park to the Impala and sit gingerly on the hood. Dean digs a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.
“When did you start smoking?” Sam asks in disbelief.
“When did you start being a whiny bitch?” Dean asks in reply, and then adds as an afterthought: “Oh, it was when you were born.”
On the edge of the square, there is a girl watching them. She has on a green jacket that’s much too thick for the summer weather, bell bottoms, and long brown hair parted down the middle. They don’t see her until they’re inside the Impala, pulling slowly away from the curb, when Sam glances up to see her sitting on the steps of the church, and knows that it was her that he had seen in the catacombs.
Staircases have rarely looked so intimidating to Sam and Dean. The sun rises as they make their way to Capitola-by-the-Sea, rolling down the cliffs above the village in utter silence. Dean curses Sam’s choice of their third floor motel room up every step he drags himself.
“Give me Nebraska,” he gasps. “Give me Illinois. Give me Kentucky, ferchrissake. Anywhere that isn’t a goddamn hill or mountain and all the motels are on the ground like they’re supposed to be.”
Sam’s laugh is breathless, nearly a gasp. “You don’t get a view like this in Illinois.”
“Hey, I happen to like cornfields,” Dean says.
He collapses on the closest bed as soon as they’re inside, the door locked behind them and blessed before Sam feels comfortable trying to shed his jacket. He gets one sleeve almost all the way off before Dean motions him over. “That’s seriously pathetic. Let me do it, dude.”
Dean herds Sam into the bathroom before pulling Sam’s t-shirt over his head. Seated on the toilet, Sam watches his brother’s face in the mirror as Dean examines his back. In the harsh light, the gash that cuts across the left side of Dean’s face looks nearly as bad as the one on Sam’s back: it leads from his temple down across the apple of his cheekbone and hooks upwards to end up close to his mouth. There’s dried blood smeared just about everywhere in their hair and clothing, worse than Chicago had been. Sam didn’t come out of the confrontation with Quintana so easily himself; he rests his forehead against the counter when Dean goes to get the first aid kit and nearly greys out again.
The clatter of the box on the counter brings Sam back to awareness. “Wake up, princess,” Dean says, holding up a suture kit. “Unless you want to do this yourself tomorrow.”
“Wait wait wait,” Sam says, holding up a feeble hand. “Half an hour ago, you couldn’t even see straight to drive. You think I’m gonna let you stick me with a needle while you’re like that?”
Dean shrugs, lips pursed. “Wouldn’t be the first time, but suit yourself.”
He turns away towards the mirror, digging out the rest of their suturing supplies. He ignores Sam’s hand but turns his head over his shoulder when Sam grabs his elbow. “Wait again,” Sam says slowly. “You’re not going to try and stitch yourself up, are you?”
Dean frowns at him. “Why not?”
Sam blinks, mouth open. “Because you have a concussion? Did you forget what I just said about not being able to drive thirty minutes ago? If I’m not going to let you stick needles in my back, what makes you think I’ll let you stick needles in your own face? It doesn’t even look all that deep, man.”
Dean stares at himself in the mirror, brow furrowed as though he’s pondering the merits of what Sam is saying. He’s not reacting slowly enough that Sam can see the gears in his head turning, but it’s close. “Let me do it, Dean,” Sam says, exasperated. That earns him another frown, but Dean parks his butt on the counter without a word and waits for Sam to do something.
He keeps his eyes fixed on Sam’s face while Sam wets a hand towel through and dabs carefully at the dried blood. The slash reopens and begins to bleed again sluggishly. Dean blinks hard but doesn’t flinch away from Sam’s hands. “I don’t think you need stitches,” Sam murmurs when the wound is finally cleaned and swabbed with alcohol. “I can put some butterfly strips on it to keep the edges together and put a bandage on top to keep it clean.”
“Whatever,” Dean says faintly.
Up close, Dean smells awful, like soot and sweat and the oily stench of what they burned tonight. There’s mud smeared across his face and his eyes are so wide that he looks like nothing so much as a kid that’s been caught rolling around in the dirt and is being punished for it.
Sam’s attention is focused so completely on taping the gash closed that he misses seeing the deep discomfort in Dean’s eyes, the way that his mouth twitches as Sam’s fingers stray close to any hurt. When Sam pulls back to examine his handiwork, Dean swallows and hardens his face.
He holds his hands out parallel to the ground, palms facing downward. They’re perfectly steady and he raises his eyebrows at Sam. “Sit down on the goddamn toilet and let me take care of your back, Sammy. If that gets infected, it’ll be me who has to take care of your sorry ass.”
It takes a long time. Dean is nothing if not thorough, setting out what he needs in an orderly manner that Sam wouldn’t have credited him with. He pops a tablet of Panadol Rapid out of its box and Sam swallows it dry. The towel that Sam had used on Dean is filthy, so Dean grabs a new one. He curves one hand around the ball of Sam’s shoulder to keep Sam still while he works. Occasionally Sam can feel his thumb stroke over his skin, back and forth, comfortingly.
The Panadol is already working its way through Sam’s system when Dean tears open the suture pack with his teeth and carefully aligns the needle between the legs of the tweezers. “Hey, how’re you doing? That stuff kicking in yet or do you want me to see what’s in the minifridge out there?” he asks.
Sam shakes his head, woozy. “I’m good.” He wants to lean forward and rest on the counter again, or lean backwards and let Dean support him, so he settles for lolling his head to the side to rest against Dean’s forearm. “That ok?” he asks, closing his eyes.
He can feel Dean’s arms twitch just a little as Dean laughs. “Yeah. You’re fine.”
Quintana’s whip had cut deeply into Sam’s back, going crooked at his shoulder blade and continuing down across his spine to the middle of his ribs. Sam presses his face into the crook of Dean’s arm and breathes deeply. The curve of the suture needle feels more like pinches than anything else, any pain that there might be overshadowed by the Panadol and the warmth of Dean’s skin against his own.
“You’re good at this,” he mumbles.
Dean scoffs. “Of course I am. Had enough practice at it, haven’t I? I swear, I used to think that the only way I’d ever get Dad to a hospital was if something tore off a friggin’ limb.”
“You used to patch Dad up after hunts?”
Dean is silent for so long that Sam opens his eyes, looking into the mirror to see an unreadable expression on his brother’s face . “After a lot of things,” he says eventually.
“What do you mean?” Sam asks.
Dean glances up and sees Sam’s face in the mirror, watching him intently. His eyebrowse rise. “Don’t you remember?”
“No,” Sam says, and suddenly does: a flash of memory, barely more than the heavy scent of alcohol and the glint of a broken glass on the floor, Dean’s voice rough with impending puberty ordering him to get back in your room, Sammy.
“Anyway, it wasn’t like there was anybody else to do it, was there?” Dean is saying, his attention back on the task at hand. “Caleb’s a good teacher, we never came across anything I couldn’t handle. All right, I think you’re good with the whole not bleeding to death thing.”
Sam stands and stretches, as best as he’s able. “Thank god,” he says, “I’m exhausted.” He staggers towards the door, but Dean’s voice stops him at the threshold.
“Sammy. You saw that girl outside the church, right? The one that looked like she stepped right off the corner of Haight and Ashbury or something?”
Sam nods. “Yeah, I saw her. She was in the catacombs with us. She didn’t exactly look ... contemporary with the rest of the spirits down there. There’s gotta be some sort of connection there, though. It’s just weird.”
Dean is silent for a long moment, staring at Sam. “What?” Sam says eventually, but Dean only shakes his head.
“Nothing. You really think there’s something bigger here? Something more than just Quintana’s ghost and whatever the hell was in the catacombs helping us?”
“That earthquake wasn’t natural,” Sam says firmly. “The rest of the church wasn’t even touched by it. It was only underground, where we were. Something was trying to stop us from getting to Quintana’s tomb.”
Dean nods, not looking at Sam. “Ok,” he says. “If you want to, we can stick around for a few more days, see what else we can dig up. All right?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Yeah, cool. Ok.”
“But,” Dean says sternly, holding up one finger, “we need at least a day of downtime, dude. I feel like I’m not gonna be able to walk for a week.”
“I’m not going anywhere near that one, man,” Sam laughs. “You keep your gay sexcapades to yourself, ok?”
He ducks out of the bathroom and shuts the door behind himself before Dean can respond. There is silence and then through the door, he hears the shower start up. The sunrise has turned their room into an ocean of pale light that shifts through the slats of the blinds and already the air is nearly stifling. All that Sam can manage is to slide his jeans off before collapsing face first onto the bed farthest from the window. He’s fast asleep before the growing daylight can begin to bother him, so it never occurs to him to look out the window, where hundreds of invisible hands press against the glass.
Part 2