Gift for electricalgwen!
Title: If You Don’t Watch Out
Author: Catja Mikhailovic/kitsune13
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3,161
Warnings and Notes: Weird-ass Ohio folklore, schmoop. For electricalgwen in the spn_j2_xmas exchange -- hope you like it!
“… And if they catch you, they eat you.” Shelley Spencer‘s eyes widened solemnly. “It’s totally true. My cousin saw one of them. He was driving in the woods at night, and one of them, like, leaped out. It had this huge head, and kept trying to scratch at the car. The thing didn’t leave till he crossed Crybaby Bridge.”
Sam paused in his note-taking. “Crybaby Bridge? You have one of those, too?”
She shook her blonde ponytail, offended. “Duh. It’s only, like, the only real one. Some girl back in Victorian times or something threw her baby off it. If you stop your car and turn off the lights, you can hear it crying.”
“Okay, Shelley,” Sam said, “thanks. I think I have all I need. You’ve been really helpful.”
She leaned forward, causing the V-neck of her alarmingly pink shirt to gap, giving Sam an (unwanted) view of her admittedly attractive (underage!) cleavage. “So, when is this going to be in the paper?”
Sam demurred, as politely as he could, and hightailed it out of the diner. She’d been flirting clumsily with him through the entire interview, and he didn’t want her fixating on him as a way out of Kirtland, Ohio. He’d claimed to be a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, writing a Halloween feature on local folklore. And Kirtland, tiny as it was, had some of the most bizarre legends in the state.
Sam hoped one of those stories could explain the string of deaths he and Dean were there to investigate. Three men, so far, had been found in the woods, their stomachs sliced open and their viscera scattered about. The police had concluded that a bear was the culprit, and had sent out Animal Control to search for it, but had turned up nothing.
While most people in town seemed willing to accept the police’s explanation of a bear, the teenagers, like Shelley, were less convinced -- or were claiming not to be, in order to scare each other. Whether it was stupid teenage crap or not, the case was definitely strange, and worth looking into.
Sam and Dean had been in nearby Boston Township, also known as “Hell Town,” investigating rumors of demonic activity. It had turned out to be a bust; the town had been abandoned when the Cuyahoga Valley National Park acquired the land, and over-imaginative teenagers (surprise, surprise), unaware of the history, had invented reasons to account for it.
However, the trip wasn’t a complete disappointment. They’d made the acquaintance of a local hunter, Bratso Mandic -- and, more importantly, of his excellent homemade slivovitz. Anyway, Bratso had told them about the killings up in Kirtland, and thought there might be something to it; Bratso, age seventy, wasn’t up for crashing around in the woods after god knew what, so Sam and Dean agreed to investigate.
After all the crap they’d been through, with angels, demons, and the almost-Apocalypse, Dean was itching for a good, old-fashioned, no-moral-gray-area, uncomplicated monster hunt, and this seemed just the ticket.
If Sam was being honest with himself -- he’d become better at it these days -- he was glad for a chance at the same. Ever since the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, he’d been feeling -- well, the only word for it was ennui. It was absurd. But he was finding it hard to work up much enthusiasm for some lame-ass poltergeist when they’d spent the past year outrunning the armies of Heaven and Hell. But there you were. This was stupid on a number of levels: first, who feels nostalgic for the fucking End Times? Second, even a lame-ass poltergeist can be pretty dangerous if you’re not taking it seriously.
And third, while he was on this honesty kick, he may as well acknowledge that whatever this was between himself and Dean -- this thing, which he wouldn’t put a name to, that had been building since that night in a haunted hotel in Connecticut almost four years ago -- it was becoming harder to avoid dealing with it.
So. Mindless violence it was. Not quite as good as Armageddon, as far as excuses go, but it would have to do.
*************
Sam didn’t know when it started. Ever since he could remember, Dean’s been there -- too close, too warm, crawling in under Sam’s skin until every memory is about his brother, even the ones Sam wants to keep to himself. Dean is so present, so vivid, that it’s not always easy for Sam to tell the difference between memories and dreams -- except for those ones. Sam has no illusions about the small clutch of invented stories he only tells himself when Dean is fast asleep. Dean’s not allowed to know, and that’s the way it has to be.
He’s spent the last few years being sick with grief, with rage, with fear. Guilt -- this guilt -- is such an old friend, though, that he almost welcomes it. But the thing is, it was always in the background. There was always Dad, or his destiny, or some other world-shattering necessity that required his attention, and he could just live with it. But now, with nothing else to distract him, whatever this is is starting to become… well, a world-shattering necessity of its own. And that wasn’t good.
*************
“Melonheads?” Dean asked.
“Melonheads,” Sam agreed.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam said. “Melonheads actually show up in a few other places -- Connecticut, Michigan, even England -- but they’re usually attributed to inbreeding. Here, they’re supposed to be the victims of medical experiments.”
According to the information Sam had gathered, the Melonheads were created by a Dr. Crow (or Crowe, or Kroh), who, sometime around World War I (or II, the stories were confused) set up a clinic for hydrocephalic children on Wisner Road, deep in the woods around Kirtland. The government had funded him, and sent him a number of orphans suffering from the disease; little did they know that the good doctor was not interested in curing his young charges, but in prolonging their suffering. He performed a variety of sadistic experiments on them -- including injecting their already oversized heads with even more fluid, causing them to swell to grotesque proportions.
“Wait, is that even possible?” Dean asked.
“Dude, I don’t know, I’m just reporting what everyone told me.”
Anyway, one day the worm turned. The Melonheads, practically feral from their prolonged isolation and abuse, killed Dr. Crow and burned down the clinic. They escaped into the woods, and had been living there ever since. Local legend claimed they were violent cannibals, ready to kill and eat anyone who ventured down Wisner Road at night. However, that didn’t seem to seriously deter the townspeople; it was a popular hiking, horseback riding, and necking spot, and a hardy few even lived along the road, in very expensive houses.
“There are plenty of people in town that will swear they've seen a Melonhead, but nobody’s ever actually been hurt by one. Did you find anything?”
Dean shook his head. “According to the town records, there have been a few deaths in the woods, but not very often, and all explainable. Even if every single reported animal attack was really a Melonhead attack, there’s less than a dozen over almost a hundred years, even including the last three. With all the people up and down that road, you’d think there’d be a lot more than that, if they really are violent cannibals.”
“So, it might very well be a bear,” Sam said. He sat back, frustrated.
“Well, if it is, it still needs killing. We may as well check it out.”
*****************
That night, Sam and Dean drove out to Wisner, which turned out to be a narrow, rather muddy dirt road winding through the forest. It was a spooky place. It probably would have been beautiful during the daytime; the woods were mainly sugar maple and beech, and in the northern Ohio October, they were a riot of red and gold. But at night, they were just dark and dense, and pressed in menacingly on all sides. They decided to park near Crybaby Bridge, and work their way out; Shelley had claimed that the Melonheads wouldn’t go over it. For that reason, Sam, after grabbing a pistol and a knife, slipped salt and holy water into his pocket: while most accounts claimed that the Melonheads were human, there was no point in taking chances. He thought for a moment, and added another pistol, filled with rock salt. Dean contented himself with a .357 Magnum and his largest knife.
Sam looked at the map. Two of the bodies had been found on the west side of the road, one 200 and one 500 yards from where they were standing. The last body had been on the east side, about 400 yards away. Dean pressed in close, peering over Sam’s shoulder; even through his multiple layers of clothing, Sam could feel Dean’s body heat. He held his breath -- the flashlight produced only a small pool of light, Dean was probably just trying to get a better view.
But Sam could feel Dean’s breath on his neck, and his treacherous body was starting to respond. This was absurd; he and Dean spent most of their lives with less than a foot between them, he had no business getting discombobulated at the feeling of his brother’s body pressed -- innocently -- against him.
He was just going to have to find more interesting hunts, if even evil mutant cannibals terrorizing Ohio wasn’t enough to distract him.
***************
After four hours of stomping around in the forest, Sam was starting to get cold and bored. They’d covered both sides of the road, from Crybaby Bridge to the body dump sites, and hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anything -- human, animal, or Melonhead. They had, a couple hours earlier, discovered the rotting foundations of a burnt-out building, now reclaimed by the forest; but the site, assuming it was the remains of the infamous clinic, yielded no clues.
He leaned against a large oak tree, and took a drink of water from his canteen. He could barely make out Dean, swinging his flashlight disconsolately at the underbrush, a few yards away.
The wind stilled. And Sam, who was not afraid of the dark, felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He knew that feeling: something was watching them. Dean felt it, too; he stilled, and pulled out the Magnum. Sam’s hand tightened on his knife. Slowly, slowly, he turned around.
The light caught its eyes, and it flinched, but didn’t run. It was small, about four feet tall, covered in makeshift clothing of skins and bark. But all Sam saw was its head -- huge, obscenely swollen, on a neck that looked far too thin to support it. Its -- his? Her? -- facial features were bunched together, too small. Sam unsheathed his knife, and hoped Dean was behind him with the gun.
But something wasn’t right. The Melonhead wasn’t moving -- neither attacking or retreating. The mouth opened, and Sam braced himself for the leap.
But it never happened. Instead, the Melonhead spoke: “Go. You are in danger.”
The voice was scratchy, disused, but the words were clear enough. And it was a high, soprano voice -- a girl.
Sam felt Dean beside him, arms tensed, ready to fire. He put a hand on Dean’s arm, lowered his own knife.
“Danger?” he asked, pitching his voice low, trying not to startle her. “From what?”
“The old doctor,” she said. “He hurts people.”
“Dr. Crow?” Sam asked. She nodded.
“But --” Dean started. There was a rustling around them, and Sam realized they were surrounded. He counted four other Melonheads; none appeared to be armed, and none were threatening -- they were just watching.
“Where is the doctor?” he asked her. The other Melonheads muttered, voices low.
“In a bad place,” she said. “We watch. Keep people away.” She gestured with her arm, and the other Melonheads moved closer, coming into the light. “We are the last ones. Not enough to keep people away from the doctor.”
“Those men who died,” Dean said. “Was it the doctor?”
One of the other Melonheads, who appeared to be an elderly man, spoke. “Yes. The doctor is dead, but still hurts people. He was quiet a long time, but he woke up.”
“Bones,” the girl added. “We did not watch the bones, and he came back.”
“If you take us to the bones,” Sam said, “we can stop him. He won’t hurt anyone again.”
The Melonheads looked at each other, and murmured something Sam couldn’t understand; they appeared to reach a consensus.
“Come,” the girl said.
She led Sam and Dean back to the remains of the burnt-out house, the other Melonheads following quietly, almost invisibly. Instead of stopping at the house, though, she led them through to a small clearing nearby. Sweeping the flashlight around, Sam could see scattered beer cans and cigarette butts -- and a shallow, open grave, in which he spotted the white gleam of bone.
“The first man,” the old man said. “He woke the doctor up. Doctor chased him. If the man crossed the bridge, he would be safe. But the doctor caught him.”
“Crybaby Bridge,” Dean said. “He can’t cross running water.”
“Let’s dig him up,” Sam said.
As he and Dean knelt to clear the dirt away from the bones, the Melonheads formed a circle around them, scanning the woods for movement. But the attack, when it came, was too fast for a warning.
Sam barely got a look at Crow’s emaciated, vicious face before he felt a hot, searing shock of pain underneath his shoulder blade -- Crow had slashed him with a knife. Before he could fight back, Dean had grabbed the pistol loaded with rock salt from Sam’s belt and fired, dispersing Crow momentarily. Sam, dazed, was aware that Dean had herded the Melonheads close to the grave, and was surrounding them and Sam with a salt circle -- he apparently, had also decided to cover all the bases, for which Sam was grateful.
“Stay there! Burn him, Sam!” Dean yelled, from outside the salt. “I can’t hold him!”
Sam dug in his jacket pocket for the lighter and fluid he always kept handy, but his fingers wouldn’t obey. The girl, seeing his distress, reached in and retrieved them, handing them over. Her fingers were cool and rough.
“Salt, salt,” Sam gasped, gesturing to Dean’s container, abandoned by the grave. One of the other Melonheads grabbed it, and held it out; Sam gestured to him to shake it over the bones, which he did. Every nerve in his body was screaming for Dean, but he knew that to save his brother, he needed to focus on the task at hand. He splashed the lighter fluid on the bones, and set them alight.
He felt, rather than saw, Dean stop fighting. Dean crashed through the circle -- the Melonheads, sensing the danger was over, dodged out of the way. Dean fell to his knees by Sam, panting.
“Are you -- “ he started.
“I’m fine,” Sam said. “He got me, but not deep.” He twisted to show Dean his shoulder, and a bolt of pain shot through him. He slumped, and Dean caught him before he hit the ground.
With Dean’s arms around him, Sam felt another wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with pain. Dean’s eyes in the firelight were dark, worried. Sam opened his mouth to tell him, again, that he was okay -- and found himself pressing his lips against Dean’s.
Dean froze. Sam jerked away, horrified, his stomach turning over, he tried to apologize, tried to beg forgiveness, but nothing was coming --
-- and Dean reached up and stroked a thumb along Sam’s cheekbone. It was a small gesture, but the look in Dean’s eyes, terror overlaid with something else, made it shockingly intimate. Dean’s hands had been nearly everywhere on his body at one time or another, checking for injuries, but this was new territory.
Sam turned his face into Dean’s hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he felt Dean’s fingers carding gently through his hair. He’d never touched Sam like that before, and something like hope flowed through Sam, filling him. Maybe --
One of the Melonheads cleared his throat. Sam suddenly remembered that they were sitting on the damp ground, in the woods in the middle of the night, being eyed by a group of Melonheads -- who were rather nice, admittedly, but still -- which killed the mood. Dean grinned, sheepishly -- and that, there, was a good sign, because he wasn’t pretending they had nothing to be sheepish about. Sam struggled to sit up, Dean’s hand on his back. The Melonheads approached, relieved.
“Thank you,” the girl said. “We did not know how to stop him.”
“You’re welcome,” Sam said. He looked at Dean, who nodded. “Is there. Is there anything we can do, to help you?”
The Melonheads all exchanged glances, and the old man spoke. “Leave us alone. Tell no one about us. We are safe here.”
The girl nodded. “The people say we are not real. Keeps us safe.” The other Melonheads murmured agreement.
Dean looked about to protest, but thought better of it. The Melonheads -- and wow, was he going to have to find something less insulting to call them -- had been surviving in the woods for multiple generations, protected by the fact that, despite the sightings, no one really believed they existed. There were only a few of them left, and the woods weren’t likely to be torn down anytime soon. If they were to be found out, they would be taken off to a hospital, locked up, poked, prodded, studied, experimented on -- not much better than what they had suffered under Crow. They were right: they were safer, and happier, where they were.
“Okay,” Sam said. “We won’t tell anyone about you.”
“We promise,” Dean added.
The -- woodland people? -- thanked them, and, kindly, accompanied them back to the Impala. Sam was grateful; Dean had to help him, and their presence meant that he was forced to keep his desires in check until Dean had patched him up, which was far better for his health and comfort. Dean tried to get them to accept some food and blankets, but they refused; the girl assured him that their homes -- they lived in burrows underground, as it turned out -- were warm and well-stocked for the winter. After thanking Sam and Dean again, they melted into the trees as if they‘d never been there.
**********************
“Think they’ll be okay?” Sam asked Dean, after they had driven out of the woods.
“I hope so,” Dean said. “They’ve been fine for this long, no reason they can’t continue. If they ever really needed help, they could go into town. But I don’t blame them for not wanting to risk it.”
Sam risked a look at Dean. “Think we’ll be okay?”
Dean smiled, and laid his hand over Sam’s.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think we will.”
Notes: The Melonheads are real! Or, at least, the *legend* of the Melonheads is real; growing up in northeast Ohio, I heard it multiple times, in multiple versions. The story as I’ve given it here is the usual one, and it remains one of Ohio’s most bizarre pieces of folklore. In case you’re wondering, there’s no certainly no record of any such doctor, or any such clinic, at any point in the area’s history, though you will, as in the story, find plenty of people all over the ’Net who will swear up and down that they’ve barely! escaped! with their lives! from a Melonhead, so make of that what you will.
Author: Catja Mikhailovic/kitsune13
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3,161
Warnings and Notes: Weird-ass Ohio folklore, schmoop. For electricalgwen in the spn_j2_xmas exchange -- hope you like it!
“… And if they catch you, they eat you.” Shelley Spencer‘s eyes widened solemnly. “It’s totally true. My cousin saw one of them. He was driving in the woods at night, and one of them, like, leaped out. It had this huge head, and kept trying to scratch at the car. The thing didn’t leave till he crossed Crybaby Bridge.”
Sam paused in his note-taking. “Crybaby Bridge? You have one of those, too?”
She shook her blonde ponytail, offended. “Duh. It’s only, like, the only real one. Some girl back in Victorian times or something threw her baby off it. If you stop your car and turn off the lights, you can hear it crying.”
“Okay, Shelley,” Sam said, “thanks. I think I have all I need. You’ve been really helpful.”
She leaned forward, causing the V-neck of her alarmingly pink shirt to gap, giving Sam an (unwanted) view of her admittedly attractive (underage!) cleavage. “So, when is this going to be in the paper?”
Sam demurred, as politely as he could, and hightailed it out of the diner. She’d been flirting clumsily with him through the entire interview, and he didn’t want her fixating on him as a way out of Kirtland, Ohio. He’d claimed to be a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, writing a Halloween feature on local folklore. And Kirtland, tiny as it was, had some of the most bizarre legends in the state.
Sam hoped one of those stories could explain the string of deaths he and Dean were there to investigate. Three men, so far, had been found in the woods, their stomachs sliced open and their viscera scattered about. The police had concluded that a bear was the culprit, and had sent out Animal Control to search for it, but had turned up nothing.
While most people in town seemed willing to accept the police’s explanation of a bear, the teenagers, like Shelley, were less convinced -- or were claiming not to be, in order to scare each other. Whether it was stupid teenage crap or not, the case was definitely strange, and worth looking into.
Sam and Dean had been in nearby Boston Township, also known as “Hell Town,” investigating rumors of demonic activity. It had turned out to be a bust; the town had been abandoned when the Cuyahoga Valley National Park acquired the land, and over-imaginative teenagers (surprise, surprise), unaware of the history, had invented reasons to account for it.
However, the trip wasn’t a complete disappointment. They’d made the acquaintance of a local hunter, Bratso Mandic -- and, more importantly, of his excellent homemade slivovitz. Anyway, Bratso had told them about the killings up in Kirtland, and thought there might be something to it; Bratso, age seventy, wasn’t up for crashing around in the woods after god knew what, so Sam and Dean agreed to investigate.
After all the crap they’d been through, with angels, demons, and the almost-Apocalypse, Dean was itching for a good, old-fashioned, no-moral-gray-area, uncomplicated monster hunt, and this seemed just the ticket.
If Sam was being honest with himself -- he’d become better at it these days -- he was glad for a chance at the same. Ever since the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, he’d been feeling -- well, the only word for it was ennui. It was absurd. But he was finding it hard to work up much enthusiasm for some lame-ass poltergeist when they’d spent the past year outrunning the armies of Heaven and Hell. But there you were. This was stupid on a number of levels: first, who feels nostalgic for the fucking End Times? Second, even a lame-ass poltergeist can be pretty dangerous if you’re not taking it seriously.
And third, while he was on this honesty kick, he may as well acknowledge that whatever this was between himself and Dean -- this thing, which he wouldn’t put a name to, that had been building since that night in a haunted hotel in Connecticut almost four years ago -- it was becoming harder to avoid dealing with it.
So. Mindless violence it was. Not quite as good as Armageddon, as far as excuses go, but it would have to do.
*************
Sam didn’t know when it started. Ever since he could remember, Dean’s been there -- too close, too warm, crawling in under Sam’s skin until every memory is about his brother, even the ones Sam wants to keep to himself. Dean is so present, so vivid, that it’s not always easy for Sam to tell the difference between memories and dreams -- except for those ones. Sam has no illusions about the small clutch of invented stories he only tells himself when Dean is fast asleep. Dean’s not allowed to know, and that’s the way it has to be.
He’s spent the last few years being sick with grief, with rage, with fear. Guilt -- this guilt -- is such an old friend, though, that he almost welcomes it. But the thing is, it was always in the background. There was always Dad, or his destiny, or some other world-shattering necessity that required his attention, and he could just live with it. But now, with nothing else to distract him, whatever this is is starting to become… well, a world-shattering necessity of its own. And that wasn’t good.
*************
“Melonheads?” Dean asked.
“Melonheads,” Sam agreed.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam said. “Melonheads actually show up in a few other places -- Connecticut, Michigan, even England -- but they’re usually attributed to inbreeding. Here, they’re supposed to be the victims of medical experiments.”
According to the information Sam had gathered, the Melonheads were created by a Dr. Crow (or Crowe, or Kroh), who, sometime around World War I (or II, the stories were confused) set up a clinic for hydrocephalic children on Wisner Road, deep in the woods around Kirtland. The government had funded him, and sent him a number of orphans suffering from the disease; little did they know that the good doctor was not interested in curing his young charges, but in prolonging their suffering. He performed a variety of sadistic experiments on them -- including injecting their already oversized heads with even more fluid, causing them to swell to grotesque proportions.
“Wait, is that even possible?” Dean asked.
“Dude, I don’t know, I’m just reporting what everyone told me.”
Anyway, one day the worm turned. The Melonheads, practically feral from their prolonged isolation and abuse, killed Dr. Crow and burned down the clinic. They escaped into the woods, and had been living there ever since. Local legend claimed they were violent cannibals, ready to kill and eat anyone who ventured down Wisner Road at night. However, that didn’t seem to seriously deter the townspeople; it was a popular hiking, horseback riding, and necking spot, and a hardy few even lived along the road, in very expensive houses.
“There are plenty of people in town that will swear they've seen a Melonhead, but nobody’s ever actually been hurt by one. Did you find anything?”
Dean shook his head. “According to the town records, there have been a few deaths in the woods, but not very often, and all explainable. Even if every single reported animal attack was really a Melonhead attack, there’s less than a dozen over almost a hundred years, even including the last three. With all the people up and down that road, you’d think there’d be a lot more than that, if they really are violent cannibals.”
“So, it might very well be a bear,” Sam said. He sat back, frustrated.
“Well, if it is, it still needs killing. We may as well check it out.”
*****************
That night, Sam and Dean drove out to Wisner, which turned out to be a narrow, rather muddy dirt road winding through the forest. It was a spooky place. It probably would have been beautiful during the daytime; the woods were mainly sugar maple and beech, and in the northern Ohio October, they were a riot of red and gold. But at night, they were just dark and dense, and pressed in menacingly on all sides. They decided to park near Crybaby Bridge, and work their way out; Shelley had claimed that the Melonheads wouldn’t go over it. For that reason, Sam, after grabbing a pistol and a knife, slipped salt and holy water into his pocket: while most accounts claimed that the Melonheads were human, there was no point in taking chances. He thought for a moment, and added another pistol, filled with rock salt. Dean contented himself with a .357 Magnum and his largest knife.
Sam looked at the map. Two of the bodies had been found on the west side of the road, one 200 and one 500 yards from where they were standing. The last body had been on the east side, about 400 yards away. Dean pressed in close, peering over Sam’s shoulder; even through his multiple layers of clothing, Sam could feel Dean’s body heat. He held his breath -- the flashlight produced only a small pool of light, Dean was probably just trying to get a better view.
But Sam could feel Dean’s breath on his neck, and his treacherous body was starting to respond. This was absurd; he and Dean spent most of their lives with less than a foot between them, he had no business getting discombobulated at the feeling of his brother’s body pressed -- innocently -- against him.
He was just going to have to find more interesting hunts, if even evil mutant cannibals terrorizing Ohio wasn’t enough to distract him.
***************
After four hours of stomping around in the forest, Sam was starting to get cold and bored. They’d covered both sides of the road, from Crybaby Bridge to the body dump sites, and hadn’t seen hide nor hair of anything -- human, animal, or Melonhead. They had, a couple hours earlier, discovered the rotting foundations of a burnt-out building, now reclaimed by the forest; but the site, assuming it was the remains of the infamous clinic, yielded no clues.
He leaned against a large oak tree, and took a drink of water from his canteen. He could barely make out Dean, swinging his flashlight disconsolately at the underbrush, a few yards away.
The wind stilled. And Sam, who was not afraid of the dark, felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He knew that feeling: something was watching them. Dean felt it, too; he stilled, and pulled out the Magnum. Sam’s hand tightened on his knife. Slowly, slowly, he turned around.
The light caught its eyes, and it flinched, but didn’t run. It was small, about four feet tall, covered in makeshift clothing of skins and bark. But all Sam saw was its head -- huge, obscenely swollen, on a neck that looked far too thin to support it. Its -- his? Her? -- facial features were bunched together, too small. Sam unsheathed his knife, and hoped Dean was behind him with the gun.
But something wasn’t right. The Melonhead wasn’t moving -- neither attacking or retreating. The mouth opened, and Sam braced himself for the leap.
But it never happened. Instead, the Melonhead spoke: “Go. You are in danger.”
The voice was scratchy, disused, but the words were clear enough. And it was a high, soprano voice -- a girl.
Sam felt Dean beside him, arms tensed, ready to fire. He put a hand on Dean’s arm, lowered his own knife.
“Danger?” he asked, pitching his voice low, trying not to startle her. “From what?”
“The old doctor,” she said. “He hurts people.”
“Dr. Crow?” Sam asked. She nodded.
“But --” Dean started. There was a rustling around them, and Sam realized they were surrounded. He counted four other Melonheads; none appeared to be armed, and none were threatening -- they were just watching.
“Where is the doctor?” he asked her. The other Melonheads muttered, voices low.
“In a bad place,” she said. “We watch. Keep people away.” She gestured with her arm, and the other Melonheads moved closer, coming into the light. “We are the last ones. Not enough to keep people away from the doctor.”
“Those men who died,” Dean said. “Was it the doctor?”
One of the other Melonheads, who appeared to be an elderly man, spoke. “Yes. The doctor is dead, but still hurts people. He was quiet a long time, but he woke up.”
“Bones,” the girl added. “We did not watch the bones, and he came back.”
“If you take us to the bones,” Sam said, “we can stop him. He won’t hurt anyone again.”
The Melonheads looked at each other, and murmured something Sam couldn’t understand; they appeared to reach a consensus.
“Come,” the girl said.
She led Sam and Dean back to the remains of the burnt-out house, the other Melonheads following quietly, almost invisibly. Instead of stopping at the house, though, she led them through to a small clearing nearby. Sweeping the flashlight around, Sam could see scattered beer cans and cigarette butts -- and a shallow, open grave, in which he spotted the white gleam of bone.
“The first man,” the old man said. “He woke the doctor up. Doctor chased him. If the man crossed the bridge, he would be safe. But the doctor caught him.”
“Crybaby Bridge,” Dean said. “He can’t cross running water.”
“Let’s dig him up,” Sam said.
As he and Dean knelt to clear the dirt away from the bones, the Melonheads formed a circle around them, scanning the woods for movement. But the attack, when it came, was too fast for a warning.
Sam barely got a look at Crow’s emaciated, vicious face before he felt a hot, searing shock of pain underneath his shoulder blade -- Crow had slashed him with a knife. Before he could fight back, Dean had grabbed the pistol loaded with rock salt from Sam’s belt and fired, dispersing Crow momentarily. Sam, dazed, was aware that Dean had herded the Melonheads close to the grave, and was surrounding them and Sam with a salt circle -- he apparently, had also decided to cover all the bases, for which Sam was grateful.
“Stay there! Burn him, Sam!” Dean yelled, from outside the salt. “I can’t hold him!”
Sam dug in his jacket pocket for the lighter and fluid he always kept handy, but his fingers wouldn’t obey. The girl, seeing his distress, reached in and retrieved them, handing them over. Her fingers were cool and rough.
“Salt, salt,” Sam gasped, gesturing to Dean’s container, abandoned by the grave. One of the other Melonheads grabbed it, and held it out; Sam gestured to him to shake it over the bones, which he did. Every nerve in his body was screaming for Dean, but he knew that to save his brother, he needed to focus on the task at hand. He splashed the lighter fluid on the bones, and set them alight.
He felt, rather than saw, Dean stop fighting. Dean crashed through the circle -- the Melonheads, sensing the danger was over, dodged out of the way. Dean fell to his knees by Sam, panting.
“Are you -- “ he started.
“I’m fine,” Sam said. “He got me, but not deep.” He twisted to show Dean his shoulder, and a bolt of pain shot through him. He slumped, and Dean caught him before he hit the ground.
With Dean’s arms around him, Sam felt another wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with pain. Dean’s eyes in the firelight were dark, worried. Sam opened his mouth to tell him, again, that he was okay -- and found himself pressing his lips against Dean’s.
Dean froze. Sam jerked away, horrified, his stomach turning over, he tried to apologize, tried to beg forgiveness, but nothing was coming --
-- and Dean reached up and stroked a thumb along Sam’s cheekbone. It was a small gesture, but the look in Dean’s eyes, terror overlaid with something else, made it shockingly intimate. Dean’s hands had been nearly everywhere on his body at one time or another, checking for injuries, but this was new territory.
Sam turned his face into Dean’s hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he felt Dean’s fingers carding gently through his hair. He’d never touched Sam like that before, and something like hope flowed through Sam, filling him. Maybe --
One of the Melonheads cleared his throat. Sam suddenly remembered that they were sitting on the damp ground, in the woods in the middle of the night, being eyed by a group of Melonheads -- who were rather nice, admittedly, but still -- which killed the mood. Dean grinned, sheepishly -- and that, there, was a good sign, because he wasn’t pretending they had nothing to be sheepish about. Sam struggled to sit up, Dean’s hand on his back. The Melonheads approached, relieved.
“Thank you,” the girl said. “We did not know how to stop him.”
“You’re welcome,” Sam said. He looked at Dean, who nodded. “Is there. Is there anything we can do, to help you?”
The Melonheads all exchanged glances, and the old man spoke. “Leave us alone. Tell no one about us. We are safe here.”
The girl nodded. “The people say we are not real. Keeps us safe.” The other Melonheads murmured agreement.
Dean looked about to protest, but thought better of it. The Melonheads -- and wow, was he going to have to find something less insulting to call them -- had been surviving in the woods for multiple generations, protected by the fact that, despite the sightings, no one really believed they existed. There were only a few of them left, and the woods weren’t likely to be torn down anytime soon. If they were to be found out, they would be taken off to a hospital, locked up, poked, prodded, studied, experimented on -- not much better than what they had suffered under Crow. They were right: they were safer, and happier, where they were.
“Okay,” Sam said. “We won’t tell anyone about you.”
“We promise,” Dean added.
The -- woodland people? -- thanked them, and, kindly, accompanied them back to the Impala. Sam was grateful; Dean had to help him, and their presence meant that he was forced to keep his desires in check until Dean had patched him up, which was far better for his health and comfort. Dean tried to get them to accept some food and blankets, but they refused; the girl assured him that their homes -- they lived in burrows underground, as it turned out -- were warm and well-stocked for the winter. After thanking Sam and Dean again, they melted into the trees as if they‘d never been there.
**********************
“Think they’ll be okay?” Sam asked Dean, after they had driven out of the woods.
“I hope so,” Dean said. “They’ve been fine for this long, no reason they can’t continue. If they ever really needed help, they could go into town. But I don’t blame them for not wanting to risk it.”
Sam risked a look at Dean. “Think we’ll be okay?”
Dean smiled, and laid his hand over Sam’s.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think we will.”
Notes: The Melonheads are real! Or, at least, the *legend* of the Melonheads is real; growing up in northeast Ohio, I heard it multiple times, in multiple versions. The story as I’ve given it here is the usual one, and it remains one of Ohio’s most bizarre pieces of folklore. In case you’re wondering, there’s no certainly no record of any such doctor, or any such clinic, at any point in the area’s history, though you will, as in the story, find plenty of people all over the ’Net who will swear up and down that they’ve barely! escaped! with their lives! from a Melonhead, so make of that what you will.