Fic: Grey Ghost(6/7)

[pen37]

Fic: Grey Ghost(6/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: A drowning in a dry swimming pool draw the crew to Long Beach.  Did we mention that the pool was on a haunted cruise ship?
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: pg-13
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7


When Sam and Dean returned to their ship's berth, they found Chloe sitting cross-legged on Sam's bed, and hunched over her laptop.

“Where are Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee?” Dean asked.

“I needed an escape,” Chloe shrugged. “The pot smell was getting to me. Besides, I overheard them speculating on how I would look in the Princess Leia slave girl outfit, and I really couldn't look at them without cracking up after that.”

Dean paused in the doorway, his eyes glazing over. Sam rolled his own eyes, and gave him a push into the room.

“Chloe?” Dean said in a wheedling tone of voice.

“No.” She said shortly.

“But --”

“No, Dean. You might be Han Solo in your own mind - but I gotta draw the line somewhere. Besides, Carrie Fisher reminds me of one of my former editors. And anyway, if we're talking Harrison Ford's leading ladies, I always saw myself more as a Marion Ravenwood type.”

“You know, I'm learning way more about your sex life than I really wanted to know,” Sam said. “Frequently. On a daily basis, even.”

“Tough,” Chloe gave Sam a patient look over her lap top. “I've been the girl that Clark, Lana and Lois have talked to about sex - or lack thereof - since I was eighteen. If I can cope with being Dr. Ruth to Superman, you can deal with a few throwaway comments about plaid skirts and knee socks. So suck it up.”

Dean looked at Sam, and grinned. “Guess she told you.”

“Shut up,” Sam said mildly.

“So what did you guys find out?” Chloe asked.

Briefly, Sam ran down the information that they'd uncovered that day.

“Well, that's coincidental,” Chloe said. “I broke into the tour guide, Chauntel Sanderson's quarters and did some snooping. And you know what I found?”

“What?” Sam asked.

“Adoption papers.” Chloe said. “So it sounds like both Chauntel and Cheryl were abandoned by their parents.”

Sam placed both forearms on the bunk, and stared up at Chloe. “I'm starting to get a clear picture here, and I think I might know what we're dealing with.”

“What?” Dean asked. As he came to stand next to Sam.

“A spirit of a woman in a white dress, drowning abandoned children. Doesn't that sound like La Lorena to you?”

Dean shook his head. “A wailing woman? On a boat?”

“Okay,” Sam nodded. “It's a little different variation than what we're used to, but the key parts of the story are here.”

“I take it you've dealt with a wailing woman before?” Chloe asked.

“A few times,” Dean nodded. “Usually they hang out near roads and attack unfaithful men.”

“But the stories also say that they can haunt bodies of water: rivers and streams.”

“Or Oceans?” Chloe suggested.

“That's what I'm thinking,” Sam nodded. “And in some of the stories, the woman in white isn't just looking for unfaithful men. Sometimes she's looking for her children. And anytime she finds a child, she'll drown it, as well.”

“But these aren't children,” Dean said. “Cheryl was seventeen. And Chauntel was an adult.”

“You know that Ghosts don't really deal in grey areas,” Sam said. “I'll bet if we go through the history of the ship, we might find a story of some abandoned mother somewhere.”

“Easy bet,” Chloe said. “When the war was over, they used this boat to transport European brides - and their kids -- back to America. While most of them had happy endings, a few women got into the country only to find their husbands already married.”

“Sounds like a recipe for a wailing woman to me,” Dean said with a frown. “But why would the woman in white haunt the ship? Shouldn't she be haunting wherever it was she drowned her child?”

“Good question,” Chloe said. “And I think I know where we can find the answer. But you two have gotta wear a suit.”

Dean sighed, and then rolled his eyes. He and Sam both walked to the tiny locker in the corner to retrieve their formal wear. But when he opened the door, he and Sam were buried under a wave of shaving cream.

Dean slipped, and fell into Sam. Sam tried to maintain balance, but quickly fell to the floor.

“The hell?” Dean sat up and wiped shaving cream from his face. He and Sam looked up at Chloe in confusion.

“Gotcha.” She said mildly.

“How did you--” Sam's face twisted as he smacked his lips and then spit out shaving cream.

“Funny thing about cans of shaving cream,” Chloe said mildly. “Did you know that they freeze solid? And once you freeze one, you can cut the can away. When it thaws, it expands.  I figure I probably put four cans in the bottom of that closet. Didn't realize they would fill the whole closet. Good thing I didn't use more.”

“You did this just because we put you on babysitting duty?” Sam asked.

“Yup.”

Dean shook his head. The he slugged Sam in the shoulder. “Told you this would happen.”

Sam gave him an incredulous expression. “You told me that she'd make our locker vomit shaving cream all over us?”

“I told you she was a mastermind.” Dean said.

“Whatever, Dude.” Sam harrumphed.

** *

Chloe and Dean sat in big, plush chairs in the art deco office of the Historical Passages Project. While the director of the project, Mr. Cole Blankenship cross-checked their credentials with Perry White. Dean drummed his fingers repetitively on the arm of the chair, until Chloe reached across the gap, and stilled his hands.

“Nervous much?”

“Sorry,” Dean shrugged. “Places like this make me a little uneasy. There's all this stuff we're not supposed to break.”

“It'll be fine,” She said absently.

Just then Mr. Blankenship walked into the office. “So - Mr. Kent and Ms. Sullivan. You had a question about a specific war-bride crossing?”

“Yes sir,” Chloe said with a smile. “We were actually looking into one of the more unfortunate stories. Young woman, abandoned by her husband. Possibly committed suicide.”

“Oh,” He looked down at his notes. “That wasn't the kind of thing that was talked about back then. You understand.”

“I understand that it's not the image that you want to promote with the hotel,” Chloe pressed. “And I can assure you that we don't plan to print the story. We mainly need it for background research.”

“Ah,” Mr. Blankenship looked at her uncertainly. “I suppose . . . that is to say. I don't see the harm in sharing. Assuming that it's off the record.”

“Completely,” Chloe nodded.

“Well then,” the director nodded. “I think I know the case you're speaking of. It's a sad one. When the war ended, the Queen Mary was pressed into service taking new brides to the U.S. And Canada.”

Chloe nodded.

“And most of the brides were happily-ever-after stories. But a handful weren't. One story in particular was told to me by a handful of crew for this particular voyage: The lady in question was put on the ship bound for Halifax with her baby girl at the last second. During the passage over, she received a telegram from the husband: He'd found a new wife, and was absolving himself of responsibility for the girl and her child.

“The young woman was understandably distraught: She was going to a foreign country with a baby, no means of support and no way to get home. So the story goes, she had an emotional breakdown. During which she threw the child overboard, and then jumped herself.”

“That's terrible,” Chloe breathed softly.

“Did they retrieve the body?” Dean asked.

Mr. Blankenship shook his head slowly. “This was at the tail end of World War II, and there was still concerns that the ship might be sunk. The ship kept moving, and the mother and babe were left behind in the Atlantic.”

Dean and Chloe looked at each other in consternation. Chloe took Mr. Blankenship's hand woodenly in her own, and shook it.

As they walked down the decking of the ship, Chloe looked at him in consternation. “Maybe we can do a cleansing ritual. Like the kind that we did for that paddle boat in Kansas City?”

Dean looked down the length of the ship. “Gonna take a whole hell of a lot of angelica root to cleanse this tub.”

Chloe worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she gazed at him: a sure sign that something was on her mind. He thought again about the expression she wore back in the cafe.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing,”

“I thought I was supposed to be the one who didn't like to share,” Dean said. “Spill it.”

“It's this case. The way that woman's husband abandoned her. If she hadn't rushed into marrying someone she didn't know, she wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place.”

Dean nodded in acknowledgment. “Yeah, it's sad. But we run into stuff like this all the time. Why are you letting this one get to you?”

“I just -What if we're making a mistake?”

“What?” Dean said incredulously. He looked away and clenched his jaw. Then he folded his arms and turned back to her with a closed-off expression. “You mean getting married?”

“I don't know,” She winced. “Maybe?”

Dean raked a hand through his hair. “Chloe, where is this coming from?”

She swallowed, and walked to the railing of the ship. The setting sun gave depths to her luminecent green eyes, gilded her skin golden, and seemed to set her hair aflame. “My parents are still married,” She said quietly. “Dad wouldn't even consider filing for divorce.”

Dean walked up behind her. and placed his arms on the railing on either side of hers. He rested his cheek against her temple, and whispered back to her. “My dad never remarried after mom. Wore his wedding band until the day he died.”

“What if . . . what if we get married. And then you regret it?”

“How could I possibly regret marrying you, Chloe?”

“I don't know if I can have kids, Dean,” She turned in the circle of his arms, and regarded him with serious eyes. “The way my immune system works, we just don't know. And even if I could, they're likely to end up with some kind of weird mutation too.”

Dean brushed her short hair away from her eyes, and smiled at her. “Is that all? In case you haven't noticed, I'm not completely human anymore either. And we don't exactly know what that means.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Dean, I know you want a family.”

He smiled in response, and shook his head. “Someone smart once told me that family are the people who love you even when you aren't very lovable,” he said. “I have a family, Chloe. I have Sam and I have you.”

“Is that enough?” She asked quietly.

“If it's not, then there's a whole world of kids out there who could use a pair of slightly abnormal parents. You okay with that?”

“I . . .” she shut her eyes, swallowed and nodded. When she opened them, it looked like this huge weight had been lifted from her. “Yeah.”

“Good,” he enclosed her in the circle of his arms, and pulled her to him. “No more talk about us not getting married. Okay?”

She smiled in relief, and Dean knew that everything would be fine. “Okay.”

Suddenly, an odd expression crossed her face.

“What?” Dean raised an eyebrow.

She shook her head, and inhaled shakily. Then she gave him a troubled look.

“What's wrong, Chloe?” Dean's eyes narrowed.

She winced, and then leaned forward in a coughing fit.

“Chloe!” Dean pushed her to a standing position, and then yanked her shirt back. Over the tops of her camisole, he could see faint green light outline the pattern of blood vessels in her lungs.

“It's that ghost bitch, isn't it?” Dean asked as he looked around frantically for the spectral shape. “She's trying to drown you, isn't she?”

Chloe leaned forward as another coughing fit wracked her body. She dropped to her hands and knees on the deck, and then fell over onto one side, spitting out flecks of bloody foam.

“Hang on, Chloe.” Dean looked frantically around. Spotting Sir Winston's, one of the restaurants on the ship, he turned and ran.

Dean crashed through the door, startling diners and wait staff alike. All talk in the upscale restaurant halted as the slightly-crazed looking man in the suit and tie looked frantically around the room. He pushed passed a maitre’d, and grabbed a salt shaker off the table.

Then he turned, and ran back to where Chloe was still coughing.

“Hang on, Darlin',” he muttered as he twisted the bottom off the container. He began forming a circle around Chloe's body. “Just hang on. Please.” Before he could complete the circle, Chloe was drug from it.

It was as if some unseen force had seized her by the ankles, and pulled. She went sliding across the deck until she hit the rail.

Then, still coughing, she was pulled to her feet, and backwards over the railing.

“Chloe!” Dean ran for the railing of the ship, and looked over in time to watch as the blonde reporter fell twelve stories and plunged into the dark water below.

Without a second thought, he vaulted over the rail after her.

A/N: This particular ghost story is made up.  As far as I know, there was no war bride who threw her child overboard and then jumped herself.  Although the Queen Mary did transport war brides to America and Canada.