Cabinet of Curiosities, Part Two
R, Gen, see warnings and details here
Back to Part One
Dean drives them to the sort of place Sam thinks Vanessa wouldn't even consider staying in alone. He's a little surprised to see that the flickering sign really does read It'll Do Motel. He had assumed that was a term Vanessa made up.
Well, there's something to be said for truth in advertising.
Vanessa hasn't said a word since Dean told her she was living with a ghost. Now, as Dean goes to see about rooms, Sam turns around so he can see her, sitting in the backseat of the Impala. "You okay?"
Vanessa first nods and then shakes her head.
"It'll be okay," Sam says. "We, Dean and I, we take care of stuff like this."
"Stuff like ghosts?"
"Yeah," Sam says. "It's kind of the family business."
"Oh," Vanessa says. She tries for a smile and manages about half of one. "Well, that makes more sense than traveling plumbers. Sort of."
Dean taps on the window, and Sam opens his door. "Rooms 13 and 14," he says, dangling a pair of keys from his hand.
"There is no way in hell I am sleeping in Room 13 tonight," Vanessa says. "Call me superstitious all y'all want, but there is no way."
They get her settled into Room 14, which connects to Room 13 through an interior door. Vanessa sits down on the edge of the bed further from the door, and looks around. "Very shabby chic," she says. "Without the chic."
She's trying, Sam knows, to be calm about all this, but her voice is shaky and she still looks like . . . well, like someone who just saw a ghost.
Dean pulls a bottle of whiskey from his bag, pours a generous shot into one of the motel's plastic cups, and hands it to Vanessa.
She swallows it in one go, and then grimaces. "That was the worst whiskey I've ever had in my life," she tells Dean.
Dean smiles at her. "Yeah, well, we ain't exactly top shelf guys."
"Yeah, well, that wasn't even middle shelf," she says.
The whiskey might be crappy, but it - or the conversation about it - seems to have done what it was supposed to do. Vanessa has had a moment to collect herself.
Sam sits down opposite her, on the edge of the other bed. Dean leans back against the dresser.
"So, let's talk about this house of yours, Vanessa," Sam says.
"Okay." Vanessa nods and then takes a deep breath. "What about it?"
"Has stuff like that happened before?" Dean asks.
"Yes and no," Vanessa says. "I mean, it's never been that much, but the lights will flicker, and sometimes the power in general, too. There are some odd creaking noises and that sort of thing, but old houses have those, right? Floors settle or something?"
Sam ignores the rationalization she hasn't quite let go of yet, and moves on with his questions. "Has anything else ever fallen over, like the badger did?"
"Once or twice," she says. "But I just figured it was drafts or, I don't know, some raccoon or something got in looking for food."
"Raccoon?" Dean asks.
"Well, it made more sense to me than a ghost," she says. "And to be honest, it still makes more sense to me than a ghost."
"Ghosts and sense very rarely go together," Dean says.
"Anything else?" Sam asks, steering the conversation back onto the topic of Vanessa's house.
"Like what?
"Does it ever get really cold all of a sudden?"
Vanessa thinks for a few seconds before she answers the question. "Sometimes, maybe. But it's not a terribly well insulated house, and I've only lived there a month, and it's winter. So it can be pretty chilly, anyway. So I'm not completely sure."
"Okay," Dean says. "Have you ever found any writing on any of the walls?"
"Writing on the walls?"
Sam and Dean exchange glances. So she didn't see the writing tonight. Sam didn't expect her to have, given how they got her out of the house, but it's good to have it confirmed.
"Yeah, you know," Dean says, keeping the tone light but still business. "Go away, or Sir Haunts-a-lot was here or anything like that?"
"That really happens?" Vanessa asks, and then shakes her head before then can answer. "No. Nothing on the walls."
"Okay. How about apparitions? Things flying across the room? Voices?" Sam asks.
Vanessa doesn't hesitate before she answers this time. "Nothing like that. That I think at that point, I probably would have given up on trying to convince myself it was just typical old house stuff, or a wayward raccoon."
"Yeah, well, that's 'cause you're not an idiot. Anything happen during the day, or is it all after the sun goes down?" Dean asks.
"I think it's all been at night," she says, slowly. "I mean, I've opened cupboards and had mice run out at me during the day, but that's just normal, right? Things like with the lights, and the stuff falling over, that's been in the evenings."
"Mice are probably normal," Sam says. "Anything else? Anything that made you uncomfortable or struck you as weird or that you just couldn't explain?"
Vanessa shakes her head. "I don't think so."
"Okay," Dean says. "We're gonna get this taken care of."
"That's what Sam said. Y'all are, like, the Ghostbusters."
"Except way cooler. And better looking," Dean tells her. "So you don't need to worry."
"I'm not," she says. "Actually, in a weird way, I'm kind of relieved. I mean, I think that I knew something was wrong, I was just trying to convince myself that I was overreacting, and, well . . ."
"'Vanessa being Vanessa?'" Sam asks, using her phrase from earlier.
"Yeah, basically. So now at least I know I'm not just imagining things."
"You're definitely not imagining things," Sam says.
"Are you going be okay in here alone for a few minutes?" Dean asks.
"Yeah, sure. I'll be fine," Vanessa says. She doesn't quite sound like she believes herself, though.
"Just a couple of minutes," Dean says. "Promise." He looks at Sam and then jerks a nod toward the parking lot.
"Hey, Sam?" Vanessa asks, and they both stop. "I'm sorry, I know you have stuff to talk about and we have problems in the here and now, but I have to ask. Was there a ghost at our prom? I mean, the DJ had all that trouble with his equipment and I can still remember what that girl in the mirror looked like and-"
"No," Sam says. "No, I looked into it that night and I didn't find anything. It probably really was just an electrical glitch and the power of suggestion. I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she says. "I just wondered. After everything tonight, you know?"
"Yeah, I know." He smiles at her, just a little. "We'll be right back."
Once the door to the room has closed behind them, Dean says, "Okay, what the hell is all this about ghost at your prom?"
Especially since Vanessa just brought it up, Sam is not surprised when this is Dean's first question. Even though Sam thinks it's hardly the time or the place.
But then, there isn't a time or a place Sam wants to have this conversation.
"There wasn't a ghost at my prom," he says, trying to keep the impatience out of his tone.
"Really? Because that's not what it sounds like."
"There was a ghost story about my prom that one of our friends told. It was like the kind of ghost story somebody makes up at a summer camp, Dean. It didn't hold together, and when I looked into it, I didn't find anything."
"You didn't think that maybe Dad and I needed to know about it?"
Sam gives up on trying to not sound impatient. "Not really, no. There was no ghost, okay? I was there, I did the research. Sometimes, an electrical glitch is just an electrical glitch and a teenaged girl imagines something. Sometimes, there is no case."
"You still should have told us. You could have missed something."
"You really want to do this, Dean? You really want to have a fight about something that didn't happen? Five years ago?"
For a moment, Dean looks like that's exactly what he wants to do. And then he says, "All right, what do we know about your friend's haunted house?"
"Not much," Sam says, relieved to be back to the current haunting. "We know the ghost is mad. And it sounds like it's madder than it's been before, if this is the first significant activity Vanessa has seen."
"So something set it off. And since the only thing that we know of that has changed is you and me showing up -"
"-and since it's using the word harlot -"
"-I'd say it doesn't like Vanessa having guys around." Dean pauses. "Or, you know, it doesn't like that we shoved a snake up her pipe."
"Jesus, Dean, would you can the innuendo for maybe ten minutes?"
Dean holds up both hands. "Hey, I'm talking about plumbing, Sammy. You're the one with his mind in the gutter. But I'm guessing that the ghost is a total prude -"
"-or a jealous type," Sam says.
"Two of my favorite varieties of angry spirit," Dean says. "Where do you want to start?"
"Research, I guess," Sam says. It's where he always starts. It's been his first move when faced with a problem all his life, whether that problem is how to write a paper, kill a ghost, or get into college. "I'll do an internet search tonight, hit the closest library or historical society tomorrow, and see what I can find on the house."
"And if it's not the house? The weird shit she's got in that place, it could be any kind of cursed objected or haunted painting or, hell, she could be running a damn ghost convention center and we could have a dozen of the sons of bitches."
"Then we'll have to go through it all."
"That'll take a month, Sammy."
"What's the alternative?"
"Torch the place," Dean suggests. "Pack it with salt and set it on fire."
"Dean, we are not going to torch the place. Vanessa is responsible for it."
"Well, I didn't really think you'd go for it." Dean looks back toward Room 14. "All right, so you'll hit the books, and I'll start on searching the house. Are you going to take her with you tomorrow? To the library or wherever? Might be safer, if the ghost's after her."
Sam wants to, and not just because it's safer for Vanessa. In light of everything - the flirting and the prom revelations and everything - Sam is far from enthusiastic about leaving Dean and Vanessa alone together for a few hours. But that won't get the problem solved, and it's not the best use of their respective skills or time.
"If the ghost's only active at night, it's probably better if she's with you. Vanessa's not from here, so she's not going to know the local lore. She is going to know at least some of what's in the house," Sam says.
"Yeah. Well, maybe we'll get lucky and you'll find something about the house online tonight."
"Maybe. I'm going to look into her fiancé, too. Make sure he's still alive."
Dean had already been headed back into the motel. Now he stops. "The Walker guy? Why?"
"The ghost got mad when we showed up, knocked over a bride, and wrote harlot on the wall. Seems kind of like jealous boyfriend crap. He could be attached to something she brought with her, rather than something that was already there."
"Nah," Dean says, shaking his head.
"What do you mean, 'nah'?"
"When was the last time you heard someone use the word harlot, Sammy? If it had been slut or maybe even whore, sure. But harlot? You can check, but this ghost is going to be old. Mark my words."
"Did you just say 'mark my words'?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Nothing."
"On this subject," Dean says.
"What subject?"
"Marking words. Are you going to tell her about the harlot thing?"
Sam looks over at the window to her room. "I think we have to," he says. "It could still be there in the morning. It probably will. And we can't just let her walk in and see it."
That would be wrong. And mean.
"Yeah. How do you think she's going to take it?"
Translation: We going to have a hysterical chick on our hands here, Sammy?
Sam shrugs. "Five years ago, I'd have said she was going to freak out. But now? No idea."
"Peachy," Dean says.
"We can tell her in the morning," Sam says. Which gives them a few hours to figure out how.
"Good luck with that," Dean says.
Correction, then. Apparently, that gives Sam a few hours to figure out how.
* * * * *
They have breakfast in a little diner with really good coffee and aspirations of being a café. The clerk in the motel recommended it. Sam waits until the waitress has left their food and refilled all three coffee cups, and then turns his attention to telling Vanessa about the ghost's writing.
People, in times of stress, often lose their grasp on the attitude they want to present to the world and fall back into gut reactions. And Vanessa's reaction last night, when the ghost had made its presence known, had been way more in line with the teenager he remembered flipping out from having seen what she thought was a ghost than it had been like the calm young woman they'd been talking to at dinner minutes before.
So he goes for easing her into telling her about the writing on the wall. It's not condescending or patronizing, or at least, Sam hopes it's neither of those things, but a careful and measured presenting of fact. He plans to explain what this tells them about the ghost, and how they can use it, and -
"Let me get this straight," Vanessa interrupts, setting her coffee down. "Some Casper the Prissy Ghost thinks I'm a slut?"
Dean gives Sam a look to say all yours, dude, but Vanessa doesn't give either of them a chance to respond.
"Well, fuck him," she says. "How do we get him out of my house?"
It was not the reaction Sam had been expecting, but he'll take it. So, apparently, will Dean.
Dean grins. "I like her," he tells Sam, and then turns back to Vanessa. "We figure out why he's still hanging around being an asshole, and then we take care of it."
"You mean like, pass on some final message to a loved one or return a stolen treasure or something?" Vanessa asks.
"No, that's what the Hardy Boys would do. What we're gonna do is destroy whatever's keeping it here."
"Usually it's the physical remains of the person the ghost used to be," Sam says. "If it's the physical remains, it's probably someone who lived and even more probably died in the house."
"Then there are ghosts that are attached to some object. So this ghost could be using something in the house like a genie uses a bottle. Either way, you either destroy whatever's left of the body, or you destroy the thing."
"Something in the house?" Vanessa says, skeptically. "You saw the house, right? The number of somethings in it?"
"Yeah, well, that's going to be a problem. Unless you're okay with burning the whole damn place to the ground. Sammy's got objections to that plan."
Vanessa looks at Sam and they both roll their eyes. The gesture is not lost on Dean. "Figured you'd take his side," he mutters around a mouthful of pancakes.
"Yeah, well, that's 'cause you're not an idiot," Vanessa says. Dean raises an eyebrow at her use of his phrase from the night before, and then laughs.
"So," Vanessa continues, "how do we figure out who it is or what it's attached to or whatever?"
"There's a county historical society. I'll head over there when it opens and see what I can learn about the house, anything like a murder or a suicide that happened there, anyone who died there, any local stories attached to it," Sam says.
"And while Sammy's off doing that, you and I will see what we can find in the house," Dean says.
"Is that safe?"
"Relax, sweetheart. You'll be with an expert."
Sam jumps in with what he hopes will be a more reassuring explanation. "And from what you said, this ghost does its thing at night. You should be okay during the day, and Dean'll know what to do if anything happens. We'll see where we are at sundown."
Vanessa takes a deep breath, and then finishes what's left in her coffee cup. "Let's go ghost hunting, then."
* * * * *
As they drive back to the house, Vanessa tells Sam what little she knows about the history of the place. The original house had been built in the 1840's, by a local family called Moss, big fish in a small town pond. People still call it the Old Moss Place, when she tells them where she was living.
The tower had been added in the 1920's by a grandson, or great-grandson, of the original owners. His name was Henry, and apparently he came back from World War I more than a little crazy. People here - in the post office, the DMV, the grocery store - were all still talking about Henry Moss and his tower. Professor Hudson's aunt and uncle were named Arnold and Delilah Young, and they bought the place from Henry's niece in the late 1960's or early 1970's.
It's not a lot, but it's enough to fake a genealogy inquiry.
The house is quiet, though the front hall looks like a storm blew through and HARLOT is still emblazoned on the wall.
Vanessa, who is wearing the Furman shirt she put on yesterday, goes to take a very quick shower and change clothes. Sam and Dean make a cursory sweep of the rest of the house, but don't find anything.
When they get back to the kitchen, Vanessa is making more coffee. While Sam waits for the Historical Society to open, Dean goes over the ABCs of ghost hunting with Vanessa. Sam would actually love to have a picture of it. There's a chalkboard on the wall in the kitchen and Dean erases Vanessa's shopping list to write his own list of things to look for.
1. Any human remains - bones, hair, teeth, weird organs in jars (don't ask)
2. Weirdass symbols (hoodoo, voodoo, etc.) and inscriptions (Latin, Greek, languages you didn't know existed)
3. Creepy as fuck portraits (especially of little girls)
4. Anything else that looks freaky (it's like porn, you'll know it when you see it)
Sam leaves as Dean is explaining EMF and how to use his homemade, jerry-rigged reader.
Vanessa's ex-fiancé seems to be alive and well in South Carolina, which means finding a story about the house involving something lurid and likely to have caused a haunting is their best hope of getting a quick solution to the problem. In some ways, it's encouraging to know that an apparently crazy person lived there for forty years. Crazy people and ghosts can go together like peanut butter and chocolate.
The county historical society is in the next town over. Sam arrives just after it opens, with an earnest smile and a story about trying to find an ancestor named Lewis Moss, who he thinks might be related to the local Mosses. He is hoping this will be enough to get him pointed to information on the house and left alone.
And it might have been, if he hadn't arrived at the same time as Miss June Moss, a talkative old lady who actually is one of the local Mosses, and who wants to know everything about Sam's "people." Sam is careful not to contradict himself in the creation of his fake family history, because June might be old and little hard of hearing, but she is also clearly sharp as a tack.
On the plus side, there doesn't appear to be anything June doesn't know about the Moss family, or the house, and when he finally escapes after three hours, he has had a very thorough and gossipy history lesson. She spends an hour on Henry Moss alone, including an incredibly detailed account of the morning he was arrested for indecent exposure, when he relieved himself on the tree in front of the First Baptist Church, "and right as Sunday services were letting out."
June reluctantly admits that she doesn't know much about the Youngs, who bought the house from a cousin after Henry Moss died. And now she hears that there's a girl living up there as some kind of caretaker, and June hasn't met her yet, but she's supposed to be a real pretty thing. She writes out directions for him, in case he wants to see the old family home, even though June suspects that Sam is "Moss that grew on a different tree." Sam laughs, because June is clearly waiting for him to, and thanks her, and goes.
It's a fairly typical, if incredibly detailed, small town family history, and Sam doesn't hear anything that sounded especially like it would cause the haunting they have on their hands. He picks up a couple of pizzas on his way back, and follows June's directions, which save a good ten minutes over the route he had taken that morning.
Sam arrives at the Old Moss Place to find what looks like Herman Munster's yard sale. There's a ramshackle pile of oddities on the front lawn: the shrunken head Sam had seen yesterday, four or five prostatic limbs, an English lawyer's wig, some paintings, what he hopes is a wax figure and not an actual corpse of a man dressed like the Phantom of the Opera, and at the very top of the pile, Miss Badgersham in her wedding dress.
"Some wild stuff, isn't it?" Vanessa calls from the porch. She's holding the door open, and a moment later, Dean follows her out of the house, carrying a large box.
It's full of small framed pictures, many showing wreaths, one or two featuring what look like tombs, all worked in golds and browns. At first, Sam thinks it's just some kind of embroidery. And then he looks more closely. "Is that hair?"
"Yep." Dean shudders and adds the box to the pile in the yard.
"It was a memorial practice, especially before photographs were easily taken. Or something you'd do to commemorate someone or something - you might collect hair from everyone in a church, for example, and make a wreath. Hair jewelry was common, too." Vanessa looks into the box. "Some of these are really amazing, and it just kind of breaks my art-history-major heart that we're going to set them on fire."
"They're gross," Dean says. He nods toward the pizza boxes. "Is that lunch?" At Vanessa's amusement over the juxtaposition of these two sentiments, Dean adds, "Freaky ass morning or not, a man's got to eat."
Vanessa takes the boxes from Sam. "I'll go get plates and drinks and stuff," she says. "See y'all inside."
Dean waits until the door has closed behind her. "You find anything?"
Sam shakes his head. "I heard the whole damn history of this house and the Moss family, and nothing. No red flags, no mysterious deaths, no disappearances, no murders, no suicides. If there were a ghost story related to this family, the woman I met this morning would have told it to me. In great and gory detail. I'd say it's something the Youngs brought in. What did you find?"
Dean waves a hand at the pile beside them. "Too much. All this hair crap, a couple of human skulls in a box, a few books that sure as hell don't look like they came from the local library, and my personal favorite, this," Dean says, pulling a huge framed picture from the pile.
It's a portrait of the most sinister and disturbing clown Sam has ever seen, and it's all he can do to keep from shuddering. "Thanks for that," he says, a split second after he should have, if it wasn't bothering him.
Point to Dean, then.
"You're welcome, Sammy." He throws the portrait back onto the pile. "Seriously, man, all this shit comes from three rooms."
Sam looks again at the pile. "That's only three rooms?"
"Well, we made a quick pass through the whole house, but as far as in-depth searching, yeah, just the three rooms."
"Three rooms," Sam says again.
"Yeah. I was really hoping you were going to show up with a murder and a ghost story, dude."
"EMF?"
"All over the place. Kinda useless. House is wired, after all."
"Great," Sam says. "So what's the plan?"
"Go eat lunch," Dean says. "Split up, hit as many rooms as we can hit by four or five o'clock. And then it's bonfire time. And then we'll put salt down around the kitchen and her room, to have a safe space to retreat to, and then we'll see if any ghosts turn up once the sun's down."
"That's our plan? Hope for the best?"
"We have no idea what we're looking for, Sammy. I can ID and burn the most obvious stuff, but without knowing who the hell is haunting this place . . . we need more info, or it's shot in the dark time."
"Yeah," Sam says. "How's Vanessa doing?"
"Good, for an amateur. She doesn't seem too freaked, though I think part of that is that she's mad, but, hey, I'll take mad over scared any day. And she's not giving me too much grief over what we're torching."
The afternoon passes in the same fashion as Dean's description of the morning. They don't come anywhere near to finishing all the rooms - the house is just too big and too full of stuff.
Dean is erring on the side of caution, and that's not a sentence Sam gets to use very often. If it looks like it might be harboring a ghost or, Sam suspects, if Dean just thinks it looks funny, out it goes.
That explains the point he sees added to Dean's list from the morning, written at the bottom of the chalkboard in handwriting that isn't his brother's and therefore must be Vanessa's.
5. Anything Dean says goes, no matter what its cultural, historical, or monetary value is (no exceptions)
Late in the afternoon, Dean appears in the doorway of the room Sam and Vanessa are searching. "Sun's starting to go down," he says.
"Time for the Bonfire of the Inanities?" Vanessa asks.
"The what?" Dean asks.
"Nothing," Vanessa says, and Sam smiles to let her know that he, at least, got the joke.
Out in the yard, Dean throws gasoline on the fire, while Sam throws salt. Dean gives Vanessa the honor of setting the whole pile alight.
Vanessa takes the lighter from him, looks at it for a moment, and then hands it back to him. "I can't. I just . . . I can't."
Dean shrugs, flicks the lighter, and throws it at the badger bride. Miss Badgersham's dress catches fire easily, and of course it would, Sam thinks, it's straight out of the book.
They all watch for a moment, and then Sam asks Vanessa for help laying down the salt lines in her room and the kitchen. They leave Dean to make sure they don't burn down the whole county.
"It bothers you, doesn't it? Burning all that stuff."
"You mean aside from the smell?" she asks.
Sam thinks about letting it go with her joke, but then says, "Yeah, aside from the smell."
Vanessa runs her hand along the edge of the kitchen table for a moment, before she answers. "Not all of it. That clown painting freaked me out. But some of it, yeah. I studied art history, Sam, and some of that stuff is art. And we're burning it on speculation. We don't actually know that any of that is what the ghost is hanging onto. I get that getting attacked by a ghost is worse than burning a couple of hair pictures, but . . . yeah, it bothers me." She gives him a slight smile. "And I feel kind of sorry for poor Miss Badgersham."
"I'm sorry," Sam says.
Vanessa shakes her head, and then says briskly, "Anyway, salt lines? These are to keep the ghost out of my kitchen and my bedroom, right? Both of which I'm very much in favor of, but the way."
"Yeah. And to give us a place to retreat to, if . . ."
"If the problem object isn't in your brother's bonfire?"
"That's the general idea."
"And if whatever we're looking for actually is in the kitchen?"
"Well, then, we can get out and it can't," Sam says. That actually wouldn't be bad. There's a lot less to go through in these two rooms than in the rest of the house.
Odds are hardly in their favor, but weirder things have happened.
Sam would know.
They put salt around her room first, and then the bathroom, before moving to the kitchen.
"So you've been doing this since high school?" Vanessa asks, from the other side of the kitchen.
Sam looks up from the salt line he's putting around the baseboards. "Longer," he says. "All my life, really."
"Why?" Vanessa asks. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm really glad you're here and you know what to do, but . . . why?"
Because someone has to. Because maybe it's the only chance he has to change whatever unknown plan a yellow-eyed demon has for him. Because he tried running, and he couldn't get away from it. Because of Jess. Because of the mother he didn't know. Because of the father he didn't know. Because of his brother.
Because it's the family business.
"Sam?"
"Sorry," he says, wondering how long he let her question hang unanswered. Probably not as long as he thinks he did. He shrugs. "It's just one of those things. You know, if you're a Barrymore, you act. If you're a Manning, you play football. If you're a Winchester, you hunt."
"Simple as that, huh?"
Not even close. "More or less."
"You missed a spot," Dean says, coming into the kitchen and pointing to the far corner.
Sam looks automatically, even though he knows the lines are complete around the perimeter. Dean laughs, and Sam flips him off.
Vanessa shakes her head and mutters, "Boys," before going to the refrigerator and getting three bottles of beer.
Dean pulls one of the chairs out from the table, turns it around, and straddles it. "Game plan time," he says. And, as Vanessa sets one of the beers in front of him, "Thanks."
Sam and Vanessa opt to sit a little more conventionally.
"If we're lucky," Sam says, "whatever the ghost was hanging onto just burned up in the front yard."
"What are the odds that we're lucky?" Vanessa asks.
Sam and Dean exchange looks across the table. It would be nice to be able to assure her that things are taken care of, but hardly honest. And while they might be more than willing to lie, cheat, and con when they need to, there are certain things you have to tell the truth about.
"Hard to say," Dean says. "We just toasted a lot of likely candidates. But this is us we're talking about and, well, luck ain't always on our side, sweetheart."
"All we know about this ghost is that it's here, and it's mad, and . . ." Sam trails off.
"And it thinks I'm a harlot," Vanessa finishes, drily.
"Ghosts have crap taste," Dean says. "And they're assholes."
"Besides, maybe we're wrong, and it thinks Dean is the harlot," Sam adds.
Vanessa gives them both a small smile of thanks.
"So," Sam says, "if we didn't find whatever it is we're looking for, then we need more information. Who the ghost was, namely, which might tell us what it's hanging onto. And then we'll have a better idea of what to look for."
"Which means we're basically waiting for the sun to go down," Dean says. "Since this seems to be a night time only ghost."
"And then we'll try to get the ghost to show itself, or do something else to give itself away," Sam says.
"And how likely is this plan to get us all killed?" Vanessa asks.
"Nothing's going to happen to you," Dean says. "And we're outta here as soon as we have something to go on."
Vanessa nods. "Okay," she says.
But she doesn't really sound okay. Brave, and like she'll be able to handle it, but not okay.
Sam is looking for something reassuring to say when Dean flashes Vanessa a grin. "Would I lie to you?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?" Vanessa asks. But she seems closer to okay, now, at least a little. She stands. "I'm going to go pack some stuff, in case we wind up back at the It'll Do tonight. I think staying there will be slightly more comfortable if I have a change of clothes. And a toothbrush. And stuff like that."
"Make sure you remember that soap that smells like flowers," Dean tells her. "Sammy likes that one." Vanessa laughs and waves off this suggestion as she heads back into her bedroom, stepping carefully over the salt lines on either side of the door before closing it behind her.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Dean and Vanessa are getting along. He remembers Vanessa as getting along with just about everyone it high school. And if there is one group of people Dean has never had any trouble talking to, it's pretty girls. And he left them here all morning to work together. So it's not a surprise. Hell, he knew it would happen.
Sam finds that he resents it a little, anyway. Just a little. And completely irrationally. She's a girl he was kind of friends with five years ago. That's all.
But she was his kind-of-friend, five years ago. Not Dean's.
Dean gets up for another beer, turns to offer Sam one, and stops. "You okay, dude?"
"Yeah," Sam says. "Look, do you think we should go ahead and clear her out? It'd be safer that way. Civilians on hunts and all."
"Yeah," Dean says, "but we don't know if we need her."
"To provoke the ghost, you mean," Sam says. "To use as bait."
"You got another option, here, Sammy, I'd love to hear it. You just want to keep burning piles of random shit till we manage to burn the right thing? She's smart, she'll be with us, and if the thing shows up, she'll be three feet from the kitchen, which should be safe behind the salt. And then it's out the back door and gone." Dean opens his beer. "Besides, I don't think she'd go for it if we tried to make her leave now."
It's fair. And objectively, it makes a lot of sense. But . . .
"I still don't like it," Sam says.
He's waiting for Dean to tell him to chill or call him a girl. But Dean just glances over at the door to Vanessa's room, and then says, "I don't, either."
* * * * *
It's not hard to fill the hour until the sun goes down. They put Vanessa's bag in the trunk of the car, and rake through the ashes of the Bonfire of the Inanities, making sure everything is completely destroyed and the fire is out. They eat what's left of the pizza.
There's not a lot of talk. Vanessa goes to make one last pass through her room, to make sure she's packed everything she wants to have packed. Sam looks at his watch, and looks up to see that something has shifted in his brother's expression. "It's time," Sam says.
"Yeah." Dean stands, and stretches his shoulders and his neck for a moment, then says, "You get the girl, I'll get the guns."
Vanessa doesn't so much as bat an eye about the shotguns, so Sam supposes that was one of the things Dean covered in the ways and means of ghost hunting that morning. And any doubts he had about that vanish when Vanessa lifts an iron fireplace poker from the corner of the front hall. She holds it like a sword. Or rather, she holds it like a girl who has only ever seen swords used in movies thinks she's supposed to hold a sword, at an angle, in front of her chest.
"I'm not really a gun girl," she tells Sam.
"I didn't really have you figured for one," he tells her.
"Now what?" she asks.
"Now we wait," Dean says, moving the curtain to look outside. "Sun's down."
And they wait. Ten minutes tick by on the grandfather clock in the hall, and then fifteen.
"Maybe we got whatever it was that we needed to get," Vanessa says, optimistically.
"One way to find out," Dean says. "Sammy, kiss her."
"What?" Sam says, horrified, and damn it, he can feel himself blushing. "No."
"Fine," Dean says, "then I'll kiss her."
"No," Sam says. He doesn't quite dare look over at Vanessa. Leave it to Dean to reduce him to feeling like a middle schooler at his first dance in the middle of a freakin' hunt.
"Vanessa, why don't you just pinch Sammy's ass and see if we can get this party started," Dean says.
"Dean, would you cut it out?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," Vanessa says. She lowers the fireplace poker, puts one arm around Sam's neck, stands up on her tiptoes and kisses him full on the mouth.
The reaction is instantaneous. The temperature in the hallway plummets, the lights start to flicker, and a plaster statue of an eagle on the hall table launches itself at Sam and Vanessa.
Sam turns them both away, and the eagle smashes into the wall behind them.
"Looks like it's still here," Sam says.
"You think, Einstein?" Dean snaps.
Vanessa's taken one step away from Sam, shifting her grip on the fireplace poker, eyes fixed on the opposite wall. "Um, Sam? Dean?"
Sam turns around. Above the HARLOT, another word is writing itself. R-E-P-
"'Repent'?" Dean says. "Okay, now this thing is just pissing me off."
The lights start to flicker faster, and a wind blows through the room.
"Get her the hell behind the salt," Dean says, bringing his shotgun up, eyes searching the room.
"Come on," Sam says, taking Vanessa's arm just above the elbow to guide her into the safety of the kitchen.
In retrospect, maybe touching her wasn't the greatest idea he could have had in this situation. Or maybe the ghost would have gotten that mad regardless.
It doesn't waste energy on little chairs or statues or badgers this time. It's the grandfather clock that slides fast across the floor toward them.
"Sammy!"
Sam pushes a startled Vanessa out of the way, sending her all but sprawling into the kitchen, and catches the brunt of the clock's force down his right side. The glass over the clock's face and pendulum shatters against his shoulder and hip, and leaves a half dozen cuts on his right hand and newly healed wrist.
He never thought he'd miss that damned cast.
"Sammy?" Dean says, again, though it's an inquiry this time and not a warning.
"I'm okay," he says. "Just kind of stuck here for the moment."
"I fucking hate it when they start throwing furniture around. It's cheating," Dean says, as he pushes the clock over with a splintering crash and a clang of its chimes and weights.
Sam's just glad the ghost stopped with throwing it. More often than not, they follow that up with holding it in place.
Except that having a ghost break off on the middle of an attack isn't always a good thing. Because if you didn't do something to make it stop (and in this case they haven't), then it probably only stopped attacking you because it found something else to do.
Sam looks at the doorway to the kitchen, where Vanessa's stumble across the threshold has broken the salt line.
"Shit," Dean says, just as there's the dull clank and skitter of something metal hitting a tiled floor and skidding, followed by a short scream and then a splash in the kitchen.
"Shit," Dean says again.
The ghost, it seems, has finally materialized. And it has Vanessa by the hair, holding her head under the water in the kitchen sink.
The ghost pulls her head up. Vanessa appears to catch about a half a breath before the ghost shoved her back under the surface of the water.
Dean fires almost before Sam has registered that his own gun is still out in the hall where he dropped it when he got hit by the clock. The ghost flashes out of view, but that doesn't necessarily buy them more than a couple of seconds. Vanessa manages to get her head out of the water, but she's coughing and sputtering and clinging to the edge of the counter.
Sam doesn't come close to reaching the sink before the ghost reappears, pushing Vanessa back into the water.
"Move," Dean yells, and Sam steps out of the path of his shot, still moving toward Vanessa. The ghost vanishes again, but now they're weaponless while Dean reloads.
"Can you walk?" Sam asks Vanessa, and she manages to nod. He puts one arm across her shoulders and starts to guide her to the back door.
The ghost reappears before they've gone five feet, blocking their exit route.
"Not ready," Dean says, still reloading the shotgun.
Sam lets go of Vanessa, reaching for the only thing he can see that might work as a weapon, hanging from the pot rack suspended above them. He swings the cast iron skillet through the ghost and it vanishes for the third time.
"I've got you covered," Dean says. "Go."
Sam drops the skillet, leaving ghost disruption to Dean, and focuses on getting a now fairly dazed-looking Vanessa out of the house. He grabs her shoulder, puts his arm across her back, and half-steers, half-propels her out of the kitchen door and into the side yard. Behind them, Dean fires again, and then once more as he follows them out of the house.
"Let's get out of here," Dean says, because they have no way of knowing that they're safe in the yard, or just how far the ghost can pursue them.
Sam keeps his arm across Vanessa's shoulders, but she's moving under her own power before they reach the Impala, though still coughing up dish water. Sam follows her into the back seat. It's one fewer door to open and close before they can leave. As it is, Dean has the car in motion before Sam gets the door closed behind them.
Vanessa finally stops coughing as they reach the end of the driveway.
"You okay?" Dean asks, looking at her in the rear view mirror.
"I think so," she says. "My throat's a little sore, and I'm soaking wet, and I smell like Palmolive, but I'm okay."
Sam pulls his jacket off, shakes it slightly in the hopes of getting rid of any glass shards, and then hands it to her.
"Thanks."
"Nice move with the frying pan, there, Emeril," Dean says.
Sam resists for a beat, maybe two, before he says, "Bam."
Vanessa laughs, and given what a bad joke it was, Sam is guessing she's more shaken than she's trying to let on. It stops a little short of actually sounding like hysteria, but not by much.
"You sure you're okay?" he asks, as Dean turns back onto the highway.
"I'm close enough," Vanessa says. "Though I definitely like ghosts better when they're figments of my imagination."
Sam smiles at her. "Yeah, I can see that."
"It's less likely to get you half-drowned, at any rate."
They drive in silence for a few minutes, and then Vanessa clears her throat. "Look, I'm just going to go ahead and say it, because someone has to," she says, and then pauses before actually going ahead and saying it.
"That was a fucking nun."
On to Part Three
Back to Part One
Dean drives them to the sort of place Sam thinks Vanessa wouldn't even consider staying in alone. He's a little surprised to see that the flickering sign really does read It'll Do Motel. He had assumed that was a term Vanessa made up.
Well, there's something to be said for truth in advertising.
Vanessa hasn't said a word since Dean told her she was living with a ghost. Now, as Dean goes to see about rooms, Sam turns around so he can see her, sitting in the backseat of the Impala. "You okay?"
Vanessa first nods and then shakes her head.
"It'll be okay," Sam says. "We, Dean and I, we take care of stuff like this."
"Stuff like ghosts?"
"Yeah," Sam says. "It's kind of the family business."
"Oh," Vanessa says. She tries for a smile and manages about half of one. "Well, that makes more sense than traveling plumbers. Sort of."
Dean taps on the window, and Sam opens his door. "Rooms 13 and 14," he says, dangling a pair of keys from his hand.
"There is no way in hell I am sleeping in Room 13 tonight," Vanessa says. "Call me superstitious all y'all want, but there is no way."
They get her settled into Room 14, which connects to Room 13 through an interior door. Vanessa sits down on the edge of the bed further from the door, and looks around. "Very shabby chic," she says. "Without the chic."
She's trying, Sam knows, to be calm about all this, but her voice is shaky and she still looks like . . . well, like someone who just saw a ghost.
Dean pulls a bottle of whiskey from his bag, pours a generous shot into one of the motel's plastic cups, and hands it to Vanessa.
She swallows it in one go, and then grimaces. "That was the worst whiskey I've ever had in my life," she tells Dean.
Dean smiles at her. "Yeah, well, we ain't exactly top shelf guys."
"Yeah, well, that wasn't even middle shelf," she says.
The whiskey might be crappy, but it - or the conversation about it - seems to have done what it was supposed to do. Vanessa has had a moment to collect herself.
Sam sits down opposite her, on the edge of the other bed. Dean leans back against the dresser.
"So, let's talk about this house of yours, Vanessa," Sam says.
"Okay." Vanessa nods and then takes a deep breath. "What about it?"
"Has stuff like that happened before?" Dean asks.
"Yes and no," Vanessa says. "I mean, it's never been that much, but the lights will flicker, and sometimes the power in general, too. There are some odd creaking noises and that sort of thing, but old houses have those, right? Floors settle or something?"
Sam ignores the rationalization she hasn't quite let go of yet, and moves on with his questions. "Has anything else ever fallen over, like the badger did?"
"Once or twice," she says. "But I just figured it was drafts or, I don't know, some raccoon or something got in looking for food."
"Raccoon?" Dean asks.
"Well, it made more sense to me than a ghost," she says. "And to be honest, it still makes more sense to me than a ghost."
"Ghosts and sense very rarely go together," Dean says.
"Anything else?" Sam asks, steering the conversation back onto the topic of Vanessa's house.
"Like what?
"Does it ever get really cold all of a sudden?"
Vanessa thinks for a few seconds before she answers the question. "Sometimes, maybe. But it's not a terribly well insulated house, and I've only lived there a month, and it's winter. So it can be pretty chilly, anyway. So I'm not completely sure."
"Okay," Dean says. "Have you ever found any writing on any of the walls?"
"Writing on the walls?"
Sam and Dean exchange glances. So she didn't see the writing tonight. Sam didn't expect her to have, given how they got her out of the house, but it's good to have it confirmed.
"Yeah, you know," Dean says, keeping the tone light but still business. "Go away, or Sir Haunts-a-lot was here or anything like that?"
"That really happens?" Vanessa asks, and then shakes her head before then can answer. "No. Nothing on the walls."
"Okay. How about apparitions? Things flying across the room? Voices?" Sam asks.
Vanessa doesn't hesitate before she answers this time. "Nothing like that. That I think at that point, I probably would have given up on trying to convince myself it was just typical old house stuff, or a wayward raccoon."
"Yeah, well, that's 'cause you're not an idiot. Anything happen during the day, or is it all after the sun goes down?" Dean asks.
"I think it's all been at night," she says, slowly. "I mean, I've opened cupboards and had mice run out at me during the day, but that's just normal, right? Things like with the lights, and the stuff falling over, that's been in the evenings."
"Mice are probably normal," Sam says. "Anything else? Anything that made you uncomfortable or struck you as weird or that you just couldn't explain?"
Vanessa shakes her head. "I don't think so."
"Okay," Dean says. "We're gonna get this taken care of."
"That's what Sam said. Y'all are, like, the Ghostbusters."
"Except way cooler. And better looking," Dean tells her. "So you don't need to worry."
"I'm not," she says. "Actually, in a weird way, I'm kind of relieved. I mean, I think that I knew something was wrong, I was just trying to convince myself that I was overreacting, and, well . . ."
"'Vanessa being Vanessa?'" Sam asks, using her phrase from earlier.
"Yeah, basically. So now at least I know I'm not just imagining things."
"You're definitely not imagining things," Sam says.
"Are you going be okay in here alone for a few minutes?" Dean asks.
"Yeah, sure. I'll be fine," Vanessa says. She doesn't quite sound like she believes herself, though.
"Just a couple of minutes," Dean says. "Promise." He looks at Sam and then jerks a nod toward the parking lot.
"Hey, Sam?" Vanessa asks, and they both stop. "I'm sorry, I know you have stuff to talk about and we have problems in the here and now, but I have to ask. Was there a ghost at our prom? I mean, the DJ had all that trouble with his equipment and I can still remember what that girl in the mirror looked like and-"
"No," Sam says. "No, I looked into it that night and I didn't find anything. It probably really was just an electrical glitch and the power of suggestion. I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she says. "I just wondered. After everything tonight, you know?"
"Yeah, I know." He smiles at her, just a little. "We'll be right back."
Once the door to the room has closed behind them, Dean says, "Okay, what the hell is all this about ghost at your prom?"
Especially since Vanessa just brought it up, Sam is not surprised when this is Dean's first question. Even though Sam thinks it's hardly the time or the place.
But then, there isn't a time or a place Sam wants to have this conversation.
"There wasn't a ghost at my prom," he says, trying to keep the impatience out of his tone.
"Really? Because that's not what it sounds like."
"There was a ghost story about my prom that one of our friends told. It was like the kind of ghost story somebody makes up at a summer camp, Dean. It didn't hold together, and when I looked into it, I didn't find anything."
"You didn't think that maybe Dad and I needed to know about it?"
Sam gives up on trying to not sound impatient. "Not really, no. There was no ghost, okay? I was there, I did the research. Sometimes, an electrical glitch is just an electrical glitch and a teenaged girl imagines something. Sometimes, there is no case."
"You still should have told us. You could have missed something."
"You really want to do this, Dean? You really want to have a fight about something that didn't happen? Five years ago?"
For a moment, Dean looks like that's exactly what he wants to do. And then he says, "All right, what do we know about your friend's haunted house?"
"Not much," Sam says, relieved to be back to the current haunting. "We know the ghost is mad. And it sounds like it's madder than it's been before, if this is the first significant activity Vanessa has seen."
"So something set it off. And since the only thing that we know of that has changed is you and me showing up -"
"-and since it's using the word harlot -"
"-I'd say it doesn't like Vanessa having guys around." Dean pauses. "Or, you know, it doesn't like that we shoved a snake up her pipe."
"Jesus, Dean, would you can the innuendo for maybe ten minutes?"
Dean holds up both hands. "Hey, I'm talking about plumbing, Sammy. You're the one with his mind in the gutter. But I'm guessing that the ghost is a total prude -"
"-or a jealous type," Sam says.
"Two of my favorite varieties of angry spirit," Dean says. "Where do you want to start?"
"Research, I guess," Sam says. It's where he always starts. It's been his first move when faced with a problem all his life, whether that problem is how to write a paper, kill a ghost, or get into college. "I'll do an internet search tonight, hit the closest library or historical society tomorrow, and see what I can find on the house."
"And if it's not the house? The weird shit she's got in that place, it could be any kind of cursed objected or haunted painting or, hell, she could be running a damn ghost convention center and we could have a dozen of the sons of bitches."
"Then we'll have to go through it all."
"That'll take a month, Sammy."
"What's the alternative?"
"Torch the place," Dean suggests. "Pack it with salt and set it on fire."
"Dean, we are not going to torch the place. Vanessa is responsible for it."
"Well, I didn't really think you'd go for it." Dean looks back toward Room 14. "All right, so you'll hit the books, and I'll start on searching the house. Are you going to take her with you tomorrow? To the library or wherever? Might be safer, if the ghost's after her."
Sam wants to, and not just because it's safer for Vanessa. In light of everything - the flirting and the prom revelations and everything - Sam is far from enthusiastic about leaving Dean and Vanessa alone together for a few hours. But that won't get the problem solved, and it's not the best use of their respective skills or time.
"If the ghost's only active at night, it's probably better if she's with you. Vanessa's not from here, so she's not going to know the local lore. She is going to know at least some of what's in the house," Sam says.
"Yeah. Well, maybe we'll get lucky and you'll find something about the house online tonight."
"Maybe. I'm going to look into her fiancé, too. Make sure he's still alive."
Dean had already been headed back into the motel. Now he stops. "The Walker guy? Why?"
"The ghost got mad when we showed up, knocked over a bride, and wrote harlot on the wall. Seems kind of like jealous boyfriend crap. He could be attached to something she brought with her, rather than something that was already there."
"Nah," Dean says, shaking his head.
"What do you mean, 'nah'?"
"When was the last time you heard someone use the word harlot, Sammy? If it had been slut or maybe even whore, sure. But harlot? You can check, but this ghost is going to be old. Mark my words."
"Did you just say 'mark my words'?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Nothing."
"On this subject," Dean says.
"What subject?"
"Marking words. Are you going to tell her about the harlot thing?"
Sam looks over at the window to her room. "I think we have to," he says. "It could still be there in the morning. It probably will. And we can't just let her walk in and see it."
That would be wrong. And mean.
"Yeah. How do you think she's going to take it?"
Translation: We going to have a hysterical chick on our hands here, Sammy?
Sam shrugs. "Five years ago, I'd have said she was going to freak out. But now? No idea."
"Peachy," Dean says.
"We can tell her in the morning," Sam says. Which gives them a few hours to figure out how.
"Good luck with that," Dean says.
Correction, then. Apparently, that gives Sam a few hours to figure out how.
* * * * *
They have breakfast in a little diner with really good coffee and aspirations of being a café. The clerk in the motel recommended it. Sam waits until the waitress has left their food and refilled all three coffee cups, and then turns his attention to telling Vanessa about the ghost's writing.
People, in times of stress, often lose their grasp on the attitude they want to present to the world and fall back into gut reactions. And Vanessa's reaction last night, when the ghost had made its presence known, had been way more in line with the teenager he remembered flipping out from having seen what she thought was a ghost than it had been like the calm young woman they'd been talking to at dinner minutes before.
So he goes for easing her into telling her about the writing on the wall. It's not condescending or patronizing, or at least, Sam hopes it's neither of those things, but a careful and measured presenting of fact. He plans to explain what this tells them about the ghost, and how they can use it, and -
"Let me get this straight," Vanessa interrupts, setting her coffee down. "Some Casper the Prissy Ghost thinks I'm a slut?"
Dean gives Sam a look to say all yours, dude, but Vanessa doesn't give either of them a chance to respond.
"Well, fuck him," she says. "How do we get him out of my house?"
It was not the reaction Sam had been expecting, but he'll take it. So, apparently, will Dean.
Dean grins. "I like her," he tells Sam, and then turns back to Vanessa. "We figure out why he's still hanging around being an asshole, and then we take care of it."
"You mean like, pass on some final message to a loved one or return a stolen treasure or something?" Vanessa asks.
"No, that's what the Hardy Boys would do. What we're gonna do is destroy whatever's keeping it here."
"Usually it's the physical remains of the person the ghost used to be," Sam says. "If it's the physical remains, it's probably someone who lived and even more probably died in the house."
"Then there are ghosts that are attached to some object. So this ghost could be using something in the house like a genie uses a bottle. Either way, you either destroy whatever's left of the body, or you destroy the thing."
"Something in the house?" Vanessa says, skeptically. "You saw the house, right? The number of somethings in it?"
"Yeah, well, that's going to be a problem. Unless you're okay with burning the whole damn place to the ground. Sammy's got objections to that plan."
Vanessa looks at Sam and they both roll their eyes. The gesture is not lost on Dean. "Figured you'd take his side," he mutters around a mouthful of pancakes.
"Yeah, well, that's 'cause you're not an idiot," Vanessa says. Dean raises an eyebrow at her use of his phrase from the night before, and then laughs.
"So," Vanessa continues, "how do we figure out who it is or what it's attached to or whatever?"
"There's a county historical society. I'll head over there when it opens and see what I can learn about the house, anything like a murder or a suicide that happened there, anyone who died there, any local stories attached to it," Sam says.
"And while Sammy's off doing that, you and I will see what we can find in the house," Dean says.
"Is that safe?"
"Relax, sweetheart. You'll be with an expert."
Sam jumps in with what he hopes will be a more reassuring explanation. "And from what you said, this ghost does its thing at night. You should be okay during the day, and Dean'll know what to do if anything happens. We'll see where we are at sundown."
Vanessa takes a deep breath, and then finishes what's left in her coffee cup. "Let's go ghost hunting, then."
* * * * *
As they drive back to the house, Vanessa tells Sam what little she knows about the history of the place. The original house had been built in the 1840's, by a local family called Moss, big fish in a small town pond. People still call it the Old Moss Place, when she tells them where she was living.
The tower had been added in the 1920's by a grandson, or great-grandson, of the original owners. His name was Henry, and apparently he came back from World War I more than a little crazy. People here - in the post office, the DMV, the grocery store - were all still talking about Henry Moss and his tower. Professor Hudson's aunt and uncle were named Arnold and Delilah Young, and they bought the place from Henry's niece in the late 1960's or early 1970's.
It's not a lot, but it's enough to fake a genealogy inquiry.
The house is quiet, though the front hall looks like a storm blew through and HARLOT is still emblazoned on the wall.
Vanessa, who is wearing the Furman shirt she put on yesterday, goes to take a very quick shower and change clothes. Sam and Dean make a cursory sweep of the rest of the house, but don't find anything.
When they get back to the kitchen, Vanessa is making more coffee. While Sam waits for the Historical Society to open, Dean goes over the ABCs of ghost hunting with Vanessa. Sam would actually love to have a picture of it. There's a chalkboard on the wall in the kitchen and Dean erases Vanessa's shopping list to write his own list of things to look for.
1. Any human remains - bones, hair, teeth, weird organs in jars (don't ask)
2. Weirdass symbols (hoodoo, voodoo, etc.) and inscriptions (Latin, Greek, languages you didn't know existed)
3. Creepy as fuck portraits (especially of little girls)
4. Anything else that looks freaky (it's like porn, you'll know it when you see it)
Sam leaves as Dean is explaining EMF and how to use his homemade, jerry-rigged reader.
Vanessa's ex-fiancé seems to be alive and well in South Carolina, which means finding a story about the house involving something lurid and likely to have caused a haunting is their best hope of getting a quick solution to the problem. In some ways, it's encouraging to know that an apparently crazy person lived there for forty years. Crazy people and ghosts can go together like peanut butter and chocolate.
The county historical society is in the next town over. Sam arrives just after it opens, with an earnest smile and a story about trying to find an ancestor named Lewis Moss, who he thinks might be related to the local Mosses. He is hoping this will be enough to get him pointed to information on the house and left alone.
And it might have been, if he hadn't arrived at the same time as Miss June Moss, a talkative old lady who actually is one of the local Mosses, and who wants to know everything about Sam's "people." Sam is careful not to contradict himself in the creation of his fake family history, because June might be old and little hard of hearing, but she is also clearly sharp as a tack.
On the plus side, there doesn't appear to be anything June doesn't know about the Moss family, or the house, and when he finally escapes after three hours, he has had a very thorough and gossipy history lesson. She spends an hour on Henry Moss alone, including an incredibly detailed account of the morning he was arrested for indecent exposure, when he relieved himself on the tree in front of the First Baptist Church, "and right as Sunday services were letting out."
June reluctantly admits that she doesn't know much about the Youngs, who bought the house from a cousin after Henry Moss died. And now she hears that there's a girl living up there as some kind of caretaker, and June hasn't met her yet, but she's supposed to be a real pretty thing. She writes out directions for him, in case he wants to see the old family home, even though June suspects that Sam is "Moss that grew on a different tree." Sam laughs, because June is clearly waiting for him to, and thanks her, and goes.
It's a fairly typical, if incredibly detailed, small town family history, and Sam doesn't hear anything that sounded especially like it would cause the haunting they have on their hands. He picks up a couple of pizzas on his way back, and follows June's directions, which save a good ten minutes over the route he had taken that morning.
Sam arrives at the Old Moss Place to find what looks like Herman Munster's yard sale. There's a ramshackle pile of oddities on the front lawn: the shrunken head Sam had seen yesterday, four or five prostatic limbs, an English lawyer's wig, some paintings, what he hopes is a wax figure and not an actual corpse of a man dressed like the Phantom of the Opera, and at the very top of the pile, Miss Badgersham in her wedding dress.
"Some wild stuff, isn't it?" Vanessa calls from the porch. She's holding the door open, and a moment later, Dean follows her out of the house, carrying a large box.
It's full of small framed pictures, many showing wreaths, one or two featuring what look like tombs, all worked in golds and browns. At first, Sam thinks it's just some kind of embroidery. And then he looks more closely. "Is that hair?"
"Yep." Dean shudders and adds the box to the pile in the yard.
"It was a memorial practice, especially before photographs were easily taken. Or something you'd do to commemorate someone or something - you might collect hair from everyone in a church, for example, and make a wreath. Hair jewelry was common, too." Vanessa looks into the box. "Some of these are really amazing, and it just kind of breaks my art-history-major heart that we're going to set them on fire."
"They're gross," Dean says. He nods toward the pizza boxes. "Is that lunch?" At Vanessa's amusement over the juxtaposition of these two sentiments, Dean adds, "Freaky ass morning or not, a man's got to eat."
Vanessa takes the boxes from Sam. "I'll go get plates and drinks and stuff," she says. "See y'all inside."
Dean waits until the door has closed behind her. "You find anything?"
Sam shakes his head. "I heard the whole damn history of this house and the Moss family, and nothing. No red flags, no mysterious deaths, no disappearances, no murders, no suicides. If there were a ghost story related to this family, the woman I met this morning would have told it to me. In great and gory detail. I'd say it's something the Youngs brought in. What did you find?"
Dean waves a hand at the pile beside them. "Too much. All this hair crap, a couple of human skulls in a box, a few books that sure as hell don't look like they came from the local library, and my personal favorite, this," Dean says, pulling a huge framed picture from the pile.
It's a portrait of the most sinister and disturbing clown Sam has ever seen, and it's all he can do to keep from shuddering. "Thanks for that," he says, a split second after he should have, if it wasn't bothering him.
Point to Dean, then.
"You're welcome, Sammy." He throws the portrait back onto the pile. "Seriously, man, all this shit comes from three rooms."
Sam looks again at the pile. "That's only three rooms?"
"Well, we made a quick pass through the whole house, but as far as in-depth searching, yeah, just the three rooms."
"Three rooms," Sam says again.
"Yeah. I was really hoping you were going to show up with a murder and a ghost story, dude."
"EMF?"
"All over the place. Kinda useless. House is wired, after all."
"Great," Sam says. "So what's the plan?"
"Go eat lunch," Dean says. "Split up, hit as many rooms as we can hit by four or five o'clock. And then it's bonfire time. And then we'll put salt down around the kitchen and her room, to have a safe space to retreat to, and then we'll see if any ghosts turn up once the sun's down."
"That's our plan? Hope for the best?"
"We have no idea what we're looking for, Sammy. I can ID and burn the most obvious stuff, but without knowing who the hell is haunting this place . . . we need more info, or it's shot in the dark time."
"Yeah," Sam says. "How's Vanessa doing?"
"Good, for an amateur. She doesn't seem too freaked, though I think part of that is that she's mad, but, hey, I'll take mad over scared any day. And she's not giving me too much grief over what we're torching."
The afternoon passes in the same fashion as Dean's description of the morning. They don't come anywhere near to finishing all the rooms - the house is just too big and too full of stuff.
Dean is erring on the side of caution, and that's not a sentence Sam gets to use very often. If it looks like it might be harboring a ghost or, Sam suspects, if Dean just thinks it looks funny, out it goes.
That explains the point he sees added to Dean's list from the morning, written at the bottom of the chalkboard in handwriting that isn't his brother's and therefore must be Vanessa's.
5. Anything Dean says goes, no matter what its cultural, historical, or monetary value is (no exceptions)
Late in the afternoon, Dean appears in the doorway of the room Sam and Vanessa are searching. "Sun's starting to go down," he says.
"Time for the Bonfire of the Inanities?" Vanessa asks.
"The what?" Dean asks.
"Nothing," Vanessa says, and Sam smiles to let her know that he, at least, got the joke.
Out in the yard, Dean throws gasoline on the fire, while Sam throws salt. Dean gives Vanessa the honor of setting the whole pile alight.
Vanessa takes the lighter from him, looks at it for a moment, and then hands it back to him. "I can't. I just . . . I can't."
Dean shrugs, flicks the lighter, and throws it at the badger bride. Miss Badgersham's dress catches fire easily, and of course it would, Sam thinks, it's straight out of the book.
They all watch for a moment, and then Sam asks Vanessa for help laying down the salt lines in her room and the kitchen. They leave Dean to make sure they don't burn down the whole county.
"It bothers you, doesn't it? Burning all that stuff."
"You mean aside from the smell?" she asks.
Sam thinks about letting it go with her joke, but then says, "Yeah, aside from the smell."
Vanessa runs her hand along the edge of the kitchen table for a moment, before she answers. "Not all of it. That clown painting freaked me out. But some of it, yeah. I studied art history, Sam, and some of that stuff is art. And we're burning it on speculation. We don't actually know that any of that is what the ghost is hanging onto. I get that getting attacked by a ghost is worse than burning a couple of hair pictures, but . . . yeah, it bothers me." She gives him a slight smile. "And I feel kind of sorry for poor Miss Badgersham."
"I'm sorry," Sam says.
Vanessa shakes her head, and then says briskly, "Anyway, salt lines? These are to keep the ghost out of my kitchen and my bedroom, right? Both of which I'm very much in favor of, but the way."
"Yeah. And to give us a place to retreat to, if . . ."
"If the problem object isn't in your brother's bonfire?"
"That's the general idea."
"And if whatever we're looking for actually is in the kitchen?"
"Well, then, we can get out and it can't," Sam says. That actually wouldn't be bad. There's a lot less to go through in these two rooms than in the rest of the house.
Odds are hardly in their favor, but weirder things have happened.
Sam would know.
They put salt around her room first, and then the bathroom, before moving to the kitchen.
"So you've been doing this since high school?" Vanessa asks, from the other side of the kitchen.
Sam looks up from the salt line he's putting around the baseboards. "Longer," he says. "All my life, really."
"Why?" Vanessa asks. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm really glad you're here and you know what to do, but . . . why?"
Because someone has to. Because maybe it's the only chance he has to change whatever unknown plan a yellow-eyed demon has for him. Because he tried running, and he couldn't get away from it. Because of Jess. Because of the mother he didn't know. Because of the father he didn't know. Because of his brother.
Because it's the family business.
"Sam?"
"Sorry," he says, wondering how long he let her question hang unanswered. Probably not as long as he thinks he did. He shrugs. "It's just one of those things. You know, if you're a Barrymore, you act. If you're a Manning, you play football. If you're a Winchester, you hunt."
"Simple as that, huh?"
Not even close. "More or less."
"You missed a spot," Dean says, coming into the kitchen and pointing to the far corner.
Sam looks automatically, even though he knows the lines are complete around the perimeter. Dean laughs, and Sam flips him off.
Vanessa shakes her head and mutters, "Boys," before going to the refrigerator and getting three bottles of beer.
Dean pulls one of the chairs out from the table, turns it around, and straddles it. "Game plan time," he says. And, as Vanessa sets one of the beers in front of him, "Thanks."
Sam and Vanessa opt to sit a little more conventionally.
"If we're lucky," Sam says, "whatever the ghost was hanging onto just burned up in the front yard."
"What are the odds that we're lucky?" Vanessa asks.
Sam and Dean exchange looks across the table. It would be nice to be able to assure her that things are taken care of, but hardly honest. And while they might be more than willing to lie, cheat, and con when they need to, there are certain things you have to tell the truth about.
"Hard to say," Dean says. "We just toasted a lot of likely candidates. But this is us we're talking about and, well, luck ain't always on our side, sweetheart."
"All we know about this ghost is that it's here, and it's mad, and . . ." Sam trails off.
"And it thinks I'm a harlot," Vanessa finishes, drily.
"Ghosts have crap taste," Dean says. "And they're assholes."
"Besides, maybe we're wrong, and it thinks Dean is the harlot," Sam adds.
Vanessa gives them both a small smile of thanks.
"So," Sam says, "if we didn't find whatever it is we're looking for, then we need more information. Who the ghost was, namely, which might tell us what it's hanging onto. And then we'll have a better idea of what to look for."
"Which means we're basically waiting for the sun to go down," Dean says. "Since this seems to be a night time only ghost."
"And then we'll try to get the ghost to show itself, or do something else to give itself away," Sam says.
"And how likely is this plan to get us all killed?" Vanessa asks.
"Nothing's going to happen to you," Dean says. "And we're outta here as soon as we have something to go on."
Vanessa nods. "Okay," she says.
But she doesn't really sound okay. Brave, and like she'll be able to handle it, but not okay.
Sam is looking for something reassuring to say when Dean flashes Vanessa a grin. "Would I lie to you?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?" Vanessa asks. But she seems closer to okay, now, at least a little. She stands. "I'm going to go pack some stuff, in case we wind up back at the It'll Do tonight. I think staying there will be slightly more comfortable if I have a change of clothes. And a toothbrush. And stuff like that."
"Make sure you remember that soap that smells like flowers," Dean tells her. "Sammy likes that one." Vanessa laughs and waves off this suggestion as she heads back into her bedroom, stepping carefully over the salt lines on either side of the door before closing it behind her.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Dean and Vanessa are getting along. He remembers Vanessa as getting along with just about everyone it high school. And if there is one group of people Dean has never had any trouble talking to, it's pretty girls. And he left them here all morning to work together. So it's not a surprise. Hell, he knew it would happen.
Sam finds that he resents it a little, anyway. Just a little. And completely irrationally. She's a girl he was kind of friends with five years ago. That's all.
But she was his kind-of-friend, five years ago. Not Dean's.
Dean gets up for another beer, turns to offer Sam one, and stops. "You okay, dude?"
"Yeah," Sam says. "Look, do you think we should go ahead and clear her out? It'd be safer that way. Civilians on hunts and all."
"Yeah," Dean says, "but we don't know if we need her."
"To provoke the ghost, you mean," Sam says. "To use as bait."
"You got another option, here, Sammy, I'd love to hear it. You just want to keep burning piles of random shit till we manage to burn the right thing? She's smart, she'll be with us, and if the thing shows up, she'll be three feet from the kitchen, which should be safe behind the salt. And then it's out the back door and gone." Dean opens his beer. "Besides, I don't think she'd go for it if we tried to make her leave now."
It's fair. And objectively, it makes a lot of sense. But . . .
"I still don't like it," Sam says.
He's waiting for Dean to tell him to chill or call him a girl. But Dean just glances over at the door to Vanessa's room, and then says, "I don't, either."
* * * * *
It's not hard to fill the hour until the sun goes down. They put Vanessa's bag in the trunk of the car, and rake through the ashes of the Bonfire of the Inanities, making sure everything is completely destroyed and the fire is out. They eat what's left of the pizza.
There's not a lot of talk. Vanessa goes to make one last pass through her room, to make sure she's packed everything she wants to have packed. Sam looks at his watch, and looks up to see that something has shifted in his brother's expression. "It's time," Sam says.
"Yeah." Dean stands, and stretches his shoulders and his neck for a moment, then says, "You get the girl, I'll get the guns."
Vanessa doesn't so much as bat an eye about the shotguns, so Sam supposes that was one of the things Dean covered in the ways and means of ghost hunting that morning. And any doubts he had about that vanish when Vanessa lifts an iron fireplace poker from the corner of the front hall. She holds it like a sword. Or rather, she holds it like a girl who has only ever seen swords used in movies thinks she's supposed to hold a sword, at an angle, in front of her chest.
"I'm not really a gun girl," she tells Sam.
"I didn't really have you figured for one," he tells her.
"Now what?" she asks.
"Now we wait," Dean says, moving the curtain to look outside. "Sun's down."
And they wait. Ten minutes tick by on the grandfather clock in the hall, and then fifteen.
"Maybe we got whatever it was that we needed to get," Vanessa says, optimistically.
"One way to find out," Dean says. "Sammy, kiss her."
"What?" Sam says, horrified, and damn it, he can feel himself blushing. "No."
"Fine," Dean says, "then I'll kiss her."
"No," Sam says. He doesn't quite dare look over at Vanessa. Leave it to Dean to reduce him to feeling like a middle schooler at his first dance in the middle of a freakin' hunt.
"Vanessa, why don't you just pinch Sammy's ass and see if we can get this party started," Dean says.
"Dean, would you cut it out?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," Vanessa says. She lowers the fireplace poker, puts one arm around Sam's neck, stands up on her tiptoes and kisses him full on the mouth.
The reaction is instantaneous. The temperature in the hallway plummets, the lights start to flicker, and a plaster statue of an eagle on the hall table launches itself at Sam and Vanessa.
Sam turns them both away, and the eagle smashes into the wall behind them.
"Looks like it's still here," Sam says.
"You think, Einstein?" Dean snaps.
Vanessa's taken one step away from Sam, shifting her grip on the fireplace poker, eyes fixed on the opposite wall. "Um, Sam? Dean?"
Sam turns around. Above the HARLOT, another word is writing itself. R-E-P-
"'Repent'?" Dean says. "Okay, now this thing is just pissing me off."
The lights start to flicker faster, and a wind blows through the room.
"Get her the hell behind the salt," Dean says, bringing his shotgun up, eyes searching the room.
"Come on," Sam says, taking Vanessa's arm just above the elbow to guide her into the safety of the kitchen.
In retrospect, maybe touching her wasn't the greatest idea he could have had in this situation. Or maybe the ghost would have gotten that mad regardless.
It doesn't waste energy on little chairs or statues or badgers this time. It's the grandfather clock that slides fast across the floor toward them.
"Sammy!"
Sam pushes a startled Vanessa out of the way, sending her all but sprawling into the kitchen, and catches the brunt of the clock's force down his right side. The glass over the clock's face and pendulum shatters against his shoulder and hip, and leaves a half dozen cuts on his right hand and newly healed wrist.
He never thought he'd miss that damned cast.
"Sammy?" Dean says, again, though it's an inquiry this time and not a warning.
"I'm okay," he says. "Just kind of stuck here for the moment."
"I fucking hate it when they start throwing furniture around. It's cheating," Dean says, as he pushes the clock over with a splintering crash and a clang of its chimes and weights.
Sam's just glad the ghost stopped with throwing it. More often than not, they follow that up with holding it in place.
Except that having a ghost break off on the middle of an attack isn't always a good thing. Because if you didn't do something to make it stop (and in this case they haven't), then it probably only stopped attacking you because it found something else to do.
Sam looks at the doorway to the kitchen, where Vanessa's stumble across the threshold has broken the salt line.
"Shit," Dean says, just as there's the dull clank and skitter of something metal hitting a tiled floor and skidding, followed by a short scream and then a splash in the kitchen.
"Shit," Dean says again.
The ghost, it seems, has finally materialized. And it has Vanessa by the hair, holding her head under the water in the kitchen sink.
The ghost pulls her head up. Vanessa appears to catch about a half a breath before the ghost shoved her back under the surface of the water.
Dean fires almost before Sam has registered that his own gun is still out in the hall where he dropped it when he got hit by the clock. The ghost flashes out of view, but that doesn't necessarily buy them more than a couple of seconds. Vanessa manages to get her head out of the water, but she's coughing and sputtering and clinging to the edge of the counter.
Sam doesn't come close to reaching the sink before the ghost reappears, pushing Vanessa back into the water.
"Move," Dean yells, and Sam steps out of the path of his shot, still moving toward Vanessa. The ghost vanishes again, but now they're weaponless while Dean reloads.
"Can you walk?" Sam asks Vanessa, and she manages to nod. He puts one arm across her shoulders and starts to guide her to the back door.
The ghost reappears before they've gone five feet, blocking their exit route.
"Not ready," Dean says, still reloading the shotgun.
Sam lets go of Vanessa, reaching for the only thing he can see that might work as a weapon, hanging from the pot rack suspended above them. He swings the cast iron skillet through the ghost and it vanishes for the third time.
"I've got you covered," Dean says. "Go."
Sam drops the skillet, leaving ghost disruption to Dean, and focuses on getting a now fairly dazed-looking Vanessa out of the house. He grabs her shoulder, puts his arm across her back, and half-steers, half-propels her out of the kitchen door and into the side yard. Behind them, Dean fires again, and then once more as he follows them out of the house.
"Let's get out of here," Dean says, because they have no way of knowing that they're safe in the yard, or just how far the ghost can pursue them.
Sam keeps his arm across Vanessa's shoulders, but she's moving under her own power before they reach the Impala, though still coughing up dish water. Sam follows her into the back seat. It's one fewer door to open and close before they can leave. As it is, Dean has the car in motion before Sam gets the door closed behind them.
Vanessa finally stops coughing as they reach the end of the driveway.
"You okay?" Dean asks, looking at her in the rear view mirror.
"I think so," she says. "My throat's a little sore, and I'm soaking wet, and I smell like Palmolive, but I'm okay."
Sam pulls his jacket off, shakes it slightly in the hopes of getting rid of any glass shards, and then hands it to her.
"Thanks."
"Nice move with the frying pan, there, Emeril," Dean says.
Sam resists for a beat, maybe two, before he says, "Bam."
Vanessa laughs, and given what a bad joke it was, Sam is guessing she's more shaken than she's trying to let on. It stops a little short of actually sounding like hysteria, but not by much.
"You sure you're okay?" he asks, as Dean turns back onto the highway.
"I'm close enough," Vanessa says. "Though I definitely like ghosts better when they're figments of my imagination."
Sam smiles at her. "Yeah, I can see that."
"It's less likely to get you half-drowned, at any rate."
They drive in silence for a few minutes, and then Vanessa clears her throat. "Look, I'm just going to go ahead and say it, because someone has to," she says, and then pauses before actually going ahead and saying it.
"That was a fucking nun."
On to Part Three