Fic: The Girl from Outside; PG; AU Jess, Sam, John, Dean
The Girl from Outside
Rating: PG
Warnings: Violence, possible abuse, Winchester-appropriate language
Word count: 8300+
Characters: Jess, Sam, John, Dean
Summary: (AU) Jess is an undergrad anthro student hoping to do her honors’ project on the little-known, poorly understood ethnic group known colloquially in the United States as Hunters. A Stanford professor puts her in touch with a student who happens to have been brought up in the Hunter community, but her efforts to conduct interviews with the student and his family takes an unexpected turn the very day she arrives.
Notes: I’ve seen a few fics featuring Jess as an anthropology student. Since I did my undergrad in anthro, it seemed like something worth writing about. I was also really interested in the idea of dealing with hunters as an ethnic group, with a language and traditions and beliefs all their own. A lot of what’s here is based on the stuff in the show, and some of it is derived from readings I’ve done over the years. Nothing here refers to any specific practices though (aside from stuff we’ve already seen in the show).
The Girl from Outside
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For the past fifty years at least, Western scholars have approached the study of myth from a viewpoint markedly different from, let us say, that of the nineteenth century. Unlike their predecessors, who treated myth in the usual meaning of the word, that is, as "fable," "invention," "fiction," they have accepted it as it was understood in archaic societies, where, on the contrary, "myth" means a "true story" and, beyond that, a story that is a most precious possession because it is sacred, exemplary, significant.
-Mircea Eliade
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1
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She can hear them arguing through the door. Sam’s voice is a nearly inaudible stream of definitely English, while his father’s is significantly louder and most certainly a language Jess doesn’t speak and has never heard. It sounds vaguely Indo-European, but she’s only ever taken one linguistics class, so she’s not exactly in a position to make that determination.
She frowns down at her feet, shuffles them on the ancient boards of the house’s old front porch. There are marks there, she can see, carved into the wood and nearly worn to incomprehensibility by time and the passage of multiple feet. This is definitely a Hunter’s house, which is strange not least because they’re a famously nomadic people. Maybe that’s another myth she can get to the bottom of, if she ever gets the chance to actually conduct her interviews with Sam and his family.
The voices through the door ratchet up a notch, as Sam’s voice rises to keep pace with his father’s. Jess backs up a step almost unconsciously, and narrowly avoids tripping over her backpack. She bites her lip.
“Da!” she hears clearly, “She drove two days to get here! I’m not telling her to turn around and go back home! I’m sure we can work something out!”
Something heavy thumps the door and Jess jumps. Sam’s father’s voice is an angry, displeased growl. She’s tempted to turn around and get back in her car, leave behind this dusty yard of broken vehicles and greying, ramshackle buildings. But she really wants the credit for this project. More than that, she wants to know everything she can about these poorly understood, habitually reticent people.
Sam’s voice rises to a shout, and it’s a testament to how frustrated he is that he starts in English and switches halfway through to something else. Jess doesn’t speak the language but she gets the gist of it, and is only half-startled when the door flies open and Sam is standing in the breach, wild-eyed and still hollering, “…va dekh! Tréd mi va dekh!”
Jess flinches anyway when she catches sight of John, huge and glowering in the shadows beyond the door. He casts her one sharp, assessing look and turns, stomping off deeper into the house, like a storm system grumbling toward the horizon.
Jess exhales a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Sam steps through the door and offers a smile, a little shamefaced.
“Sorry,” he offers, ducking his head a little. “He gets like that-it’s nothing to do with you. He just…doesn’t like outsiders.”
She shakes her head. “I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t think-I mean I should’ve called ahead-”
“Jessica-”
“Jess. Please.”
“Okay.” He makes an abortive gesture toward the bridge of his nose, and turns it into a scratch at the underside of his jaw. “Look, do you-would you like to come in? Have something to drink? You’ve been standing out here for,” he checks his watch, “God, fifteen minutes. I’m really sorry.”
She looks down at the backpack at her feet, then back up at the young man who she’s only ever met online, swallows around the dryness in her throat, and nods.
“Sure,” she says. “I’d like that.”
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Jess Moore
Honors’ Project 2005 (June)
Advisor: Dr. Wallace
Notes, Etc.
Subject: Hunters (culture, enclaves, individuals) in contemporary U.S. (esp. Midwest)
Themes: traditional cultures, interactions with contemporary ethos (interface?)(is there a specific threshold?), Patriarchy? Matriarchy?, focus on death, act of dying (Shamanism-Sam says no), xenophobia?, nomadism, kinship networks
Thesis: Although believed by many to have gone into decline since the turn of the 19th century, Hunters (the ethnic and culturally distinct population) have in fact continued to flourish well out of sight of the general American population. (Middle America-outskirts)
Fieldwork: Interview subjects (change names for final)
Sam Winchester
John Winchester (???)
Robert Singer (NO- not present)
Dean Winchester (? Available? )
When I stepped into the old, two-story house, it was dimly lit and dusty. Difficult to ignore I had difficulty ignoring the enormous circular [marks/designs/??] painted directly behind the threshold, and my informant told me that they were traps ‘to prevent demons entering.’ He delivered this declaration offhandedly. He told me that an ordinary person would have no trouble crossing the lines and symbols marked out in red paint. I confess that I breathed a little easier when I crossed that particular, secondary threshold. I also hoped that I was imagining the brief [glance] my informant [cast] at me, as if he too were relieved.
[He was only a few months older than me. Nothing like the images in popular culture of grizzled old men and women, armed and mistrusting of outsiders. Sam’s face was open, his every gesture honest MORE??]
In a handful of simple steps I had walked out of the world I understood and into a place guided by an entirely different, alien set of rules.
My informant led me through a sitting room crowded with books and a wide variety of materials whose meaning I couldn’t begin to parse. Some items were clearly weapons, others might have been ritual ephemera. I saw bones and scattered artifacts from dozens of traditions, some which I recognized (dream catchers, rune stones) some which had no significance to me (bones and crystals in odd formations, a tripod construct of gold and glass whose use I can only guess at). The weapons ranged from archaic-knives, even a sickle-to the modern: I saw more than one firearm, hanging on walls and resting on top of books.
My informant’s name was [Sam]. Raised in the Hunter culture, steeped in the traditions of the transplanted, once-nomadic people, he nevertheless I had been put in contact with him thanks to the connections/efforts of a Stanford professor. We are both students at the university, I with my parent’s blessings, [Sam] in direct [conflict] with his father’s wishes. Raised from birth in the Hunter culture, steeped in the transplanted traditions of the once-proud [really?] nomadic people, [Sam] had been expected to join the ranks of the traditional war against the dark forces believed by oppressing the world, the traditional enemies of Hunters. [Sam’s] flight from that battlefield and his years spent in the ‘outside’ world have given him an unprecedented cross-cultural understanding that I hoped would aid me in my efforts to learn more about his culture and people.
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“I’m sorry, I don’t want to be a bother,” she says, blowing steam away from her coffee.
Sam leans against the counter and shuts his eyes, briefly. He’s wearing the signs of strain on his face and in his posture. Whatever’s troubling him, Jess is willing to bet that it’s more than the unexpected arrival two days early of an anthro student from Stanford.
“Sam,” she says, turning her coffee mug around on the table, “Listen, if this is a bad time…”
He takes a deep breath, shakes his head. “It kind of…it really kind of is. I just didn’t want, I mean…”
She watches him as he visibly gathers his composure.
“I do want to help you with your project. As much as I can anyway. But now is just…something’s come up. Something none of us expected. I still want to do what I can for you, but the interviews and all that…it might have to wait a couple of days. That’s all. I’m sorry.”
She tries not to let her disappointment show on her face. It’s not as if he’s refusing her outright. He’s gone out of the way to be polite, helpful. Courteous even. And it’s just an Honors’ project and it’s not as if she’s going to be able to uncover all the secrets of Hunters in America in a few days of interviews. She’ll finish her coffee and go back to her motel and just…hang out for a couple of days. Call Sam later and try to pick things up then.
“Okay,” she nods, realizes from his face she probably hasn’t done as good of a job concealing her disappointment as she’d have liked, “I just…I’m really sorry for all the inconvenience.”
He opens his mouth, probably to send her apologies back to her, again, when there’s a loud crash from outside and Sam leaps away from the counter as if he’s been burned. Jess drops her coffee and it spills all over the table, but her attention is all on Sam as he springs for the doorway and dashes out of the room.
She leaps after him. She can’t help it. Behind her, coffee drips onto the table.
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That first day wasn’t meant to be anything but a quick meeting, after which I would return at a later date to conduct my interviews. Circumstances intervened, however, and I very quickly found myself in the midst of a situation the likes of which I’d never encountered, and was wholly unprepared for. and for which I was wholly unprepared.
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Outside dogs are barking and yammering. She follows Sam into the front room and out onto the porch. The noise is nearly deafening and she claps both hands over her ears and follows Sam’s gaze across the yard, where clouds of dust have risen.
“What going on?” Jess shouts, above the noise, and Sam turns to her and opens his mouth. Before he can get a word out though, John Winchester appears around the side of the house, nearly running, and waves his arms at both of them.
“Get back in the house!” he shouts, “Kaeti, Sam mu chavg au!”
She barely has time to react when strong hands clamp on her arms and shove her bodily through the door. The dogs’ voices melt seamlessly from barking to howling and the hair on the back of Jess’ neck stands up. She forgets to bat Sam’s hands away until they’re both inside, and John is slamming through the door and leaning against it, briefly. She catches a flash of wide-eyed distress on his face before he shuts it down, schools it back to hardness.
But Jess saw.
“What’s going on?” she asks, softly, but with an edge of steel.
Sam turns to his father. Says, “Da?” and there’s at least as much of an edge to his own voice.
John says, “Drgu chah gva.”
“No.” Sam’s lip curls a little. “She’s here now, you say it in front of her too.”
“Sam.”
“No, Da.”
John reaches out, grabs his son’s shoulder in one large hand, and wrenches him closer. Jess stumbles back, eyes wide. John Winchester is a big man. There are scars on his face and hands, and he looms. Despite Sam’s height his son looks small next to him.
He hisses something in Sam’s ear. Even if she could make out what it was, it wouldn’t help since he’s definitely still not speaking English. She starts to edge toward the kitchen where she left her bag. The dogs outside are still howling. She has a very bad feeling indeed.
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Outline
Thesis: survival of traditional practices (which?) in contemporary landscape
(focus on: male dominated, death-centric, hunting (killing), EVENT
A. Introduction: History (put as many secondary sources here as possible)
B.
C.
-origin (Old World, evidence in various small enclaves, probably Europe b4 HR Empire)
-scattered, became nomadic
-religion: world dominated by threats, monsters, undead; duty is to ensure security of human realm from supernat’l threats (Syncretism--incorporated later Judeo-Christian doctrine (Frell, 2001)
-kinship: nuclear family, extended family, marriage practices
-property: nomadism, minimum possession of items, focus on practical tools, emphasis on weapons, ritual items
- language: dialects, esp. New World (also English, Spanish)
D. Now: adaptation to new contemporary landscape (focus on fieldwork, interviews, observations)
Due to the nomadic, widely dispersed nature of the population, traditional practices may be localized within small kinship groups of a few families. Such practices are often divided along gender lines, as in the case of this small, exclusively male sample group. See Blevins(1995), Carey (1999), Meyer et. al. (1964) for female practices (compare/contrast?)
E. Survival of traditional ‘way of life’ (relate to other cultural groups within U.S.?)
F.
Narrow the focus: is this family part of a network? Are there social ties linking them to out-groups? (Be specific)
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“What are you doing?” Sam asks from the doorway. She looks up from zipping her bag shut. She’s suddenly aware of how much bigger than her Sam really is.
“Leaving,” she says. The dogs have gone silent, at least, but dust is cascading against the glass window in random spurts. The wind is audible.
“Uh,” he says, “Yeah. About that…”
She tenses. Can taste the sudden flood of adrenaline in her mouth.
“Sam,” she says.
“You can’t leave.”
She shoots upright, draws herself to her full height. She’s a big girl, and she’s never been afraid to use that fact.
“You can’t keep me here!”
He winces. “It’s just for a little while. Okay? It’s…things are going faster than expected. If I’d known I never would have invited you inside…”
She hefts and shoulders her bag, but doesn’t risk getting close to him.
“People know where I am.”
He raises his hands, palms out. “It’s nothing like that. Please, you have to believe me. It’s not that I-we, want to keep you here, it’s just that it’s not safe to go outside. There’s…something’s coming. It’s not safe out there.”
Her lip curls. “And how long is it not going to be ‘safe’?”
He pushes a hand through his hair. Jess doesn’t move.
“Look,” he says, “Something’s happening-there’s kind of a family emergency happening right now. It came out of nowhere and now we’re kind of having to deal with it. I never meant for you to be involved.”
“Sam.” She risks getting a little closer, though she doesn’t let go of her bag, and doesn’t reach out to him. “What is going on?”
He lifts his eyes. “My brother’s coming home.”
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Excerpt from voice recording session, May 25th, 1:15 pm (transcribed)
Sam: It’s sort of expected, but not required, for an adult hunter to spend some time out in the world on his own. I mean, Dean and I grew up…we went to school with other kids and even though we moved around a lot and we knew we were…y’know, our peple, we still learned all about the, the rest of the country that aren’t hunters. So it’s not like it used to be.
Jess: What do you mean?
Sam: Well, back in my…I guess my grandparents’ generation, there really were a lot of taboos, or whatever you want to call them, about mixing or going out in the world, and stuff like that. I mean it’s supposed to be a calling, you know? It’s not like there’s a chance at something else, some other life. There’s just…there’s good and evil, there’s people and there’s demons and monsters and ghosts. And anything that could…I guess contaminate someone, that had to be avoided. So people didn’t go out in the world much, except for a short time in their life, to prove themselves. But then after Hunters started coming to the States and got so spread out, it was a lot harder to keep up the old ways. You know, that’s how it goes I guess.
Jess: Lots of traditions change.
Sam: Right. Exactly. And that happened. Suddenly there weren’t clans and caravans, just little families, maybe only a couple people. And it was impossible to really keep everything the way it used to be. So Dean…my brother, he didn’t really have to do the whole burv gnekt thing, but…he wanted to.
Jess: Bur…
Sam: Burv gnekt. It means, like…hunting dark things, on your own. For a long time. Sometimes years. And I think…I mean he never said anything about wanting to do it, when we were kids. But then I left and…maybe it’s my fault.
[Note: at this point the informant put his hand over his eyes and didn’t speak for several minutes.]
Jess: Sam…
Sam: Yeah, okay. Sorry. Sorry. So Dean did decide, he did…you know there are rituals and stuff, fasting, things like that. Stuff you’d expect.
Jess: Mm-hm.
Sam: And so he did that…here actually.
Jess: Is this…your house?
Sam: What? [laughs] No, of course not. It belongs to…well, do you know what a liy ubukn is?
Jess: It’s kinda like a Shaman, right?
Sam: No, uh..well, kinda. I mean, ‘Shaman’ has become sort of a catch-all term, I guess, but there’s so many different traditions in the world. But anyway a liy ubukn is someone who can do that stuff, I guess, the stuff you’d think of shamans and spirit walkers and those kinds of people doing. And he also keeps track of all the lore, knows the rituals and traditions. So he helped Dean get ready, made sure he had all the protection he would need, and then sent him out in the world.
[Note: several more minutes of silence pass.]
Jess: Sam? What happened then?
[Note: sound of Sam standing, walking across the room.]
Sam: I don’t know…but something went wrong.
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She sits on the old dusty couch with her legs pulled up and watches John and Sam prepare for the return.
There’s a lot of symbology involved. She remembers the marks on the floor, which Sam has since explained are called ‘devil’s traps.’ The complex circular designs he and his father are constructing now share certain features in common with those simpler, spray-painted traps, but even her untrained eye can detect differences. The two men are essentially ignoring her presence, murmuring together in mixture of English and the primary language spoken by Hunters, which as far as she knows isn’t directly related to any living language, and which hasn’t been much studied by linguists due to the insularity of its people and their well-documented distrust of outsiders.
She shifts a little on the couch. Wonders if the reasons for such near-Xenophobia have more to do with keeping non-Hunters safe than anyone had realized.
“Khre gev,” Sam says softly, gesturing to a corner of the trap he’s been carefully constructing, and his father moves quickly to render some kind of judgment on it. Sam continues with his work. Jess follows him with her eyes.
She’d never known him at school, hadn’t had time to even speak to him on campus before the summer term started and he made excuses of some ‘family emergency’ to head out of the state. She’d wondered, when she’d first been put in touch with him by Professor Craig, what he would look like, this scion of a people believed to be nearly extinct. Tall or short, slender or bulky. Would he be recognizably alien to the general population? But despite his height he’s otherwise very average, and she knows if she’d met him on the street or in the library, she’d never have identified him as anything other than ordinary. A kid making his way in the world, a young man with something to prove. Favorite pastimes: sports, video games, maybe getting drunk with his friends on the weekend. Certainly not someone trained since childhood to pursue monsters in the dark.
She stiffens slightly when he stands, groans and stretches. Sam shoots her a quick glance. He offers a lopsided smile which she can’t bring herself to return, and rolls his shoulders. He’s got paint on his arms and fingers, and somehow managed to get it in his hair. At any other time it might even be endearing.
“Sam,” John says, in a tone Jess hasn’t heard him use up to now, “Mur avgva cré svet. Nevla gbar.”
Sam starts a little. “But Da, what about-”
“Stka. Gad mi dho.”
Sam presses his lips together, eyes a little wide.
“Uh,” he says, “Okay. Um,” this addressed to Jess, “Would…would you like something to eat?”
It takes a lot of willpower for her not to leap off the couch at him. Vaguely she’s aware she should be a lot more pleased about her situation-a lowly anthro undergrad being allowed to bear witness to the secret rituals of a barely-understood culture in the heartland of America. But right now all she feels is weary, hungry, and sweaty.
“That’d be great, Sam.” She gets up with what she hopes is relative grace. “Really, awesome.”
He smiles, flash of dimples. In spite of herself, she feels a little better.
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Excerpt from Stewart, Charles, 1999 ‘Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture.’ Diacritics 29.3: 40-62
Anthropologists and other social scientists have expressed ambivalence about all three terms--syncretism, hybridity, and creolization. …. My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the present is … an attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an objectionable but nevertheless instructive past. If this past can be understood, then we are in a position to consciously reappropriate syncretism [Shaw and Stewart 2] and set the ethnographic study of cultural mixture on new tracks.
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“Dean looked after me, y’know?” Sam says, around a mouthful of bread and lunchmeat. Jess is proud of herself for not making a face as crumbs sort of cascade onto the table.
“Really?” she asks, and tries to subtly pass him a napkin.
“Yeah. Our grandparents died…well, way before we were born. And our mom not long after I was.”
She recognizes her cue.
“And your father?”
Sam shrugs. “He was, y’know, around I guess. Some. But gone a lot. For…” he waves a hand vaguely, encompassing, she supposes, the kitchen, the house, the yard, and the entirety of what life as a dedicated Hunter really means. “Once Dean was old enough to hold a rifle, Da left us alone a lot of the time.”
“How old were you?”
He frowns at his sandwich, lips pursing.
“I’m not sure…four or five? Maybe?”
“And Dean’s…”
“Four years older.”
She sits back, eyebrows shooting to her hairline. “Holy crap Sam!”
He winces, as if he’s just now realized what he’s said.
“Well, I mean it’s not that weird. My brother started training as soon as he could walk…I mean everybody does. Boys and girls. It’s just…how things are.”
“Training for…
He looks at her, shrugs. Puts down his sandwich and lays his arm on the table, palm up. She squints at his paint-mottled skin. Sees, faintly, a row of tiny scars, like dots, on the underside of his arm. Vaguely discolored, as if something had been rubbed into the skin at the time of the injury.
“It’s the bre kthn,” he says, “Everyone gets it in their fourth year. If you cry they know you’ll never go to the Hunt. But I didn’t,” and here he looks proud, “And I’m damn sure Dean didn’t either.” He grins a little, and there’s something slightly feral to it. “When I was old enough to start going to school some kid in my class started babbling about how there was a monster in his closet. And y’know, I was impressionable, I wanted to be like the normal kids, so a week or so later I started telling Da the same thing. And you know what he did?”
She shakes her head. He pulls his arm back, picks up his sandwich and waves it around a little.
“He gave me gun. And I mean I was disappointed as all hell. But Da knew about monsters and they don’t hang around closets. That’s just kid’s fear.”
“He gave you a gun?”
He nods, looks down a little. “I was so embarrassed. Dean made fun of me for a month.”
She blinks at him, unsure how to respond. Feels again how out of her depth she really is. A real anthropologist, she’s sure, would know how to respond. But this is all too strange to her, still. The almost aggressive ordinariness of Sam’s clothes and face contrasts so sharply with the words coming out of his mouth. It would be easier, she thinks, if he dressed in something other than jeans and a worn t-shirt, if he spoke with an accent or had some outlandish body modifications. But he doesn’t.
She realizes she should probably be taking notes.
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My informant told me stories about his family, his upbringing. He described in very matter-of-fact manner circumstances ranging from humorous to horrifying. I realized that he was attempting to entertain and even distract me from our difficult situation, and I appreciated it. But the more he spoke, the more I understood that his appearance as an average, all-American boy really was an illusion. A constructed image concealing someone steeped in a culture and belief system I would possibly never truly understand.
He described monsters, which I’d expected. What I hadn’t expected was the conviction he spoke with, the acceptance he had of these things, despite his regular exposure to a culture which gives no credence to such things. Witches, vampires, a host of creatures I’d never even heard of. He discussed them in the same casual tones he used to ask me what sort of lunchmeat I’d like on my sandwich, and if I preferred mayonnaise or mustard. He could be expansive in his gestures, and more than once he left to grab some sort of trinket to use as a visual aid.
He told me the story of one of his brother’s early hunts. A werewolf, he said, meant to be simple. And he described the search for the monster, the rituals used. The texts referenced, some of which were there in the house where we sat. He showed me one, an arcane book with brittle, yellowing pages. Flipped it open and pointed at an illustration of something that looked very much like a man, except for the teeth and eyes.
As he talked, I pictured this young man, roughly my own age, on the Stanford campus. Frequenting the places I did-the libraries, coffee shops, lecture halls. The incongruity of it grew as he spoke.
He took from a pocket a single silver bullet. Said, “These really work, it’s not just a myth.” I admit I was startled and a little disturbed.
I asked him how he would determine if something was a myth or fact. I admit I was filled with greater skepticism than was maybe appropriate. Perhaps I should blame this attitude on my inexperience on or the apparent ordinariness of my informant [MORE?]. I clearly hadn’t yet learned to put my own value-judgments and worldview aside.
He didn’t seem troubled, though. Maybe he’d expected the question.
“A lot of it is just what works. Most of the Lore is extremely accurate, if you know where to look and how to apply it. But some things that worked once don’t work anymore because the world has changed so much. And sometimes you just have to try everything, and hope something sticks.”
That didn’t seem very practical to me, but at the same time, it sounded very much like something Sam had personal experience in dealing with.
I looked at the silver bullet as Sam got up to make another sandwich. Outside, the dogs started barking again.
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Sam tells her she can wander around the house as long as she doesn’t touch anything.
“Well,” he amends, “I mean if you need to use the bathroom that’s okay. But just don’t…”
She smiles, in spite of herself. “I get it, Sam. No messing with the pointy things or books.”
He looks suddenly, surprisingly serious. “I mean it though, okay? This stuff can really hurt you. Be careful.”
Somehow, she thinks he’s probably not talking about just the weapons.
She does use the restroom on the first floor, and is pleased to find it less dusty and cobwebbed than she’d feared. The towels, while threadbare, are fresh. The window’s closed, though, and she thinks briefly about cracking it open until she approaches and sees a thick line of white crystals laid down across the sill. She peers closer. Sugar? But that would attract ants. Salt?
A memory from one of her readings flashes across her brain. The significance of salt among Hunters is not fully understood, but shares many features in common with practices found in a wide variety of spiritual and mystical traditions throughout the Eurasian continent. Specifically, salt is often associated with purity and with the idea of protection…
She’s very careful not to touch the line. Washes her hands and wanders back out into the hall, and listens carefully for the murmur of conversation that is Sam and his father continuing their preparations.
How long, she wonders, before the return of the prodigal son?
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2
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At two in the morning she’s torn out of an uneasy sleep in the upstairs bedroom by the crash of a door, the howling of dogs, and multiple raised male voices. She’s halfway out of bed before she’s even awake, tangled in the sheets. Downstairs something shatters and she hears Sam shouting.
“Vlek de trk vn du! Cüy gra Dean!”
Someone screams, a terrible sound, and Jess slaps her hands over her ears and shrinks against the doorjamb.
John’s voice: “Hjak khay zm! Hjak khay zm! Dammit! Sam!”
And someone laughs, long and low and horrible, and the hair on the back of Jess’ neck stands up. She takes a step, then another, out into the hall. Hears Sam biting out sharp and low, “You get out of my brother, you hear me?” The laughter continues over him.
She reaches the top of the stairs and looks down.
The main room is a mess. The couch where she’d sat earlier that day is shoved against the wall, and books have fallen to lie in random piles like so much discarded trash. The enormous and complex trap Sam and John spent the day painting covers most of the bare floor, and there are signs and markings all over the walls. She wonders what the owner of this house is going to have to say about the mess-but only briefly. Her attention is claimed by the physical chaos happening on the far side of the room: two men struggling with a third. Sam and John are wrestling intently with someone size of an adult man. Jess guesses it’s probably Sam’s brother.
They’ve dragged him halfway across the floor, both of them struggling to keep a grip on his thrashing body. The noises he makes are inhuman, long grating cries, wails, shrieks and the babble of languages Jess thinks are maybe Latin and Greek. Sam’s face is tight and pale. He’s bleeding from his lip and there’s a bruise on his cheek.
“Get out of him!” he’s shouting, “Get out of my brother! Get out! Vlek de trk! Vlek de trk vn du! Vn du! Dean!”
She thinks there might be tears in his eyes.
“Oh God,” Jess murmurs, sinking down on her haunches at the top of the stairs. She doesn’t dare go any lower. Once the eyes of the newcomer flash on her, briefly, and they’re bright and wide and blind.
She flinches when John deals a ringing blow to the struggling man’s-Dean’s-face, but it seems to have very little effect. Between the two of them, Sam and John get the other man onto his stomach and begin binding his arms and legs tightly with thick black cords. Dean hisses and spits at them. Blood and saliva drool from his mouth.
“I know you’re in there, Dean,” Sam murmurs. Dean snaps at him and Sam yanks his hand away just in time to avoid being bitten.
When he’s well and truly bound both men step back, wiping at mouths and massaging bruised ribs. Sam smears blood across his chin but seems not to notice. He casts one quick glance up the stairs and meets Jess’ eyes, and that’s all.
On the floor, in the center of the trap, Dean writhes and screams, long and terrible, until his breath runs out, and then he sucks in a new one and screams again. Sam winces, backs away, but it’s only to turn to the nearest collection of books and grab two from the pile, along a rosary. He turns back just as John is flinging what looks like water on the thrashing form. The screams dissolve into choked gasps. John sprinkles himself and Sam for good measure.
Sam opens one of the books, passes the other to John. The page has been marked, Jess thinks, though it’s hard to tell. But neither man spends any time flipping around searching, and Sam begins to read as the form on the floor gasps and twists.
“Deus,” he begins, “In nómine tuo salvum me fac, et virtúte tua age causam meam.”
She knows it’s Latin, recognizes the flavor if not the actual words. A prayer? Invocation? But no, Sam had told her that the marks on the floor were devil’s traps. So that would make this…
An exorcism?
“Deus, audi oratiónem meam; áuribus pércipe verba oris mei. Nam supérbi insurréxunt contra me, et violénti quasiérunt vitam meam; non proposuérunt Deum ante óculos suos.”
Dean coughs and sputters, starts to laugh. Sam doesn’t stop reading but John squats down beside his son, grips his hair tightly and hauls his head around to face him. Dean doesn’t seem frightened, or angry. His eyes roll in his head and he gasps and laughs.
“John,” he breaths, a low and terrible moan, “Johnny, I came for you. But I’ll take your son instead. Both your sons. You like that? How do you like that?”
John says something low that Jess doesn’t catch. Dean jerks violently, head smacking against the wood paneling, tendons standing out in his neck.
“I’ll kill you,” Dean says, intonation flat and emotionless, “I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you…”
John slaps him. Jess claps a hand over her mouth.
She’s heard of worse things, of course. In her classes they talked about what it was like for ethnographers to visit societies and interact with people whose values were so different from their own, and how difficult it was to maintain emotional distance from the events. How researchers struggled not to let their own worldview color their understanding of what was happening. Even when confronted with what might seem reprehensible acts, an anthropologist was meant to be value-free, to observe and seek to understand, not to pass judgment.
Sam’s voice rises. Jess knows for a fact that Hunters aren’t Catholic, it’s been documented that they’re sort of religious scavengers, borrowing traditions, practices and beliefs from a wide variety of systems. It makes sense, in a way-they’re meant to be tackling a global problem of evil, after all. Their worldview is more all-encompassing than a lot of societies. She’ll wonder about that later, when she’s more awake and coherent.
The exorcism continues, Sam reading in a near-monotone, Dean threatening, John occasionally delivering a punishing blow to his son. Jess winces every time. Sam doesn’t so much as flinch. It’s as if they have no concept that this is Dean. It’s as if he’s truly become the vessel for something demonic.
Jess has no doubt that they believe that what’s happening is real. Has no doubt, watching Dean pant and scream and suffer, that he believes it as well. She remembers reading about belief systems with trance states, possessions by gods or dark forces. Loa, exu, orisha. Those possessed, she knows, are not acting, or pretending, or caught in some strange self-delusion. It’s far more complex, and rooted in a reality she can barely understand.
The exorcism lasts a long time. When Sam’s voice starts to give he passes it off to his father, gets down on his knees by his brother. Dean’s stopped fighting, is lying nearly limp in his bonds, eyes blank, and Sam kneels and puts a hand on his head, mouths words too soft to carry.
John starts a new portion of the exorcism. “Dómine sancte, Pater omnípotens, ætérne Deus, Pater Dómini nostri Jesu Christi, qui illum réfugam tyránnum et apóstatam gehénnae ígnibus deputásti.”
Dean’s head lolls on the wood floor, a thin line of bloody spittle drooling from his lip. Sam’s words, she knows, aren’t for her to hear. She watches a tear form in on of Sam’s eyes, run down the side of his face, and she doubts he even knows that it’s there.
She sees his lips form words she doesn’t know, but the meaning at least is clear. Come back, he’s saying. Come back.
She’s not sure how much time passes. Her ears are ringing with the noise and with exhaustion. It’s pitch black outside and the door is still open, bringing with it the chill of the night wind. She wonders about that, if there’s no chance of evil spirits or something wandering across the threshold, but then she sees the line of salt and feels, strangely, a little safer.
Sam and John read out Latin until they’re both hoarse, until false dawn is just lightening the sky. She catches a glimpse of a dog trotting by on the porch, head low. Patrolling. Sam and John are both slumping in exhaustion, and Dean…
Dean’s essentially unconscious, no longer so much as twitching. Jess watches as John heaves a deep, weary sigh, closes his book, and sets it aside. She has no idea how he can tell it’s safe to do so, but he begins unwinding the bonds on his son’s arms and legs. A sharp handful of words at Sam has the younger man scrambling out of the room and back again with what’s clearly a first aid kit. He sets it on Dean’s belly and between the two of them they hoist Dean up off the floor, Sam with his arms under his brother’s shoulders, John at his feet. Jess watches them carry him out of the room and around the corner. She looks at the floor. There’s blood there, and scratch marks in the wood.
They’re gone for a long time. When Sam comes back he seems shrunken, worn with exhaustion. He smiles at her through his weariness, though, and there’s kindness there.
“Hey,” he says quietly, climbing the stairs and settling beside her at the top. “I…um, I guess that was pretty dramatic, huh?”
She stares at him blankly, then chokes out a laugh a little closer to a sob than she’d like. She claps her hand over her mouth.
“I…Jesus Sam,” she says faintly, around her fingers. “I was just supposed to be doing interviews!”
He blurts a laugh, leans forward until his forehead is on his knees. His shoulders shake a little, with silent laughter or pain, she isn’t sure. He doesn’t lift his head until he’s got his composure back.
“He’s going to be okay now,” Sam says, when he does. “I know it…it might’ve looked pretty violent, sometimes, from where you were sitting.”
“It’s not the sort of thing I’m used to seeing, no,” she agrees.
“Well, it was kind of…I mean I haven’t seen, or done, a lot of exorcisms-”
“So that is what was going on.”
“Yeah. Um. It doesn’t happen that often. And there’s…y’know, a lot of history there. Our family, and demons…well, you don’t need to know about that. I’m not really supposed to…” he rubs his hands together. “Yeah, anyway…would you…can I make you something to eat? It’s kind of been a long night.”
She looks down, plucks at the seam of her jeans. She hadn’t bothered to change clothes before going to sleep, and she’s glad now for that choice. She looks at Sam.
“I’d really like to talk to your brother,” she says.
____________________________
Sam would tell me later that no one was quite sure how his brother had come to be possessed. Dean himself apparently had very spotty memories of the events leading up to it, and Sam passed on what little he knew as best he could.
He told me that Dean’s burv gnekt [sp?] was set to end soon and he was expected to return to the fold. They were to meet at the[Liy ubukn] Spirit Walker’s house, and [Sam] was to be present for it. There should have been a small celebration, but then the Spirit Walker started tracking ‘signs’ of [Dean]’s progress across the lower 48, which apparently indicated some sort of demonic possession.
I wasn’t able to get much information about the possession itself, and have had to rely on general sources. However the use of the Roman Ritual suggests adoption of characteristics associated with the Catholic model of possession, as opposed to the types of spirit possession associated with such syncretic faiths as Umbanda or Santeria. [CITE] [Bliss 1998, Carver 1975, Holmes and ??? 1984] [HERE DISCUSS CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMAN CATHOLIC DOCTRINE ON POSSESSION ETC]
[Sam] indicated to me that he did not consider himself a member of the Catholic church or a practitioner of the faith, and that it was only in response to the type of demon that had taken his brother-revealed, apparently, through the Liy ubukn’s reading of the signs-that he and John were able to respond appropriately and cure his brother in a relatively short period of time.
I asked him what his opinions were of those practicing anti-possession rituals who were not hunters, such as priests or laypeople. He indicated that he did not feel favorably toward the efforts of such people, as they lacked the lifetime of exposure to darkness necessary to truly shield a mind and soul against the evil present in the world. But, he allowed, sometimes it couldn’t be avoided, and as long as it got the job done, in the end that was all that really mattered.
“Most of the time though it’s better left to us,” he told me.
____________________________
Sam has doubts.
“I’m just not sure it’s a good idea, Jess,” he says.
“I know,” she nods, “I just…I mean I get that he’s your brother. And…I really still don’t understand everything that’s happened…”
He rubs his neck a little. “It’s not just that…it’s that you’re an outsider. And I…it’s just never been done before, at least not that I know of. I mean really you shouldn’t have seen any of it, it’s just…we had to work fast. There wasn’t time.”
She raises her eyebrows. “It’s not like I asked to be here, you know. I was all set to leave before any of this started.”
He has the good grace to look a little shamefaced.
“I just…just five minutes, Sam,” she pleads. “Something to help round out…everything that’s happened. There’s so much to wade through but it would help a lot to talk to him. Please. I can…I don’t have to record it. Just a few minutes. I just want to understand more.”
Maybe that’s what gets him, she thinks. The earnestness of her plea. Her genuine need to understand him, his family and his beliefs-not to mention the events of the previous night. Nothing in her readings has prepared her for it. She’s still having trouble grasping the reality of what she saw. It feels more dreamlike with every passing hour.
“I’ll…I’ll ask Dean. It’s really up to him, anyway,” Sam finally says. “But I’m going to eat first, and you should too. Dean…he’ll be out for a while anyway.”
He gets up and heads into the kitchen, walking across the scratched and blood-spattered floor as if nothing extraordinary has happened in the room at all. After a few long, deep breaths, Jess gets up and follows him.
In the kitchen Sam fries eggs and bacon, but she notes that he also sets a pot of oatmeal on to cook. When it’s done he loads it into a bowl and John appears in the doorway, haggard and huge, and takes it away.
Jess and Sam eat mostly in silence. She’s burning with questions, but Sam’s starting to drift and nod, and more than once she has to rescue him from face-planting into his eggs.
When he finally drifts off, chin propped in one hand, drooling a little, she puts the dishes in the sink and goes upstairs to collect her things. There’s not much and it doesn’t take long.
She feels at loose ends. There’s more to this story, so much more. She’s gotten closer to knowing and maybe understanding these people than anyone else has, ever, and it’s all thanks to being in the right place at the right time. Everything she’s seen, in just a handful of hours-less than a whole day-is just enough to make her want to understand more. Understand everything. But she has no idea where to begin asking, if Sam isn’t willing to help her.
She hits the bottom of the stairs and John Winchester looms into the room. He stops and looks directly at her, and her hand tightens involuntarily on the strap of her bag.
“I heard what you said,” he rumbles, and she stares a little. He’s barely said two words to her since he’s been here. Barely said anything she could understand at all. “To my son, about my son.”
She swallows. Can still hear the sound of his hand connecting with Dean’s face. Can hear the drone of his voice as he chants, as his son thrashes on the floor and promises to kill him.
“I’m sorry,” she says meekly. “I…I just want to, to understand. I didn’t mean to-”
“You can see him,” he interrupts. Jess gapes, words strangling in her throat.
“See him? See who? Dean? I can see Dean?”
He’s already turned away, but he looks back over his shoulder.
“He’s down the hall. Where we took him. There’s a small room. Just a few minutes, though. That’s all.”
And he walks away, leaving Jess gaping after him. She blinks rapidly, clearing the spots of exhaustion from her vision, then before she has time to second-guess herself nearly sprints down the hall, bringing herself up short at a door that’s been left half-open, the only door in the hall.
Cautiously, she pokes her head inside.
The room is small. Probably a converted closet, or storeroom. There’s an old couch and some boxes in a corner, more piles of books, an old vanity, and a dusty mirror.
And Sam’s brother.
He smiles when he sees her. The kind of smile that wants to be flirtatious, but given the circumstances is more a shadow of greater potential. She raps her knuckles lightly on the doorframe.
“Hello,” she offers. “John…your father…he said it was okay.”
Dean clears his throat, tries to push himself up a little on the couch. His arms and hands are bandaged and he’s swathed in an old off-white blanket. His skin is washed out in the soft light. He’s the polar opposite of the man who’d spent hours convulsing and shrieking on the floor, and she notes with some shock that he has freckles. He’s clearly exhausted, but he makes an effort to be approachable.
“It’s fine,” rasps, and grimaces a little, drops his voice to a whisper. “C’mon in.”
She edges through the door, unable to ignore the way he massages his neck.
“I’m Jess. I’m…sort of a friend of Sam’s?”
He nods, tries to offer an encouraging smile. She walks softly, afraid to shatter the almost preternatural stillness of the air in the room. There’s a chair by the makeshift sickbed, and she lowers herself onto it.
“What can I do for you?” he asks, still barely above a whisper, and she smiles. She wouldn’t be able to ask much from him.
“I just…wanted to talk. But…” she pauses. Shakes her head. “I guess maybe I was just worried. I know it’s…” she hangs her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened last night, not really.”
There’s a bowl of half-eaten oatmeal on the table. She looks at it, then back at the wan man on the couch. He catches her gaze, smiles and looks down.
“It looks worse than it is,” he says, and nothing else.
And she doesn’t know what she expected. She can see, now, the bruises on his throat and temple. The split lip, no longer bleeding. His arms, she knows, are bandaged from the damage of straining against his bonds. She imagines his legs are much the same. But he seems content.
“Do you remember what happened?” she blurts, and immediately winces. “Sorry, sorry, I don’t-”
He’s shaking his head, at her apology or in answer to her question she doesn’t know. She bites her lip, forces herself to shut up.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I don’t really know what happened. I’m…it’s okay though. I’ll find out. Da and Sammy’ll tell me.” He seems to understand her distress, and she flushes with it, the shame of her concern for this man she’s never met before. “Everything’s gonna be fine, okay?” He actually reaches out from the blanket cocoon and pats her knee. She resists the urge to laugh because she’s afraid it might turn a little hysterical.
“Jess?” a voice from the doorway asks, and she turns in time to see Sam’s eyes fall on his brother, and his whole face light up. “Dean!”
Dean forces himself up straighter, offers a blinding grin that makes the one he’d given Jess seem even more pathetic than she’d thought. Sam’s across the room in a step and a half, and he’s hauling his brother halfway off the couch into an embrace that makes Jess cringe with its fierceness.
“Nak dah zhur, you asshole,” he whispers, and Jess gets to her feet with a faint smile. She creeps out of the room while Dean is returning his brother’s greeting, his voice an annoyed whisper. She doesn’t understand the words, but she has a pretty good idea of the meaning.
She meets John in the hall. Shoulders her bag and meets his eyes, and makes herself stand up tall. It’s a little startling when he puts out his hand, though, and she’s only able to make herself take it after a heartbeat of awkward silence.
“It was…nice…to meet you,” the big man rumbles. His handshake is firm, but he doesn’t crush her hand in his enormous grip. Instead he rests his other hand over it, and offers the first smile she’s seen on his face since she arrived.
“Things will be okay now?” she dares to ask, and John casts a glance down the hall, to the light spilling out of the little room where Jess left Sam and Dean behind. He nods, as much to himself as to her.
“Things will be fine,” he says.
When she leaves, it’s to drive in the direction of the nearest motel. She’s got Sam’s contact information and she has no intention of letting him off the hook. She’s hoping to get a real interview with Dean, at least or maybe both of them together, and it’d be fantastic if she could meet the Liy ubukn, the absent owner of the house.
Right now though all she wants is a hot shower, a cup of coffee, and someplace quiet where she can go over her notes.
____________________________
Thesis [reworked]: The Hunter population has maintained a system of beliefs and practices that strengthens the bond of the nuclear family, now the fundamental unit of the society, in the face of a contemporary civilization and geographic barriers which would otherwise have torn the society and its families apart long ago.
-The End-
___________________________________
Notes:
I have a bit of a language and culture fetish, so it seemed natural to sort of mash those two together and come up with this. In case you can’t tell I’ve always been one of those people who loves the sound of someone speaking more than one language. Unfortunately the only language I speak besides English is Japanese, which wasn’t very useful in this situation, so I just made some stuff up. But it was fun! It’s easier when there are only a handful of sentences and you don’t have to worry about troublesome things like grammar and sentence structure.
There are two real sources here, and the rest are fictional. It’s been a long time since I wrote an anthro paper so a lot of the terminology just isn’t here, which is just as well because there’s no point in confusing people and anyway Jess is only an undergrad. So she wouldn’t know a lot of it anyway.
Syncretism is a real thing, and you find it in references to a lot of New World religions that combine practices of different cultures. Umbanda, Santeria and Vodou are good examples. I referenced them here mainly because I’d spent some time trying to decide if this was a world where monsters exist or not, and then I realized that was entirely the wrong question to be asking. In the end, that sort of thing just depends on your worldview. Also because I like the idea that hunter practices are syncretic. Real anthropologists may argue with me on this, though.
In the end, this wound up being less dark than I’d originally intended, but that’s okay. The whole ‘no value judgments’ thing is pretty important, actually, and in the end it became more about that than anything else. Which I like. So it worked out.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Violence, possible abuse, Winchester-appropriate language
Word count: 8300+
Characters: Jess, Sam, John, Dean
Summary: (AU) Jess is an undergrad anthro student hoping to do her honors’ project on the little-known, poorly understood ethnic group known colloquially in the United States as Hunters. A Stanford professor puts her in touch with a student who happens to have been brought up in the Hunter community, but her efforts to conduct interviews with the student and his family takes an unexpected turn the very day she arrives.
Notes: I’ve seen a few fics featuring Jess as an anthropology student. Since I did my undergrad in anthro, it seemed like something worth writing about. I was also really interested in the idea of dealing with hunters as an ethnic group, with a language and traditions and beliefs all their own. A lot of what’s here is based on the stuff in the show, and some of it is derived from readings I’ve done over the years. Nothing here refers to any specific practices though (aside from stuff we’ve already seen in the show).
The Girl from Outside
____________________________
For the past fifty years at least, Western scholars have approached the study of myth from a viewpoint markedly different from, let us say, that of the nineteenth century. Unlike their predecessors, who treated myth in the usual meaning of the word, that is, as "fable," "invention," "fiction," they have accepted it as it was understood in archaic societies, where, on the contrary, "myth" means a "true story" and, beyond that, a story that is a most precious possession because it is sacred, exemplary, significant.
-Mircea Eliade
____________________________
1
____________________________
She can hear them arguing through the door. Sam’s voice is a nearly inaudible stream of definitely English, while his father’s is significantly louder and most certainly a language Jess doesn’t speak and has never heard. It sounds vaguely Indo-European, but she’s only ever taken one linguistics class, so she’s not exactly in a position to make that determination.
She frowns down at her feet, shuffles them on the ancient boards of the house’s old front porch. There are marks there, she can see, carved into the wood and nearly worn to incomprehensibility by time and the passage of multiple feet. This is definitely a Hunter’s house, which is strange not least because they’re a famously nomadic people. Maybe that’s another myth she can get to the bottom of, if she ever gets the chance to actually conduct her interviews with Sam and his family.
The voices through the door ratchet up a notch, as Sam’s voice rises to keep pace with his father’s. Jess backs up a step almost unconsciously, and narrowly avoids tripping over her backpack. She bites her lip.
“Da!” she hears clearly, “She drove two days to get here! I’m not telling her to turn around and go back home! I’m sure we can work something out!”
Something heavy thumps the door and Jess jumps. Sam’s father’s voice is an angry, displeased growl. She’s tempted to turn around and get back in her car, leave behind this dusty yard of broken vehicles and greying, ramshackle buildings. But she really wants the credit for this project. More than that, she wants to know everything she can about these poorly understood, habitually reticent people.
Sam’s voice rises to a shout, and it’s a testament to how frustrated he is that he starts in English and switches halfway through to something else. Jess doesn’t speak the language but she gets the gist of it, and is only half-startled when the door flies open and Sam is standing in the breach, wild-eyed and still hollering, “…va dekh! Tréd mi va dekh!”
Jess flinches anyway when she catches sight of John, huge and glowering in the shadows beyond the door. He casts her one sharp, assessing look and turns, stomping off deeper into the house, like a storm system grumbling toward the horizon.
Jess exhales a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Sam steps through the door and offers a smile, a little shamefaced.
“Sorry,” he offers, ducking his head a little. “He gets like that-it’s nothing to do with you. He just…doesn’t like outsiders.”
She shakes her head. “I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t think-I mean I should’ve called ahead-”
“Jessica-”
“Jess. Please.”
“Okay.” He makes an abortive gesture toward the bridge of his nose, and turns it into a scratch at the underside of his jaw. “Look, do you-would you like to come in? Have something to drink? You’ve been standing out here for,” he checks his watch, “God, fifteen minutes. I’m really sorry.”
She looks down at the backpack at her feet, then back up at the young man who she’s only ever met online, swallows around the dryness in her throat, and nods.
“Sure,” she says. “I’d like that.”
____________________________
Jess Moore
Honors’ Project 2005 (June)
Advisor: Dr. Wallace
Notes, Etc.
Subject: Hunters (culture, enclaves, individuals) in contemporary U.S. (esp. Midwest)
Themes: traditional cultures, interactions with contemporary ethos (interface?)(is there a specific threshold?), Patriarchy? Matriarchy?, focus on death, act of dying (Shamanism-Sam says no), xenophobia?, nomadism, kinship networks
Thesis: Although believed by many to have gone into decline since the turn of the 19th century, Hunters (the ethnic and culturally distinct population) have in fact continued to flourish well out of sight of the general American population. (Middle America-outskirts)
Fieldwork: Interview subjects (change names for final)
Sam Winchester
John Winchester (???)
Robert Singer (NO- not present)
Dean Winchester (? Available? )
When I stepped into the old, two-story house, it was dimly lit and dusty. Difficult to ignore I had difficulty ignoring the enormous circular [marks/designs/??] painted directly behind the threshold, and my informant told me that they were traps ‘to prevent demons entering.’ He delivered this declaration offhandedly. He told me that an ordinary person would have no trouble crossing the lines and symbols marked out in red paint. I confess that I breathed a little easier when I crossed that particular, secondary threshold. I also hoped that I was imagining the brief [glance] my informant [cast] at me, as if he too were relieved.
[He was only a few months older than me. Nothing like the images in popular culture of grizzled old men and women, armed and mistrusting of outsiders. Sam’s face was open, his every gesture honest MORE??]
In a handful of simple steps I had walked out of the world I understood and into a place guided by an entirely different, alien set of rules.
My informant led me through a sitting room crowded with books and a wide variety of materials whose meaning I couldn’t begin to parse. Some items were clearly weapons, others might have been ritual ephemera. I saw bones and scattered artifacts from dozens of traditions, some which I recognized (dream catchers, rune stones) some which had no significance to me (bones and crystals in odd formations, a tripod construct of gold and glass whose use I can only guess at). The weapons ranged from archaic-knives, even a sickle-to the modern: I saw more than one firearm, hanging on walls and resting on top of books.
My informant’s name was [Sam]. Raised in the Hunter culture, steeped in the traditions of the transplanted, once-nomadic people, he nevertheless I had been put in contact with him thanks to the connections/efforts of a Stanford professor. We are both students at the university, I with my parent’s blessings, [Sam] in direct [conflict] with his father’s wishes. Raised from birth in the Hunter culture, steeped in the transplanted traditions of the once-proud [really?] nomadic people, [Sam] had been expected to join the ranks of the traditional war against the dark forces believed by oppressing the world, the traditional enemies of Hunters. [Sam’s] flight from that battlefield and his years spent in the ‘outside’ world have given him an unprecedented cross-cultural understanding that I hoped would aid me in my efforts to learn more about his culture and people.
____________________________
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to be a bother,” she says, blowing steam away from her coffee.
Sam leans against the counter and shuts his eyes, briefly. He’s wearing the signs of strain on his face and in his posture. Whatever’s troubling him, Jess is willing to bet that it’s more than the unexpected arrival two days early of an anthro student from Stanford.
“Sam,” she says, turning her coffee mug around on the table, “Listen, if this is a bad time…”
He takes a deep breath, shakes his head. “It kind of…it really kind of is. I just didn’t want, I mean…”
She watches him as he visibly gathers his composure.
“I do want to help you with your project. As much as I can anyway. But now is just…something’s come up. Something none of us expected. I still want to do what I can for you, but the interviews and all that…it might have to wait a couple of days. That’s all. I’m sorry.”
She tries not to let her disappointment show on her face. It’s not as if he’s refusing her outright. He’s gone out of the way to be polite, helpful. Courteous even. And it’s just an Honors’ project and it’s not as if she’s going to be able to uncover all the secrets of Hunters in America in a few days of interviews. She’ll finish her coffee and go back to her motel and just…hang out for a couple of days. Call Sam later and try to pick things up then.
“Okay,” she nods, realizes from his face she probably hasn’t done as good of a job concealing her disappointment as she’d have liked, “I just…I’m really sorry for all the inconvenience.”
He opens his mouth, probably to send her apologies back to her, again, when there’s a loud crash from outside and Sam leaps away from the counter as if he’s been burned. Jess drops her coffee and it spills all over the table, but her attention is all on Sam as he springs for the doorway and dashes out of the room.
She leaps after him. She can’t help it. Behind her, coffee drips onto the table.
____________________________
That first day wasn’t meant to be anything but a quick meeting, after which I would return at a later date to conduct my interviews. Circumstances intervened, however, and I very quickly found myself in the midst of a situation the likes of which I’d never encountered, and was wholly unprepared for. and for which I was wholly unprepared.
____________________________
Outside dogs are barking and yammering. She follows Sam into the front room and out onto the porch. The noise is nearly deafening and she claps both hands over her ears and follows Sam’s gaze across the yard, where clouds of dust have risen.
“What going on?” Jess shouts, above the noise, and Sam turns to her and opens his mouth. Before he can get a word out though, John Winchester appears around the side of the house, nearly running, and waves his arms at both of them.
“Get back in the house!” he shouts, “Kaeti, Sam mu chavg au!”
She barely has time to react when strong hands clamp on her arms and shove her bodily through the door. The dogs’ voices melt seamlessly from barking to howling and the hair on the back of Jess’ neck stands up. She forgets to bat Sam’s hands away until they’re both inside, and John is slamming through the door and leaning against it, briefly. She catches a flash of wide-eyed distress on his face before he shuts it down, schools it back to hardness.
But Jess saw.
“What’s going on?” she asks, softly, but with an edge of steel.
Sam turns to his father. Says, “Da?” and there’s at least as much of an edge to his own voice.
John says, “Drgu chah gva.”
“No.” Sam’s lip curls a little. “She’s here now, you say it in front of her too.”
“Sam.”
“No, Da.”
John reaches out, grabs his son’s shoulder in one large hand, and wrenches him closer. Jess stumbles back, eyes wide. John Winchester is a big man. There are scars on his face and hands, and he looms. Despite Sam’s height his son looks small next to him.
He hisses something in Sam’s ear. Even if she could make out what it was, it wouldn’t help since he’s definitely still not speaking English. She starts to edge toward the kitchen where she left her bag. The dogs outside are still howling. She has a very bad feeling indeed.
____________________________
Outline
Thesis: survival of traditional practices (which?) in contemporary landscape
(focus on: male dominated, death-centric, hunting (killing), EVENT
A. Introduction: History (put as many secondary sources here as possible)
B.
C.
-origin (Old World, evidence in various small enclaves, probably Europe b4 HR Empire)
-scattered, became nomadic
-religion: world dominated by threats, monsters, undead; duty is to ensure security of human realm from supernat’l threats (Syncretism--incorporated later Judeo-Christian doctrine (Frell, 2001)
-kinship: nuclear family, extended family, marriage practices
-property: nomadism, minimum possession of items, focus on practical tools, emphasis on weapons, ritual items
- language: dialects, esp. New World (also English, Spanish)
D. Now: adaptation to new contemporary landscape (focus on fieldwork, interviews, observations)
Due to the nomadic, widely dispersed nature of the population, traditional practices may be localized within small kinship groups of a few families. Such practices are often divided along gender lines, as in the case of this small, exclusively male sample group. See Blevins(1995), Carey (1999), Meyer et. al. (1964) for female practices (compare/contrast?)
E. Survival of traditional ‘way of life’ (relate to other cultural groups within U.S.?)
F.
Narrow the focus: is this family part of a network? Are there social ties linking them to out-groups? (Be specific)
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“What are you doing?” Sam asks from the doorway. She looks up from zipping her bag shut. She’s suddenly aware of how much bigger than her Sam really is.
“Leaving,” she says. The dogs have gone silent, at least, but dust is cascading against the glass window in random spurts. The wind is audible.
“Uh,” he says, “Yeah. About that…”
She tenses. Can taste the sudden flood of adrenaline in her mouth.
“Sam,” she says.
“You can’t leave.”
She shoots upright, draws herself to her full height. She’s a big girl, and she’s never been afraid to use that fact.
“You can’t keep me here!”
He winces. “It’s just for a little while. Okay? It’s…things are going faster than expected. If I’d known I never would have invited you inside…”
She hefts and shoulders her bag, but doesn’t risk getting close to him.
“People know where I am.”
He raises his hands, palms out. “It’s nothing like that. Please, you have to believe me. It’s not that I-we, want to keep you here, it’s just that it’s not safe to go outside. There’s…something’s coming. It’s not safe out there.”
Her lip curls. “And how long is it not going to be ‘safe’?”
He pushes a hand through his hair. Jess doesn’t move.
“Look,” he says, “Something’s happening-there’s kind of a family emergency happening right now. It came out of nowhere and now we’re kind of having to deal with it. I never meant for you to be involved.”
“Sam.” She risks getting a little closer, though she doesn’t let go of her bag, and doesn’t reach out to him. “What is going on?”
He lifts his eyes. “My brother’s coming home.”
____________________________
Excerpt from voice recording session, May 25th, 1:15 pm (transcribed)
Sam: It’s sort of expected, but not required, for an adult hunter to spend some time out in the world on his own. I mean, Dean and I grew up…we went to school with other kids and even though we moved around a lot and we knew we were…y’know, our peple, we still learned all about the, the rest of the country that aren’t hunters. So it’s not like it used to be.
Jess: What do you mean?
Sam: Well, back in my…I guess my grandparents’ generation, there really were a lot of taboos, or whatever you want to call them, about mixing or going out in the world, and stuff like that. I mean it’s supposed to be a calling, you know? It’s not like there’s a chance at something else, some other life. There’s just…there’s good and evil, there’s people and there’s demons and monsters and ghosts. And anything that could…I guess contaminate someone, that had to be avoided. So people didn’t go out in the world much, except for a short time in their life, to prove themselves. But then after Hunters started coming to the States and got so spread out, it was a lot harder to keep up the old ways. You know, that’s how it goes I guess.
Jess: Lots of traditions change.
Sam: Right. Exactly. And that happened. Suddenly there weren’t clans and caravans, just little families, maybe only a couple people. And it was impossible to really keep everything the way it used to be. So Dean…my brother, he didn’t really have to do the whole burv gnekt thing, but…he wanted to.
Jess: Bur…
Sam: Burv gnekt. It means, like…hunting dark things, on your own. For a long time. Sometimes years. And I think…I mean he never said anything about wanting to do it, when we were kids. But then I left and…maybe it’s my fault.
[Note: at this point the informant put his hand over his eyes and didn’t speak for several minutes.]
Jess: Sam…
Sam: Yeah, okay. Sorry. Sorry. So Dean did decide, he did…you know there are rituals and stuff, fasting, things like that. Stuff you’d expect.
Jess: Mm-hm.
Sam: And so he did that…here actually.
Jess: Is this…your house?
Sam: What? [laughs] No, of course not. It belongs to…well, do you know what a liy ubukn is?
Jess: It’s kinda like a Shaman, right?
Sam: No, uh..well, kinda. I mean, ‘Shaman’ has become sort of a catch-all term, I guess, but there’s so many different traditions in the world. But anyway a liy ubukn is someone who can do that stuff, I guess, the stuff you’d think of shamans and spirit walkers and those kinds of people doing. And he also keeps track of all the lore, knows the rituals and traditions. So he helped Dean get ready, made sure he had all the protection he would need, and then sent him out in the world.
[Note: several more minutes of silence pass.]
Jess: Sam? What happened then?
[Note: sound of Sam standing, walking across the room.]
Sam: I don’t know…but something went wrong.
____________________________
She sits on the old dusty couch with her legs pulled up and watches John and Sam prepare for the return.
There’s a lot of symbology involved. She remembers the marks on the floor, which Sam has since explained are called ‘devil’s traps.’ The complex circular designs he and his father are constructing now share certain features in common with those simpler, spray-painted traps, but even her untrained eye can detect differences. The two men are essentially ignoring her presence, murmuring together in mixture of English and the primary language spoken by Hunters, which as far as she knows isn’t directly related to any living language, and which hasn’t been much studied by linguists due to the insularity of its people and their well-documented distrust of outsiders.
She shifts a little on the couch. Wonders if the reasons for such near-Xenophobia have more to do with keeping non-Hunters safe than anyone had realized.
“Khre gev,” Sam says softly, gesturing to a corner of the trap he’s been carefully constructing, and his father moves quickly to render some kind of judgment on it. Sam continues with his work. Jess follows him with her eyes.
She’d never known him at school, hadn’t had time to even speak to him on campus before the summer term started and he made excuses of some ‘family emergency’ to head out of the state. She’d wondered, when she’d first been put in touch with him by Professor Craig, what he would look like, this scion of a people believed to be nearly extinct. Tall or short, slender or bulky. Would he be recognizably alien to the general population? But despite his height he’s otherwise very average, and she knows if she’d met him on the street or in the library, she’d never have identified him as anything other than ordinary. A kid making his way in the world, a young man with something to prove. Favorite pastimes: sports, video games, maybe getting drunk with his friends on the weekend. Certainly not someone trained since childhood to pursue monsters in the dark.
She stiffens slightly when he stands, groans and stretches. Sam shoots her a quick glance. He offers a lopsided smile which she can’t bring herself to return, and rolls his shoulders. He’s got paint on his arms and fingers, and somehow managed to get it in his hair. At any other time it might even be endearing.
“Sam,” John says, in a tone Jess hasn’t heard him use up to now, “Mur avgva cré svet. Nevla gbar.”
Sam starts a little. “But Da, what about-”
“Stka. Gad mi dho.”
Sam presses his lips together, eyes a little wide.
“Uh,” he says, “Okay. Um,” this addressed to Jess, “Would…would you like something to eat?”
It takes a lot of willpower for her not to leap off the couch at him. Vaguely she’s aware she should be a lot more pleased about her situation-a lowly anthro undergrad being allowed to bear witness to the secret rituals of a barely-understood culture in the heartland of America. But right now all she feels is weary, hungry, and sweaty.
“That’d be great, Sam.” She gets up with what she hopes is relative grace. “Really, awesome.”
He smiles, flash of dimples. In spite of herself, she feels a little better.
____________________________
Excerpt from Stewart, Charles, 1999 ‘Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture.’ Diacritics 29.3: 40-62
Anthropologists and other social scientists have expressed ambivalence about all three terms--syncretism, hybridity, and creolization. …. My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the present is … an attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an objectionable but nevertheless instructive past. If this past can be understood, then we are in a position to consciously reappropriate syncretism [Shaw and Stewart 2] and set the ethnographic study of cultural mixture on new tracks.
___________________________
“Dean looked after me, y’know?” Sam says, around a mouthful of bread and lunchmeat. Jess is proud of herself for not making a face as crumbs sort of cascade onto the table.
“Really?” she asks, and tries to subtly pass him a napkin.
“Yeah. Our grandparents died…well, way before we were born. And our mom not long after I was.”
She recognizes her cue.
“And your father?”
Sam shrugs. “He was, y’know, around I guess. Some. But gone a lot. For…” he waves a hand vaguely, encompassing, she supposes, the kitchen, the house, the yard, and the entirety of what life as a dedicated Hunter really means. “Once Dean was old enough to hold a rifle, Da left us alone a lot of the time.”
“How old were you?”
He frowns at his sandwich, lips pursing.
“I’m not sure…four or five? Maybe?”
“And Dean’s…”
“Four years older.”
She sits back, eyebrows shooting to her hairline. “Holy crap Sam!”
He winces, as if he’s just now realized what he’s said.
“Well, I mean it’s not that weird. My brother started training as soon as he could walk…I mean everybody does. Boys and girls. It’s just…how things are.”
“Training for…
He looks at her, shrugs. Puts down his sandwich and lays his arm on the table, palm up. She squints at his paint-mottled skin. Sees, faintly, a row of tiny scars, like dots, on the underside of his arm. Vaguely discolored, as if something had been rubbed into the skin at the time of the injury.
“It’s the bre kthn,” he says, “Everyone gets it in their fourth year. If you cry they know you’ll never go to the Hunt. But I didn’t,” and here he looks proud, “And I’m damn sure Dean didn’t either.” He grins a little, and there’s something slightly feral to it. “When I was old enough to start going to school some kid in my class started babbling about how there was a monster in his closet. And y’know, I was impressionable, I wanted to be like the normal kids, so a week or so later I started telling Da the same thing. And you know what he did?”
She shakes her head. He pulls his arm back, picks up his sandwich and waves it around a little.
“He gave me gun. And I mean I was disappointed as all hell. But Da knew about monsters and they don’t hang around closets. That’s just kid’s fear.”
“He gave you a gun?”
He nods, looks down a little. “I was so embarrassed. Dean made fun of me for a month.”
She blinks at him, unsure how to respond. Feels again how out of her depth she really is. A real anthropologist, she’s sure, would know how to respond. But this is all too strange to her, still. The almost aggressive ordinariness of Sam’s clothes and face contrasts so sharply with the words coming out of his mouth. It would be easier, she thinks, if he dressed in something other than jeans and a worn t-shirt, if he spoke with an accent or had some outlandish body modifications. But he doesn’t.
She realizes she should probably be taking notes.
____________________________
My informant told me stories about his family, his upbringing. He described in very matter-of-fact manner circumstances ranging from humorous to horrifying. I realized that he was attempting to entertain and even distract me from our difficult situation, and I appreciated it. But the more he spoke, the more I understood that his appearance as an average, all-American boy really was an illusion. A constructed image concealing someone steeped in a culture and belief system I would possibly never truly understand.
He described monsters, which I’d expected. What I hadn’t expected was the conviction he spoke with, the acceptance he had of these things, despite his regular exposure to a culture which gives no credence to such things. Witches, vampires, a host of creatures I’d never even heard of. He discussed them in the same casual tones he used to ask me what sort of lunchmeat I’d like on my sandwich, and if I preferred mayonnaise or mustard. He could be expansive in his gestures, and more than once he left to grab some sort of trinket to use as a visual aid.
He told me the story of one of his brother’s early hunts. A werewolf, he said, meant to be simple. And he described the search for the monster, the rituals used. The texts referenced, some of which were there in the house where we sat. He showed me one, an arcane book with brittle, yellowing pages. Flipped it open and pointed at an illustration of something that looked very much like a man, except for the teeth and eyes.
As he talked, I pictured this young man, roughly my own age, on the Stanford campus. Frequenting the places I did-the libraries, coffee shops, lecture halls. The incongruity of it grew as he spoke.
He took from a pocket a single silver bullet. Said, “These really work, it’s not just a myth.” I admit I was startled and a little disturbed.
I asked him how he would determine if something was a myth or fact. I admit I was filled with greater skepticism than was maybe appropriate. Perhaps I should blame this attitude on my inexperience on or the apparent ordinariness of my informant [MORE?]. I clearly hadn’t yet learned to put my own value-judgments and worldview aside.
He didn’t seem troubled, though. Maybe he’d expected the question.
“A lot of it is just what works. Most of the Lore is extremely accurate, if you know where to look and how to apply it. But some things that worked once don’t work anymore because the world has changed so much. And sometimes you just have to try everything, and hope something sticks.”
That didn’t seem very practical to me, but at the same time, it sounded very much like something Sam had personal experience in dealing with.
I looked at the silver bullet as Sam got up to make another sandwich. Outside, the dogs started barking again.
____________________________
Sam tells her she can wander around the house as long as she doesn’t touch anything.
“Well,” he amends, “I mean if you need to use the bathroom that’s okay. But just don’t…”
She smiles, in spite of herself. “I get it, Sam. No messing with the pointy things or books.”
He looks suddenly, surprisingly serious. “I mean it though, okay? This stuff can really hurt you. Be careful.”
Somehow, she thinks he’s probably not talking about just the weapons.
She does use the restroom on the first floor, and is pleased to find it less dusty and cobwebbed than she’d feared. The towels, while threadbare, are fresh. The window’s closed, though, and she thinks briefly about cracking it open until she approaches and sees a thick line of white crystals laid down across the sill. She peers closer. Sugar? But that would attract ants. Salt?
A memory from one of her readings flashes across her brain. The significance of salt among Hunters is not fully understood, but shares many features in common with practices found in a wide variety of spiritual and mystical traditions throughout the Eurasian continent. Specifically, salt is often associated with purity and with the idea of protection…
She’s very careful not to touch the line. Washes her hands and wanders back out into the hall, and listens carefully for the murmur of conversation that is Sam and his father continuing their preparations.
How long, she wonders, before the return of the prodigal son?
____________________________
2
____________________________
At two in the morning she’s torn out of an uneasy sleep in the upstairs bedroom by the crash of a door, the howling of dogs, and multiple raised male voices. She’s halfway out of bed before she’s even awake, tangled in the sheets. Downstairs something shatters and she hears Sam shouting.
“Vlek de trk vn du! Cüy gra Dean!”
Someone screams, a terrible sound, and Jess slaps her hands over her ears and shrinks against the doorjamb.
John’s voice: “Hjak khay zm! Hjak khay zm! Dammit! Sam!”
And someone laughs, long and low and horrible, and the hair on the back of Jess’ neck stands up. She takes a step, then another, out into the hall. Hears Sam biting out sharp and low, “You get out of my brother, you hear me?” The laughter continues over him.
She reaches the top of the stairs and looks down.
The main room is a mess. The couch where she’d sat earlier that day is shoved against the wall, and books have fallen to lie in random piles like so much discarded trash. The enormous and complex trap Sam and John spent the day painting covers most of the bare floor, and there are signs and markings all over the walls. She wonders what the owner of this house is going to have to say about the mess-but only briefly. Her attention is claimed by the physical chaos happening on the far side of the room: two men struggling with a third. Sam and John are wrestling intently with someone size of an adult man. Jess guesses it’s probably Sam’s brother.
They’ve dragged him halfway across the floor, both of them struggling to keep a grip on his thrashing body. The noises he makes are inhuman, long grating cries, wails, shrieks and the babble of languages Jess thinks are maybe Latin and Greek. Sam’s face is tight and pale. He’s bleeding from his lip and there’s a bruise on his cheek.
“Get out of him!” he’s shouting, “Get out of my brother! Get out! Vlek de trk! Vlek de trk vn du! Vn du! Dean!”
She thinks there might be tears in his eyes.
“Oh God,” Jess murmurs, sinking down on her haunches at the top of the stairs. She doesn’t dare go any lower. Once the eyes of the newcomer flash on her, briefly, and they’re bright and wide and blind.
She flinches when John deals a ringing blow to the struggling man’s-Dean’s-face, but it seems to have very little effect. Between the two of them, Sam and John get the other man onto his stomach and begin binding his arms and legs tightly with thick black cords. Dean hisses and spits at them. Blood and saliva drool from his mouth.
“I know you’re in there, Dean,” Sam murmurs. Dean snaps at him and Sam yanks his hand away just in time to avoid being bitten.
When he’s well and truly bound both men step back, wiping at mouths and massaging bruised ribs. Sam smears blood across his chin but seems not to notice. He casts one quick glance up the stairs and meets Jess’ eyes, and that’s all.
On the floor, in the center of the trap, Dean writhes and screams, long and terrible, until his breath runs out, and then he sucks in a new one and screams again. Sam winces, backs away, but it’s only to turn to the nearest collection of books and grab two from the pile, along a rosary. He turns back just as John is flinging what looks like water on the thrashing form. The screams dissolve into choked gasps. John sprinkles himself and Sam for good measure.
Sam opens one of the books, passes the other to John. The page has been marked, Jess thinks, though it’s hard to tell. But neither man spends any time flipping around searching, and Sam begins to read as the form on the floor gasps and twists.
“Deus,” he begins, “In nómine tuo salvum me fac, et virtúte tua age causam meam.”
She knows it’s Latin, recognizes the flavor if not the actual words. A prayer? Invocation? But no, Sam had told her that the marks on the floor were devil’s traps. So that would make this…
An exorcism?
“Deus, audi oratiónem meam; áuribus pércipe verba oris mei. Nam supérbi insurréxunt contra me, et violénti quasiérunt vitam meam; non proposuérunt Deum ante óculos suos.”
Dean coughs and sputters, starts to laugh. Sam doesn’t stop reading but John squats down beside his son, grips his hair tightly and hauls his head around to face him. Dean doesn’t seem frightened, or angry. His eyes roll in his head and he gasps and laughs.
“John,” he breaths, a low and terrible moan, “Johnny, I came for you. But I’ll take your son instead. Both your sons. You like that? How do you like that?”
John says something low that Jess doesn’t catch. Dean jerks violently, head smacking against the wood paneling, tendons standing out in his neck.
“I’ll kill you,” Dean says, intonation flat and emotionless, “I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you…”
John slaps him. Jess claps a hand over her mouth.
She’s heard of worse things, of course. In her classes they talked about what it was like for ethnographers to visit societies and interact with people whose values were so different from their own, and how difficult it was to maintain emotional distance from the events. How researchers struggled not to let their own worldview color their understanding of what was happening. Even when confronted with what might seem reprehensible acts, an anthropologist was meant to be value-free, to observe and seek to understand, not to pass judgment.
Sam’s voice rises. Jess knows for a fact that Hunters aren’t Catholic, it’s been documented that they’re sort of religious scavengers, borrowing traditions, practices and beliefs from a wide variety of systems. It makes sense, in a way-they’re meant to be tackling a global problem of evil, after all. Their worldview is more all-encompassing than a lot of societies. She’ll wonder about that later, when she’s more awake and coherent.
The exorcism continues, Sam reading in a near-monotone, Dean threatening, John occasionally delivering a punishing blow to his son. Jess winces every time. Sam doesn’t so much as flinch. It’s as if they have no concept that this is Dean. It’s as if he’s truly become the vessel for something demonic.
Jess has no doubt that they believe that what’s happening is real. Has no doubt, watching Dean pant and scream and suffer, that he believes it as well. She remembers reading about belief systems with trance states, possessions by gods or dark forces. Loa, exu, orisha. Those possessed, she knows, are not acting, or pretending, or caught in some strange self-delusion. It’s far more complex, and rooted in a reality she can barely understand.
The exorcism lasts a long time. When Sam’s voice starts to give he passes it off to his father, gets down on his knees by his brother. Dean’s stopped fighting, is lying nearly limp in his bonds, eyes blank, and Sam kneels and puts a hand on his head, mouths words too soft to carry.
John starts a new portion of the exorcism. “Dómine sancte, Pater omnípotens, ætérne Deus, Pater Dómini nostri Jesu Christi, qui illum réfugam tyránnum et apóstatam gehénnae ígnibus deputásti.”
Dean’s head lolls on the wood floor, a thin line of bloody spittle drooling from his lip. Sam’s words, she knows, aren’t for her to hear. She watches a tear form in on of Sam’s eyes, run down the side of his face, and she doubts he even knows that it’s there.
She sees his lips form words she doesn’t know, but the meaning at least is clear. Come back, he’s saying. Come back.
She’s not sure how much time passes. Her ears are ringing with the noise and with exhaustion. It’s pitch black outside and the door is still open, bringing with it the chill of the night wind. She wonders about that, if there’s no chance of evil spirits or something wandering across the threshold, but then she sees the line of salt and feels, strangely, a little safer.
Sam and John read out Latin until they’re both hoarse, until false dawn is just lightening the sky. She catches a glimpse of a dog trotting by on the porch, head low. Patrolling. Sam and John are both slumping in exhaustion, and Dean…
Dean’s essentially unconscious, no longer so much as twitching. Jess watches as John heaves a deep, weary sigh, closes his book, and sets it aside. She has no idea how he can tell it’s safe to do so, but he begins unwinding the bonds on his son’s arms and legs. A sharp handful of words at Sam has the younger man scrambling out of the room and back again with what’s clearly a first aid kit. He sets it on Dean’s belly and between the two of them they hoist Dean up off the floor, Sam with his arms under his brother’s shoulders, John at his feet. Jess watches them carry him out of the room and around the corner. She looks at the floor. There’s blood there, and scratch marks in the wood.
They’re gone for a long time. When Sam comes back he seems shrunken, worn with exhaustion. He smiles at her through his weariness, though, and there’s kindness there.
“Hey,” he says quietly, climbing the stairs and settling beside her at the top. “I…um, I guess that was pretty dramatic, huh?”
She stares at him blankly, then chokes out a laugh a little closer to a sob than she’d like. She claps her hand over her mouth.
“I…Jesus Sam,” she says faintly, around her fingers. “I was just supposed to be doing interviews!”
He blurts a laugh, leans forward until his forehead is on his knees. His shoulders shake a little, with silent laughter or pain, she isn’t sure. He doesn’t lift his head until he’s got his composure back.
“He’s going to be okay now,” Sam says, when he does. “I know it…it might’ve looked pretty violent, sometimes, from where you were sitting.”
“It’s not the sort of thing I’m used to seeing, no,” she agrees.
“Well, it was kind of…I mean I haven’t seen, or done, a lot of exorcisms-”
“So that is what was going on.”
“Yeah. Um. It doesn’t happen that often. And there’s…y’know, a lot of history there. Our family, and demons…well, you don’t need to know about that. I’m not really supposed to…” he rubs his hands together. “Yeah, anyway…would you…can I make you something to eat? It’s kind of been a long night.”
She looks down, plucks at the seam of her jeans. She hadn’t bothered to change clothes before going to sleep, and she’s glad now for that choice. She looks at Sam.
“I’d really like to talk to your brother,” she says.
____________________________
Sam would tell me later that no one was quite sure how his brother had come to be possessed. Dean himself apparently had very spotty memories of the events leading up to it, and Sam passed on what little he knew as best he could.
He told me that Dean’s burv gnekt [sp?] was set to end soon and he was expected to return to the fold. They were to meet at the[Liy ubukn] Spirit Walker’s house, and [Sam] was to be present for it. There should have been a small celebration, but then the Spirit Walker started tracking ‘signs’ of [Dean]’s progress across the lower 48, which apparently indicated some sort of demonic possession.
I wasn’t able to get much information about the possession itself, and have had to rely on general sources. However the use of the Roman Ritual suggests adoption of characteristics associated with the Catholic model of possession, as opposed to the types of spirit possession associated with such syncretic faiths as Umbanda or Santeria. [CITE] [Bliss 1998, Carver 1975, Holmes and ??? 1984] [HERE DISCUSS CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMAN CATHOLIC DOCTRINE ON POSSESSION ETC]
[Sam] indicated to me that he did not consider himself a member of the Catholic church or a practitioner of the faith, and that it was only in response to the type of demon that had taken his brother-revealed, apparently, through the Liy ubukn’s reading of the signs-that he and John were able to respond appropriately and cure his brother in a relatively short period of time.
I asked him what his opinions were of those practicing anti-possession rituals who were not hunters, such as priests or laypeople. He indicated that he did not feel favorably toward the efforts of such people, as they lacked the lifetime of exposure to darkness necessary to truly shield a mind and soul against the evil present in the world. But, he allowed, sometimes it couldn’t be avoided, and as long as it got the job done, in the end that was all that really mattered.
“Most of the time though it’s better left to us,” he told me.
____________________________
Sam has doubts.
“I’m just not sure it’s a good idea, Jess,” he says.
“I know,” she nods, “I just…I mean I get that he’s your brother. And…I really still don’t understand everything that’s happened…”
He rubs his neck a little. “It’s not just that…it’s that you’re an outsider. And I…it’s just never been done before, at least not that I know of. I mean really you shouldn’t have seen any of it, it’s just…we had to work fast. There wasn’t time.”
She raises her eyebrows. “It’s not like I asked to be here, you know. I was all set to leave before any of this started.”
He has the good grace to look a little shamefaced.
“I just…just five minutes, Sam,” she pleads. “Something to help round out…everything that’s happened. There’s so much to wade through but it would help a lot to talk to him. Please. I can…I don’t have to record it. Just a few minutes. I just want to understand more.”
Maybe that’s what gets him, she thinks. The earnestness of her plea. Her genuine need to understand him, his family and his beliefs-not to mention the events of the previous night. Nothing in her readings has prepared her for it. She’s still having trouble grasping the reality of what she saw. It feels more dreamlike with every passing hour.
“I’ll…I’ll ask Dean. It’s really up to him, anyway,” Sam finally says. “But I’m going to eat first, and you should too. Dean…he’ll be out for a while anyway.”
He gets up and heads into the kitchen, walking across the scratched and blood-spattered floor as if nothing extraordinary has happened in the room at all. After a few long, deep breaths, Jess gets up and follows him.
In the kitchen Sam fries eggs and bacon, but she notes that he also sets a pot of oatmeal on to cook. When it’s done he loads it into a bowl and John appears in the doorway, haggard and huge, and takes it away.
Jess and Sam eat mostly in silence. She’s burning with questions, but Sam’s starting to drift and nod, and more than once she has to rescue him from face-planting into his eggs.
When he finally drifts off, chin propped in one hand, drooling a little, she puts the dishes in the sink and goes upstairs to collect her things. There’s not much and it doesn’t take long.
She feels at loose ends. There’s more to this story, so much more. She’s gotten closer to knowing and maybe understanding these people than anyone else has, ever, and it’s all thanks to being in the right place at the right time. Everything she’s seen, in just a handful of hours-less than a whole day-is just enough to make her want to understand more. Understand everything. But she has no idea where to begin asking, if Sam isn’t willing to help her.
She hits the bottom of the stairs and John Winchester looms into the room. He stops and looks directly at her, and her hand tightens involuntarily on the strap of her bag.
“I heard what you said,” he rumbles, and she stares a little. He’s barely said two words to her since he’s been here. Barely said anything she could understand at all. “To my son, about my son.”
She swallows. Can still hear the sound of his hand connecting with Dean’s face. Can hear the drone of his voice as he chants, as his son thrashes on the floor and promises to kill him.
“I’m sorry,” she says meekly. “I…I just want to, to understand. I didn’t mean to-”
“You can see him,” he interrupts. Jess gapes, words strangling in her throat.
“See him? See who? Dean? I can see Dean?”
He’s already turned away, but he looks back over his shoulder.
“He’s down the hall. Where we took him. There’s a small room. Just a few minutes, though. That’s all.”
And he walks away, leaving Jess gaping after him. She blinks rapidly, clearing the spots of exhaustion from her vision, then before she has time to second-guess herself nearly sprints down the hall, bringing herself up short at a door that’s been left half-open, the only door in the hall.
Cautiously, she pokes her head inside.
The room is small. Probably a converted closet, or storeroom. There’s an old couch and some boxes in a corner, more piles of books, an old vanity, and a dusty mirror.
And Sam’s brother.
He smiles when he sees her. The kind of smile that wants to be flirtatious, but given the circumstances is more a shadow of greater potential. She raps her knuckles lightly on the doorframe.
“Hello,” she offers. “John…your father…he said it was okay.”
Dean clears his throat, tries to push himself up a little on the couch. His arms and hands are bandaged and he’s swathed in an old off-white blanket. His skin is washed out in the soft light. He’s the polar opposite of the man who’d spent hours convulsing and shrieking on the floor, and she notes with some shock that he has freckles. He’s clearly exhausted, but he makes an effort to be approachable.
“It’s fine,” rasps, and grimaces a little, drops his voice to a whisper. “C’mon in.”
She edges through the door, unable to ignore the way he massages his neck.
“I’m Jess. I’m…sort of a friend of Sam’s?”
He nods, tries to offer an encouraging smile. She walks softly, afraid to shatter the almost preternatural stillness of the air in the room. There’s a chair by the makeshift sickbed, and she lowers herself onto it.
“What can I do for you?” he asks, still barely above a whisper, and she smiles. She wouldn’t be able to ask much from him.
“I just…wanted to talk. But…” she pauses. Shakes her head. “I guess maybe I was just worried. I know it’s…” she hangs her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened last night, not really.”
There’s a bowl of half-eaten oatmeal on the table. She looks at it, then back at the wan man on the couch. He catches her gaze, smiles and looks down.
“It looks worse than it is,” he says, and nothing else.
And she doesn’t know what she expected. She can see, now, the bruises on his throat and temple. The split lip, no longer bleeding. His arms, she knows, are bandaged from the damage of straining against his bonds. She imagines his legs are much the same. But he seems content.
“Do you remember what happened?” she blurts, and immediately winces. “Sorry, sorry, I don’t-”
He’s shaking his head, at her apology or in answer to her question she doesn’t know. She bites her lip, forces herself to shut up.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I don’t really know what happened. I’m…it’s okay though. I’ll find out. Da and Sammy’ll tell me.” He seems to understand her distress, and she flushes with it, the shame of her concern for this man she’s never met before. “Everything’s gonna be fine, okay?” He actually reaches out from the blanket cocoon and pats her knee. She resists the urge to laugh because she’s afraid it might turn a little hysterical.
“Jess?” a voice from the doorway asks, and she turns in time to see Sam’s eyes fall on his brother, and his whole face light up. “Dean!”
Dean forces himself up straighter, offers a blinding grin that makes the one he’d given Jess seem even more pathetic than she’d thought. Sam’s across the room in a step and a half, and he’s hauling his brother halfway off the couch into an embrace that makes Jess cringe with its fierceness.
“Nak dah zhur, you asshole,” he whispers, and Jess gets to her feet with a faint smile. She creeps out of the room while Dean is returning his brother’s greeting, his voice an annoyed whisper. She doesn’t understand the words, but she has a pretty good idea of the meaning.
She meets John in the hall. Shoulders her bag and meets his eyes, and makes herself stand up tall. It’s a little startling when he puts out his hand, though, and she’s only able to make herself take it after a heartbeat of awkward silence.
“It was…nice…to meet you,” the big man rumbles. His handshake is firm, but he doesn’t crush her hand in his enormous grip. Instead he rests his other hand over it, and offers the first smile she’s seen on his face since she arrived.
“Things will be okay now?” she dares to ask, and John casts a glance down the hall, to the light spilling out of the little room where Jess left Sam and Dean behind. He nods, as much to himself as to her.
“Things will be fine,” he says.
When she leaves, it’s to drive in the direction of the nearest motel. She’s got Sam’s contact information and she has no intention of letting him off the hook. She’s hoping to get a real interview with Dean, at least or maybe both of them together, and it’d be fantastic if she could meet the Liy ubukn, the absent owner of the house.
Right now though all she wants is a hot shower, a cup of coffee, and someplace quiet where she can go over her notes.
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Thesis [reworked]: The Hunter population has maintained a system of beliefs and practices that strengthens the bond of the nuclear family, now the fundamental unit of the society, in the face of a contemporary civilization and geographic barriers which would otherwise have torn the society and its families apart long ago.
-The End-
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Notes:
I have a bit of a language and culture fetish, so it seemed natural to sort of mash those two together and come up with this. In case you can’t tell I’ve always been one of those people who loves the sound of someone speaking more than one language. Unfortunately the only language I speak besides English is Japanese, which wasn’t very useful in this situation, so I just made some stuff up. But it was fun! It’s easier when there are only a handful of sentences and you don’t have to worry about troublesome things like grammar and sentence structure.
There are two real sources here, and the rest are fictional. It’s been a long time since I wrote an anthro paper so a lot of the terminology just isn’t here, which is just as well because there’s no point in confusing people and anyway Jess is only an undergrad. So she wouldn’t know a lot of it anyway.
Syncretism is a real thing, and you find it in references to a lot of New World religions that combine practices of different cultures. Umbanda, Santeria and Vodou are good examples. I referenced them here mainly because I’d spent some time trying to decide if this was a world where monsters exist or not, and then I realized that was entirely the wrong question to be asking. In the end, that sort of thing just depends on your worldview. Also because I like the idea that hunter practices are syncretic. Real anthropologists may argue with me on this, though.
In the end, this wound up being less dark than I’d originally intended, but that’s okay. The whole ‘no value judgments’ thing is pretty important, actually, and in the end it became more about that than anything else. Which I like. So it worked out.