SPN fic: Arcana
Title: Arcana: a hunter’s herbal
Media: Supernatural
Rating: PG (language, concepts)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Archive: My LJ, ‘goblok’ archive, silverlake - others by permission
Summary: “So what’s the difference between the real world and the other world?” “Honey,” she says, pulling her gloves back on, “you’re asking the wrong question.” Sam visits old friends in Lawrence - Contretemps Series, No. 2.
Note: She-Who-Provideth - hey niz, is any of this blowin’ up your skirt? - gave the inspiration and the eye-candy, thanks sis. And thanks to onelittlesleep, for pats on the back. If you haven’t read Abaddon, the first fic in this series, you’ll probably come out the end a bit confused but otherwise unscathed. Catch up at goblok archive, or through the link.
BTW: all the herb refs here are researched from herbals and netlinks - medicinal and magical properties are true as I could find them.
Spoilers: Season 1, particularly ‘Home’.
Feedback: is tasty.
ARCANA
a hunter’s herbal
I went to Missouri and I learned the truth
from John Winchester’s diary
Boys -
Your daddy was always at me to write some of this stuff down for him, but what with this and that I never did. Seeing you both last time, though, how you’re carrying on with the work, I figured it might be helpful. So here it is - not all of it, just some that you might find a use for. Most of the herbs you can get in the grocery, or a health food store, and I put in the proper names too, so there’s no confusion. Make sure you follow the instructions, some of the exotics can be dangerous if you use em wrong. Go well, anytime you’re in Lawrence you be sure to look me up -
*
He’s in the middle of his Master’s degree, managing the headaches with Imigran and dark rooms, but it’s starting to get to him. He can’t keep ignoring it. The day after he dreams about the house with the flies again is the day he calls her.
“It’s me,” he says.
“I know, honey. Gettin’ too hard for you?”
“Just lately,” he says, and then he’s not sure what else to say, or even why he called.
“Don’t you worry about that,” she says. “Come on over.”
(Like it’s a couple of doors down.)
“I’ve gotta -“
“I’m sure that library lady will give you a few days off, if you ask nice.”
“Okay,” he says, feeling bovine.
“See you Saturday, hon,” and she rings off.
He thinks she must have meant Friday, but of course when he calls to book the bus ticket he can’t leave until tomorrow. So Saturday it is.
He hasn’t spoken to Missouri for nearly three years, but she hasn’t changed a bit.
*
OATS - Avena sativa
- for money and prosperity spells, mostly. Also for when you’re having trouble, and I don’t mean werewolf-trouble or poltergeist-trouble. Treats nervous exhaustion, depression, melancholy and such. A bowl of oatmeal every day for a week - sounds simple and it is. Dean, don’t cluck your tongue boy, it works fine.
*
His head keeps knocking against the window and his knees are aching from lack of leg room, but he couldn’t get an aisle seat. At least the scenery is kinda nice. He’d forgotten how golden Kansas gets in the late spring. So much sun - the landscape is radiant. Or maybe he’s just been spending too much time in dark rooms.
When he unfolds at the end of the trip he gets a cramp in his calf, has to stand there rubbing the muscle through the denim until the pain recedes. By the time he looks up all the cabs are gone. He shoulders the backpack and starts walking.
*
GINGER - Zingiber officinalis
- I use this in baggies for lighting fires - romantic ones, y’know? For you boys, I’d use it for travel sickness - you both spend so much time on the road this might come in handy. It’s good for colds and flu as well, grate up a thimbleful into hot drinks. Warms you up fine.
*
On the third stair she opens the door. She is wearing a purple button-up sweater and has an axe in her hand.
“Sammy…” she smiles, looking him over, and the way she says it he really doesn’t mind.. “Well, I guess you couldn’t get any taller.”
“No ma’am,” he grins.
“You wanna kill the chicken or chop the wood?” she asks, then flaps her sleeve. “Never mind.” And she thrusts the axe into his hand.
“It’s out the back. About half a cord, and a few blocks for the fire tonight.”
He sighs, but it’s kind of a relief thing, then dumps his pack on the front porch.
“This better not be some kind of wax on-wax off bullshit,” he mutters, feeling warm already.
“Boy,” she says, cocking an eyebrow, “you watch too much tv.”
*
ALOE - Aloe vera
- put the leaf pulp on burns, cuts, whatever. Drink to make you puke, if you need it. Hang a stem over the door to guard against household accidents.
*
He chops for an hour, and then carries some into the house and stacks some near the back door, the smell of chickenshit and damp potatoes and compost. Then he chops more, he’s developed a kind of rhythm, the wood splits smooth, he chops until sundown, the sweat starting to chill on his shoulders. Missouri comes out with two tall glasses.
“Put your shirt on, sweetie, before you catch cold.”
She hands him the lemonade after he does up a couple of buttons.
“Oh boy, it sure is nice out here, isn’t it?” she says, and he sits on a log near her, on the back step, and they both watch the red sun low on the horizon. The aroma of frying fat and baking nearby, if he turns his face towards the house.
Missouri pulls her sweater around herself.
“That’s thyme, and oregano, and the damn lemon balm is taking over the whole place…” she says, pointing with her chin, then sipping her lemonade. “And rosemary, you know.”
“I know,” he nods. He remembers something he read. “’Rosemary grows best where a woman is strong in her own house.’”
She laughs.
“And considering that I’m the only soul here, it’d be a damn shame if that was some stunted little shrub, dontcha think?”
He smiles softly, looks around some more. He hadn’t really seen the garden before, which is kinda strange because it’s a jungle, a riot of green, and he was chopping wood right in the middle of it. He recognizes marigolds, sunflowers, some of the vegetables. Others, the herbs, he doesn’t know at all.
“Snakeroot,” she says, watching his eyes move. “Pennyroyal, squawvine, angelica, hyssop…chamomile, for calming you down…”
He’s listening to her voice and it floats in the air, kinda like music, and he realizes with dull surprise that he’s shaking all over, only partly from exertion. She doesn’t say anything more, and when the shaking subsides they go inside for dinner.
Fried chicken and greens and baked pumpkin and potatoes, and then maple syrup pie with cream for dessert.
*
ROSEMARY - Rosmarinus officinalis
- lots of uses - infuse a handful of leaves in tea for exhaustion, nervous depression. Helps with headaches too. Smoulder the leaves with juniper berries in a sickroom, or to get rid of insomnia, and rub the juice into joints, bruises, sprains. And then burn the stuff for protection, exorcism and purification.
CHAMOMILE - Matricaria recutita
- get it from the supermarket. Drink the tea for calm, and to settle your stomach. It’s a mild sedative for hysteria (you may not need it, but some other poor folk might) and it’s good for insomnia too. Mush up and poultice onto burns and weeping sores. Sprinkle the dried stuff around houses when you’re trying to get rid of a curse or a hex.
*
Chicken sleep - nodding head, jerking up, nodding down again, slip, fall, jarring awake.
He stands at the second floor window of the bedroom he has been given, standing in the dark looking down on a panorama of silver and black. The whole world glowing under moonlight, diamond dusted, curtains billowing lightly over the sill, and the outside world is one street wide. There’s a procession down there, cars and people - dark clothes, with the white collars standing out in high relief. He recognizes the old green van from Guenther’s, sliding ahead of the mourners on foot, and in front of the van is the Impala, and in front of the Impala is the hearse.
He sees a man walking, carrying a bundle, with a little kid in a dark suit walking close beside - and Sam has a second to wonder who’s driving the Impala when his dad turns his head and looks straight at him, straight through the window, and there’s a knock on the door and he jerks
awake.
Missouri has a candle, and a thick hairy dressing gown, and her breath fogs a little when she speaks, so he realizes the cold isn’t just in his head.
“Y’know, you’re supposed to be asleep at three a.m.”
“It’s called insomnia,” he points out delicately, but his words run together a little, enough to give it away, just how bone-dry and tired he feels, and Missouri squints at him.
“This is easier if you’re asleep,” she says.
He thinks of course it is, except he has no idea what she’s talking about, and turning back to the window he feels the night breeze course through him - his dad and little Dean and his baby self are already halfway down the street, maybe two houses away, the cars honouring his mother’s remains streaming ahead and he
jerks awake.
The knock sounds, and he bites his teeth together, trying to figure out what’s real. He almost stays lying there on the bed, but he knows that in real life he’s obliged to open the door himself.
“Coming,” he calls.
He bumps the nightstand pulling on his pants, and the pain reminds him of the truth of the flesh, and gives him a second to settle himself. He slides his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. The floorboards are freezing in bare feet.
When he opens the door Missouri is standing there, with her candle and her dressing gown, same as before.
“Y’know, you’re supposed to be asleep at three a.m.” she says and he tries hard not to gape at her, but at least he knows his line now.
“It’s called insomnia,” he says dully, teeth chattering.
She leans forward suddenly and plants a palm on his cheek - he feels the warmth of skin, and his own dry heat. She frowns.
“Come on,” she says, and there’s no room for argument, he pads down behind her, keeping his eyes off the candleflame, watching where he puts his feet, feeling his way, wishing he’d pulled on his socks.
The kitchen is musty-smelling and the wood stove still radiates a little banked heat. He hugs his jacket closer and lowers himself into a chair, rubs his toes together, watches Missouri pour hot water from the kettle on the hob, wondering why the candles -
“I can turn on the light if you want,” she says.
“No - uh, no, it’s fine.”
“I just don’t like the glare.”
“Sure, I understand.”
She pushes a mug into his hands.
“Here - for the fever. And for sleeping.”
Can’t see in the half-light - the tea could be sump oil, but it tastes kind of citrusy and green and he’s only taken three slurps before he breaks out in a light sweat.
“Thanks.”
Missouri stands near the stove and warms her hands, looking at him, smiling.
“You boys,” she mutters, shakes her head. “You remind me so much of my -“
She stops herself, looking away - he wonders what she’d been going to say, he never thought of her life before, maybe children of her own, before she became the surrogate of orphans like himself. He feels bad all of a sudden, for being here, for burdening her like this. It just doesn’t seem like something that friends do.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, and then he can’t look her in the eye and he’s obliged to explain. “Dean and Holly are having a baby, and Bobby never returns any of my messages, and I…didn’t know who else to call.”
He finally manages to look at her for the last bit. She’s pouring steaming water into her own mug.
“Bobby is in Haiti,” she says. “So don’t take it personal.”
“Oh.”
“And you don’t need to apologize, Sam.”
“Oh.” He clears his throat. “Okay.”
Missouri comes in and settles her stiff joints into a chair at the table. She’s turning her own mug in her hands with a look on her face like someone told her the sky turned green.
“Dean and some girl are having a baby?”
He raises his own eyebrows and smiles and shakes his head.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Sweet Lord. Now I have heard it all.
“I think he wants to hand that leather jacket on down the line.”
Missouri takes a sip of tea, closes her eyes, opens them.
“He might be in for a surprise.”
“What? Do you -“
“Nothin’.” She shoos him with her hand. “Go to bed. Take your tea, there’s an extra blanket in the press in the hall, and stop thinking and go to sleep.”
“Thanks,” he says, and it’s important that she see that he means it.
“Don’t mention it,” she says. Before he leaves the kitchen she catches his gaze. “What did you see out the window, Sam?”
He looks away and back again.
“My mother’s funeral.”
She smiles sadly and sighs.
“Go to bed, honey,” she says
*
LEMON BALM - Melissa officinalis
- make tea with the leaves for anxiety, nerves, insomnia. Soak in wine - red or white, it don’t matter much - for three hours and drink up for doing spellwork.
YARROW - Achillea millefolium
- to manage a fever - drink the tea. Poultice it up to stop bleeding and heal wounds, but fresh leaves is better for that. For exorcism - sprinkle it around with the salt, it will help. Works fine for people, place or things.
*
He comes down in the morning, rubs his chin, there’s stubble there, and coffee in the pot on the stove, and he’s about to take his mug out onto the back step when he hears voices.
Real ones.
“…but he’s gonna be fine. You don’t need to worry over it. You been drinking that tea I gave you?”
“When I have a chance to sit, yeah.”
“You keep that up. I’ll give you some squawvine too - you can mix the leaves together if you like, but add a little honey for taste. Gimme a minute, sweetie.”
There’s some bustle, Missouri prods open the other door - before she closes it behind her he gets a glimpse of a worn-faced woman with a rounded belly, sitting in a hard-backed chair in the parlour.
“Hey,” he offers.
He feels a little uncomfortable. He hasn’t even washed his face.
“Hey, Sam,” she smiles, relaxed, stepping to the side countertop, reaching to the shelves above. The jar population there is prodigious, ordered but unlabelled. She chooses a large jar with a screw-top, and handfuls a quantity of herb into a brown paper bag from a bunch bundled up in the drawer.
“You sleep better, after last night?” she asks, folding the top of the bag down, and no matter how nonchalant she is, he’s still a stranger in the house, so he feels compelled to be polite.
“Sure. I slept fine.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, puts a hand on her hip and looks at him and waits.
“Well - better,” he amends.
She smiles at him and her eyelashes blink a little.
“Well - um, I mean, I woke up again, but it wasn’t so…” He sips his coffee to cover the flush, then forces himself to raise his eyes. “I did sleep. For a while. It was better, after the tea.”
She purses her lips at him before remembering her client.
“Look, I’ll be done in about ten minutes. Take your coffee out back and I’ll come and fix you something.”
“You don’t -“
“Yes, I do, and enjoy it too. I don’t have company so often, and you gotta fill those legs of yours somehow…”and she hustles back out to the parlour.
Feeling strange and half-complete, he moves, pushes open the outside door and the rich green smell of dirt and herbs makes his face lift. He sits on the step with his coffee, lets the sun warm him up. It’s later than he thought, parts of the garden that should be in morning shade are lit, and the dew has risen long before. Before he finishes his cup Missouri comes out.
“You want another, sweetie?”
“Naw - no, I’m good.” The sun on his face, stirring lethargy, his words bleeding together a little, the Kansas drawl he’d forgotten he possessed.
She sits on the log, wipes her face and neck with a kerchief. She’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday.
“Mm. Sun’s good - could sit here all day, y’know?”
“Uh-huh.”
And the buzz of insects and the ambience so warm and gentle he hardly realizes where the conversation’s going.
“When’d you get out of the hospital, Sammy? Thanksgiving?”
“Just after Thanksgiving, yeah,” he replies sleepily.
“Christmas was hard, wasn’t it, honey.”
“Yeah,” he says, watching a cabbage moth. “Yeah. Christmas was hard.”
“You like eggs, Sam? Over-easy?”
“Sure,” he says, closing his eyes. “Eggs are great.”
She lays a hand on him then, large brown hand sinking on his shoulder, steadying his descent. He opens his eyes and sees the dazzle dance in front for countless minutes, and it’s not until he hears the sizzle, the fry-up aroma flaring his nostrils, that he realizes Missouri’s gone inside to the kitchen.
Eggs over-easy and fresh oranges and his soul floating, taffy-pulling, and stretching back and forth in the sunshine, half gone already.
*
Now these two you might not have much call for, but you never can tell I guess. Lords knows I’m called to use them almost every day for some folk.
RASPBERRY - Rubus idaeus
- you boys could hang a bramble over doors and windows for protection, but generally you make leaf tea for the last trimester of pregnancy. For a gentle birth. Pretty handy as an eyewash for pinkeye too.
SQUAWVINE - Mitchella repens
- same thing - make a tea to ease labour. Good for irritability - Sam, you might wanna give some to your brother.
*
The house is big enough, but small in that way he knows, the ceilings kind of low, the way he has to duck his head a little to get under the door jambs, like the place was made for people shorter than himself. Maybe the house isn’t small, maybe he’s too big - that feeling. Or maybe this sense that he’s expanding, spreading out too wide, too much height and breadth and depth, gangly and overgrown. He’s had that feeling since he was a kid, but it’s worse now somehow. Like if he closes his eyes he’ll grow and grow, until something gives and he’ll shatter outwards -
He gets overcome. The house is full of whispers and his head is throbbing. He sits on the bed, keeps himself crunched in, keeps his head down, his arms tight, his knees together. Maybe that’ll help.
“Sam,” Missouri calls behind the door. “Sam, you comin’ down for lunch?”
His back is against the headboard of the bed, his laptop on his bent knees. His eyes were closed, now they open, and the door opens too. Missouri leans in a little.
“Uh-huh,” she says. “But you gotta eat.”
He can’t remember whether he spoke. She frowns then tips her head to the side.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Then she leaves. He hears her movement on the stairs, below, puts aside his laptop, closes his eyes again, resting them. When he opens them this time she’s walking softly into the room with a mug in one hand.
“Drink this,” she says. “It’ll help.”
He puts aside the laptop, accepts the mug. The tea is olive-tinted and there’s leaf-residue floating on the top of it.
“More tea?”
“Yes,” she says drily. She settles herself at the foot of the bed. “It’ll help.”
It’s hot. It’s bitter - he makes a face.
“It’s kinda gross,” he whispers.
“Baby. Drink it all.”
He sips gingerly, feels his fingers start to warm around the mug, shifts his shoulders a little. Sitting on the single bed, in this room, is like the whole world - Stanford is far away, and his entire life is a dim memory.
“It gets better, y’know,” she says gently.
He looks at her. Is this why he came?
“You gotta stop fighting it,” she explains, watching him drink. “Honey, I know it’s a struggle, but you gotta let it go.”
“My skin is too small,” he says hoarsely.
“It’ll pass. You gotta relax into it.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can.”
He detaches one hand from the mug to rub at his eyes, knead his forehead like dough.
“I feel like I’m gonna blow apart.”
“That’s what it’s like, when you’re open.”
“What if…” He takes a gulp of his tea, keeps his eyes on the liquid swirl. “What if it’s too strong? What if I can’t control it?”
Missouri sits back, smoothes the maroon folds of her pants over her knees.
“I don’t know, sweetie. Have you tried?”
He blinks at that.
“So we try,” Missouri nods. She gets to her feet. “Not now. Soon. Now, we eat. C’mon.”
She gestures for the mug, and he drains the dregs, hands it over. Goes downstairs with her for lunch.
Bread chunks, buttered and dipped in vegetable soup, hot milk with cinnamon and rose petals.
*
ST JOHN’S WORT - Hypericum perforatum
- this used to be called ‘leaf of the blessed’. You can drink the tea to calm the nerves and it’s the best around for depression - half a cup morning and night, but mind the bitter taste. Folk used to wear it to cure melancholy and mental illness - maybe this means the confusion and such you can get when you’re performing an exorcism? And some say it makes you invincible in battle, so there’s no harm in trying. Hang it over the windows to keep spirits out.
VALERIAN - Valeriana officinalis
- called ‘All-Heal’ - rub the leaves onto muscle cramps. Use the root powder for anxiety-based insomnia. This is a mild hypnotic, and if you stuff it into a pillow you’ll get a good night’s rest for sure. In gris-gris bags, folk use it for love spells.
*
After lunch he helps clear the table and Missouri takes out a short stack of calico squares from a shelf in the pantry, lays them to one side, pulls down a half-dozen jars from the collection, unscrews their grubby lids. They make gris-gris bags for a few hours.
The work is methodical - a pinch from each jar, the herbs crinkling between his fingertips, crumbling into a pile in the middle of the calico, then gather all the corners and tie each square into a sweet tiny parcel. Missouri directs, where to dip his fingers, how much, how little, the pot-pourri smell and the fusty leathery scent of dried leaf and blossom and root, the parcels gathering into little groups, little minions, armies of protection, love, success.
Talk is low and pleasant, she asks about his research, his acquaintances, his other life. When the silences come she lets them flow into stories about her work, her people, the town. He’s reminded that Lawrence used to be home, but it’s been a while, too long for nostalgia, he lets the stories drift over him, laughs when he likes.
“…so I do better business at the end of winter,” she says, grinning. “Lots of folk remembering what it was like to have a spring in their step, lots of babies on the way. Gets so I can turn a baby in my sleep by June.”
His face lights with startlement.
“You can do that?”
“Just said so, didn’t I? It’s a knack, but it ain’t hard.” She twists a rubber band around a bag, gives him a sly glancing look. “Turned your brother.”
His eyes pop a little.
“No way,” he gasps out, but in his heart he feels how this is unsurprising.
Missouri flaps a square of calico as theatre.
“What is it in my face, I tell you something and you think I’m lying to you - ?”
“No, I just - I mean…” he fumbles, shakes his head. “Wow. Okay.”
“Okay is right,” she nods.
Then he realises something, and raises his eyes.
“So…you saw my mom?”
Missouri maintains his gaze.
“Sure. It was your momma looked me up. I never saw your daddy then. I imagine he thought Mary was crazy, going to some hokey old palm-reader…”
He thinks of his father’s reaction and grins, before remembering his place.
“But it worked, right?” he defends.
She smiles at that.
“Well - your brother. Stubborn as the day is long. He took some convincing - always did have the tendency to jump in feet first, that boy...”
“And my dad -“
“Could be he remembered my name. I can only guess that’s maybe why he came calling, all those years later...” She stops, seeing the effect this is having. “You got something in your eye there, honey?”
He doesn’t know why this still hurts so much, he thought he was over it. He looks down at his hands.
“I just… I never thought…”
“You’re still worrying over that end business with your daddy.”
He freezes in the act of glancing up. This is something he actively avoids thinking about, in normal life. Some experiences are better scoured from memory. Of course, there’s a price that goes with that.
“Sometimes I have trouble remembering his face. From before,” he says quietly.
Missouri looks at her herbs, pinches and sprinkles and twists.
“You know it was a mercy. John couldn’t have gone on like that, and he doesn’t want you frettin’ over it now.” Her fingers barely still as she catches his eye. “I see him sometimes, you know.”
“Yeah?” Sam says. He’s suddenly exhausted by this. He looks out the kitchen window, at the life outside, and sighs. “Me too.”
*
ASFETIDA - Ferula asafoetida
- I use this in beans when they’re cooking, to stop gas. Otherwise, this is the best evil spirit repellent around. Use it to smoke around an exorcism or a bad place, or wear it in a bag around your neck. Just one thing - this stuff tastes and smells terrible, so don’t go crazy with the censer.
ROSE - Rosa spp.
- Apart from just smelling so nice and looking lovely, rosehip jelly is good for coughs. Then go pick the petals for love bags. Put roses around the house to settle down arguments and negativity.
HYSSOP - Hyssopus officinalis
- I love hyssop - the flowers are wonderful. You can use the leaves in tea for coughs, colds and bronchitis. But I usually use it as a purifcation herb, and in gris-gris for wealth and success.
DRAGON’S BLOOD - Draceana draco
- you can get this from a good herbalist or an occult supply store. Basically it increases the power of your mixture/spell/whatever - use a pinch to magnify. It’s good for pretty much everything.
*
Running.
He runs in sweatpants and a t-shirt, without headphones, so he can hear his breathing and concentrate. Running is ritualised now, he feels weird if he doesn’t run, and it loosens him up, all his joints and tiredness and it’s never about keeping fit although that’s a side benefit.
His body is ground zero, bones jangling inside, like beans in a can, puffing like smoke, brain tickling and his calves itching a little. He spins around corner blocks and over pavement and past electricity poles -
The edge of town is very quiet. Campus is huge, and always bustling, and he’s lost his understanding of how things work in towns, where six o’clock is time for kids to head for home, and businesses to close their doors, and mothers are cutting vegetables as menfolk crack their first beer of the evening and the twilight settles in. Lawrence feels empty, devoid of life. Shutters closing, battening down the hatches, like curfew. He catches his breath, spits in the gutter, and wonders if there’s something wrong, something off here, or whether he’s just unused to these rhythms, too accustomed to looking for the ghost in the dark, the lurking evil, something, something…
He spots a lone teenager pedaling a bike, plastic grocery bag banging against the handlebars. On the corner, someone with a dog. He shakes, unravels his shoulders, lengthens his stride. He’s avoided the middle of town so far, content to lap the outskirts.
He sees something that makes his smooth breath stutter - a sign for Guenthers’ Auto Repair. He keeps running. He’s on Saltmarsh Street, heading west, and if he keeps his eyes facing forward and his stride steady he’ll pass Elk Drive without even noticing, without even looking, and he can go three blocks and turn for Missouri’s, follow the road back without feeling the hairs on his nape rise.
*
CALENDULA - Calendula officinalis
- betcha never thought you could get such use out of normal old marigolds. I always keep a bottle of the oil handy - for bites and stings, rashes, burns, just anything. Rub it into muscles for cramping and sore joints - all that jumping around you both do, might be good. The petals bring on dreams, but whether they’re good or bad is up to you, I guess.
*
He falls asleep on the couch with a book on his lap, watching Missouri play solo gin rummy, the night sound of cicadas in the bushes outside.
An hour later he snaps awake, sees blackness and colours when he opens his eyes, feels his skullcap detonate, turns blindly and throws up off the side of the couch. For whole blessed seconds he can’t see or feel anything. Then he catches his breath and everything comes rushing back, and cool hands are holding his shoulder, his head, while he leans over the side of the boat he’s in, tries to stop gagging. He hears voices, at a distance.
“Sam, I’m gonna get you a bucket and a towel, okay?”
There’s an absence, and he holds onto the solid edge to stop the sway, keeps his eyes closed, feels the insistent pounding. Then she’s back and the towel on his face is warm and moist and smells of something that seems to help.
“I keep looking…” he slurs out, smelling his own vomit, “…in all the rooms, the house is so big…I open all the doors…”
He gasps suddenly, looks into Missouri’s face.
“The woman! She was walking - there’s an accident…a car -“
“Hush now,” Missouri says.
He subsides and when he resurfaces the towel is good for his mouth and nose and his eyelids are made of molten metal. He touches his forehead gingerly, voice a croaky whisper.
“God. What day is it?”
“It’s Monday, honey. You need the bucket again?”
“No, no… It’s Monday?”
“It’s one a.m., Monday morning.”
“Okay. God.”
“You keep the towel on your face, it should help.”
And he does, and it does, for a while at least.
*
BETONY - Stachys officinalis
- hard to get sometimes, but you can find wood betony if you ask locals. Useful for lots of stuff - the tea for migraines and stomach troubles - but more useful for expelling evil spirits. Wear as a protective charm. Spread across doorways and windows to make a barrier - burn it if you want to double up. Put it in your pillow to chase nightmares.
FEVERFEW - Tanacetum parthenium
- 3-10 fresh leaves three times a day. This is the best remedy for migraines around. You can steep the leaves and drink it, but…well, it might make you upchuck.
BRIAR ROSE - Rosa rubiginosa
- can substitute for true rose in medicinals, but for clairvoyant dreams steep 2 teaspoons of petals and 1 cup boiling water. Drink at bedtime.
*
“So what can you do?”
They’re in the kitchen, he’s sitting at the table with one of his books open in front, and she’s sitting opposite, stripping dried leaves from dried stems, feathering the leaves into a jar, the bunches of herb and flower scattered in a loose mess, sweet disorder. He looks up with a blank expression, but he understands the question, it’s no use pretending. He meets her eyes and shrugs.
“It’s just…dreams, mostly. Like seeing stuff that’s about to happen.” Missouri is nodding her head, so he goes on. “Sometimes I get a few days warning, sometimes it’s only a few minutes. And then I get the headaches, which is fun.”
“Uh-huh. What else?”
He opens his mouth, but she’s already plunged ahead.
“Can you light fires? I knew a fella who could light fires. That’s a damned useful thing to have.”
He grins half-heartedly.
“I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think I ever -“
“There’s something else though.”
He’s used to this way of hers now. Kind of used to it. He’s never talked about this openly with anyone else before - Dean doesn’t count. He’s never talked about it with anyone who understood. With anyone who didn’t look at him like he was crazy. He swallows over hesitation.
“I can, uh, move stuff. Sometimes.”
“When you need it?”
“No - just sometimes.”
“When you’re upset or scared?”
“Not always. It’s like it happens more often when I’m not thinking about it.”
“Uh-huh.” She takes a sip of tea from a delicate china cup with a matching saucer, and the aroma is minty, refreshing. “You ever read cards, Sam?”
Cards. He thinks of spades and diamonds for a second, his brother and him playing Texas hold-em for matches, then remembers her parlour and has to re-order his brain. Cards. No, he’s never read cards.
“I know a little… I can make a spread, but I don’t really -“
“Try something for me,” she says, gets up and rummages in the drawer with the paper bags, returns to her chair with a stack - not a stack, a deck - a deck of well-worn cards. She clears a space on the table. Then she holds up a card, over-large and elaborately detailed on the back, which is facing him. Sam grins, bemused.
“You want me to guess?”
“Can you?” she asks, eyeballing him.
“Well, I can guess, but -“
“Show me.”
He smiles and shrugs. This isn’t something he’s tried before. It’s kind of embarrassing.
“Uh - swords.”
“Swords it is,” she says, and she lays the picture face up on the table. “Another one.”
He’s still humouring her.
“Cups,” he says, off the top of his head.
“Cups it is.”
He swallows.
“That’s lucky,” he says, but he’s not sure why he’s still thinking in those terms, after what they’ve just discussed.
“Is it? Here’s another one.”
He actually looks at the card this time.
“Wands.”
She smiles as she puts the card face up. “Another one.”
She gives him two more and he gets them both. That’s five from five. He opens and closes his mouth, feeling more and more uncertain.
“But I’m not -“
“You still think you’re lucky, Sam?” Missouri says quietly. Her brown hand slides up another card, and it fills his vision. “Gimme some depth. No more easy stuff.”
He wrinkles his forehead at the card. Depth.
“Uh…swords again.”
“More,” she says, still holding it up.
“Uh…”
He blinks a little, lets himself breathe. Depth.
“It’s, uh, it’s a number card…” He lets himself drift, lets himself float a bit. “It’s…”
He feels something trailing inside himself, like seaweed curling. He lets himself sink, a tiny bit, half an inch, lets his eyelids droop a little until he starts to feel warm, cosy, he’s aware of it there, an image, a sense of -
“There’s…there’s a problem. She’s fighting with somebody…family. Her cousins. There’s a problem with the money, and everyone wants a slice, but her grandfather put in his will that she…she…”
He realises what he’s saying and comes to with a start. Missouri is staring at him, intent.
“D’you think she’ll get that money problem sorted out, Sam?” she asks softly, but he’s already too taken aback.
“I-I don’t know. What, was that -“
“Nothin’,” Missouri says quickly, and she piles all the cards together. “Parlour tricks.”
“Parlour tricks,” he says flatly. He can’t figure this all out, one minute she’s asking him to -
“I’m just saying, this stuff isn’t the important stuff,” she says, and pats his hand on the table, goes back to stacking.
He shakes his head, rubs his eyes. If this weren’t all so fucking confusing -
He hears a noise and looks up. The cards are whirling in the air above the table, like an eddy of leaves, and when he gasps they collapse back onto the wood. Missouri regards him, then begins picking them up all over again.
“Like I said,” she intones quietly. “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
*
MUGWORT - Artemisia vulgaris
- apart from keeping the moths out of the closet, this is the business for protection and clairvoyance. Hang it over the door or hang it in the car - keeps spirits out and clears weariness. Makes an infusion with honey and drink before divination. Not for nothin they used to call it Witch Herb.
WORMWOOD - Artemisia absinthium
- mugwort’s smellier older brother. Burn em together for scrying - the smell increases psychic power. Hang it off the rear-view to prevent accidents. You can take a tea of this as a gut tonic, but not more than three times a day, it’s toxic in high doses.
*
He’s outside after lunch, the heat of the day making the sweat trickle down his back, his arms elbow-deep in the compost, pulling potatoes. These are the only ones left - all her clamped potatoes are gone, and it’s too early in the spring for the next crop. He reaches with his fingers in the dirt, feels through mushy spots and old apple peelings, inhales something that smells like moist breath and brownness, tugs out a tuber, rubs off some of the mud, puts it in the pile. Two hens free-range close by. Missouri has pulled off her gardening gloves, she’s scratching at her neck beneath the brim of her floppy hat, looking over the wilting weeds she’s just yanked.
“I just… I can’t figure it out,” Sam says, mid-conversation, huffing a little with work. “I met someone, when I was in the hospital. I thought she was real, but she…well, she wasn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” Missouri says, lifts off her hat to fan herself.
Sam sits back on his haunches, tosses another potato into the collection, squints over at her.
“So, how can you tell? I mean, what’s the difference?”
“The difference?”
“Yeah. What’s the difference between the real world and the other world?”
Missouri smiles wearily, then uses her sleeve to wipe her forehead.
“Honey,” she says, pulling her gloves back on, “you’re asking the wrong question.”
*
RUE - Ruta graveolens
- called ‘Herb of Grace’. Watch out, you can get a rash from this if you pick it fresh. Steep 2 tspns of dried herb in 1 cup boiling water for 20 minutes, take half a cup per day (for coughs and cramps) but no more, unles you wanna throw it all up again. Rue is anti-magical - it breaks hexes and curses, and it’s a good defence against dark stuff. Burn it to move things on - spirits, headaches, heartaches, general stuff. Grows best when it’s stolen.
*
This time, he runs through the main part of town, past the strip mall and the supermarket, tired red-and-blue posters flap and wave at him from lampposts, trying to get him worked up about last winter’s basketball game. He doesn’t get anything - nada, not a thing - and he decides he was imagining it, the other time.He’s just too alert, hyper-alert, over-sensitized, and look, there’s people everywhere this time. People giving him funny looks. Plus, y’know, yesterday, he forgot it was Sunday. Sunday can make a big difference to a small town.
He ignores the looks and finishes his run.
When he gets up to Missouri’s street it’s long and flat, he hammers for home, racing himself. He sprints the last fifty feet or so, slams into the fence to brake, almost whoops a little until he sees he’s disturbed a visitor - a woman, youngish, with a kindergarten-aged child. When the woman sees him, by the time he sees her, realises what’s going on, she’s through the gate and scuttling away, small child in tow.
“Oh, hey - um, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -“
She’s gone. He drops his hand, gives up with a shrug. Snags his t-shirt on the fence and then makes his way up the steps, and is unsurprised when Missouri opens the door. He swipes his face against his shoulder sleeve.
“You had a visitor. A lady with a little girl. I think maybe I scared her off.”
“Oh - that’s Deborah,” Missouri says, turning for the kitchen, moving back down the hall as he trails, closing the door behind him. “Yeah, she’s a sweetie, real thoughtful. Shame her husband’s such a pain in the ass… You want a shower or something? Dinner’s nearly done, hope you like casserole and beans.”
“Sounds great. Yeah, gimme a minute to change.”
He goes out the back door to the washing line, grabs his towel, wipes his face and drapes the terrycloth around his neck. When he comes back, passing through the kitchen on the way upstairs, he remembers something he’d been thinking about.
“What is it?” Missouri asks, that way she does.
“It’s no big deal. I was just thinking, y’know…Lawrence. I mean, how come Lawrence? How come you never moved on?”
“Well, for a start, I like it here,” she says, wiping the table, laying cutlery. “I got a clientele. It’s regular. Can’t all be gypsies, like you Winchesters.”
Sam nods, says nothing, lets her go on.
“It was a hard life your father chose, y’know,” Missouri says, arranging forks and glassware carefully, meeting Sam’s eyes. “Maybe I’m just lazy…I don’t know. Anyway - at least if you ever need me you know where I am, right?”
“Right,” he says, smiling gently. The thought is comforting, which he’s sure is how it was intended.
“You still want a shower, you better hustle,” she says brightly. “Dinner’s in five.”
Minty lamb casserole with white beans and bread, stewed apples with brown sugar and cream.
*
LAVENDER - Lavandula augustifolia
- rub lavender oil on muscles for cramps and soreness. Burn it for sleep, or for purification and protection. Carry it to see ghosts.
PEPPERMINT - Mentha piperita
- good for lots of stuff: a liniment to cool you down, tea to settle your stomach, freshen your mind. I use it in bags for travel, prosperity. Use it to get things moving - it’s a catalyst for change.
*
That night, his last night, he remembers what happened after.
One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things.
Him and Dean, going from room to room in the house with the flies, gathering remains, bits and pieces, they place everything together, they have to make sure they haven’t missed anything. They don’t speak. They don’t want to return here again.
Dean goes out to the car and comes back with the gas can and he makes a spill in each corner, covers everything, and Sam sits cross-legged on the front porch watching the light fade, It’s done soon enough - Dean tips the dregs onto the front door, throws the can into the house, the clatter is the signal, Sam rises slowly on wobbly legs and walks back inside with his brother.
They stand in the room for a while. The smell of gas is overpowering, almost disguising the scent of rot.
“Sam,” Dean says, his voice guttural, and Sam extends his arm, prises his fingers open with an effort of will, lets the Colt detach, drop, fall with a muffled thud onto - onto -
It occurs to him that they should say prayers or something. He wets his lips but nothing will come out from between them.
Dean takes out a matchbook, tears off a couple of flints - fingers thick, fumbling - takes three tries to light them. Lets them flare up the book. Holds the burning brand out for as long as he can and lets it go.
From their father’s body the flames spread blue and gold, like water. It’s beautiful, and Sam stares at it for a while until his brother grabs him by the collar and hauls him outside.
They stand near the car and watch the house go flaring up.
Dean’s face is golden in the reflected heat. Sam wants to tell him, wants to say something, but Dean is staring at nothing and he is the first one to speak.
“I need a drink,” is the first thing he says.
They drive until they get to an out-of-town bar, where their state of filth and the stink of sweat and gasoline and the black-hole vacuum in the air around their tall bodies means no-one wants to come near them, where Dean empties out his wallet onto the countertop and gets a bottle and a single glass, where they retire to a booth and Dean drinks and drinks like he’s dying of thirst. Sam sits opposite with his back against the wall, knees drawn up with his feet on the seat, watching everything, running his thumbnail over his dry bottom lip, waiting for his hands to stop shaking.
Dean sloshes a half-measure into the glass, pushes it over while he himself slugs from the bottle, and Sam swallows the liquor and it tastes just like nothing at all. Halfway through the night he accepts a cigarette from a waitress, but that doesn’t taste like anything either. Nothing tastes like anything.
Another bottle and hours later and Dean starts a fight and they get thrown out and the bar closes, so Sam half-carries his brother back to the carpark, holds Dean’s waist while his brother pukes whiskey onto the gravel, lays Dean down in the back of the Impala. Dean looks both heavy and lightened. Sam sits in the front with the door open and watches the sky at night.
Missouri walks over to the car door, the breeze tugging at her clothes.
“This is old stuff,” she says, and leans in over the open window. Sam can see the diamonds in her earrings. “You gotta stop torturing yourself, honey.”
“This is my memory,” he whispers, “and I abjure consolation.”
“That may be,” she says,” but time’s up. There’s still work need’s doing. Hop to it.”
And he awakes.
*
GARLIC - Allum sativum
- easy to find and plenty useful. Mash it up as a wound dressing, it’s a natural antibiotic. Roast and eat it for colds and flu and general run-down. Now, I know Daniel never had much use for it against vampires, but I use it in gris-gris all the time as a protection and it works well against ghosts. Sacred to Hecate.
ANGELICA - Angelica archangelica
- ‘Angel’s food’ they call it, for good reason. Gets rid of poltergeists, as you know, plus you can sprinkle the leaves around the four corners of a house to purify it. A good all-rounder.
ACONITE - Aconitum napellum/lycoctonum
- monkshood - do not screw around with wolfsbane, it’s a registered poison. It will work on werewolves, try dipping crossbow bolts in tincture or packing it into ammunition. You want more information call Rufus Elder 5498379. Store it in an airtight container, use gloves to handle it, and for pity’s sake don’t inhale the smoke, cos I don’t wanna have to phone your daddy with the bad news.
*
“So Dean said that was it,” Sam finishes slowly. “Finito. No more.”
He sips his herb tea in the sun. Missouri is sitting beside him, tying lavender stems together for hanging.
“Mm,” she says, wraps the string around the gathered stems three times, pulls the knot. “And he hasn’t done any hunting for what, two years or so?”
“Coming up three years now.”
“Uh-huh. Pass me the scissors, Sam?”
He does, and drains his cup.
“There was something else I wanted to ask you.”
“Ask away.”
“Remember when I asked what was the difference between the real world and the other world? And you said I was asking the wrong question?”
“I remember.”
He squints into the sun, enjoying the warmth on his face.
“So what’s the right question? I mean -“
“Oh, honey,” she says, smiling broadly, and she pats his shoulder and gets up, pulling the stems with her. “I’m gonna go hang these in the house.”
She shuffles inside, and he still doesn’t know.
*
HOREHOUND - Marrubium vulgare
- in a tight spot you can use the flowers like candles. Demons hate horehound - scatter with salt for exorcism. Good protection against dark magic. Drink an infusion to clear the mind, help you think, strengthen yourself mentally.
*
He returns with the milk, it feels kinda good to be getting out a little, he resolves to go into town tomorrow morning. It’s been a while since he thought about his dissertation - maybe he could look over the notes on his laptop after lunch.
The screen door bangs behind him, the sound echoes hollow through the house. He thinks he hears a murmur, voices from the kitchen, but when he walks in there it’s just Missouri at the table, cutting bread.
“You want two sandwiches or three?” she asks. “I got some corned beef, and pickles, and there’s early lettuces over near the compost heap.”
“Two is good - I’ll get the lettuce,” he offers, puts the milk on the table. “Were you just -?”
“Get me some peppermint while you’re out there, okay sweetie?” she says, sawing off another slice, crumbs scattering over the tabletop like snow.
He opens his mouth, then closes it, walks through the open back door for the greens. There’s birds feeding on the grass, they wing at his approach.
The sandwiches taste excellent, and there’s lemonade, peppermint leaves floating lazily on the surface.
“I got some papers for you upstairs, been meaning to give them over, some herbal stuff,” Missouri remembers, wiping her hands on a kitchen cloth.
“Okay,” he says, kind of says, talking around a mouthful.
You’re looking a whole lot better,” Missouri approves, watching him finish. “Not so…” She makes the flick of her fingertips around her eyes, to indicate the old dark circles.
“Yeah,” he says, and he realises that he actually is feeling better, better than when he first arrived, and there’s a reason for that. “Thank you. I mean it, thanks for -“
“Oh don’t,” she says, waves her hand and blinks quickly.
He grins.
“Well, I mean it.”
“I know you do, honey,” she says softly. “I know you do.”
She looks a little tired. Tomorrow, he thinks, tomorrow in town he’ll book his bus ticket home.
*
VERVAIN - Verbena officinalis
- Enchanter’s Herb, Holy Herb. One of the important ones - scatter for protection from ghosts, like iron. Burn it to clear your mind. Wear it as a protection when working magic or dealing with spirits.
*
He looks at his notes after lunch, does some tai-chi out the back for a while, then helps bring in some laundry. He goes running at five.
The day is starting to cool off. The length of his stride is smooth and his breathing is unforced and for the first time in a while his life feels manageable. The study, the hunting, Dean - all the anachronisms. He feels stronger, goes further than he expected, and before he knows it there’s the streetsign. Elk Drive is still tree-lined, neat houses and a few people walking, and it looks so unprepossessing, so normal - without letting himself think too much he turns onto the pavement.
He feels his pace alter, inevitability and awareness, and when he gets to the house…his house. His mother’s house. Jenni’s house. There’s a few changes - the big tree has come into leaf and there’s new plantings, garden beds near the path, near the porch. He slows to a stop, panting a little.
Before he can make up his own mind a blue Honda Civic pulls up to the kerb, and there’s no time to renege because Jenni recognizes him as soon as she gets out of the car.
“Sam? Oh my goodness -“
And she looks nice, done-up hair and skirt and dressed-from-work makeup, smiling at him so genuinely he can’t feel uncomfortable.
“Hey, Jenni.”
She shoulders her bag as she comes over to touch his arm, smiling, smiling.
“Oh wow - it’s good to see you! I didn’t know you were - oh hey, honey, do you remember Sam?”
To the little boy who’s clambered out of the car, dragging a colourful backpack, grabbing her hand for security.
“Richie,” Sam says, kind of amazed at the transition from two years to five, and the boy nods, tow-headed, shy.
“You carried me out,” Richie says solemnly.
Sam catches his breath.
“Yeah, I did.”
In the time it takes to swallow the experience back in Jenni squeezes her son’s shoulder and waves it all away.
“But hey, you’re in town now? And your brother, he’s -“
“Actually, I’m on my own. Just visiting, not staying - I head back to Stanford tomorrow, or day after.”
“Oh, okay - d’you - I mean, would you like to come in?” She angles herself towards the house. “I just picked up Richie from care after work -“
“Thanks, but I’m kind of…” He looks down at his running gear. “I was just passing,” he smiles, shifting feet, not wanting to be impolite, steering things away. He doesn’t really want to go inside. “And your daughter, she’s -“
“Oh, Sari’s having a sleepover tonight,” Jenni says with light laugh, hitching her bag, Sam can see that this sleepover stuff is a new development in the pre-teen continuum. “But she’ll be sorry she missed you. You’re staying in town, huh?”
“Just out of town - I’m at Missouri’s,” he nods, catching Richie’s eye as the boy stares. “So you’ll be starting school soon, yeah?”
“Next year,” Richie says, pulling his pack forward for show.
Jenni tousles the kid’s hair, hitches her bag, it looks a little heavy -
“Yeah, he’s getting so big now…you’re at Missouri’s old place? Weren’t you cold there at the weekend? I mean, I didn’t think the utilities would still be connected…”
Sam blinks at her.
“No, it was fine,” he says slowly, looking at Jenni, really looking now. “Why wouldn’t the utilities be on?”
“I just thought, y’know, after…well, I felt terrible about it,” Jenni says, frowning now. “She helped us so much, she used to bring us pot roast and everything…”
Sam watches the way her lips move when she says it: pot roast. He looks at her whole face, suddenly wondering if she is real.
“It was…well, it was such an awful thing to happen…” Jenni says.
“An awful thing,” Sam echoes, nodding, not knowing why, feeling kind of weird and a little terrified now.
“God, yes,” Jenni continues. “I mean, you never think - and they never caught the guy, the driver of the car, you’d think that in a town of this size there’d be a - Sam? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says, he thinks he says it, he makes an effort to say it out loud. “I’m fine. They never - they never caught the driver…”
“Of the hit-and-run,” Jenni says, but she’s touching his arm, his holllow arm, squinting at him in concern. “Hey, I’m sorry, I thought you - but you’ve been out of town, I guess you…I guess you didn’t know…”
And the confusion on her face, because he’s been staying at Missouri’s house, so how can he not know? except he’s swaying a little on his feet, chalky face, pale lips -
“I’ve gotta go now, Jenni,” he says in a blurry way, stepping back, walking off, running off, careless of how it must look, but too empty to really worry about it, the stinging in his chest, the awfulness, the awful thing, because this is what it’s like when you’re open, when you’re open, a big open gaping hole, the whole whole world rushing in, and you’re learning the same lessons again and again and again and -
*
LILAC - Syringia vulgaris
- A real pretty plant, it drives evil real good. Also, the fresh flowers can clean out ghosts from a haunted house.
*
He returns to the house, walks through to the kitchen, feet feeling heavy and slow, drops himself into a chair at the big old table. The tabletop is stained with ancient coffee rings, like it’s worn into the wood - he stares at the stains for a minute and at his own large hands on the table, and when he raises his eyes his dad is putting a steaming mug in front of him. The coffee smells dark and rich and pure. He reaches for the mug carefully, takes small sips, watches his father move the kettle back onto the stove before sitting down opposite.
There’s silence for a long while. Just the coffee. Then Sam sighs and speaks.
“Does it bother you?” he asks quietly, and John smiles, that smile of his that’s always faint and shimmering, like a mirage.
“No, son, it doesn’t bother me.” He blows on his coffee. “I’m not hurting, and I don’t think you did the wrong thing. I’m just…here. I don’t mind.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess the question is, does it bother you?”
Sam takes in his father’s face, feels the stillness, inside and out.
“No, Dad. It doesn’t bother me. I guess I’m…getting used to it.”
John nods, lifts a finger towards the mugs.
“Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
The kitchen is very quiet. Sam can hear birds outside in the garden. He wants to say ‘I wish you were really here’, but it seems stupid.
“Missouri was a fine woman,” John says softly.
“Yes, she was,” Sam agrees.
“Those papers she wanted to give you, they’re in the middle drawer of your room upstairs.”
Sam nods.
“You better get some food into you - you’re looking thin.”
Sam wants to say, Missouri’s home cooking isn’t as filling as it used to be. Instead he says, “Yes, sir.”
John clears his throat and looks away.
“You wanted to know the question. You wanted to know the difference between the real world and the other world.”
“I did.”
His father looks at him squarely.
“Think you know now?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” Sam says. It’s all he can do to make his voice audible.
“Good.” John nods, looks at his coffee dregs. When he looks up his face has that soft quality that Sam still yearns for. “It’s good to see you, son.”
Sam has to look away then. Something in him cracks through the hollowness in his chest, and the words are out before he can stop himself.
“I miss you, dad.”
When he looks back, he’s sitting in the kitchen, in the late afternoon. There are no jars, no fixtures, no warmth of home, no hanging herbs, or pantry items or tea things, or pots and pans or belongings or signs of life of any kind. The kitchen is empty, except for him and the table. The tabletop is dusty - there are two cups.
He looks out the back window into the wilderness garden, feeling his whole body stiffen and chill. He thinks he hears Missouri’s voice, in his ear, in his mind.
Do you know the right question, Sam?
He knows.
*
MISTLETOE - Viscum album
- one of the most sacred plants, burned to banish evil. Just like at Christmas, hang it as an all-purpose protection over doors, windows, mantles. Mistletoe is a funny thing - not quite a herb, not quite a tree. You can find berries, flowers, and young leaves all on the same plant, and it grows upside-down and sideways. Doesn’t seem to hold to the regular green cycles - folk say the ‘spirit’ of the plant belongs to in-between times, dusk and dawn, the change of seasons and such. It’s a gateway to something different.
Sam, stick a piece of this inside your pocket for me? Good boy.
fin
Second fic in the Contretemps series
Arcana, secret things; mysteries (L.)
Media: Supernatural
Rating: PG (language, concepts)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Archive: My LJ, ‘goblok’ archive, silverlake - others by permission
Summary: “So what’s the difference between the real world and the other world?” “Honey,” she says, pulling her gloves back on, “you’re asking the wrong question.” Sam visits old friends in Lawrence - Contretemps Series, No. 2.
Note: She-Who-Provideth - hey niz, is any of this blowin’ up your skirt? - gave the inspiration and the eye-candy, thanks sis. And thanks to onelittlesleep, for pats on the back. If you haven’t read Abaddon, the first fic in this series, you’ll probably come out the end a bit confused but otherwise unscathed. Catch up at goblok archive, or through the link.
BTW: all the herb refs here are researched from herbals and netlinks - medicinal and magical properties are true as I could find them.
Spoilers: Season 1, particularly ‘Home’.
Feedback: is tasty.
ARCANA
a hunter’s herbal
I went to Missouri and I learned the truth
from John Winchester’s diary
Boys -
Your daddy was always at me to write some of this stuff down for him, but what with this and that I never did. Seeing you both last time, though, how you’re carrying on with the work, I figured it might be helpful. So here it is - not all of it, just some that you might find a use for. Most of the herbs you can get in the grocery, or a health food store, and I put in the proper names too, so there’s no confusion. Make sure you follow the instructions, some of the exotics can be dangerous if you use em wrong. Go well, anytime you’re in Lawrence you be sure to look me up -
*
He’s in the middle of his Master’s degree, managing the headaches with Imigran and dark rooms, but it’s starting to get to him. He can’t keep ignoring it. The day after he dreams about the house with the flies again is the day he calls her.
“It’s me,” he says.
“I know, honey. Gettin’ too hard for you?”
“Just lately,” he says, and then he’s not sure what else to say, or even why he called.
“Don’t you worry about that,” she says. “Come on over.”
(Like it’s a couple of doors down.)
“I’ve gotta -“
“I’m sure that library lady will give you a few days off, if you ask nice.”
“Okay,” he says, feeling bovine.
“See you Saturday, hon,” and she rings off.
He thinks she must have meant Friday, but of course when he calls to book the bus ticket he can’t leave until tomorrow. So Saturday it is.
He hasn’t spoken to Missouri for nearly three years, but she hasn’t changed a bit.
*
OATS - Avena sativa
- for money and prosperity spells, mostly. Also for when you’re having trouble, and I don’t mean werewolf-trouble or poltergeist-trouble. Treats nervous exhaustion, depression, melancholy and such. A bowl of oatmeal every day for a week - sounds simple and it is. Dean, don’t cluck your tongue boy, it works fine.
*
His head keeps knocking against the window and his knees are aching from lack of leg room, but he couldn’t get an aisle seat. At least the scenery is kinda nice. He’d forgotten how golden Kansas gets in the late spring. So much sun - the landscape is radiant. Or maybe he’s just been spending too much time in dark rooms.
When he unfolds at the end of the trip he gets a cramp in his calf, has to stand there rubbing the muscle through the denim until the pain recedes. By the time he looks up all the cabs are gone. He shoulders the backpack and starts walking.
*
GINGER - Zingiber officinalis
- I use this in baggies for lighting fires - romantic ones, y’know? For you boys, I’d use it for travel sickness - you both spend so much time on the road this might come in handy. It’s good for colds and flu as well, grate up a thimbleful into hot drinks. Warms you up fine.
*
On the third stair she opens the door. She is wearing a purple button-up sweater and has an axe in her hand.
“Sammy…” she smiles, looking him over, and the way she says it he really doesn’t mind.. “Well, I guess you couldn’t get any taller.”
“No ma’am,” he grins.
“You wanna kill the chicken or chop the wood?” she asks, then flaps her sleeve. “Never mind.” And she thrusts the axe into his hand.
“It’s out the back. About half a cord, and a few blocks for the fire tonight.”
He sighs, but it’s kind of a relief thing, then dumps his pack on the front porch.
“This better not be some kind of wax on-wax off bullshit,” he mutters, feeling warm already.
“Boy,” she says, cocking an eyebrow, “you watch too much tv.”
*
ALOE - Aloe vera
- put the leaf pulp on burns, cuts, whatever. Drink to make you puke, if you need it. Hang a stem over the door to guard against household accidents.
*
He chops for an hour, and then carries some into the house and stacks some near the back door, the smell of chickenshit and damp potatoes and compost. Then he chops more, he’s developed a kind of rhythm, the wood splits smooth, he chops until sundown, the sweat starting to chill on his shoulders. Missouri comes out with two tall glasses.
“Put your shirt on, sweetie, before you catch cold.”
She hands him the lemonade after he does up a couple of buttons.
“Oh boy, it sure is nice out here, isn’t it?” she says, and he sits on a log near her, on the back step, and they both watch the red sun low on the horizon. The aroma of frying fat and baking nearby, if he turns his face towards the house.
Missouri pulls her sweater around herself.
“That’s thyme, and oregano, and the damn lemon balm is taking over the whole place…” she says, pointing with her chin, then sipping her lemonade. “And rosemary, you know.”
“I know,” he nods. He remembers something he read. “’Rosemary grows best where a woman is strong in her own house.’”
She laughs.
“And considering that I’m the only soul here, it’d be a damn shame if that was some stunted little shrub, dontcha think?”
He smiles softly, looks around some more. He hadn’t really seen the garden before, which is kinda strange because it’s a jungle, a riot of green, and he was chopping wood right in the middle of it. He recognizes marigolds, sunflowers, some of the vegetables. Others, the herbs, he doesn’t know at all.
“Snakeroot,” she says, watching his eyes move. “Pennyroyal, squawvine, angelica, hyssop…chamomile, for calming you down…”
He’s listening to her voice and it floats in the air, kinda like music, and he realizes with dull surprise that he’s shaking all over, only partly from exertion. She doesn’t say anything more, and when the shaking subsides they go inside for dinner.
Fried chicken and greens and baked pumpkin and potatoes, and then maple syrup pie with cream for dessert.
*
ROSEMARY - Rosmarinus officinalis
- lots of uses - infuse a handful of leaves in tea for exhaustion, nervous depression. Helps with headaches too. Smoulder the leaves with juniper berries in a sickroom, or to get rid of insomnia, and rub the juice into joints, bruises, sprains. And then burn the stuff for protection, exorcism and purification.
CHAMOMILE - Matricaria recutita
- get it from the supermarket. Drink the tea for calm, and to settle your stomach. It’s a mild sedative for hysteria (you may not need it, but some other poor folk might) and it’s good for insomnia too. Mush up and poultice onto burns and weeping sores. Sprinkle the dried stuff around houses when you’re trying to get rid of a curse or a hex.
*
Chicken sleep - nodding head, jerking up, nodding down again, slip, fall, jarring awake.
He stands at the second floor window of the bedroom he has been given, standing in the dark looking down on a panorama of silver and black. The whole world glowing under moonlight, diamond dusted, curtains billowing lightly over the sill, and the outside world is one street wide. There’s a procession down there, cars and people - dark clothes, with the white collars standing out in high relief. He recognizes the old green van from Guenther’s, sliding ahead of the mourners on foot, and in front of the van is the Impala, and in front of the Impala is the hearse.
He sees a man walking, carrying a bundle, with a little kid in a dark suit walking close beside - and Sam has a second to wonder who’s driving the Impala when his dad turns his head and looks straight at him, straight through the window, and there’s a knock on the door and he jerks
awake.
Missouri has a candle, and a thick hairy dressing gown, and her breath fogs a little when she speaks, so he realizes the cold isn’t just in his head.
“Y’know, you’re supposed to be asleep at three a.m.”
“It’s called insomnia,” he points out delicately, but his words run together a little, enough to give it away, just how bone-dry and tired he feels, and Missouri squints at him.
“This is easier if you’re asleep,” she says.
He thinks of course it is, except he has no idea what she’s talking about, and turning back to the window he feels the night breeze course through him - his dad and little Dean and his baby self are already halfway down the street, maybe two houses away, the cars honouring his mother’s remains streaming ahead and he
jerks awake.
The knock sounds, and he bites his teeth together, trying to figure out what’s real. He almost stays lying there on the bed, but he knows that in real life he’s obliged to open the door himself.
“Coming,” he calls.
He bumps the nightstand pulling on his pants, and the pain reminds him of the truth of the flesh, and gives him a second to settle himself. He slides his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. The floorboards are freezing in bare feet.
When he opens the door Missouri is standing there, with her candle and her dressing gown, same as before.
“Y’know, you’re supposed to be asleep at three a.m.” she says and he tries hard not to gape at her, but at least he knows his line now.
“It’s called insomnia,” he says dully, teeth chattering.
She leans forward suddenly and plants a palm on his cheek - he feels the warmth of skin, and his own dry heat. She frowns.
“Come on,” she says, and there’s no room for argument, he pads down behind her, keeping his eyes off the candleflame, watching where he puts his feet, feeling his way, wishing he’d pulled on his socks.
The kitchen is musty-smelling and the wood stove still radiates a little banked heat. He hugs his jacket closer and lowers himself into a chair, rubs his toes together, watches Missouri pour hot water from the kettle on the hob, wondering why the candles -
“I can turn on the light if you want,” she says.
“No - uh, no, it’s fine.”
“I just don’t like the glare.”
“Sure, I understand.”
She pushes a mug into his hands.
“Here - for the fever. And for sleeping.”
Can’t see in the half-light - the tea could be sump oil, but it tastes kind of citrusy and green and he’s only taken three slurps before he breaks out in a light sweat.
“Thanks.”
Missouri stands near the stove and warms her hands, looking at him, smiling.
“You boys,” she mutters, shakes her head. “You remind me so much of my -“
She stops herself, looking away - he wonders what she’d been going to say, he never thought of her life before, maybe children of her own, before she became the surrogate of orphans like himself. He feels bad all of a sudden, for being here, for burdening her like this. It just doesn’t seem like something that friends do.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, and then he can’t look her in the eye and he’s obliged to explain. “Dean and Holly are having a baby, and Bobby never returns any of my messages, and I…didn’t know who else to call.”
He finally manages to look at her for the last bit. She’s pouring steaming water into her own mug.
“Bobby is in Haiti,” she says. “So don’t take it personal.”
“Oh.”
“And you don’t need to apologize, Sam.”
“Oh.” He clears his throat. “Okay.”
Missouri comes in and settles her stiff joints into a chair at the table. She’s turning her own mug in her hands with a look on her face like someone told her the sky turned green.
“Dean and some girl are having a baby?”
He raises his own eyebrows and smiles and shakes his head.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Sweet Lord. Now I have heard it all.
“I think he wants to hand that leather jacket on down the line.”
Missouri takes a sip of tea, closes her eyes, opens them.
“He might be in for a surprise.”
“What? Do you -“
“Nothin’.” She shoos him with her hand. “Go to bed. Take your tea, there’s an extra blanket in the press in the hall, and stop thinking and go to sleep.”
“Thanks,” he says, and it’s important that she see that he means it.
“Don’t mention it,” she says. Before he leaves the kitchen she catches his gaze. “What did you see out the window, Sam?”
He looks away and back again.
“My mother’s funeral.”
She smiles sadly and sighs.
“Go to bed, honey,” she says
*
LEMON BALM - Melissa officinalis
- make tea with the leaves for anxiety, nerves, insomnia. Soak in wine - red or white, it don’t matter much - for three hours and drink up for doing spellwork.
YARROW - Achillea millefolium
- to manage a fever - drink the tea. Poultice it up to stop bleeding and heal wounds, but fresh leaves is better for that. For exorcism - sprinkle it around with the salt, it will help. Works fine for people, place or things.
*
He comes down in the morning, rubs his chin, there’s stubble there, and coffee in the pot on the stove, and he’s about to take his mug out onto the back step when he hears voices.
Real ones.
“…but he’s gonna be fine. You don’t need to worry over it. You been drinking that tea I gave you?”
“When I have a chance to sit, yeah.”
“You keep that up. I’ll give you some squawvine too - you can mix the leaves together if you like, but add a little honey for taste. Gimme a minute, sweetie.”
There’s some bustle, Missouri prods open the other door - before she closes it behind her he gets a glimpse of a worn-faced woman with a rounded belly, sitting in a hard-backed chair in the parlour.
“Hey,” he offers.
He feels a little uncomfortable. He hasn’t even washed his face.
“Hey, Sam,” she smiles, relaxed, stepping to the side countertop, reaching to the shelves above. The jar population there is prodigious, ordered but unlabelled. She chooses a large jar with a screw-top, and handfuls a quantity of herb into a brown paper bag from a bunch bundled up in the drawer.
“You sleep better, after last night?” she asks, folding the top of the bag down, and no matter how nonchalant she is, he’s still a stranger in the house, so he feels compelled to be polite.
“Sure. I slept fine.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, puts a hand on her hip and looks at him and waits.
“Well - better,” he amends.
She smiles at him and her eyelashes blink a little.
“Well - um, I mean, I woke up again, but it wasn’t so…” He sips his coffee to cover the flush, then forces himself to raise his eyes. “I did sleep. For a while. It was better, after the tea.”
She purses her lips at him before remembering her client.
“Look, I’ll be done in about ten minutes. Take your coffee out back and I’ll come and fix you something.”
“You don’t -“
“Yes, I do, and enjoy it too. I don’t have company so often, and you gotta fill those legs of yours somehow…”and she hustles back out to the parlour.
Feeling strange and half-complete, he moves, pushes open the outside door and the rich green smell of dirt and herbs makes his face lift. He sits on the step with his coffee, lets the sun warm him up. It’s later than he thought, parts of the garden that should be in morning shade are lit, and the dew has risen long before. Before he finishes his cup Missouri comes out.
“You want another, sweetie?”
“Naw - no, I’m good.” The sun on his face, stirring lethargy, his words bleeding together a little, the Kansas drawl he’d forgotten he possessed.
She sits on the log, wipes her face and neck with a kerchief. She’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday.
“Mm. Sun’s good - could sit here all day, y’know?”
“Uh-huh.”
And the buzz of insects and the ambience so warm and gentle he hardly realizes where the conversation’s going.
“When’d you get out of the hospital, Sammy? Thanksgiving?”
“Just after Thanksgiving, yeah,” he replies sleepily.
“Christmas was hard, wasn’t it, honey.”
“Yeah,” he says, watching a cabbage moth. “Yeah. Christmas was hard.”
“You like eggs, Sam? Over-easy?”
“Sure,” he says, closing his eyes. “Eggs are great.”
She lays a hand on him then, large brown hand sinking on his shoulder, steadying his descent. He opens his eyes and sees the dazzle dance in front for countless minutes, and it’s not until he hears the sizzle, the fry-up aroma flaring his nostrils, that he realizes Missouri’s gone inside to the kitchen.
Eggs over-easy and fresh oranges and his soul floating, taffy-pulling, and stretching back and forth in the sunshine, half gone already.
*
Now these two you might not have much call for, but you never can tell I guess. Lords knows I’m called to use them almost every day for some folk.
RASPBERRY - Rubus idaeus
- you boys could hang a bramble over doors and windows for protection, but generally you make leaf tea for the last trimester of pregnancy. For a gentle birth. Pretty handy as an eyewash for pinkeye too.
SQUAWVINE - Mitchella repens
- same thing - make a tea to ease labour. Good for irritability - Sam, you might wanna give some to your brother.
*
The house is big enough, but small in that way he knows, the ceilings kind of low, the way he has to duck his head a little to get under the door jambs, like the place was made for people shorter than himself. Maybe the house isn’t small, maybe he’s too big - that feeling. Or maybe this sense that he’s expanding, spreading out too wide, too much height and breadth and depth, gangly and overgrown. He’s had that feeling since he was a kid, but it’s worse now somehow. Like if he closes his eyes he’ll grow and grow, until something gives and he’ll shatter outwards -
He gets overcome. The house is full of whispers and his head is throbbing. He sits on the bed, keeps himself crunched in, keeps his head down, his arms tight, his knees together. Maybe that’ll help.
“Sam,” Missouri calls behind the door. “Sam, you comin’ down for lunch?”
His back is against the headboard of the bed, his laptop on his bent knees. His eyes were closed, now they open, and the door opens too. Missouri leans in a little.
“Uh-huh,” she says. “But you gotta eat.”
He can’t remember whether he spoke. She frowns then tips her head to the side.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Then she leaves. He hears her movement on the stairs, below, puts aside his laptop, closes his eyes again, resting them. When he opens them this time she’s walking softly into the room with a mug in one hand.
“Drink this,” she says. “It’ll help.”
He puts aside the laptop, accepts the mug. The tea is olive-tinted and there’s leaf-residue floating on the top of it.
“More tea?”
“Yes,” she says drily. She settles herself at the foot of the bed. “It’ll help.”
It’s hot. It’s bitter - he makes a face.
“It’s kinda gross,” he whispers.
“Baby. Drink it all.”
He sips gingerly, feels his fingers start to warm around the mug, shifts his shoulders a little. Sitting on the single bed, in this room, is like the whole world - Stanford is far away, and his entire life is a dim memory.
“It gets better, y’know,” she says gently.
He looks at her. Is this why he came?
“You gotta stop fighting it,” she explains, watching him drink. “Honey, I know it’s a struggle, but you gotta let it go.”
“My skin is too small,” he says hoarsely.
“It’ll pass. You gotta relax into it.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can.”
He detaches one hand from the mug to rub at his eyes, knead his forehead like dough.
“I feel like I’m gonna blow apart.”
“That’s what it’s like, when you’re open.”
“What if…” He takes a gulp of his tea, keeps his eyes on the liquid swirl. “What if it’s too strong? What if I can’t control it?”
Missouri sits back, smoothes the maroon folds of her pants over her knees.
“I don’t know, sweetie. Have you tried?”
He blinks at that.
“So we try,” Missouri nods. She gets to her feet. “Not now. Soon. Now, we eat. C’mon.”
She gestures for the mug, and he drains the dregs, hands it over. Goes downstairs with her for lunch.
Bread chunks, buttered and dipped in vegetable soup, hot milk with cinnamon and rose petals.
*
ST JOHN’S WORT - Hypericum perforatum
- this used to be called ‘leaf of the blessed’. You can drink the tea to calm the nerves and it’s the best around for depression - half a cup morning and night, but mind the bitter taste. Folk used to wear it to cure melancholy and mental illness - maybe this means the confusion and such you can get when you’re performing an exorcism? And some say it makes you invincible in battle, so there’s no harm in trying. Hang it over the windows to keep spirits out.
VALERIAN - Valeriana officinalis
- called ‘All-Heal’ - rub the leaves onto muscle cramps. Use the root powder for anxiety-based insomnia. This is a mild hypnotic, and if you stuff it into a pillow you’ll get a good night’s rest for sure. In gris-gris bags, folk use it for love spells.
*
After lunch he helps clear the table and Missouri takes out a short stack of calico squares from a shelf in the pantry, lays them to one side, pulls down a half-dozen jars from the collection, unscrews their grubby lids. They make gris-gris bags for a few hours.
The work is methodical - a pinch from each jar, the herbs crinkling between his fingertips, crumbling into a pile in the middle of the calico, then gather all the corners and tie each square into a sweet tiny parcel. Missouri directs, where to dip his fingers, how much, how little, the pot-pourri smell and the fusty leathery scent of dried leaf and blossom and root, the parcels gathering into little groups, little minions, armies of protection, love, success.
Talk is low and pleasant, she asks about his research, his acquaintances, his other life. When the silences come she lets them flow into stories about her work, her people, the town. He’s reminded that Lawrence used to be home, but it’s been a while, too long for nostalgia, he lets the stories drift over him, laughs when he likes.
“…so I do better business at the end of winter,” she says, grinning. “Lots of folk remembering what it was like to have a spring in their step, lots of babies on the way. Gets so I can turn a baby in my sleep by June.”
His face lights with startlement.
“You can do that?”
“Just said so, didn’t I? It’s a knack, but it ain’t hard.” She twists a rubber band around a bag, gives him a sly glancing look. “Turned your brother.”
His eyes pop a little.
“No way,” he gasps out, but in his heart he feels how this is unsurprising.
Missouri flaps a square of calico as theatre.
“What is it in my face, I tell you something and you think I’m lying to you - ?”
“No, I just - I mean…” he fumbles, shakes his head. “Wow. Okay.”
“Okay is right,” she nods.
Then he realises something, and raises his eyes.
“So…you saw my mom?”
Missouri maintains his gaze.
“Sure. It was your momma looked me up. I never saw your daddy then. I imagine he thought Mary was crazy, going to some hokey old palm-reader…”
He thinks of his father’s reaction and grins, before remembering his place.
“But it worked, right?” he defends.
She smiles at that.
“Well - your brother. Stubborn as the day is long. He took some convincing - always did have the tendency to jump in feet first, that boy...”
“And my dad -“
“Could be he remembered my name. I can only guess that’s maybe why he came calling, all those years later...” She stops, seeing the effect this is having. “You got something in your eye there, honey?”
He doesn’t know why this still hurts so much, he thought he was over it. He looks down at his hands.
“I just… I never thought…”
“You’re still worrying over that end business with your daddy.”
He freezes in the act of glancing up. This is something he actively avoids thinking about, in normal life. Some experiences are better scoured from memory. Of course, there’s a price that goes with that.
“Sometimes I have trouble remembering his face. From before,” he says quietly.
Missouri looks at her herbs, pinches and sprinkles and twists.
“You know it was a mercy. John couldn’t have gone on like that, and he doesn’t want you frettin’ over it now.” Her fingers barely still as she catches his eye. “I see him sometimes, you know.”
“Yeah?” Sam says. He’s suddenly exhausted by this. He looks out the kitchen window, at the life outside, and sighs. “Me too.”
*
ASFETIDA - Ferula asafoetida
- I use this in beans when they’re cooking, to stop gas. Otherwise, this is the best evil spirit repellent around. Use it to smoke around an exorcism or a bad place, or wear it in a bag around your neck. Just one thing - this stuff tastes and smells terrible, so don’t go crazy with the censer.
ROSE - Rosa spp.
- Apart from just smelling so nice and looking lovely, rosehip jelly is good for coughs. Then go pick the petals for love bags. Put roses around the house to settle down arguments and negativity.
HYSSOP - Hyssopus officinalis
- I love hyssop - the flowers are wonderful. You can use the leaves in tea for coughs, colds and bronchitis. But I usually use it as a purifcation herb, and in gris-gris for wealth and success.
DRAGON’S BLOOD - Draceana draco
- you can get this from a good herbalist or an occult supply store. Basically it increases the power of your mixture/spell/whatever - use a pinch to magnify. It’s good for pretty much everything.
*
Running.
He runs in sweatpants and a t-shirt, without headphones, so he can hear his breathing and concentrate. Running is ritualised now, he feels weird if he doesn’t run, and it loosens him up, all his joints and tiredness and it’s never about keeping fit although that’s a side benefit.
His body is ground zero, bones jangling inside, like beans in a can, puffing like smoke, brain tickling and his calves itching a little. He spins around corner blocks and over pavement and past electricity poles -
The edge of town is very quiet. Campus is huge, and always bustling, and he’s lost his understanding of how things work in towns, where six o’clock is time for kids to head for home, and businesses to close their doors, and mothers are cutting vegetables as menfolk crack their first beer of the evening and the twilight settles in. Lawrence feels empty, devoid of life. Shutters closing, battening down the hatches, like curfew. He catches his breath, spits in the gutter, and wonders if there’s something wrong, something off here, or whether he’s just unused to these rhythms, too accustomed to looking for the ghost in the dark, the lurking evil, something, something…
He spots a lone teenager pedaling a bike, plastic grocery bag banging against the handlebars. On the corner, someone with a dog. He shakes, unravels his shoulders, lengthens his stride. He’s avoided the middle of town so far, content to lap the outskirts.
He sees something that makes his smooth breath stutter - a sign for Guenthers’ Auto Repair. He keeps running. He’s on Saltmarsh Street, heading west, and if he keeps his eyes facing forward and his stride steady he’ll pass Elk Drive without even noticing, without even looking, and he can go three blocks and turn for Missouri’s, follow the road back without feeling the hairs on his nape rise.
*
CALENDULA - Calendula officinalis
- betcha never thought you could get such use out of normal old marigolds. I always keep a bottle of the oil handy - for bites and stings, rashes, burns, just anything. Rub it into muscles for cramping and sore joints - all that jumping around you both do, might be good. The petals bring on dreams, but whether they’re good or bad is up to you, I guess.
*
He falls asleep on the couch with a book on his lap, watching Missouri play solo gin rummy, the night sound of cicadas in the bushes outside.
An hour later he snaps awake, sees blackness and colours when he opens his eyes, feels his skullcap detonate, turns blindly and throws up off the side of the couch. For whole blessed seconds he can’t see or feel anything. Then he catches his breath and everything comes rushing back, and cool hands are holding his shoulder, his head, while he leans over the side of the boat he’s in, tries to stop gagging. He hears voices, at a distance.
“Sam, I’m gonna get you a bucket and a towel, okay?”
There’s an absence, and he holds onto the solid edge to stop the sway, keeps his eyes closed, feels the insistent pounding. Then she’s back and the towel on his face is warm and moist and smells of something that seems to help.
“I keep looking…” he slurs out, smelling his own vomit, “…in all the rooms, the house is so big…I open all the doors…”
He gasps suddenly, looks into Missouri’s face.
“The woman! She was walking - there’s an accident…a car -“
“Hush now,” Missouri says.
He subsides and when he resurfaces the towel is good for his mouth and nose and his eyelids are made of molten metal. He touches his forehead gingerly, voice a croaky whisper.
“God. What day is it?”
“It’s Monday, honey. You need the bucket again?”
“No, no… It’s Monday?”
“It’s one a.m., Monday morning.”
“Okay. God.”
“You keep the towel on your face, it should help.”
And he does, and it does, for a while at least.
*
BETONY - Stachys officinalis
- hard to get sometimes, but you can find wood betony if you ask locals. Useful for lots of stuff - the tea for migraines and stomach troubles - but more useful for expelling evil spirits. Wear as a protective charm. Spread across doorways and windows to make a barrier - burn it if you want to double up. Put it in your pillow to chase nightmares.
FEVERFEW - Tanacetum parthenium
- 3-10 fresh leaves three times a day. This is the best remedy for migraines around. You can steep the leaves and drink it, but…well, it might make you upchuck.
BRIAR ROSE - Rosa rubiginosa
- can substitute for true rose in medicinals, but for clairvoyant dreams steep 2 teaspoons of petals and 1 cup boiling water. Drink at bedtime.
*
“So what can you do?”
They’re in the kitchen, he’s sitting at the table with one of his books open in front, and she’s sitting opposite, stripping dried leaves from dried stems, feathering the leaves into a jar, the bunches of herb and flower scattered in a loose mess, sweet disorder. He looks up with a blank expression, but he understands the question, it’s no use pretending. He meets her eyes and shrugs.
“It’s just…dreams, mostly. Like seeing stuff that’s about to happen.” Missouri is nodding her head, so he goes on. “Sometimes I get a few days warning, sometimes it’s only a few minutes. And then I get the headaches, which is fun.”
“Uh-huh. What else?”
He opens his mouth, but she’s already plunged ahead.
“Can you light fires? I knew a fella who could light fires. That’s a damned useful thing to have.”
He grins half-heartedly.
“I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think I ever -“
“There’s something else though.”
He’s used to this way of hers now. Kind of used to it. He’s never talked about this openly with anyone else before - Dean doesn’t count. He’s never talked about it with anyone who understood. With anyone who didn’t look at him like he was crazy. He swallows over hesitation.
“I can, uh, move stuff. Sometimes.”
“When you need it?”
“No - just sometimes.”
“When you’re upset or scared?”
“Not always. It’s like it happens more often when I’m not thinking about it.”
“Uh-huh.” She takes a sip of tea from a delicate china cup with a matching saucer, and the aroma is minty, refreshing. “You ever read cards, Sam?”
Cards. He thinks of spades and diamonds for a second, his brother and him playing Texas hold-em for matches, then remembers her parlour and has to re-order his brain. Cards. No, he’s never read cards.
“I know a little… I can make a spread, but I don’t really -“
“Try something for me,” she says, gets up and rummages in the drawer with the paper bags, returns to her chair with a stack - not a stack, a deck - a deck of well-worn cards. She clears a space on the table. Then she holds up a card, over-large and elaborately detailed on the back, which is facing him. Sam grins, bemused.
“You want me to guess?”
“Can you?” she asks, eyeballing him.
“Well, I can guess, but -“
“Show me.”
He smiles and shrugs. This isn’t something he’s tried before. It’s kind of embarrassing.
“Uh - swords.”
“Swords it is,” she says, and she lays the picture face up on the table. “Another one.”
He’s still humouring her.
“Cups,” he says, off the top of his head.
“Cups it is.”
He swallows.
“That’s lucky,” he says, but he’s not sure why he’s still thinking in those terms, after what they’ve just discussed.
“Is it? Here’s another one.”
He actually looks at the card this time.
“Wands.”
She smiles as she puts the card face up. “Another one.”
She gives him two more and he gets them both. That’s five from five. He opens and closes his mouth, feeling more and more uncertain.
“But I’m not -“
“You still think you’re lucky, Sam?” Missouri says quietly. Her brown hand slides up another card, and it fills his vision. “Gimme some depth. No more easy stuff.”
He wrinkles his forehead at the card. Depth.
“Uh…swords again.”
“More,” she says, still holding it up.
“Uh…”
He blinks a little, lets himself breathe. Depth.
“It’s, uh, it’s a number card…” He lets himself drift, lets himself float a bit. “It’s…”
He feels something trailing inside himself, like seaweed curling. He lets himself sink, a tiny bit, half an inch, lets his eyelids droop a little until he starts to feel warm, cosy, he’s aware of it there, an image, a sense of -
“There’s…there’s a problem. She’s fighting with somebody…family. Her cousins. There’s a problem with the money, and everyone wants a slice, but her grandfather put in his will that she…she…”
He realises what he’s saying and comes to with a start. Missouri is staring at him, intent.
“D’you think she’ll get that money problem sorted out, Sam?” she asks softly, but he’s already too taken aback.
“I-I don’t know. What, was that -“
“Nothin’,” Missouri says quickly, and she piles all the cards together. “Parlour tricks.”
“Parlour tricks,” he says flatly. He can’t figure this all out, one minute she’s asking him to -
“I’m just saying, this stuff isn’t the important stuff,” she says, and pats his hand on the table, goes back to stacking.
He shakes his head, rubs his eyes. If this weren’t all so fucking confusing -
He hears a noise and looks up. The cards are whirling in the air above the table, like an eddy of leaves, and when he gasps they collapse back onto the wood. Missouri regards him, then begins picking them up all over again.
“Like I said,” she intones quietly. “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
*
MUGWORT - Artemisia vulgaris
- apart from keeping the moths out of the closet, this is the business for protection and clairvoyance. Hang it over the door or hang it in the car - keeps spirits out and clears weariness. Makes an infusion with honey and drink before divination. Not for nothin they used to call it Witch Herb.
WORMWOOD - Artemisia absinthium
- mugwort’s smellier older brother. Burn em together for scrying - the smell increases psychic power. Hang it off the rear-view to prevent accidents. You can take a tea of this as a gut tonic, but not more than three times a day, it’s toxic in high doses.
*
He’s outside after lunch, the heat of the day making the sweat trickle down his back, his arms elbow-deep in the compost, pulling potatoes. These are the only ones left - all her clamped potatoes are gone, and it’s too early in the spring for the next crop. He reaches with his fingers in the dirt, feels through mushy spots and old apple peelings, inhales something that smells like moist breath and brownness, tugs out a tuber, rubs off some of the mud, puts it in the pile. Two hens free-range close by. Missouri has pulled off her gardening gloves, she’s scratching at her neck beneath the brim of her floppy hat, looking over the wilting weeds she’s just yanked.
“I just… I can’t figure it out,” Sam says, mid-conversation, huffing a little with work. “I met someone, when I was in the hospital. I thought she was real, but she…well, she wasn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” Missouri says, lifts off her hat to fan herself.
Sam sits back on his haunches, tosses another potato into the collection, squints over at her.
“So, how can you tell? I mean, what’s the difference?”
“The difference?”
“Yeah. What’s the difference between the real world and the other world?”
Missouri smiles wearily, then uses her sleeve to wipe her forehead.
“Honey,” she says, pulling her gloves back on, “you’re asking the wrong question.”
*
RUE - Ruta graveolens
- called ‘Herb of Grace’. Watch out, you can get a rash from this if you pick it fresh. Steep 2 tspns of dried herb in 1 cup boiling water for 20 minutes, take half a cup per day (for coughs and cramps) but no more, unles you wanna throw it all up again. Rue is anti-magical - it breaks hexes and curses, and it’s a good defence against dark stuff. Burn it to move things on - spirits, headaches, heartaches, general stuff. Grows best when it’s stolen.
*
This time, he runs through the main part of town, past the strip mall and the supermarket, tired red-and-blue posters flap and wave at him from lampposts, trying to get him worked up about last winter’s basketball game. He doesn’t get anything - nada, not a thing - and he decides he was imagining it, the other time.He’s just too alert, hyper-alert, over-sensitized, and look, there’s people everywhere this time. People giving him funny looks. Plus, y’know, yesterday, he forgot it was Sunday. Sunday can make a big difference to a small town.
He ignores the looks and finishes his run.
When he gets up to Missouri’s street it’s long and flat, he hammers for home, racing himself. He sprints the last fifty feet or so, slams into the fence to brake, almost whoops a little until he sees he’s disturbed a visitor - a woman, youngish, with a kindergarten-aged child. When the woman sees him, by the time he sees her, realises what’s going on, she’s through the gate and scuttling away, small child in tow.
“Oh, hey - um, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -“
She’s gone. He drops his hand, gives up with a shrug. Snags his t-shirt on the fence and then makes his way up the steps, and is unsurprised when Missouri opens the door. He swipes his face against his shoulder sleeve.
“You had a visitor. A lady with a little girl. I think maybe I scared her off.”
“Oh - that’s Deborah,” Missouri says, turning for the kitchen, moving back down the hall as he trails, closing the door behind him. “Yeah, she’s a sweetie, real thoughtful. Shame her husband’s such a pain in the ass… You want a shower or something? Dinner’s nearly done, hope you like casserole and beans.”
“Sounds great. Yeah, gimme a minute to change.”
He goes out the back door to the washing line, grabs his towel, wipes his face and drapes the terrycloth around his neck. When he comes back, passing through the kitchen on the way upstairs, he remembers something he’d been thinking about.
“What is it?” Missouri asks, that way she does.
“It’s no big deal. I was just thinking, y’know…Lawrence. I mean, how come Lawrence? How come you never moved on?”
“Well, for a start, I like it here,” she says, wiping the table, laying cutlery. “I got a clientele. It’s regular. Can’t all be gypsies, like you Winchesters.”
Sam nods, says nothing, lets her go on.
“It was a hard life your father chose, y’know,” Missouri says, arranging forks and glassware carefully, meeting Sam’s eyes. “Maybe I’m just lazy…I don’t know. Anyway - at least if you ever need me you know where I am, right?”
“Right,” he says, smiling gently. The thought is comforting, which he’s sure is how it was intended.
“You still want a shower, you better hustle,” she says brightly. “Dinner’s in five.”
Minty lamb casserole with white beans and bread, stewed apples with brown sugar and cream.
*
LAVENDER - Lavandula augustifolia
- rub lavender oil on muscles for cramps and soreness. Burn it for sleep, or for purification and protection. Carry it to see ghosts.
PEPPERMINT - Mentha piperita
- good for lots of stuff: a liniment to cool you down, tea to settle your stomach, freshen your mind. I use it in bags for travel, prosperity. Use it to get things moving - it’s a catalyst for change.
*
That night, his last night, he remembers what happened after.
One woe is past. Behold, still two more woes are coming after these things.
Him and Dean, going from room to room in the house with the flies, gathering remains, bits and pieces, they place everything together, they have to make sure they haven’t missed anything. They don’t speak. They don’t want to return here again.
Dean goes out to the car and comes back with the gas can and he makes a spill in each corner, covers everything, and Sam sits cross-legged on the front porch watching the light fade, It’s done soon enough - Dean tips the dregs onto the front door, throws the can into the house, the clatter is the signal, Sam rises slowly on wobbly legs and walks back inside with his brother.
They stand in the room for a while. The smell of gas is overpowering, almost disguising the scent of rot.
“Sam,” Dean says, his voice guttural, and Sam extends his arm, prises his fingers open with an effort of will, lets the Colt detach, drop, fall with a muffled thud onto - onto -
It occurs to him that they should say prayers or something. He wets his lips but nothing will come out from between them.
Dean takes out a matchbook, tears off a couple of flints - fingers thick, fumbling - takes three tries to light them. Lets them flare up the book. Holds the burning brand out for as long as he can and lets it go.
From their father’s body the flames spread blue and gold, like water. It’s beautiful, and Sam stares at it for a while until his brother grabs him by the collar and hauls him outside.
They stand near the car and watch the house go flaring up.
Dean’s face is golden in the reflected heat. Sam wants to tell him, wants to say something, but Dean is staring at nothing and he is the first one to speak.
“I need a drink,” is the first thing he says.
They drive until they get to an out-of-town bar, where their state of filth and the stink of sweat and gasoline and the black-hole vacuum in the air around their tall bodies means no-one wants to come near them, where Dean empties out his wallet onto the countertop and gets a bottle and a single glass, where they retire to a booth and Dean drinks and drinks like he’s dying of thirst. Sam sits opposite with his back against the wall, knees drawn up with his feet on the seat, watching everything, running his thumbnail over his dry bottom lip, waiting for his hands to stop shaking.
Dean sloshes a half-measure into the glass, pushes it over while he himself slugs from the bottle, and Sam swallows the liquor and it tastes just like nothing at all. Halfway through the night he accepts a cigarette from a waitress, but that doesn’t taste like anything either. Nothing tastes like anything.
Another bottle and hours later and Dean starts a fight and they get thrown out and the bar closes, so Sam half-carries his brother back to the carpark, holds Dean’s waist while his brother pukes whiskey onto the gravel, lays Dean down in the back of the Impala. Dean looks both heavy and lightened. Sam sits in the front with the door open and watches the sky at night.
Missouri walks over to the car door, the breeze tugging at her clothes.
“This is old stuff,” she says, and leans in over the open window. Sam can see the diamonds in her earrings. “You gotta stop torturing yourself, honey.”
“This is my memory,” he whispers, “and I abjure consolation.”
“That may be,” she says,” but time’s up. There’s still work need’s doing. Hop to it.”
And he awakes.
*
GARLIC - Allum sativum
- easy to find and plenty useful. Mash it up as a wound dressing, it’s a natural antibiotic. Roast and eat it for colds and flu and general run-down. Now, I know Daniel never had much use for it against vampires, but I use it in gris-gris all the time as a protection and it works well against ghosts. Sacred to Hecate.
ANGELICA - Angelica archangelica
- ‘Angel’s food’ they call it, for good reason. Gets rid of poltergeists, as you know, plus you can sprinkle the leaves around the four corners of a house to purify it. A good all-rounder.
ACONITE - Aconitum napellum/lycoctonum
- monkshood - do not screw around with wolfsbane, it’s a registered poison. It will work on werewolves, try dipping crossbow bolts in tincture or packing it into ammunition. You want more information call Rufus Elder 5498379. Store it in an airtight container, use gloves to handle it, and for pity’s sake don’t inhale the smoke, cos I don’t wanna have to phone your daddy with the bad news.
*
“So Dean said that was it,” Sam finishes slowly. “Finito. No more.”
He sips his herb tea in the sun. Missouri is sitting beside him, tying lavender stems together for hanging.
“Mm,” she says, wraps the string around the gathered stems three times, pulls the knot. “And he hasn’t done any hunting for what, two years or so?”
“Coming up three years now.”
“Uh-huh. Pass me the scissors, Sam?”
He does, and drains his cup.
“There was something else I wanted to ask you.”
“Ask away.”
“Remember when I asked what was the difference between the real world and the other world? And you said I was asking the wrong question?”
“I remember.”
He squints into the sun, enjoying the warmth on his face.
“So what’s the right question? I mean -“
“Oh, honey,” she says, smiling broadly, and she pats his shoulder and gets up, pulling the stems with her. “I’m gonna go hang these in the house.”
She shuffles inside, and he still doesn’t know.
*
HOREHOUND - Marrubium vulgare
- in a tight spot you can use the flowers like candles. Demons hate horehound - scatter with salt for exorcism. Good protection against dark magic. Drink an infusion to clear the mind, help you think, strengthen yourself mentally.
*
He returns with the milk, it feels kinda good to be getting out a little, he resolves to go into town tomorrow morning. It’s been a while since he thought about his dissertation - maybe he could look over the notes on his laptop after lunch.
The screen door bangs behind him, the sound echoes hollow through the house. He thinks he hears a murmur, voices from the kitchen, but when he walks in there it’s just Missouri at the table, cutting bread.
“You want two sandwiches or three?” she asks. “I got some corned beef, and pickles, and there’s early lettuces over near the compost heap.”
“Two is good - I’ll get the lettuce,” he offers, puts the milk on the table. “Were you just -?”
“Get me some peppermint while you’re out there, okay sweetie?” she says, sawing off another slice, crumbs scattering over the tabletop like snow.
He opens his mouth, then closes it, walks through the open back door for the greens. There’s birds feeding on the grass, they wing at his approach.
The sandwiches taste excellent, and there’s lemonade, peppermint leaves floating lazily on the surface.
“I got some papers for you upstairs, been meaning to give them over, some herbal stuff,” Missouri remembers, wiping her hands on a kitchen cloth.
“Okay,” he says, kind of says, talking around a mouthful.
You’re looking a whole lot better,” Missouri approves, watching him finish. “Not so…” She makes the flick of her fingertips around her eyes, to indicate the old dark circles.
“Yeah,” he says, and he realises that he actually is feeling better, better than when he first arrived, and there’s a reason for that. “Thank you. I mean it, thanks for -“
“Oh don’t,” she says, waves her hand and blinks quickly.
He grins.
“Well, I mean it.”
“I know you do, honey,” she says softly. “I know you do.”
She looks a little tired. Tomorrow, he thinks, tomorrow in town he’ll book his bus ticket home.
*
VERVAIN - Verbena officinalis
- Enchanter’s Herb, Holy Herb. One of the important ones - scatter for protection from ghosts, like iron. Burn it to clear your mind. Wear it as a protection when working magic or dealing with spirits.
*
He looks at his notes after lunch, does some tai-chi out the back for a while, then helps bring in some laundry. He goes running at five.
The day is starting to cool off. The length of his stride is smooth and his breathing is unforced and for the first time in a while his life feels manageable. The study, the hunting, Dean - all the anachronisms. He feels stronger, goes further than he expected, and before he knows it there’s the streetsign. Elk Drive is still tree-lined, neat houses and a few people walking, and it looks so unprepossessing, so normal - without letting himself think too much he turns onto the pavement.
He feels his pace alter, inevitability and awareness, and when he gets to the house…his house. His mother’s house. Jenni’s house. There’s a few changes - the big tree has come into leaf and there’s new plantings, garden beds near the path, near the porch. He slows to a stop, panting a little.
Before he can make up his own mind a blue Honda Civic pulls up to the kerb, and there’s no time to renege because Jenni recognizes him as soon as she gets out of the car.
“Sam? Oh my goodness -“
And she looks nice, done-up hair and skirt and dressed-from-work makeup, smiling at him so genuinely he can’t feel uncomfortable.
“Hey, Jenni.”
She shoulders her bag as she comes over to touch his arm, smiling, smiling.
“Oh wow - it’s good to see you! I didn’t know you were - oh hey, honey, do you remember Sam?”
To the little boy who’s clambered out of the car, dragging a colourful backpack, grabbing her hand for security.
“Richie,” Sam says, kind of amazed at the transition from two years to five, and the boy nods, tow-headed, shy.
“You carried me out,” Richie says solemnly.
Sam catches his breath.
“Yeah, I did.”
In the time it takes to swallow the experience back in Jenni squeezes her son’s shoulder and waves it all away.
“But hey, you’re in town now? And your brother, he’s -“
“Actually, I’m on my own. Just visiting, not staying - I head back to Stanford tomorrow, or day after.”
“Oh, okay - d’you - I mean, would you like to come in?” She angles herself towards the house. “I just picked up Richie from care after work -“
“Thanks, but I’m kind of…” He looks down at his running gear. “I was just passing,” he smiles, shifting feet, not wanting to be impolite, steering things away. He doesn’t really want to go inside. “And your daughter, she’s -“
“Oh, Sari’s having a sleepover tonight,” Jenni says with light laugh, hitching her bag, Sam can see that this sleepover stuff is a new development in the pre-teen continuum. “But she’ll be sorry she missed you. You’re staying in town, huh?”
“Just out of town - I’m at Missouri’s,” he nods, catching Richie’s eye as the boy stares. “So you’ll be starting school soon, yeah?”
“Next year,” Richie says, pulling his pack forward for show.
Jenni tousles the kid’s hair, hitches her bag, it looks a little heavy -
“Yeah, he’s getting so big now…you’re at Missouri’s old place? Weren’t you cold there at the weekend? I mean, I didn’t think the utilities would still be connected…”
Sam blinks at her.
“No, it was fine,” he says slowly, looking at Jenni, really looking now. “Why wouldn’t the utilities be on?”
“I just thought, y’know, after…well, I felt terrible about it,” Jenni says, frowning now. “She helped us so much, she used to bring us pot roast and everything…”
Sam watches the way her lips move when she says it: pot roast. He looks at her whole face, suddenly wondering if she is real.
“It was…well, it was such an awful thing to happen…” Jenni says.
“An awful thing,” Sam echoes, nodding, not knowing why, feeling kind of weird and a little terrified now.
“God, yes,” Jenni continues. “I mean, you never think - and they never caught the guy, the driver of the car, you’d think that in a town of this size there’d be a - Sam? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says, he thinks he says it, he makes an effort to say it out loud. “I’m fine. They never - they never caught the driver…”
“Of the hit-and-run,” Jenni says, but she’s touching his arm, his holllow arm, squinting at him in concern. “Hey, I’m sorry, I thought you - but you’ve been out of town, I guess you…I guess you didn’t know…”
And the confusion on her face, because he’s been staying at Missouri’s house, so how can he not know? except he’s swaying a little on his feet, chalky face, pale lips -
“I’ve gotta go now, Jenni,” he says in a blurry way, stepping back, walking off, running off, careless of how it must look, but too empty to really worry about it, the stinging in his chest, the awfulness, the awful thing, because this is what it’s like when you’re open, when you’re open, a big open gaping hole, the whole whole world rushing in, and you’re learning the same lessons again and again and again and -
*
LILAC - Syringia vulgaris
- A real pretty plant, it drives evil real good. Also, the fresh flowers can clean out ghosts from a haunted house.
*
He returns to the house, walks through to the kitchen, feet feeling heavy and slow, drops himself into a chair at the big old table. The tabletop is stained with ancient coffee rings, like it’s worn into the wood - he stares at the stains for a minute and at his own large hands on the table, and when he raises his eyes his dad is putting a steaming mug in front of him. The coffee smells dark and rich and pure. He reaches for the mug carefully, takes small sips, watches his father move the kettle back onto the stove before sitting down opposite.
There’s silence for a long while. Just the coffee. Then Sam sighs and speaks.
“Does it bother you?” he asks quietly, and John smiles, that smile of his that’s always faint and shimmering, like a mirage.
“No, son, it doesn’t bother me.” He blows on his coffee. “I’m not hurting, and I don’t think you did the wrong thing. I’m just…here. I don’t mind.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess the question is, does it bother you?”
Sam takes in his father’s face, feels the stillness, inside and out.
“No, Dad. It doesn’t bother me. I guess I’m…getting used to it.”
John nods, lifts a finger towards the mugs.
“Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
The kitchen is very quiet. Sam can hear birds outside in the garden. He wants to say ‘I wish you were really here’, but it seems stupid.
“Missouri was a fine woman,” John says softly.
“Yes, she was,” Sam agrees.
“Those papers she wanted to give you, they’re in the middle drawer of your room upstairs.”
Sam nods.
“You better get some food into you - you’re looking thin.”
Sam wants to say, Missouri’s home cooking isn’t as filling as it used to be. Instead he says, “Yes, sir.”
John clears his throat and looks away.
“You wanted to know the question. You wanted to know the difference between the real world and the other world.”
“I did.”
His father looks at him squarely.
“Think you know now?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” Sam says. It’s all he can do to make his voice audible.
“Good.” John nods, looks at his coffee dregs. When he looks up his face has that soft quality that Sam still yearns for. “It’s good to see you, son.”
Sam has to look away then. Something in him cracks through the hollowness in his chest, and the words are out before he can stop himself.
“I miss you, dad.”
When he looks back, he’s sitting in the kitchen, in the late afternoon. There are no jars, no fixtures, no warmth of home, no hanging herbs, or pantry items or tea things, or pots and pans or belongings or signs of life of any kind. The kitchen is empty, except for him and the table. The tabletop is dusty - there are two cups.
He looks out the back window into the wilderness garden, feeling his whole body stiffen and chill. He thinks he hears Missouri’s voice, in his ear, in his mind.
Do you know the right question, Sam?
He knows.
*
MISTLETOE - Viscum album
- one of the most sacred plants, burned to banish evil. Just like at Christmas, hang it as an all-purpose protection over doors, windows, mantles. Mistletoe is a funny thing - not quite a herb, not quite a tree. You can find berries, flowers, and young leaves all on the same plant, and it grows upside-down and sideways. Doesn’t seem to hold to the regular green cycles - folk say the ‘spirit’ of the plant belongs to in-between times, dusk and dawn, the change of seasons and such. It’s a gateway to something different.
Sam, stick a piece of this inside your pocket for me? Good boy.
fin
Second fic in the Contretemps series
Arcana, secret things; mysteries (L.)