Stranger in Love, part 2/5
MASTER || PROLOGUE || PART 1 || PART 2 || PART 3 || PART 4 || PART 5 || EPILOGUE
PART 2
"Still nothing?" Sam asked.
"What do you think?" Dean snapped irritably as he shut his cellphone off. Not like this was new, it was more that Dean never really got used to it. Dad had told him in advance that he would keep off the radar and might be gone for weeks. Dean figured it'd been about demons. Once more he glanced at the slide he'd been nervously turning in his fingers. He was trying to keep his cool, he was, but finding this picture here, apparently completely out of the blue, well, that triggered something. It was as if someone wanted him and Sam to see these; an entire box full of slides, each and every one of them displaying the same picture of Dad. The question why would anyone run an errand with it for Sam and Dean to find was a key to a whole, vast box of ugly possibilities.
Dean sighed and glanced at his little brother who was now crouching amongst the mess of the slides. It was like looking back at the little brat helplessly trying to build some ridiculous tower or whatever of his stupid blocks. For some reason that seemed to piss Dean off even more.
“Any luck with those?” Dean nodded in the general direction of a chaotic pile.
Sam shifted and Dean knew his brother well enough to see that Sam was restraining himself from parroting Dean or going with some other snarky remark. Dean decided he could at least grant Sam points for effort.
“Not a single different picture, not anything that would stand out in the rest of the slides other than slight diversity in focus and maybe coloring, as far as I can tell.” Sam clasped his hands against thighs forming two small clouds of dust.
Dean pulled out a flashlight from the inner pocket of his jacket. On his way out of the room he turned to look back at Sam. Mustering a deadly serious expression, Dean flashed the light right in his brother's face.
“Care to join me in the bathroom?”
Sam stared at him for a while like he was savoring another moment of Dean the Moron Extraordinaire. Eventually though, he stood up and followed his brother downstairs.
Although there was actually a small window in the bathroom, it was mostly barricaded with one of the hanging cupboards of that time, vacant in the row of them where it used to be, apparently ripped off the wall and randomly tossed aside. In the result, the place was dark enough. Dean found the shower was still fringed with a pastel colored curtain, the grimy yet pale material held now only by a handful of clips. He stretched it out, smoothing the surface.
“It's fine,” said Sam. “Let's see this.”
Dean stood next to him and switched on the flashlight, directing the beam through the slide up to the curtain. The picture displayed on the curtain showed John Winchester walking down a fairly quiet street, his posture alert as ever, the familiar look was there in the eyes that hardly ever let anything go unnoticed.
“Just how I remember him,” Sam marveled.
There were two houses in the background, as typical as the suburbs could promise. No signboard with the address, nothing to indicate when or whereabouts except a car, emerging from around the corner. The plate was unreadable, though.
“This was taken in the last few days. How's that possible? Why is it here?” Dean mused as he remembered the dusty box wherein he'd found the slides.
In the mild darkness he noticed Sam looking at him with curiosity and amusement, probably of equal measure.
“That car over there,” Dean said pointing to the side of the picture. “That's Ford Focus Mk2, hatchback. Boring. Except for the fact that it hadn't been produced till June 2005.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. And I was with Dad practically the whole time in June. We were on the trail of one psycho nomadic vampire family,” he sighed. “I don't recognize this place at all so... last couple of days, a week tops.”
Any explanation Dean could come up with was ridiculous. Maybe while Dad was around here, somebody or something that felt threatened was spying on him. One of the locals, perhaps. But then, why hide the slides in here? And why all the copies of a single picture? Dean tried to call his father again but he already knew it was pointless. Alternately, Sam and Dean were taking breaths like they were about to say something but clearly they were lost at this point.
“Looks like we're staying around for a while,” Sam said finally. “Till maybe we can figure something out?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Huh. You wanna hit the pool tables?”
The next afternoon, Sam's and Dean's orders at the diner were a bit fancier than usual. This was Sam's idea but their ultimate victory at pool the previous night seemed sufficient reason for a small celebration in the lone restaurant in town. At least this was the explanation Dean chose to believe. He knew better than to claim full understanding of what was going on in his brother's head, neither was he all that interested in reading into Sam's whims.
Sam had been outdoors since the early morning that day and he wouldn't say where he'd gone. He dodged the single question - as casually thrown as Dean could manage - by saying: "Trust me, you're gonna love this," which was a valid cause for alarm already. Then, met by Dean's deeply doubtful expression, Sam added, "just not right away," which at least meant they were past the alarms. They were doomed.
So give me Coffee and TV
Easily...
Coming from the loudspeakers was now a noise fighting against the insufferable ranting of the diner owner - Candy's Mum. Apparently, somehow she had deduced that Sam had not drunk his coffee the other day. She had yet to discover that neither Sam nor Dean had ordered coffee this time around.
“...four children and not one of them grew up a tea drinker,” she roared over their table, spitting out the last words with venom. Dean noticed the lady's bloodshot eyes even though they were focused on Sam; the red, forked lightning matched Candy's Mum's thundering gaze as she spoke. “They all sucked in coffee with their mother's milk!”
Dean shook his head as if to shatter the image. He caught one scarred look from Sam. Meanwhile, Candy's Mum leaned even closer over the table revealing her impressive cleavage. “And let me tell you,” she went on, “they drank from an F cup.”
“Look,” Sam tried. “We sure do appreciate a good coffee-”
Dean rolled his eyes.
“In his nauseatingly polite way, Sam would like to ask you to keep your cups closer to your chest,” he smiled broadly at Candy's Mum. Predictably, she glared daggers at him in return. She seemed more than ready to kick them both out any time now.
“Right,” Sam cleared his throat. He looked somewhere past Candy's Mum. “Anyway, we've already ordered-”
“What? A burger and a salad like you did yesterday?” the lady snapped.
From behind her Candy emerged with a tray on which Dean found two deliciously smelling mugs.
“Two times Turkish,” she said with an easy smile as she set the dishes on the table in front of them. “Enjoy your coffee, gentlemen.”
Her mum seemed baffled. “That's a good choice,” she said.
“I know!” Candy beamed, standing upright now and holding the empty tray.
Sam and Dean could barely keep their faces straight.
“Thank you,” they spoke at the same time.
“You're welcome.”
After a momentary hesitation, the older woman walked away, which both Sam and Dean welcomed with tremendous relief. Candy was picking up the dirty dishes from a nearby table.
For a change Sam wasn't whining about getting the unbidden coffee. In all fairness, he seemed rather content with it. More than that, he seemed awfully happy the whole time since he'd come back from wherever he'd been today. What Dean consistently put off considering - for more than one reason - was the impression that Sam seemed awfully happy since he'd come back, period.
“I was thinking we should go back to the house,” Sam said. “Those slides still bother me. I thought we could stay over for the night, search the house more thoroughly and see if anything comes up. Or someone comes in, I don't know.”
Dean had already been planning that himself so he easily agreed. They decided to take the advantage of hot water supply while still at the motel and, after the showers, to sneak out with the blankets. They should get through the night pretty smoothly.
Get through the night, Dean thought taking another longing look at Candy who was bending over the next table. She wasn't very tall but her long limbs made her appear to be. Couldn't be more than seventeen or eighteen years old, apparently still poorly coordinated. Her hips and thighs filling the worn light blue jeans embodied pure yet unbalanced energy. Dean knew this type of figure by heart. He could recognize the misplaced moves and, just as easily, he could place them in time.
So Candy couldn't pride herself of much agility, probably never would, but what she lacked in grace, she made up for in charm. With a dazzling smile, hair like sunbeams and light in her eyes, she was one of the most effortless incarnations of beauty Dean had ever seen.
He smiled to a fond memory of Sam back in time when he was only adjusting to his body quickly filling out. Hard to tell whether hunting things or waiting tables made for a peskier fate in this condition.
Dean took one last glance at Candy before he and Sam would leave to go spend the night on a dirty floor of the hovel. He definitely wouldn't say no tonight if Candy invited him in for coffee instead.
They packed some rations and a vacuum tube along with blankets, then tossed it all to the trunk of the Impala. In about an hour, they were on their way to the house. The prominent summer sun seemed kinder now that it was aligning with the Earth. It would get much colder later in the evening. For now, the level beams lit up a road as if through the golden stained glass. It was nice and warm, a kind of weather that was all but articulately luring people outdoors.
Their destination was enough to remind Dean of the twisted case they were on.
"I still don't get why the spirit wasn't torched," he said. "Fiona was grounded by the piece of fabric. We didn't see her burn but that's because at the time she wasn't manifested. Still she did, she must have 'cause she sure let go of Jeremy Barrow."
"Well yeah," Sam shrugged. "That was the idea."
"I know." Dean kept silent for a moment as he drove. This didn't add up. "Here's the thing. When the stuff linking a ghost burns, the ghost burns with it. That's how it goes, we've seen it hundreds of times. So when you set fire to that rag, Fiona went in flames. But at the same time, she was the thing that had been grounding Jeremy's ghost. So when she burns, he does as well." Dean broke. "Think fierce dominoes," he said, looking over at Sam. "Only we both saw this taking a different turn. Jeremy just vanished."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, bugs me, too," he admitted. "But I figured this didn't have to go the usual way when there was a ghost claiming a hold over another ghost. Maybe with Fiona gone, Jeremy was, I don't know, freed, simple as that."
They were drawing near the house now. Dean looked ahead to take it in. The setting sun was flaming windows angry orange. Dean narrowed his eyes at the brightness.
"Yeah," he said, looking back to the road. “I guess.”
To say it hit him would be an understatement of epic proportion.
Dean strolled towards the door alongside the front wall of the veranda. He slowed his pace by the window because he thought he saw the pane trembling like a reminiscence of an aftershock. Sam walked past him. Somehow, this caught Dean off guard. One moment he was examining the glass and the next his head was entirely immersed in a rustle of Sam's jacket, clear and so very, very close.
“You coming?” Sam was calling from somewhere distant, holding the door for him. Dean could only stand still, his face pale and expressionless.
It was one of these vivid images that sometimes burst into mind. Clear as if they were meticulously planned out even though they flash out of nowhere. Like thoughts of jumping in front of a subway train when standing right at the brink in metro station. Is that what we're doing? Dean would think later vaguely. Placing ourselves at the verge.
Without a word, Dean followed his brother into the house, shutting off every single thought of the distinctly vivid erotic scene that had lit up in his mind.
They searched through the ground floor finding nothing out of the ordinary except for vibrating windowpanes. As it turned out, they were also quite warm which at least promised some kind of heat shield for the night. Useful perhaps. Nevertheless, this was yet another point to make a list of things about the house that neither Sam nor Dean were able to explain.
They took a break. Dean spread one of the blankets on a dirty coach in the living room. Sam put a vacuum tube on a near bench; it was getting dark already. They took places on the opposite parts of the coach and covered the space in between with their legs under the other blanket. Sam opened two bottles of beer and passed one to Dean.
Shortly, they got engrossed in a conversation about the previous night at the bar, laughed over Candy's Mum and cursed in harmony the awful chilliness after dark in this fringe of the country. Contrary to Dean's expectations, he was having a really good time. With reference to earlier today, the thought crossed his mind that this should upset him all the more, the easy comfort he seemed to derive from Sam's proximity. It didn't, and Dean never was much for nitpicking anyway. Understandably so, since he never had good things in excess.
Sam didn't ask whether anything turned up on Dad and Dean was grateful for that. Had there been news, he'd share them with Sam right away, that went without saying. As it was, by now Dean had used every contact he could think of, all to no avail.
So much for savoring the moment. Shaking off the unpleasant trail of thoughts, Dean looked up at his brother. In a pale blue light of the tube, the serene image of Sam seemed downright otherworldly.
Since he had showed up, Sam was his usual self, except more relaxed like he finally felt comfortable where he was. His strained quiet became more of a vigilant tranquility. Sam grew up into a man, and quite a mesmerizing one. Happy, what mattered most.
And as much as Dean was happy for him, he also felt a pang of guilt and bitterness. Because it took a mere two years of life that Sam had always wanted, that he'd been asking for over and over, to turn him into that man. Two years without all the freakiness - but also without Dean - and Sam was good, just as he'd always said he would be. He had been right all along.
“So really, what are you doing here?” Dean had to ask.
“Why is it so hard for you to believe that I actually wanted to see you?”
Dean was sitting with his forearms propped on his bent knees, a bottle hanging down from the tangle of his fingers.
“Oh, I believe that,” Dean said. “I'm a delight.” He looked down at the bottleneck, noticed that he'd been waving it gently in the air, foaming the liquid. With an effort, Dean calmed his hands. “Just, why the sudden change of heart?”
No answer.
“Everything fine in Nerdville, California?”
“Dean, it's ok to say the S-word now,” Sam's lips quirked up. “Actually, if Dad comes rushing in to kick up a fight again, this one time I won't mind.”
And Dean couldn't not laugh at that.
“Everything's fine in Stanford,” Sam said.
As soon as he finished that sentence, someone burst through the door. They both jumped in their seats.
"You guys all right?" Candy ran into the living room, gasping. Her hair was a mess and she was holding a sizeable pitchfork in her hand.
"Um, yeah?" Dean said. "Are you?"
She leaned against the wall, squeezed her eyelids shut and tried to steady her breath. When she opened her eyes again, she seemed to really notice Sam and Dean for the first time since she'd made an entrance and Dean could practically feel her confusion as she momentarily swayed on her feet, gaze deadpan all of a sudden. It was as though she'd just realized she'd intruded on something.
"Candy, what's going on?" Sam prompted.
This might as well have been a de-hypnotizing command, because life instantly kicked back into her eyes.
"We need to get out of here," she said.
"Ok, easy now," Dean took a step towards the girl, his hands reaching out like he was walking up to a frightened animal. With a large pitchfork. "We know that this place has quite a reputation, but really there's no danger-"
From what was left of a large chandelier, a spark skipped onto the pointy tips of Candy's fork, leaving behind a trail of noise like the air was being torn all the way through. Sam and Dean exchanged uneasy looks. The girl was squeezing the plastic handle tightly, aiming the iron parts farther away from herself.
“Huh,” she regarded the pitchfork cautiously as if the thing was most likely to jump at her face at any second. “I think I just brought in a ghosting-conductor.”
Sam swallowed and altogether seemed quite alarmed but Dean was having none of that. The house had quite a reputation in Pryor and not uncalled for but obviously the town folk had a lot of time to develop their own legends about the place.
“Calm down, all right? Whatever you're talking about, it's not real. Candy, you know this.”
A circle of smudged figures flashed out in the prevalent dark within a radius of ten feet of Candy and her pitchfork.
“Throw that away already!” Sam shouted.
“It's iron! I need something to defend myself with,” she looked around where the spirits had briefly appeared.
Dean was about to point out that it looked like there'd be no need for self defense if only she got rid of the fork but he could see that look-likes wouldn't be good enough for Candy right now. She radiated with exhaustion and irritation, it was written all over her - and what do you know - she was her mother's daughter after all.
Briefly, she regarded Sam and Dean. “Hunters, right? Lovely. Look, I'll explain everything but seriously we need to take this outside.”
As if obeying the orders, the door behind Candy opened wide.
“You doing this?” Dean asked her, alarmed.
“No.”
A wave of cold burst into the room, the door began jerking back and forth, and then Candy was flying through the air until she hit the wall. Sam and Dean ran to her but then a ghost of an old woman popped up in their way, dirty and hideous. The ugly figure had an open wound going all the way from its throat to the stomach and was dripping blood all over. Instantly, it stretched out its arms, grabbed both Sam and Dean by their throats and squeezed hard. Dean struggled to break free and from the corner of his eye he saw Sam putting up even more ferocious fight, but they didn't have any weapons at hand.
The picture gradually became blurry.
“Hey!” Candy shouted from behind the ghost, her voice loud and strong, demanding attention. She was pulling herself from the floor with an obvious effort. Still, she reached for the dropped pitchfork in the process. Under the curtain of her messy hair, a corner of her mouth was smudged with a couple drops of fresh blood. Her lips quirked up slightly when she grabbed the pitchfork.
The ghost actually turned around to regard this daring girl. Dean felt the grip around his neck loosen. The same went for Sam, who was now coughing on the floor beside him. Dean wanted to shout at Candy, yell run! at the top of his lungs but all that came out were choked, small noises.
“That's some massive blood loss you got there.” Candy said to the spirit, standing up.
With all the force she could muster, she run through the ghost with her pitchfork, shouting “Well, have some iron, you creep!”
The dreadful figure melted down in the air.
While Dean was still far from well - he hated it when things strangled him - at least Sam seemed pretty much alright, already back on his feet. He reached out a hand to Dean and hauled him up.
Candy looked actually kind of freaked, like only now things were starting to get through to her. She was gaping at the place on the floor where the ghost had disappeared, holding the pitchfork so tightly that her hand was pale.
“That was-” Sam started.
Candy raised her head.
“Ironic?” She quirked an eyebrow and waved the pitchfork in the air gently.
Sam huffed a laugh. “I was gonna say amazing.”
“Yeah, well, that won't keep her off long,” Dean said. “Come on, let's get out of here.”
The door was still open. On the way out, Sam seemed to notice that his trouser leg was severely torn below the knee and he stopped, bending down most likely to check for blood but at once Candy poked his ass couple of times with her pitchfork whispering out! Now!, which put a genuine smile on Dean's face.
Once everybody stepped over the threshold, Dean shut the door, unmindful of their possessions left behind.
“So who are you, really?” Dean asked.
Sam and Candy both turned around to look at him, bemused.
“Neptune,” Candy waved her pitchfork but apparently she wasn't happy with the questioning. “Or, I don't know, some chick who just happened to save your life.”
“About that,” Dean said, scrutinizing her with his gaze. “How did you know we were here?”
“You overheard us talking at the diner, didn't you?” Sam said and Candy nodded to that.
“Duh, you weren't exactly discreet,” she said. “I was gonna catch up with you guys before you'd leave the motel. My shift was ending, except the power cut off and mum made me stay wash a mountain of dishes by hand,” Candy shrugged, not at all bothered by the sheer priority issues revealed by that sentence. “As soon as I was done, I took this fork and ran all the way up here.”
Dean regarded Candy who was now bracing her shoulders. Apparently she didn't even make a stop at her place to take something to cover up her arms.
“All right, let's get you home,” Dean said, heading to the car. Still, first he opened the trunk and pulled out a mess-tin of holy water. Just in case.
“Forget it, I'm not getting into a car with two strange men,” Candy said.
Dean sighed.
“I'm Dean, this my brother Sam,” he nodded in the general direction where Sam was standing. “The beauty here is Chevy Impala,” he said opening the door for Candy. “Now hop in.”
Candy stared at him incredulously.
“Oh, and before you do, I'm gonna have to ask you to drink some of this,” Dean extended the hand with a mess-tin to her and grinned while Sam seemed to be hoping for the Earth to open and swallow either one of them.
Candy started off.
In the end, Sam talked Candy into letting him accompany her home. Knight in shining armor that he was, he also demanded of Dean to strip off his own jacket on Candy's behalf. Which, judging by her stolen looks, she appreciated thoroughly, if discreetly. That at least gave Dean the opportunity to spill a few drops of holy water on an inner cuff of the jacket before he handed it to Candy. She never even noticed. Dean drove off soon after that.
He took a long ride back to the motel. There was this tingling anxiety inside him, crawling under his skin, nesting in his fingertips, and it would only get worse whenever he stopped. So he kept on driving. Eventually, he dialed Sam's new phone number which he'd been given earlier today, told his brother not to wait up for him, then steered for a road in the forest. Having checked on Sam was supposed to calm him down. Granted, Dean had a good feeling about Candy from day one, and his instincts hardly ever failed him but he would never be entirely comfortable leaving Sam alone in a company of an unidentified slaying person. So having heard from Sam was good. It still didn't prove useful against the disturbing tingling feeling.
He blamed this whole day, it had been a roller-coaster. First, Sam had taken off without giving away anything besides that he'd be back in the afternoon. Sam was an adult now; Dean had had two years to get used to not being able to keep track of his little brother. It still unnerved him, even more now that Sam was back. Besides, Dean was fed up with what Dad had been putting him through and now it all seemed to have zeroed in on his brother, suddenly more available and in so many ways easier of a target.
So the morning had been nothing short of frustrating but then he and Sam had a nice dinner and things were starting to look good again from where Dean had stood. Searching the house had been messy and unrewarding but the beer he and Sam shared after that couldn't have tasted better. The sudden ghost attack with all the choking must have been the downside of the day but in the end, he and Sam were all right and that's what mattered.
The thing is, to be able to invariably miss a Rome Where All Roads Lead, you need to be profoundly aware of its location. So it's not exactly that Dean didn't know what had hit him. Not by chance did he feel so restless to get away all by himself. He wouldn't have chosen to wrap up deep in the cover of the woods just any day.
He tightened his fingers on the steering wheel in attempt to kill all those pins and needles under his skin. He drove faster.
Sam called.
“We got a date,” he announced.
Weary, Dean waited for his brother to flesh out the message.
“Candy wants to help. She said she would let us in on everything there is to know about the house but apparently it's a longer tale and going through this in the diner or wherever in Pryor didn't seem convenient. So we're meeting in the library in Hardin tomorrow. It's about sixty miles from here. Candy's brother lives in town and she was going to visit him anyway so I guess it works out all right.”
“Good,” Dean said eventually. “Great.”
“Dean, you all right?” Sam asked after a momentary silence.
No, Dean really wasn't. On top of everything else, an exhaustion over the entire day was getting better of him.
“I'm good. Be back in a few.” With that he hung up.
Dean turned back his car on the empty road. There were only a few lights that still glimmered in the distance where Pryor was settled. Dean took his eyes from the windshield and stole a glance at the cell phone tossed in Sam's seat. The drive back went in a blur.
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