The Witches of Salem | Part 1
Title: The Witches of Salem
By: revenant_scribe
Part One:
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-14 | Word Count: 7,247
Salem Massachusetts was not like anything Sam had imagined. He wasn’t certain exactly what he had been expecting, but driving into town felt disappointing.
If he thought about it, he would likely credit his disappointment to the wild way in which the town seemed to have embraced the season. Not that there was anything wrong with Halloween, but Salem had come up so frequently in his high school history classes that to him it seemed a place frozen in time. There was an image in his head of 17th century Salem, complete with wooden gallows and hanged witches; the grinning jack-o’-lanterns, window decals of blob-like ghosts and green-skinned warty crones wearing black pointy hats were incompatible with this picture.
Sam felt a little foolish for expecting to drive the heavily purring Impala through a town lodged somewhere in the 1600s, and he spent the rest of the drive to his motel thinking about Army of Darkness and attempting to imagine how the people of historic Salem would have responded to his sleek, shiny ride.
Salem was perfectly modern, despite how many historic buildings still stood, with women clad in blue jeans, not in heavy dresses, and with people toting cellphones and laptops and plugged into this or that bit of technology. No one was lugging around a torch, and there was no pyre in the center of town, let alone a gallows. There were no witches.
The novelty of the Impala had not faded since his dad had pulled him out of bed on the morning of his seventeenth birthday and into the crisp morning air to stand, still in his pajama bottoms and a thin T-shirt, in the middle of a motel parking lot somewhere in Idaho. John had casually flicked something into the air, which Sam had deftly and unthinkingly caught in one hand. There had only been two keys hanging from a plain key ring. John had removed the keys to the Impala from his dangling jumble of keys that included the ever-present little talisman, and a ribbon, courtesy of Sam’s first ever ritual, imbued with luck and protection, a gift to his father one long-ago Christmas.
Sam remembered standing there, staring dumbly at the keys in his opened palm and thinking, “No way,” and then actually saying aloud, “Dad, no way!”, to which John had laughed and said, “Way.” Sam might have done a little dance, if his dad hadn’t been standing right there but, as it was, he remembered he’d laughed a lot and given his dad a spontaneous hug that had shocked them both before he’d pretty much gone running at the car.
He knew the Impala better than anything; he knew the smell of her, the feel of her, and all the little tricks she played that, John once explained, no mechanic would ever understand. At the time, he hadn’t understood that the roadside car maintenance lessons were John’s way of getting him ready for the day when he’d hand over the keys. If he had known, Sam might have complained a little less.
Along with those keys had come independence. Not long after that day in the parking lot in Idaho, Sam had brought up a possible hunt. The strange bumps and thumps reported from Salem were probably just people with Halloween jitters in a town with a notorious history, but it was worth checking out. John had looked at him and said, “Sounds good, Sammy.” And then, a little later, about the time they’d been marching their bags to their separate vehicles, he had said Sam could handle it, that John trusted him, and that a boy needed some space from his dad sometimes.
There was no doubting the truth in his father’s words, as Sam had been wishing for some independence since he was about thirteen. He hadn’t dared ask anything more, and had simply waved and sped off before John could change his mind. After seventeen years, finally Sam could make his own decisions.
So he drove into Salem, and yeah, maybe it didn’t quite match the impossible expectations that Sam had collected and clumped together into a collage no town could possibly live-up to, but whatever disappointment he felt toward the location was not enough to quell the part of him that was still high on his new found independence. His first ever hunt all on his own.
______________________________
Salem was home to a small museum dedicated to a local legend: three sisters who had been hanged for witchcraft in October of 1693 after some local kids went missing. The unimpressive museum, located in what was supposedly the very house the sisters had inhabited all those years ago, had, over time, acquired some outrageous artifacts that were also attributed to the sisters.
All things considered, the museum had done pretty well for itself, except that, in the past few weeks, there had been an increasing number of peculiar incidents in the area. At first, it had merely been a few benign bumps and thumps which Mr. Cottes, the man who owned and maintained the museum, had heralded as joyfully atmospheric. Of course, then the incidents had escalated, and after the latest one, which had featured looting, followed by a fire that had almost incinerated the entire lot, Mr. Cottes had begun taking the matter more seriously.
He was now considering closing the entire museum down.
Sam had found an article that mentioned the escalating occurrences, as well as the Sanderson legend when he’d been trolling around on the Internet looking for a hunt. Most of the hunts Sam and his dad had faced over the years featured deaths, not disappearances. The sad truth was, a situation had to get that serious before it warranted mention in a newspaper or online article reputable enough to make it worth their while to investigate. This time Sam felt he had the opportunity to bring down the museum’s angry spirit, or perhaps the angry spirits, before they had a chance to cause any real harm.
It hadn’t taken Sam long to complete his research. The incidents had been consistently located in or around the Sanderson museum and there hadn’t been anyone living there prior to it becoming a museum. He supposed the stigma of having once housed witches was enough to keep the demand to live there low. It wasn’t as if it was a particularly choice location, either.
The house had been falling apart and condemned before Mr. Cottes’ great grandfather had picked it up cheap. It had been deeded down to his grandfather and then his mother and Mr. Cottes regarded it with pride as his family’s contribution to the history of Salem. Mostly, though, it was a tourist trap, a place to scare the kids around Halloween.
With no other suspects, Sam had looked into the Sanderson sisters’ history and, with their rather unpleasant and exceedingly public demise, angry spirits wasn’t a far leap; in fact, it was pretty textbook.
The only complication was that following their hanging the townsfolk had burned the bodies of the sisters, assuring that they could never rise again.
Sam set off on his second day in Salem to visit the Sanderson museum, confident that the matter could be resolved as soon as he discovered the object to which the sisters were bound. With any luck, he’d be back on the road by morning, not that he had anything particularly pressing. Still, there was no reason to let the hunt linger just for something to do.
He tried to keep that in mind as he pulled the Impala into a space in the small parking lot, about a three-minute walk from the museum. The autumn air was fresh and tangy with the smell of leaves and earth in a cycle of decay, and there was a crisp breeze that made him adjust the collar of his coat. The sun was still out, though, and it wasn’t so cold that he had to do up his jacket; it was his favorite type of weather.
With his hands in his pockets, along with the iron dagger for added protection, Sam strolled casually along the side of the dark tar road, startling slightly as a black cat dodged a car and bolted right across his path before disappearing into the withered shrubs.
“Jesus,” Sam muttered. “Stupid cat.”
By the tall wooden sign, weatherworn but still legibly announcing that people should ‘Meet here for the tour,’ people had already begun to assemble. The tour was, according to the brochure from the local diner, the ‘only way to see the Sanderson house’.
It also cost ten dollars, which seemed a bit steep. Sam handed over a crinkled bill to a stooped and glowering man who operated the gift shop across the road from the museum.
“Sign here,” the man said, indicating a heavy leather-bound book that lay open on the counter-top. Sam picked up the pen and then winced as the EMF meter he had in his pocket, one ear bud allowing him to track any disturbances, suddenly screeched in his ear.
“Uh,” he said, noticing the unimpressed stare the shopkeeper was giving him and quickly plucked the bud from his ear. “Yeah, sorry.” The man continued to stare as a black cat hopped up onto the counter and then climbed its way to sit on the man’s shoulder. Distracted, Sam signed his name quickly, only realizing that he had scrawled ‘Sam Winchester’ for all to see after the damage had been done. He hoped his writing was too messy to read.
Glancing down at the signature, the man said, “Tour starts in one minute. The next one’s in a half and hour.” Quickly, Sam left the gift shop and crossed the street.
“Heya everyone! Gather on round!” a girl was calling as he stepped up to a steadily growing crowd.
She was outfitted in a dark faded blue dress made of some rough fabric, and wearing a light blue apron. Her blond hair was pulled back in a loose bun with a plain white cap on her head. Sam supposed Mr. Cottes insisted on having his tour guides in period costumes for atmosphere.
She raised her arm and waved it back and forth to get everyone’s attention. “My name is Susannah, and I’ll be conducting your tour through the Sanderson Mill House.”
Susannah had a wonderful opening monologue about the controversy surrounding the Sanderson sisters: they could be described as simple maids living somewhat apart from the townsfolk in the woods in order to tend the mill and make cloth, or as sinister crones with unusually long lives who would steal away and eat the children of the village.
According to the legend, some time in 1693, children had begun disappearing, until finally one of the local farmer’s daughters, Emily Thackeray, vanished, and her brother went to the mill with his friend to retrieve her. When the villagers arrived at the scene, summoned by Dean Thackeray’s friend, they found Emily’s body but no sign of her brother. The villagers hanged the sisters that night, though the Sandersons vowed that they would rise again.
There was enough humor in the guide’s presentation to keep the atmosphere light, and enough gossipy whispered undertones to send shivers of excitement up and down the spines of every tourist. Sam found himself enjoying Susannah’s knack for storytelling and obvious enjoyment of her work. When she motioned them forward to the house, she caught Sam’s eye and gave him a devilish wink.
The Sanderson house was situated on the outskirts of the town, on a small black-tar highway that cut through a dense forest. It was a water mill, though the water that once ran beside it had since become a bubbling swamp; a damp afterthought filled with weeds.
As it required running water to function, the house always stood separate from the rest of the town. Even in its heyday it had still been surrounded by thick forest, with barely a worn path leading up to it, or so Susannah insisted. That isolation, paired with the private nature of the sisters, hadn’t helped the Sandersons when the community turned against them.
“This way,” Susannah encouraged, leading them from the front of the house, up the creaky steps of the porch and through the front door. The mill house was remarkably small, so Sam could understand why the tours were staggered as they were, with the groups kept to a manageable size of no more than eight.
As soon as they entered the house, they encountered a slight traffic jam as the earlier tour had to march single-file to get out the front door as the other group came down from the upstairs, an open space that served as the sisters’ shared bedroom, with a rail that overlooked the main room.
The main floor was clearly the principal living space, with a table and chairs in one corner to designate the kitchen. Though the house was obviously cared for and maintained, the heavy scent of must seeping from the very wood in the walls and floors belied its age. There were wrought-iron wall sconces made to look like candles, but even with the sun angling through the glass of the windows the house still seemed dark and dreary.
Susannah had them crowd around a large cast-iron cauldron hanging in the very center of the room, which was supposedly where the sisters had brewed their evil potions. “But where’s the bathroom?” a little girl, barely taller than Sam’s knee asked with a concerned frown.
“They used an outhouse,” Susannah said, and then added, “Outside,” when the girl didn’t quite seem to understand.
The girl’s mother leaned down to whisper something in her ear, presumably explaining how outhouses worked, that there was no flushing toilet in those days. “Yich,” the girl said.
The girl’s mother flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said to the group, when her daughter’s reaction caused a group of boys around Sam’s age or slightly younger, to begin snickering.
“Not at all,” Susannah dismissed easily.
Against the far wall stood an ancient-looking wooden bookshelf stuffed with tomes and texts that were falling apart, all had bizarre and sinister titles, but some seemed less authentic than others. Sam had returned one of the ear buds to his ear before the tour, but the EMF meter in his pocket was of little help, groaning and beeping so persistently that he’d turned it off within the first three minutes of the tour.
Determining which items were fake and what might have actually belonged to the sisters was more difficult than Sam had initially anticipated. Whoever curated the little museum space had gone to some lengths to make it appear as genuine as possible. The potions cabinet, complete with a human skull and a mason jar filled with rodent bones was, Sam felt confident, entirely faked, but he did not know what to make of a book that was entirely encased in glass and sitting on a pedestal which Susannah brought them over to.
“This,” Susannah said, in a low gleeful tone crouching by the wooden podium she was indicating and raising her arms like a cartoon witch casting a spell. “Is the spell book of Winifred Sanderson. They say it was given to her by the Devil himself, and contains the recipes for her most wicked and sinister spells.” She lowered her voice and almost hummed the last few words.
The book had two coiled snakes on the upper and lower corners, and one snake slithering down the edge of the binding. Thick stitches arched across the cover and there was a bulge surrounded by a metal disc, like an eye that was closed.
“What’s it made out of?” one of the teens asked, peering closely through the glass.
“Human skin,” Susannah said with relish. The boy skittered back a bit, and then immediately tried to look as if he had not been utterly repulsed by the notion. Sam smirked at the guy’s reaction. He may have never encountered such a thing before, but after hunting a skinwalker, who tended to leave its skin in gooey piles of flesh, split fingernails and broken teeth, the book was hardly disturbing. Catching Sam’s smirk, the guy glared but that didn’t faze Sam at all either.
“Over here,” Susannah said, stifling a chuckle at the interplay, “is the Black Flame Candle.”
The candle wasn’t much to look at: it sat on a plain wooden stand, white candle wax streaked through with red in a strange patchwork design. “It’s made from the rendered fat of a hangman,” Susannah continued. “According to the legend, it will raise the dead when it’s lit by a virgin on a Halloween night. Like tonight,” she added brightly, with a dismissing laugh, to appreciative chuckling. Behind him, Sam could hear the group of teenage boys snickering and rolled his eyes.
“What’s a virgin, mummy?” the little girl asked.
“Have you ever tried it?” one of the teens piped up, distracting the little girl, much to her mother’s relief.
“Would you like to be the first?” Susannah offered with a sly grin. The boy turned red and skittered back, his trepidation written plain on her face. His friends nudged him and grinned, but Sam noted that none of them volunteered to light the candle, and, in fact, gave it a wide berth.
The upstairs was not as exciting as the main floor, consisting as it did of three small and uncomfortable looking beds and not much else. There were three large broomsticks tilted against one corner of the wall, belonging, Susannah assured them, to the real Sanderson sisters.
“What did they need three broomsticks for?” asked one of the guys, only to be shoved by his for his stupidity. “For flying, obviously.”
There was a black cat sitting on the corner of the bookshelf as they made their way down the stairs, watching them imperiously from above. Susannah showed them back out the front door and around to the rear of the house, where they stopped by a little stoned garden filled with herbs and plants. She indicated the deadly nightshade and wormwort, as if that were somehow proof of the sisters’ sinister inclinations.
“It is said that the bones of a thousand children are buried within these gardens,” Susannah stated, bending forward a little and toeing curiously at the ground, which made some of the more squeamish tourists glance down at their feet and dance back away from the herbs.
The tour wrapped up where it had begun, just to the side of a wooden sign that read: Sanderson Mill: Come see the Witches’ House for yourself! Susannah gave a dramatic account of the hanging of the Sanderson sisters, which prompted the mother to usher her daughter away quickly, obviously regretting not asking for the recommended age for the tour. Susannah brought her story to a closed by flicking a streamer at a skinny brunette teen and startling a humorously cracking and high-pitched scream from him. Everyone cheered and applauded.
When the group began to wander in the direction of the gift shop, Sam caught Susannah’s eye and the girl smiled at him. “Sticking around?”
He shrugged casually, glancing back at the house. “How much of that stuff is real and how much is thrown in just to scare us tourists?”
Susannah laughed. “Ah, a skeptic, huh?” She perched on the low stone wall by the house and, after a moment, Sam settled beside her. “You know a lot about the legend?”
“Some,” he said. “I thought it was appropriate, considering I’d be passing through town.”
“It is the season for it,” she agreed. “We get a lot of business this time of year. To answer your question, not as much is made up as you’d think. I mean, the potions are bogus, of course, but some of the books, including Winifred’s spell book, and the candle and cauldron, those were theirs. The beds are original as well, though the bedding’s been changed out.”
She smiled broadly at him, clearly proud of the little mill. “Mr. Cottes has done a really good job of keeping the place up. I’m a history student and I have to say, as someone who’s done a lot of work on those particular sisters, there’s a lot more to the rumors than you’d think. Although,” she wrinkled her nose and plucked at her rough blue dress, “no one would have worn whatever this is supposed to be.”
Sam laughed. “I suppose it’s for atmosphere.”
“Well, it’s itchy as all hell.” She rolled her eyes, and then leaned forward as a fluffy black cat pushed through one of the open windows in the house and leapt down onto the path just in front of them.
Sam frowned at it. “You guys have a lot of black cats around here. Is that for atmosphere as well?”
“No,” she said, leaning forward to coax the cat over. “We only keep the one. It’s tradition, really.” When she caught Sam’s frown she smiled. “I must have forgotten to add that to the tour. When Dean Thackeray ran off into the woods after Emily, the little sister he should have been watching, he was never seen again. According to legend, Winifred Sanderson cursed him to live forever as a cat, trapping him for eternity.”
She scooped up the cat into her arms and dropped him onto her lap. “Hey, babe,” she greeted, scratching behind the cat’s long tufted ears. She sighed. “I think that’s the most horrible part of the legend,” she said, softly. “If my little sister were taken like that, when I was supposed to be looking after her. If I couldn’t protect her…I wouldn’t want to spend an entire eternity remembering how I failed her.”
After a moment, the cat relented, ceased its efforts to escape and instead settled into a purring sprawl on her lap. Susannah brightened, a pleased grin breaking across her face as she preened, “He loves me.” From where it was situated on her lap, the cat rumbled. Sam thought the purr was so loud it sounded like the engine of the Impala.
Susannah tipped her head to the side and smirked wryly at Sam as she confided in a mock-whisper, “It might have something to do with the cream I sneak to him on my breaks.”
He laughed, reaching over to scratch the purring feline’s head. “How much of this witch stuff do you actually believe?”
“Well,” she hedged. “It’s history, right? I mean, I’ve done the research, and I can tell you all this legend stuff is founded on actual events. There were three sisters living at the old mill, and they were dragged out and hanged for witchcraft, and there are enough accounts that mention their dying threats that I figure there’s truth in most of the rumors.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “But?”
She chuckled softly. “But,” she said, with emphasis, “I think the Sanderson sisters were just like most of the people who were killed around that time: completely innocent women who someone in the village took a dislike to. I mean, Sarah Sanderson was supposed to be quite beautiful, maybe she was caught having an affair with the baker, and his wife was looking for revenge. Or maybe Winifred, who was supposedly very bright, and was actually a midwife, threatened one of the local doctors.”
“And Mary?”
“I don’t know what Mary could have done,” Susannah admitted. “By all accounts she was very sweet, if a little slow. But that’s another thing,” she continued. “History is fundamentally biased. I mean, there’s a stretch where the town logs and things show that no one had any qualms whatsoever about the Sanderson sisters, and then suddenly they’re being accused of murders and eating babies. It’s complete hysteria. Classic scapegoating.”
From its perch on her lap, the cat whipped its head around, tracking a bird overheard. After a moment, it took-off, bounding into the forest, and Susannah smiled as she watched it go. “Is that really what you wanted to talk about? A bunch of accused witches?”
“Well…” Sam looked a bit sheepish and rubbed the back of his neck. He liked her, and he wouldn’t be averse to spending more time with her, but Sam had trouble when he liked the people he bumped into: it always made it harder to get back onto the road when another hunt beckoned.
The last time he’d dated someone John had given him a talk about keeping things casual, easy, and not getting caught-up with someone who couldn’t ever understand the life they led. It hadn’t stopped Sam from hooking up with a girl, or sometimes a guy, now and again. It was always someone brought close by a hunt, who knew enough of the life that Sam could finally let loose, until inevitably he had to go while they tried to convince him to stay. Hunters were nomads; it was part of the job. The travelling didn’t much bother Sam, except that it continuously prevented him from having something, even just one thing that was completely and entirely normal.
Susannah bumped her shoulder against his. “Maybe I’ll see you around town,” she said. “Sam Winchester.”
“Hey,” Sam said. “How did you…?”
She laughed, bright and full. “You signed the guestbook,” she said, winking.
______________________________
On the drive back to the Bluebird Motel, Sam stopped for dinner at a cramped corner restaurant that had a blue awning and dark wooden chairs with bright yellow cushions. His waitress was tall and thin, with grey-black hair. Upon first glance, she looked as if she might be solemn and strict but she was, in fact, chatty and bubbly.
She took Sam’s order with an assessing glance, brought him a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice even though he asked for small, and, when she set his chicken Caesar salad down on the table, promptly dropped three chocolate chip cookies onto his plate: “A growing boy like you needs to eat more!”
After dinner, Sam flipped open his phone and selected his dad’s number. Despite his support of Sam’s growing independence, John had made it quite clear that he expected his boy to check-in and keep him informed of any developments in the case. While this stipulation was normally one Sam would have disputed, he had felt happy enough to be putting distance between himself and his dad that he’d let it slide. Later he could decide whether or not to comply with John’s order. Like his dad, Sam had quite a facility when it came to bending the truth.
On the sixth ring there was a hiccupping sound and then his father’s familiar rumbling voice, “This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached at the moment. Leave a detailed voicemail and your number, and I’ll return your call.” Sam pulled the car into a parking spot just in front of his room, turned off the engine and slumped back against the seat as he said, “Dad, it’s me. I’m in Salem following that case; pretty sure it’s an angry spirit over at a local museum. I’m going over tonight to take care of it.” He paused, toying with the idea of saying ‘good-bye’ or asking his dad to call back.
Sam ended the call; he had no intention of meeting-up with his father after Salem, and he was almost certain his dad hadn’t intended him to, but after so long traveling with his dad, the sudden independence felt almost overwhelming. That was what the Impala had meant, an acceptance that if they persisted going as they had been, butting heads as Sam pushed for more responsibility and freedom, while his dad fought to maintain his military hierarchy of ‘no questions, just follow orders’, they would have ended up going in separate directions but under much worse conditions. This way, Sam figured, at least his dad was out there, willing to have his back if needed, and the thought wasn’t too stifling.
With a sigh, Sam slipped his phone back into his coat pocket and climbed out of the Impala. Night was already falling over the town, but the Sanderson museum was staying open late in honor of Halloween. Sam had a few more hours to kill before he could count on the old mill being empty.
Taking in a deep long breath of the crisp, chill autumn air, and noting the full globe of the moon that was already creeping its way up into the sky, Sam considered what to do. There was no point in showering, as salt and the smell of ash tended to linger even on the best days, and he had every intention of driving back to the museum to wrap-up the case later that night. Checking his watch as he pulled the motel keys from his pocket, Sam resigned himself to killing a good few hours.
Sprawling out on the bed, Sam ran a steady circuit of the limited television channels that offered no HBO, and absolutely no porn, before settling on a showing of Casper, airing on a family channel that had stretches of commercials for obnoxiously loud children’s toys that bleeped and blinked and moved themselves. The commercials ran for longer stretches than the movie actually played.
Another advantage to his newfound independence, Sam thought as he lay there, was that his dad wasn’t around to insist he spend his time exercising or cleaning his weapons, or sparring. John wasn’t there to monopolize the television either.
Sam set the movie on low, dragged out his laptop and amused himself with Bejeweled when he wasn’t watching the vaguely transparent ghosts, shaped like white twirls of whipping cream, belching green vapor and accosting Bill Pullman with rippling carpets and various household appliances.
When he began to hypothesize about the use of a vacuum cleaner as a weapon against the undead, Sam closed down the laptop and unrolled a soft cloth, occupying himself with thoroughly cleaning out his guns and trying to refrain from relying on Disney for practical knowledge about hunting restless spirits.
He couldn’t imagine what his dad would say if Sam were to casually inquire if he had ever been forced to use a vacuum cleaner as a weapon. Sam made a mental note to perhaps ask Bobby who was more likely not only to have an answer and actually give it, but also to have had experience taking down restless spirits with all sorts of unusual and unconventional weapons.
At ten o’clock, Sam packed a bag with salt and iron, two lighters and a shotgun with salt rounds. He kept a gun tucked into his waistband hidden by his coat, just in case, and then locked his room and headed back to the Impala.
The main streets of Salem were mostly empty, though music emanated from a few nightclubs and he passed more than a few overrun parking lots. As he drove further from the heart of town, he noticed lit jack-o-lanterns and saw costumed teens rushing along the street. He remembered with a start that it was October thirty-first.
Supernatural creatures each had their own habits, some preferring full moons and others no moons at all. Certain creatures only woke at night, and others only the day, but beyond those confines, the supernatural didn’t work on a schedule. Halloween had no meaning to them whatsoever, but Sam couldn’t remember ever having hunted something on October thirty-first before.
He pulled the Impala up to the side of the street, forgoing the walk from the parking lot in favor of convenience; if there was one thing he had learned growing up with his father, it was that it never hurt to be prepared, and having less ground to cover to get to your safe getaway was a necessity.
The black of the Impala made-up for the inconvenience of her bulk, and he did his best to pull far enough into the brush that the car would not be immediately noticeable from the street; it wouldn’t do to have a concerned cop stopping to check out the vehicle and locate its missing driver.
At night, with only a single lamp lighting the foot of the path, the old mill looked eerie, looming ghost-like and ominous over the street. Sam pulled his bag from the trunk and walked to the back of the mill. After stacking a few rocks to make a fire pit and salting the ground just to be safe, he left his bag and, armed with his gun, an iron blade, a set of picklocks and an EMF reader, he crept to the side of the house.
Without any water, the mill wheel was mostly just for display, though it had been mended periodically in order to preserve the house as much as possible. Just above the massive wooden wheel was a window that Sam had noticed during the tour. It had a creaky latch that no one had bothered to fix as it was on the second floor.
The aged mill wheel served as a convenient ladder, with the river dried up, though it was a bit of an awkward stretch from the wheel to the window. Flipping open his switch-blade, Sam carefully opened the window latch, slithering half-way into the room before a dark shadow streaked by and startled him. His body convulsed and twisted until he face-planted onto the second floor of Sanderson House with a clattering bang.
“Jesus Christ!” he swore, startled, then quickly jumped up and prepared to defend himself against whatever spirit had materialized.
Susannah’s legend-has-it cursed black cat sat in front of him, head tilted back, surveying him with dark judging eyes. “Uh,” Sam said, “nice kitty.”
It hissed at him.
Unwilling to be intimidated by a tiny ball of fur, Sam stepped over the thing, ignoring the claws swatting at his leg, and skipped down the stairs, pulling out his EMF meter as he went.
A quick survey of the main floor indicated strong activity, but the book and the candle both gave a significant spike on the EMF. Sam’s chest tightened and his breathing sped up at the proof of supernatural activity. The cat had given him a start, but he was still waiting for the spirit to manifest, was still concerned that it could come at any moment, and the likelihood only increased with each passing moment.
Sam pushed the nervous thrum of adrenaline aside, switching off the meter and stuffing it back in his coat pocket, exchanging it for a set of lock picks.
He made quick work of the glass casing that housed what was purportedly Winifred Sanderson’s evil spell book.
“Okay,” he admitted to himself as he hesitated over the book. “This is actually kind of gross.”
Trying not to think about it being bound in human flesh, or what that strange bulge on the front cover was, he reached forward to pick up the book. Suddenly, four sets of claws latched onto his back, sharp points piercing through his jacket and shirt and pricking at his skin.
The hissing and spitting cat startled him so badly that he reacted without thought, grabbing at whatever had clung to his back and launching it across the room. Sam didn’t spare a moment as he picked up the book, spun on his heels and, snatching the candle as an afterthought, raced back up the stairs and out the window before he could be assaulted again.
Panting, bent over his own knees and attempting to overcome the surge of adrenaline, Sam experienced a moment of guilt when it occurred to him that he had likely just sent Susannah’s cat flying across a room and had possibly hurt it. He glanced back at the house.
Had he known that Sam was considering putting off salting and burning the objects in order to go and check on an animal that he had mistaken for a malevolent spirit, John would have had a choice word or three to say.
It was sheer luck that the spirits hadn’t manifested while he’d been in there. Reminding himself of his priorities, Sam lit a fire in the pit he’d fashioned and picked up the candle from where he’d left it on the ground.
“Wait!” a voice called, sounding somewhat far away, but frantic all the same. Sam twisted around and scanned the woods, concerned that his fire had been spotted from the road despite the shelter provided by the mill. He saw no sign of anyone.
Turning back around, Sam dropped the candle into the flame. The fire sparked and hissed, but the wax of the candle didn’t melt. “Sonofabitch!” the voice shouted again, distinctly male and throaty, and sounding much closer than it had been before.
Sam ignored the shout, his attention captured by the candle that was resting, undamaged, in the center of his fire. Around him, a strange wind picked up and he could see that the wick of the candle was alight, burning with a black flame. “Huh,” he said.
From the direction of the house, a great rumbling and clattering started, surprising him with the sheer volume of the noise and he spun on his heels, watching as green-blue light flickered on, then off, and staccato bursts of blindingly bright light illuminated the sky above the mill like the Aurora Borealis.
The clattering rumble increased in volume, enough that Sam had to cover his ears. Glancing about, he worried that the noise and the light would bring the police.
As suddenly as it had started, it all stopped. The whole house went dark and quiet, but instead of relief it felt like the calm before the storm. Sam had just begun to move toward the mill when the little wooden house began to glow once again, this time with an orange flickering light.
Candles, Sam realized with no small amount of confusion. “What the hell?”
“A virgin lit the fucking candle!” the voice hissed, and it was right on top of him. Sam spun on his heel and tried to see through the darkness, but there was nothing there, not even a faint silhouette in the shadows, and then he was distracted by laughter: sharp and high and cackling with rich delight. Sam shivered.
“You idiot!” the voice was ranting. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Shh!” Sam hissed as he crept closer to the house; there was definitely movement inside of it.
“Don’t go over there!” the voice was saying. “Come over here! God dammit!” Sam peered through a window and froze, unable to process what he was seeing.
The Sanderson Mill was lit not by the electric sconces used during the day, but by candles. A warm fire burned in the hearth, and another flickered beneath the cauldron that sat in the center of the room.
Three women were moving about inside; each in a long dress and brown leather boots laced passed the ankle. They looked as if they had stepped out of a history book about the American settlers, except they did not quite seem like friendly pilgrims.
The tallest of the three had dark curly red hair pinned up loosely on her head, some of it falling down to frame her oval face. The dark redness of her hair brought out the rich green of her dress and made Sam think of Christmas, until he caught sight of her distressingly long nails and all thoughts of festive cheer lodged in his throat.
She had a small heart-shaped mouth, and round eyes hidden behind even rounder spectacles. She paced like a prowling cat, running a hand idly over the old bookcase and across the cluttered desk, only to be jostled from her reverie by another woman, who was in the process of spinning in slow circles about the room.
The second woman had light blond hair hanging passed her shoulders, falling in gentle curls and gleaming, drifting away from her body and fluttering in bright flashes of gold light as she spun. She was beautiful. Sam was momentarily fascinated by the carefree way she leaned her head back, smiling blissfully as she moved, her hands out like a dancer, full of grace in the sheer and unabashed joy of movement. Her dress was a dark red, but it was tattered and Sam was certain that it would have been considered indecent when she had last worn it, which was, he thought with a queasy stomach, back in 1693, apparently.
At the center of the room, standing by the cauldron and peering into its depths was a plumper figure in a plain brown-orange dress, whose black hair twisted into braids that hung heavily on either side of her rounded face. She had a soft smile and wide blue eyes, and Sam was almost charmed by her childlike innocence until she tipped her chin up and said, “Winnie, I smell a child,” with such sharp and disturbing delight that Sam was staggering back from the window and tripping over his own feet before he even realized he was moving.
“Great,” said that disembodied voice.
On the ground with his head still spinning, Sam noted that the voice sounded at about ear-level despite the fact that he was flat on his back. “Now you listen to me,” it said. “Grab the book and lets get out of here.”
Sam tracked the voice to two glowing points of unearthly light hovering just at eye-level in his sprawled position. Then the shadowed figure stepped forward and was illuminated by the fire.
Sam blinked. “You’re a cat.”
“You’re an idiot,” the saucy ball of fur retorted.
“You just talked,” Sam pointed out, helpfully.
“I’m gonna do a hell of a lot more than that if you don’t pick up the goddamned spell book and start running!” The front door of the house creaked open, and the voices of the women became louder as they stepped out side.
Hurriedly, Sam rolled over and grabbed the book as well as his bag, stopping long enough to throw some dirt on the fire as the cat hissed, “Smokey thanks you, now can we just go!” and then they were running in the general direction of the Impala.
“There he is!” shouted the dark haired one, who Sam idly realized must be Mary Sanderson, pointing triumphantly at him as he fled. “I knew I smelled a child!”
“A boy!” Sarah rejoiced, clapping her hands as she danced down the front steps of her home.
Sam pulled open the door of the Impala and tossed in both the bag and the book, pausing just long enough for the cat to leap onto the seat and over onto the passenger’s side. “Shit,” he said, twisting to look back toward the mill. “I forgot the candle.”
“Leave the candle,” the cat snarled.
“What is that dark beast?” the red headed woman asked, squinting through her glasses, as Sam slid behind the wheel and pulled the door closed, cranking the ignition with enough force he almost winced. His dad would kill him if he knew his son was running around leaving potentially dangerous magical items lying around for anyone to find and use. Willfully, he shoved the thought from his mind.
The car purred to life, its lights flashing on and catching the three sisters in its glare. Sam stamped on the gas pedal as the cat shouted, “Go go!” and behind them, growing consistently smaller in the rear-window, the Sanderson sisters screamed.
___________________________________________________
|| END PART ONE >>|
MASTERPOST
By: revenant_scribe
Part One:
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-14 | Word Count: 7,247
Salem Massachusetts was not like anything Sam had imagined. He wasn’t certain exactly what he had been expecting, but driving into town felt disappointing.
If he thought about it, he would likely credit his disappointment to the wild way in which the town seemed to have embraced the season. Not that there was anything wrong with Halloween, but Salem had come up so frequently in his high school history classes that to him it seemed a place frozen in time. There was an image in his head of 17th century Salem, complete with wooden gallows and hanged witches; the grinning jack-o’-lanterns, window decals of blob-like ghosts and green-skinned warty crones wearing black pointy hats were incompatible with this picture.
Sam felt a little foolish for expecting to drive the heavily purring Impala through a town lodged somewhere in the 1600s, and he spent the rest of the drive to his motel thinking about Army of Darkness and attempting to imagine how the people of historic Salem would have responded to his sleek, shiny ride.
Salem was perfectly modern, despite how many historic buildings still stood, with women clad in blue jeans, not in heavy dresses, and with people toting cellphones and laptops and plugged into this or that bit of technology. No one was lugging around a torch, and there was no pyre in the center of town, let alone a gallows. There were no witches.
The novelty of the Impala had not faded since his dad had pulled him out of bed on the morning of his seventeenth birthday and into the crisp morning air to stand, still in his pajama bottoms and a thin T-shirt, in the middle of a motel parking lot somewhere in Idaho. John had casually flicked something into the air, which Sam had deftly and unthinkingly caught in one hand. There had only been two keys hanging from a plain key ring. John had removed the keys to the Impala from his dangling jumble of keys that included the ever-present little talisman, and a ribbon, courtesy of Sam’s first ever ritual, imbued with luck and protection, a gift to his father one long-ago Christmas.
Sam remembered standing there, staring dumbly at the keys in his opened palm and thinking, “No way,” and then actually saying aloud, “Dad, no way!”, to which John had laughed and said, “Way.” Sam might have done a little dance, if his dad hadn’t been standing right there but, as it was, he remembered he’d laughed a lot and given his dad a spontaneous hug that had shocked them both before he’d pretty much gone running at the car.
He knew the Impala better than anything; he knew the smell of her, the feel of her, and all the little tricks she played that, John once explained, no mechanic would ever understand. At the time, he hadn’t understood that the roadside car maintenance lessons were John’s way of getting him ready for the day when he’d hand over the keys. If he had known, Sam might have complained a little less.
Along with those keys had come independence. Not long after that day in the parking lot in Idaho, Sam had brought up a possible hunt. The strange bumps and thumps reported from Salem were probably just people with Halloween jitters in a town with a notorious history, but it was worth checking out. John had looked at him and said, “Sounds good, Sammy.” And then, a little later, about the time they’d been marching their bags to their separate vehicles, he had said Sam could handle it, that John trusted him, and that a boy needed some space from his dad sometimes.
There was no doubting the truth in his father’s words, as Sam had been wishing for some independence since he was about thirteen. He hadn’t dared ask anything more, and had simply waved and sped off before John could change his mind. After seventeen years, finally Sam could make his own decisions.
So he drove into Salem, and yeah, maybe it didn’t quite match the impossible expectations that Sam had collected and clumped together into a collage no town could possibly live-up to, but whatever disappointment he felt toward the location was not enough to quell the part of him that was still high on his new found independence. His first ever hunt all on his own.
______________________________
Salem was home to a small museum dedicated to a local legend: three sisters who had been hanged for witchcraft in October of 1693 after some local kids went missing. The unimpressive museum, located in what was supposedly the very house the sisters had inhabited all those years ago, had, over time, acquired some outrageous artifacts that were also attributed to the sisters.
All things considered, the museum had done pretty well for itself, except that, in the past few weeks, there had been an increasing number of peculiar incidents in the area. At first, it had merely been a few benign bumps and thumps which Mr. Cottes, the man who owned and maintained the museum, had heralded as joyfully atmospheric. Of course, then the incidents had escalated, and after the latest one, which had featured looting, followed by a fire that had almost incinerated the entire lot, Mr. Cottes had begun taking the matter more seriously.
He was now considering closing the entire museum down.
Sam had found an article that mentioned the escalating occurrences, as well as the Sanderson legend when he’d been trolling around on the Internet looking for a hunt. Most of the hunts Sam and his dad had faced over the years featured deaths, not disappearances. The sad truth was, a situation had to get that serious before it warranted mention in a newspaper or online article reputable enough to make it worth their while to investigate. This time Sam felt he had the opportunity to bring down the museum’s angry spirit, or perhaps the angry spirits, before they had a chance to cause any real harm.
It hadn’t taken Sam long to complete his research. The incidents had been consistently located in or around the Sanderson museum and there hadn’t been anyone living there prior to it becoming a museum. He supposed the stigma of having once housed witches was enough to keep the demand to live there low. It wasn’t as if it was a particularly choice location, either.
The house had been falling apart and condemned before Mr. Cottes’ great grandfather had picked it up cheap. It had been deeded down to his grandfather and then his mother and Mr. Cottes regarded it with pride as his family’s contribution to the history of Salem. Mostly, though, it was a tourist trap, a place to scare the kids around Halloween.
With no other suspects, Sam had looked into the Sanderson sisters’ history and, with their rather unpleasant and exceedingly public demise, angry spirits wasn’t a far leap; in fact, it was pretty textbook.
The only complication was that following their hanging the townsfolk had burned the bodies of the sisters, assuring that they could never rise again.
Sam set off on his second day in Salem to visit the Sanderson museum, confident that the matter could be resolved as soon as he discovered the object to which the sisters were bound. With any luck, he’d be back on the road by morning, not that he had anything particularly pressing. Still, there was no reason to let the hunt linger just for something to do.
He tried to keep that in mind as he pulled the Impala into a space in the small parking lot, about a three-minute walk from the museum. The autumn air was fresh and tangy with the smell of leaves and earth in a cycle of decay, and there was a crisp breeze that made him adjust the collar of his coat. The sun was still out, though, and it wasn’t so cold that he had to do up his jacket; it was his favorite type of weather.
With his hands in his pockets, along with the iron dagger for added protection, Sam strolled casually along the side of the dark tar road, startling slightly as a black cat dodged a car and bolted right across his path before disappearing into the withered shrubs.
“Jesus,” Sam muttered. “Stupid cat.”
By the tall wooden sign, weatherworn but still legibly announcing that people should ‘Meet here for the tour,’ people had already begun to assemble. The tour was, according to the brochure from the local diner, the ‘only way to see the Sanderson house’.
It also cost ten dollars, which seemed a bit steep. Sam handed over a crinkled bill to a stooped and glowering man who operated the gift shop across the road from the museum.
“Sign here,” the man said, indicating a heavy leather-bound book that lay open on the counter-top. Sam picked up the pen and then winced as the EMF meter he had in his pocket, one ear bud allowing him to track any disturbances, suddenly screeched in his ear.
“Uh,” he said, noticing the unimpressed stare the shopkeeper was giving him and quickly plucked the bud from his ear. “Yeah, sorry.” The man continued to stare as a black cat hopped up onto the counter and then climbed its way to sit on the man’s shoulder. Distracted, Sam signed his name quickly, only realizing that he had scrawled ‘Sam Winchester’ for all to see after the damage had been done. He hoped his writing was too messy to read.
Glancing down at the signature, the man said, “Tour starts in one minute. The next one’s in a half and hour.” Quickly, Sam left the gift shop and crossed the street.
“Heya everyone! Gather on round!” a girl was calling as he stepped up to a steadily growing crowd.
She was outfitted in a dark faded blue dress made of some rough fabric, and wearing a light blue apron. Her blond hair was pulled back in a loose bun with a plain white cap on her head. Sam supposed Mr. Cottes insisted on having his tour guides in period costumes for atmosphere.
She raised her arm and waved it back and forth to get everyone’s attention. “My name is Susannah, and I’ll be conducting your tour through the Sanderson Mill House.”
Susannah had a wonderful opening monologue about the controversy surrounding the Sanderson sisters: they could be described as simple maids living somewhat apart from the townsfolk in the woods in order to tend the mill and make cloth, or as sinister crones with unusually long lives who would steal away and eat the children of the village.
According to the legend, some time in 1693, children had begun disappearing, until finally one of the local farmer’s daughters, Emily Thackeray, vanished, and her brother went to the mill with his friend to retrieve her. When the villagers arrived at the scene, summoned by Dean Thackeray’s friend, they found Emily’s body but no sign of her brother. The villagers hanged the sisters that night, though the Sandersons vowed that they would rise again.
There was enough humor in the guide’s presentation to keep the atmosphere light, and enough gossipy whispered undertones to send shivers of excitement up and down the spines of every tourist. Sam found himself enjoying Susannah’s knack for storytelling and obvious enjoyment of her work. When she motioned them forward to the house, she caught Sam’s eye and gave him a devilish wink.
The Sanderson house was situated on the outskirts of the town, on a small black-tar highway that cut through a dense forest. It was a water mill, though the water that once ran beside it had since become a bubbling swamp; a damp afterthought filled with weeds.
As it required running water to function, the house always stood separate from the rest of the town. Even in its heyday it had still been surrounded by thick forest, with barely a worn path leading up to it, or so Susannah insisted. That isolation, paired with the private nature of the sisters, hadn’t helped the Sandersons when the community turned against them.
“This way,” Susannah encouraged, leading them from the front of the house, up the creaky steps of the porch and through the front door. The mill house was remarkably small, so Sam could understand why the tours were staggered as they were, with the groups kept to a manageable size of no more than eight.
As soon as they entered the house, they encountered a slight traffic jam as the earlier tour had to march single-file to get out the front door as the other group came down from the upstairs, an open space that served as the sisters’ shared bedroom, with a rail that overlooked the main room.
The main floor was clearly the principal living space, with a table and chairs in one corner to designate the kitchen. Though the house was obviously cared for and maintained, the heavy scent of must seeping from the very wood in the walls and floors belied its age. There were wrought-iron wall sconces made to look like candles, but even with the sun angling through the glass of the windows the house still seemed dark and dreary.
Susannah had them crowd around a large cast-iron cauldron hanging in the very center of the room, which was supposedly where the sisters had brewed their evil potions. “But where’s the bathroom?” a little girl, barely taller than Sam’s knee asked with a concerned frown.
“They used an outhouse,” Susannah said, and then added, “Outside,” when the girl didn’t quite seem to understand.
The girl’s mother leaned down to whisper something in her ear, presumably explaining how outhouses worked, that there was no flushing toilet in those days. “Yich,” the girl said.
The girl’s mother flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said to the group, when her daughter’s reaction caused a group of boys around Sam’s age or slightly younger, to begin snickering.
“Not at all,” Susannah dismissed easily.
Against the far wall stood an ancient-looking wooden bookshelf stuffed with tomes and texts that were falling apart, all had bizarre and sinister titles, but some seemed less authentic than others. Sam had returned one of the ear buds to his ear before the tour, but the EMF meter in his pocket was of little help, groaning and beeping so persistently that he’d turned it off within the first three minutes of the tour.
Determining which items were fake and what might have actually belonged to the sisters was more difficult than Sam had initially anticipated. Whoever curated the little museum space had gone to some lengths to make it appear as genuine as possible. The potions cabinet, complete with a human skull and a mason jar filled with rodent bones was, Sam felt confident, entirely faked, but he did not know what to make of a book that was entirely encased in glass and sitting on a pedestal which Susannah brought them over to.
“This,” Susannah said, in a low gleeful tone crouching by the wooden podium she was indicating and raising her arms like a cartoon witch casting a spell. “Is the spell book of Winifred Sanderson. They say it was given to her by the Devil himself, and contains the recipes for her most wicked and sinister spells.” She lowered her voice and almost hummed the last few words.
The book had two coiled snakes on the upper and lower corners, and one snake slithering down the edge of the binding. Thick stitches arched across the cover and there was a bulge surrounded by a metal disc, like an eye that was closed.
“What’s it made out of?” one of the teens asked, peering closely through the glass.
“Human skin,” Susannah said with relish. The boy skittered back a bit, and then immediately tried to look as if he had not been utterly repulsed by the notion. Sam smirked at the guy’s reaction. He may have never encountered such a thing before, but after hunting a skinwalker, who tended to leave its skin in gooey piles of flesh, split fingernails and broken teeth, the book was hardly disturbing. Catching Sam’s smirk, the guy glared but that didn’t faze Sam at all either.
“Over here,” Susannah said, stifling a chuckle at the interplay, “is the Black Flame Candle.”
The candle wasn’t much to look at: it sat on a plain wooden stand, white candle wax streaked through with red in a strange patchwork design. “It’s made from the rendered fat of a hangman,” Susannah continued. “According to the legend, it will raise the dead when it’s lit by a virgin on a Halloween night. Like tonight,” she added brightly, with a dismissing laugh, to appreciative chuckling. Behind him, Sam could hear the group of teenage boys snickering and rolled his eyes.
“What’s a virgin, mummy?” the little girl asked.
“Have you ever tried it?” one of the teens piped up, distracting the little girl, much to her mother’s relief.
“Would you like to be the first?” Susannah offered with a sly grin. The boy turned red and skittered back, his trepidation written plain on her face. His friends nudged him and grinned, but Sam noted that none of them volunteered to light the candle, and, in fact, gave it a wide berth.
The upstairs was not as exciting as the main floor, consisting as it did of three small and uncomfortable looking beds and not much else. There were three large broomsticks tilted against one corner of the wall, belonging, Susannah assured them, to the real Sanderson sisters.
“What did they need three broomsticks for?” asked one of the guys, only to be shoved by his for his stupidity. “For flying, obviously.”
There was a black cat sitting on the corner of the bookshelf as they made their way down the stairs, watching them imperiously from above. Susannah showed them back out the front door and around to the rear of the house, where they stopped by a little stoned garden filled with herbs and plants. She indicated the deadly nightshade and wormwort, as if that were somehow proof of the sisters’ sinister inclinations.
“It is said that the bones of a thousand children are buried within these gardens,” Susannah stated, bending forward a little and toeing curiously at the ground, which made some of the more squeamish tourists glance down at their feet and dance back away from the herbs.
The tour wrapped up where it had begun, just to the side of a wooden sign that read: Sanderson Mill: Come see the Witches’ House for yourself! Susannah gave a dramatic account of the hanging of the Sanderson sisters, which prompted the mother to usher her daughter away quickly, obviously regretting not asking for the recommended age for the tour. Susannah brought her story to a closed by flicking a streamer at a skinny brunette teen and startling a humorously cracking and high-pitched scream from him. Everyone cheered and applauded.
When the group began to wander in the direction of the gift shop, Sam caught Susannah’s eye and the girl smiled at him. “Sticking around?”
He shrugged casually, glancing back at the house. “How much of that stuff is real and how much is thrown in just to scare us tourists?”
Susannah laughed. “Ah, a skeptic, huh?” She perched on the low stone wall by the house and, after a moment, Sam settled beside her. “You know a lot about the legend?”
“Some,” he said. “I thought it was appropriate, considering I’d be passing through town.”
“It is the season for it,” she agreed. “We get a lot of business this time of year. To answer your question, not as much is made up as you’d think. I mean, the potions are bogus, of course, but some of the books, including Winifred’s spell book, and the candle and cauldron, those were theirs. The beds are original as well, though the bedding’s been changed out.”
She smiled broadly at him, clearly proud of the little mill. “Mr. Cottes has done a really good job of keeping the place up. I’m a history student and I have to say, as someone who’s done a lot of work on those particular sisters, there’s a lot more to the rumors than you’d think. Although,” she wrinkled her nose and plucked at her rough blue dress, “no one would have worn whatever this is supposed to be.”
Sam laughed. “I suppose it’s for atmosphere.”
“Well, it’s itchy as all hell.” She rolled her eyes, and then leaned forward as a fluffy black cat pushed through one of the open windows in the house and leapt down onto the path just in front of them.
Sam frowned at it. “You guys have a lot of black cats around here. Is that for atmosphere as well?”
“No,” she said, leaning forward to coax the cat over. “We only keep the one. It’s tradition, really.” When she caught Sam’s frown she smiled. “I must have forgotten to add that to the tour. When Dean Thackeray ran off into the woods after Emily, the little sister he should have been watching, he was never seen again. According to legend, Winifred Sanderson cursed him to live forever as a cat, trapping him for eternity.”
She scooped up the cat into her arms and dropped him onto her lap. “Hey, babe,” she greeted, scratching behind the cat’s long tufted ears. She sighed. “I think that’s the most horrible part of the legend,” she said, softly. “If my little sister were taken like that, when I was supposed to be looking after her. If I couldn’t protect her…I wouldn’t want to spend an entire eternity remembering how I failed her.”
After a moment, the cat relented, ceased its efforts to escape and instead settled into a purring sprawl on her lap. Susannah brightened, a pleased grin breaking across her face as she preened, “He loves me.” From where it was situated on her lap, the cat rumbled. Sam thought the purr was so loud it sounded like the engine of the Impala.
Susannah tipped her head to the side and smirked wryly at Sam as she confided in a mock-whisper, “It might have something to do with the cream I sneak to him on my breaks.”
He laughed, reaching over to scratch the purring feline’s head. “How much of this witch stuff do you actually believe?”
“Well,” she hedged. “It’s history, right? I mean, I’ve done the research, and I can tell you all this legend stuff is founded on actual events. There were three sisters living at the old mill, and they were dragged out and hanged for witchcraft, and there are enough accounts that mention their dying threats that I figure there’s truth in most of the rumors.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “But?”
She chuckled softly. “But,” she said, with emphasis, “I think the Sanderson sisters were just like most of the people who were killed around that time: completely innocent women who someone in the village took a dislike to. I mean, Sarah Sanderson was supposed to be quite beautiful, maybe she was caught having an affair with the baker, and his wife was looking for revenge. Or maybe Winifred, who was supposedly very bright, and was actually a midwife, threatened one of the local doctors.”
“And Mary?”
“I don’t know what Mary could have done,” Susannah admitted. “By all accounts she was very sweet, if a little slow. But that’s another thing,” she continued. “History is fundamentally biased. I mean, there’s a stretch where the town logs and things show that no one had any qualms whatsoever about the Sanderson sisters, and then suddenly they’re being accused of murders and eating babies. It’s complete hysteria. Classic scapegoating.”
From its perch on her lap, the cat whipped its head around, tracking a bird overheard. After a moment, it took-off, bounding into the forest, and Susannah smiled as she watched it go. “Is that really what you wanted to talk about? A bunch of accused witches?”
“Well…” Sam looked a bit sheepish and rubbed the back of his neck. He liked her, and he wouldn’t be averse to spending more time with her, but Sam had trouble when he liked the people he bumped into: it always made it harder to get back onto the road when another hunt beckoned.
The last time he’d dated someone John had given him a talk about keeping things casual, easy, and not getting caught-up with someone who couldn’t ever understand the life they led. It hadn’t stopped Sam from hooking up with a girl, or sometimes a guy, now and again. It was always someone brought close by a hunt, who knew enough of the life that Sam could finally let loose, until inevitably he had to go while they tried to convince him to stay. Hunters were nomads; it was part of the job. The travelling didn’t much bother Sam, except that it continuously prevented him from having something, even just one thing that was completely and entirely normal.
Susannah bumped her shoulder against his. “Maybe I’ll see you around town,” she said. “Sam Winchester.”
“Hey,” Sam said. “How did you…?”
She laughed, bright and full. “You signed the guestbook,” she said, winking.
______________________________
On the drive back to the Bluebird Motel, Sam stopped for dinner at a cramped corner restaurant that had a blue awning and dark wooden chairs with bright yellow cushions. His waitress was tall and thin, with grey-black hair. Upon first glance, she looked as if she might be solemn and strict but she was, in fact, chatty and bubbly.
She took Sam’s order with an assessing glance, brought him a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice even though he asked for small, and, when she set his chicken Caesar salad down on the table, promptly dropped three chocolate chip cookies onto his plate: “A growing boy like you needs to eat more!”
After dinner, Sam flipped open his phone and selected his dad’s number. Despite his support of Sam’s growing independence, John had made it quite clear that he expected his boy to check-in and keep him informed of any developments in the case. While this stipulation was normally one Sam would have disputed, he had felt happy enough to be putting distance between himself and his dad that he’d let it slide. Later he could decide whether or not to comply with John’s order. Like his dad, Sam had quite a facility when it came to bending the truth.
On the sixth ring there was a hiccupping sound and then his father’s familiar rumbling voice, “This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached at the moment. Leave a detailed voicemail and your number, and I’ll return your call.” Sam pulled the car into a parking spot just in front of his room, turned off the engine and slumped back against the seat as he said, “Dad, it’s me. I’m in Salem following that case; pretty sure it’s an angry spirit over at a local museum. I’m going over tonight to take care of it.” He paused, toying with the idea of saying ‘good-bye’ or asking his dad to call back.
Sam ended the call; he had no intention of meeting-up with his father after Salem, and he was almost certain his dad hadn’t intended him to, but after so long traveling with his dad, the sudden independence felt almost overwhelming. That was what the Impala had meant, an acceptance that if they persisted going as they had been, butting heads as Sam pushed for more responsibility and freedom, while his dad fought to maintain his military hierarchy of ‘no questions, just follow orders’, they would have ended up going in separate directions but under much worse conditions. This way, Sam figured, at least his dad was out there, willing to have his back if needed, and the thought wasn’t too stifling.
With a sigh, Sam slipped his phone back into his coat pocket and climbed out of the Impala. Night was already falling over the town, but the Sanderson museum was staying open late in honor of Halloween. Sam had a few more hours to kill before he could count on the old mill being empty.
Taking in a deep long breath of the crisp, chill autumn air, and noting the full globe of the moon that was already creeping its way up into the sky, Sam considered what to do. There was no point in showering, as salt and the smell of ash tended to linger even on the best days, and he had every intention of driving back to the museum to wrap-up the case later that night. Checking his watch as he pulled the motel keys from his pocket, Sam resigned himself to killing a good few hours.
Sprawling out on the bed, Sam ran a steady circuit of the limited television channels that offered no HBO, and absolutely no porn, before settling on a showing of Casper, airing on a family channel that had stretches of commercials for obnoxiously loud children’s toys that bleeped and blinked and moved themselves. The commercials ran for longer stretches than the movie actually played.
Another advantage to his newfound independence, Sam thought as he lay there, was that his dad wasn’t around to insist he spend his time exercising or cleaning his weapons, or sparring. John wasn’t there to monopolize the television either.
Sam set the movie on low, dragged out his laptop and amused himself with Bejeweled when he wasn’t watching the vaguely transparent ghosts, shaped like white twirls of whipping cream, belching green vapor and accosting Bill Pullman with rippling carpets and various household appliances.
When he began to hypothesize about the use of a vacuum cleaner as a weapon against the undead, Sam closed down the laptop and unrolled a soft cloth, occupying himself with thoroughly cleaning out his guns and trying to refrain from relying on Disney for practical knowledge about hunting restless spirits.
He couldn’t imagine what his dad would say if Sam were to casually inquire if he had ever been forced to use a vacuum cleaner as a weapon. Sam made a mental note to perhaps ask Bobby who was more likely not only to have an answer and actually give it, but also to have had experience taking down restless spirits with all sorts of unusual and unconventional weapons.
At ten o’clock, Sam packed a bag with salt and iron, two lighters and a shotgun with salt rounds. He kept a gun tucked into his waistband hidden by his coat, just in case, and then locked his room and headed back to the Impala.
The main streets of Salem were mostly empty, though music emanated from a few nightclubs and he passed more than a few overrun parking lots. As he drove further from the heart of town, he noticed lit jack-o-lanterns and saw costumed teens rushing along the street. He remembered with a start that it was October thirty-first.
Supernatural creatures each had their own habits, some preferring full moons and others no moons at all. Certain creatures only woke at night, and others only the day, but beyond those confines, the supernatural didn’t work on a schedule. Halloween had no meaning to them whatsoever, but Sam couldn’t remember ever having hunted something on October thirty-first before.
He pulled the Impala up to the side of the street, forgoing the walk from the parking lot in favor of convenience; if there was one thing he had learned growing up with his father, it was that it never hurt to be prepared, and having less ground to cover to get to your safe getaway was a necessity.
The black of the Impala made-up for the inconvenience of her bulk, and he did his best to pull far enough into the brush that the car would not be immediately noticeable from the street; it wouldn’t do to have a concerned cop stopping to check out the vehicle and locate its missing driver.
At night, with only a single lamp lighting the foot of the path, the old mill looked eerie, looming ghost-like and ominous over the street. Sam pulled his bag from the trunk and walked to the back of the mill. After stacking a few rocks to make a fire pit and salting the ground just to be safe, he left his bag and, armed with his gun, an iron blade, a set of picklocks and an EMF reader, he crept to the side of the house.
Without any water, the mill wheel was mostly just for display, though it had been mended periodically in order to preserve the house as much as possible. Just above the massive wooden wheel was a window that Sam had noticed during the tour. It had a creaky latch that no one had bothered to fix as it was on the second floor.
The aged mill wheel served as a convenient ladder, with the river dried up, though it was a bit of an awkward stretch from the wheel to the window. Flipping open his switch-blade, Sam carefully opened the window latch, slithering half-way into the room before a dark shadow streaked by and startled him. His body convulsed and twisted until he face-planted onto the second floor of Sanderson House with a clattering bang.
“Jesus Christ!” he swore, startled, then quickly jumped up and prepared to defend himself against whatever spirit had materialized.
Susannah’s legend-has-it cursed black cat sat in front of him, head tilted back, surveying him with dark judging eyes. “Uh,” Sam said, “nice kitty.”
It hissed at him.
Unwilling to be intimidated by a tiny ball of fur, Sam stepped over the thing, ignoring the claws swatting at his leg, and skipped down the stairs, pulling out his EMF meter as he went.
A quick survey of the main floor indicated strong activity, but the book and the candle both gave a significant spike on the EMF. Sam’s chest tightened and his breathing sped up at the proof of supernatural activity. The cat had given him a start, but he was still waiting for the spirit to manifest, was still concerned that it could come at any moment, and the likelihood only increased with each passing moment.
Sam pushed the nervous thrum of adrenaline aside, switching off the meter and stuffing it back in his coat pocket, exchanging it for a set of lock picks.
He made quick work of the glass casing that housed what was purportedly Winifred Sanderson’s evil spell book.
“Okay,” he admitted to himself as he hesitated over the book. “This is actually kind of gross.”
Trying not to think about it being bound in human flesh, or what that strange bulge on the front cover was, he reached forward to pick up the book. Suddenly, four sets of claws latched onto his back, sharp points piercing through his jacket and shirt and pricking at his skin.
The hissing and spitting cat startled him so badly that he reacted without thought, grabbing at whatever had clung to his back and launching it across the room. Sam didn’t spare a moment as he picked up the book, spun on his heels and, snatching the candle as an afterthought, raced back up the stairs and out the window before he could be assaulted again.
Panting, bent over his own knees and attempting to overcome the surge of adrenaline, Sam experienced a moment of guilt when it occurred to him that he had likely just sent Susannah’s cat flying across a room and had possibly hurt it. He glanced back at the house.
Had he known that Sam was considering putting off salting and burning the objects in order to go and check on an animal that he had mistaken for a malevolent spirit, John would have had a choice word or three to say.
It was sheer luck that the spirits hadn’t manifested while he’d been in there. Reminding himself of his priorities, Sam lit a fire in the pit he’d fashioned and picked up the candle from where he’d left it on the ground.
“Wait!” a voice called, sounding somewhat far away, but frantic all the same. Sam twisted around and scanned the woods, concerned that his fire had been spotted from the road despite the shelter provided by the mill. He saw no sign of anyone.
Turning back around, Sam dropped the candle into the flame. The fire sparked and hissed, but the wax of the candle didn’t melt. “Sonofabitch!” the voice shouted again, distinctly male and throaty, and sounding much closer than it had been before.
Sam ignored the shout, his attention captured by the candle that was resting, undamaged, in the center of his fire. Around him, a strange wind picked up and he could see that the wick of the candle was alight, burning with a black flame. “Huh,” he said.
From the direction of the house, a great rumbling and clattering started, surprising him with the sheer volume of the noise and he spun on his heels, watching as green-blue light flickered on, then off, and staccato bursts of blindingly bright light illuminated the sky above the mill like the Aurora Borealis.
The clattering rumble increased in volume, enough that Sam had to cover his ears. Glancing about, he worried that the noise and the light would bring the police.
As suddenly as it had started, it all stopped. The whole house went dark and quiet, but instead of relief it felt like the calm before the storm. Sam had just begun to move toward the mill when the little wooden house began to glow once again, this time with an orange flickering light.
Candles, Sam realized with no small amount of confusion. “What the hell?”
“A virgin lit the fucking candle!” the voice hissed, and it was right on top of him. Sam spun on his heel and tried to see through the darkness, but there was nothing there, not even a faint silhouette in the shadows, and then he was distracted by laughter: sharp and high and cackling with rich delight. Sam shivered.
“You idiot!” the voice was ranting. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Shh!” Sam hissed as he crept closer to the house; there was definitely movement inside of it.
“Don’t go over there!” the voice was saying. “Come over here! God dammit!” Sam peered through a window and froze, unable to process what he was seeing.
The Sanderson Mill was lit not by the electric sconces used during the day, but by candles. A warm fire burned in the hearth, and another flickered beneath the cauldron that sat in the center of the room.
Three women were moving about inside; each in a long dress and brown leather boots laced passed the ankle. They looked as if they had stepped out of a history book about the American settlers, except they did not quite seem like friendly pilgrims.
The tallest of the three had dark curly red hair pinned up loosely on her head, some of it falling down to frame her oval face. The dark redness of her hair brought out the rich green of her dress and made Sam think of Christmas, until he caught sight of her distressingly long nails and all thoughts of festive cheer lodged in his throat.
She had a small heart-shaped mouth, and round eyes hidden behind even rounder spectacles. She paced like a prowling cat, running a hand idly over the old bookcase and across the cluttered desk, only to be jostled from her reverie by another woman, who was in the process of spinning in slow circles about the room.
The second woman had light blond hair hanging passed her shoulders, falling in gentle curls and gleaming, drifting away from her body and fluttering in bright flashes of gold light as she spun. She was beautiful. Sam was momentarily fascinated by the carefree way she leaned her head back, smiling blissfully as she moved, her hands out like a dancer, full of grace in the sheer and unabashed joy of movement. Her dress was a dark red, but it was tattered and Sam was certain that it would have been considered indecent when she had last worn it, which was, he thought with a queasy stomach, back in 1693, apparently.
At the center of the room, standing by the cauldron and peering into its depths was a plumper figure in a plain brown-orange dress, whose black hair twisted into braids that hung heavily on either side of her rounded face. She had a soft smile and wide blue eyes, and Sam was almost charmed by her childlike innocence until she tipped her chin up and said, “Winnie, I smell a child,” with such sharp and disturbing delight that Sam was staggering back from the window and tripping over his own feet before he even realized he was moving.
“Great,” said that disembodied voice.
On the ground with his head still spinning, Sam noted that the voice sounded at about ear-level despite the fact that he was flat on his back. “Now you listen to me,” it said. “Grab the book and lets get out of here.”
Sam tracked the voice to two glowing points of unearthly light hovering just at eye-level in his sprawled position. Then the shadowed figure stepped forward and was illuminated by the fire.
Sam blinked. “You’re a cat.”
“You’re an idiot,” the saucy ball of fur retorted.
“You just talked,” Sam pointed out, helpfully.
“I’m gonna do a hell of a lot more than that if you don’t pick up the goddamned spell book and start running!” The front door of the house creaked open, and the voices of the women became louder as they stepped out side.
Hurriedly, Sam rolled over and grabbed the book as well as his bag, stopping long enough to throw some dirt on the fire as the cat hissed, “Smokey thanks you, now can we just go!” and then they were running in the general direction of the Impala.
“There he is!” shouted the dark haired one, who Sam idly realized must be Mary Sanderson, pointing triumphantly at him as he fled. “I knew I smelled a child!”
“A boy!” Sarah rejoiced, clapping her hands as she danced down the front steps of her home.
Sam pulled open the door of the Impala and tossed in both the bag and the book, pausing just long enough for the cat to leap onto the seat and over onto the passenger’s side. “Shit,” he said, twisting to look back toward the mill. “I forgot the candle.”
“Leave the candle,” the cat snarled.
“What is that dark beast?” the red headed woman asked, squinting through her glasses, as Sam slid behind the wheel and pulled the door closed, cranking the ignition with enough force he almost winced. His dad would kill him if he knew his son was running around leaving potentially dangerous magical items lying around for anyone to find and use. Willfully, he shoved the thought from his mind.
The car purred to life, its lights flashing on and catching the three sisters in its glare. Sam stamped on the gas pedal as the cat shouted, “Go go!” and behind them, growing consistently smaller in the rear-window, the Sanderson sisters screamed.
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|| END PART ONE >>|
MASTERPOST