Old World Shadows - Chapter 3
The Sanford Historical Society building looked very much like every other local museum Sam had seen, complete with an elderly receptionist and a plethora of relatively uninteresting local mementos. While Dean attempted to sweet talk the receptionist into letting them into the back room where the records were kept, Sam strolled around the main room. Suddenly, he stopped dead. “Dean. Come look at this.”
Excusing himself, Dean wandered over. “What is it?”
Sam pointed at an old sepia picture, labeled Sanford School, 1820. “That kid right there,” he jabbed his finger at a boy in the front row, “he’s the boy I saw.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s him; I’m positive.” Sam glanced down at the caption for the photo. “His name is… Nat Keller. And he was in third grade in 1850.”
“He’s our ghost.” Dean turned back toward the front desk. “Give me a minute, and I’ll get Gladys to pull up any records that might have info on him.”
Sam chuckled. “Gladys? You’re on a first name basis already? Don’t you think she’s a little old for you?”
“Shut up. A little flirting gets you right into restricted records.”
“And into old-lady panties…”
From behind his back, where the receptionist couldn’t see it, Dean flipped Sam off.
However much fun it was to poke fun at Dean, Sam had to admit that Dean’s flirting got results. Less than ten minutes later, they were sitting in the microfiche room with a large stack of information from the 1820s, while Gladys continued to comb the shelves for anything else that might be pertinent.
An hour later, Sam had a splitting headache from using the microfiche reader, and he was no closer to finding out what had happened to Nat Keller. Plus, he now knew more than he ever wanted to about the history of logging in Maine and the construction of the first Episcopal church in Sanford. With a heavy sigh, he started in on news reports from 1821.
“Still think this is fun, Sammy?”
Dean sounded about as miserable as Sam felt, but Sam ignored him and kept scrolling. Finally, as his vision started to blur, he caught a glimpse of the name Keller. The text was faded and hard to make out in some sections, but from what he could read, it looked like Nat Keller had died in February of 1821, less than five months after the school picture had been taken. More importantly, Nat had been missing for four days before he was found dead. “Dean - I’ve got something.”
“Thank God; my neck is killing me.” Dean rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “What’d you find?”
“Nat Keller went missing in 1851, before turning up dead. Let’s see… The father, Otto, who found the body, said that Nat had been lost in the woods near the family farm and had frozen to death.” Sam hesitated for a moment as he struggled to make out the final sentence. “It looks like Nat Keller was buried in the family cemetery, which I guess would have been pretty common back then. And get this - Nat was buried alongside his great-grandfather, Klaus Weber.”
“So he was another missing Weber kid. Was he on your list?”
Sam shook his head. “No, but if his family found his body, he was probably never reported as missing. And I wasn’t looking for child deaths, just missing children.”
“Okay, so Nat Keller goes missing, turns up dead, and then comes back as a ghost. Why, though? What reason did he have for sticking around?” Dean leaned back in his chair and groaned. “This means more looking at microfiche, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe not.” Sam shuffled through the pile of discarded microfiche films. “I remember seeing a mention of an Otto Keller before, but I didn’t know he was Nat’s father.” Pulling out a film labeled Journal of Sheriff Evan Weld, he stuck it in the reader and scanned to the relevant section, before pushing it towards Dean. “Here, take a look at this.”
Dean bent over the reader, and Sam watched his lips moving as he deciphered the old text. After a bit, he straightened up, looking disturbed. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That Nat Keller’s death wasn’t an accident?”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them wanted to expand on that, but it had to be said.
“The sheriff's records show his father got locked up a couple times for drunken brawling; maybe Daddy came home drunk one night and hit his kid a little too hard.” Dean visibly cringed as he said it.
Sam ignored the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he finished the thought. “And then he makes the rest of the family swear to keep quiet and takes the boy out into the woods and hides him where he won't be found.” He shivered involuntarily at the horrible picture. “He gets the neighbors to help him look, but he knows they won’t find Nat. And then he supposedly finds the body a few days later, and buries it in the family cemetery, privately, so no one ever knows. That’s cold.”
“It explains why it’s always kids that vanish, though.” Dean shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Nat Keller is making his family pay, both for his death and for their silence.”
That didn’t feel quite right to Sam, though. “Or maybe he’s just trying to let someone know the truth?”
“What do you mean?”
Shrugging, Sam said, “I’m not quite sure, but he didn’t feel like a vengeful spirit to me - more like he was trying to show me something.”
“Either way, his ghost is killing kids, Sam.” Dean gave a tired sigh. “You know what we have to do.”
Sam nodded. “We have to salt and burn his bones.”
***************
The trip out to the Keller family farm was spent in an uneasy silence. It was easy to get used to death - hell, their job generally only started after someone had died - but this was different. Sam wasn’t sure whether it was how young all the victims were, or the terrible theory that seemed to explain everything, but he wanted this case to be over.
Digging up a grave was mind-numbing work, and Sam threw himself into it, concentrating on the flying dirt and his aching muscles rather than on the thought of a father killing his son. At one point Dean tried to lighten the mood with a joke - “Haunted small towns in Maine? Creepy kids? Anyone else getting a Stephen King vibe?” - but Sam ignored him and they went back to digging in silence.
Finally, their shovels hit rotten wood. The small coffin was a simple box, half-disintegrated with age, and they unearthed it carefully. Neither of them wanted to be the one to open it, but after staring each other down, Dean eventually gave in. The nails protested as he pried the top open, and then the coffin was open.
Neither of them spoke. Sam couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to - the bones they’d uncovered were so small, and he felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow that drowned everything else out. After a moment, Dean bent down for a closer look, gently brushing dirt away from the skeleton. His hand paused for a moment on an arm, and again as he touched the side of the skull. When he finally looked up, his face was somber.
“There’s a fracture on the skull, here.” His voice was ever so slightly unsteady, and Sam could tell he was struggling. “And his arm’s broken, too. It looks like he fell into something, hard.”
Sam swallowed slowly, then managed to force words out past the lump in his throat. “It fits. It’s terrible, but it fits.”
Ducking his head, Dean kicked at the dirt. “Sometimes I hate being right.”
Sam reached for the salt. “Let’s just do this and go home.”
***************
The ride back to the motel was almost as bad as the drive to the farm had been. Once in their room, Dean collapsed onto the bed with a beer, while Sam went to scrub off the dirt and try to forget about what they’d found. When he emerged from the bathroom, he found Dean watching the news, his beer forgotten.
“Emily is the fifth child to go missing this month, in a series of events that has even the FBI baffled,” the lady on the screen was saying, as a banner ran across the bottom of the screen with a hotline number and a picture of a young girl floated in the top left corner.
Dean looked up, and quickly filled Sam in. “Another little girl disappeared this evening. After we burned Nat’s bones.”
“What?” Just when Sam was sure this day couldn’t get any worse, it did.
“We must have missed something. That’s the only explanation.”
Sam shook his head. “Maybe Nat’s baby teeth are saved somewhere. But even if they are, we’ll never find them, Dean.” This case was already tearing him apart, and not being able to resolve it… Enough kids had died already; he didn’t want to be responsible for more.
“We’re not giving up. We need to talk to Emily’s parents, show them Nat’s picture, see if they saw him with their daughter.” Dean was already reaching for some clean clothes.
Dean was right; Sam knew that. But it didn’t make talking to grieving parents any easier, and it didn’t make Sam feel any better.
***************
The Judsons’ house was swarming with people from the local sheriff’s department, the state police, and the FBI, along with neighbors and friends. Sam was sure that someone was going to recognize them as fake priests and throw them out, but somehow they made it to Emily’s parents without incident. Dean started in with the standard apologies for their loss and offers of assistance in this difficult time, while Sam queued up a picture of Nat Keller.
When Mr. Judson mentioned seeing a strange boy playing with Emily that very morning, Sam extended his phone with the photo. “Was this the boy you saw?”
Mr. Judson looked confused. “No, definitely not. He was older than that, maybe ten years old. And he had very blond hair, not dark. And we already told the police all that - aren’t you priests supposed to stay out of their way?”
After that, Sam and Dean excused themselves as quickly as possible, only stopping once they were around the corner from the house.
“If it wasn’t Nat…” Dean began, but Sam broke in.
“Then burning those bones did nothing to protect any other kids. We’re missing something important here, Dean. We need to get back into the records, and this time I think we need to refocus on Klaus Weber. He’s still our best connection between the victims.”
Dean nodded in agreement. “It’s pretty late, though - I doubt the historical society will still be open.”
Sam grinned. “Since when has that ever stopped us?”
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Chapter 4