Lights Out
Disclaimer: Being the property of their respective copyright holders, Supernatural, its characters or any other publicly recognizable names don’t belong to me in any way, shape or form. This was written for the sole purpose of entertainment, not monetary gain. No copyright infringement is intended.
~ Oh my, would the boys be in trouble if I had a say... Just one word: SFTCOL(AR)S
A/N: Muchísimas gracias to my twin sister twinchy for the beta! A special thank you goes out to K Hanna Korossy, who thankfully pointed out a middle-sized plot hole in my original concept. Plus, a huge thank you to Mikiya for the awesome banner.
A/N 2: Recipient: faye_dartmouth
This piece was written as a contribution for the Summer of Sam Love Fic-Exchange 2009. I absolutely loved your prompt, Faye, and had a total blast writing it! Plus, it provided such a nice excuse to go all whumpy on poor, unsuspecting Sammy. Due to other urgent commitments over the summer, this fic is pretty much on the latish side but I still hope you aren’t disappointed with the result. Now strap yourself in and enjoy the ride!
First Published: 24/08/2009
Summary:
The Winchester brothers investigate a string of creepy accidents in a candle factory. When Sam gets snatched from right underneath Dean’s nose, it all goes to hell in a hand-basket, and fast. House of Wax-ish
Prompt: Quasi-crossover with Jared’s movie House of Wax. Mostly, I’ve always wanted to see that abduction scene and near waxing done with Sam being the victim who gets saved by his awesome big bro at the last minute. That’s kind of specific, but you can take it lots of ways - mostly, that’s a creepy situation, and it’d be cool to see it done with Sam and Dean.
Word Count: 7,835
Setting: Probably sometime in season 3, no spoilers
Warning:
Language, violence, h/c, disturbing images… so, the usual by Winchester standards.
“Dean, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Dude, you always have a bad feeling.” Dean feigned exasperation, his cocky reply, however, was hardly able to disguise his own unease. While the two hooded figures watchfully snuck further into the unlit factory, the night inside the building was so complete that the mignon lights seemed hardly able to penetrate the darkness in their immediate vicinity. They passed abandoned workplaces and haphazardly strewn tools. Eerie tanks loomed gloomily at the edge of the flashlight’s reach.
“No,” Sam interjected in a hushed voice, “this is more than that.” He couldn’t really narrow it down to something solid, something more than a hunch but the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
In spite of his purposefully suave air, the older hunter subconsciously tightened the grip around the handle of his gun. “Your psychic powers making an uncalled for reappearance, or are you still sweating the last poltergeist one-on-one?” Playing it cool usually worked best for him… and Sammy.
Waiting for his little brother’s retort, he cautiously stepped a few paces ahead, his own sense of danger intensifying by leaps. A few more seconds dragged by but there was still no response, no smart-ass comment, nothing.
“Sam?” He asked hesitantly. Ogling back into the darkness behind to try and make out his little brother’s shape, Dean’s heartbeat quickened and his adrenaline levels shot through the ceiling while he listened intently into the surrounding silence, waiting for the soft voice that never came.
xXxXx
36 hours earlier
“Now that sounds like a gig for us,” Dean beamed form ear to ear.
“If you are suggesting to investigate in a strip bar again-”
“Give me a little credit, Sammy! When do I ever mingle job and pleasure?” Dean’s wiggled his eyebrows.
“Do you really want an answer to that?” Sam rolled his eyes. “When was it again that you convinced me to take this one hunt in a Finnish sauna paradise, on women’s day? - Oh right, last Thursday!”
“Hey, that was totally not my fault. Who would have thought that it was no spook but a serial killer? And you have to admit the old crow really looked like she was dead already. So no wonder I misjudged.”
Dismissing their current topic with a wave of his hand, Sam directed the conversation towards their next hunt again. “Okay then, tell me about the possible job you found.”
“Alright, listen up, Sammy. In Hopkins, MN they found this watchman working the nightshift in a candle factory completely coated in candle wax. Obviously he had taken a nose dive into one of the tanks with candle wax.”
“Could have been an accident,” the younger man reasoned. “Freak accidents do happen. What makes this one so special?”
“I don’t know, maybe that it was the third accident in as many months? Or that they didn’t find the poor guy inside one of the tanks but standing in his booth looking like a runaway from Ma’am T’s exhibition?” Dean grinned like a Cheshire cat; victory was sweet.
xXxXx
The next afternoon found the Winchester brothers already checked into their half-decent motel room in Hopkins. Trying to doze off the after-effects from the all-night drive up to and through North Dakota right into Minnesota, Dean reclined on the bed. Sam, who had been able to catch some z’s riding shotgun, sat uncomfortably in the too small chair doing his magic on research. The table had proven too low even for the tiny chair; therefore he was balancing the laptop precariously on his thighs. It was a shame that paying their old friend Bobby a visit had been out of the question; it would have been too much of a detour at the moment but they would most certainly amend that once the job was done.
“Not much info to be found on any of those accidents,” Sam sighed. “I even hacked into the digitalized archive of the state library, nothing.” He had feared as much but that neither made the search any less frustrating nor the truth any more appealing, “Could be practically anything killing those workers.”
“Okay, Sherlock, judging from the meagre information you managed to dig up, it’s probably a poltergeist of the very nasty kind.”
“The MO would certainly fit but it could still be something completely different, something not so easy to figure out.”
“What more proof do you need, Sam?” Dean’s impatience got the better of him. “All the circumstantial evidence points to a classic poltergeist haunting. First, the grisly way the workers died. Second, that you couldn’t find anything unusual about either the building itself or the company, or any of its owners for that matter. And last but not least,” he was counting off the arguments triumphantly with his fingers, “a poltergeist would be most practical to get rid of.”
Sam spared his big brother a doubtful look, “How so?”
“’Cause we wouldn’t have to find out what kind of whack-job is responsible for the killings and then dig up the bones to make a nice, little bonfire. Plus, if it’s not a poltergeist we’re dealing with,” Dean conceded, “the purging of the building won’t do much harm anyway.”
“Just make it in and out alive, I get it,” Sam answered sarcastically.
“Exactly. Now you get my drift!”
xXxXx
Present
The overwhelming nausea was slow to pass. One second he had been standing right next to his brother, talking to him, then suddenly, everything had shifted out of place, like clicking on replace background. Sam fruitlessly tried to shake the thick cobwebs out of his head. In spite of the surrounding darkness, he guessed from the shadowy silhouettes around him that he was still somewhere in the factory. And apparently lying down, going by his horizontal perspective.
Common sense kicking in, the younger Winchester jerked upwards in a valiant attempt at ignoring the persistent vertigo. Out of nowhere, a presence bled from the shadows, its shape even blacker than the darkness around it. A menace radiated off the fuzzy form that revealed a depth of evil the hunter had never sensed before. The figure extended a blurry hand towards him and, despite his best efforts to evade the touch, rested it on Sam’s forehead, slowly applying pressure. A peculiar tingling sensation made its way through his brain down the spine. Suddenly bereft of all strength, the young man sagged back onto the surface he had been lying on. As disturbingly comfortable warmth spread through his limbs, his muscles relaxed involuntarily, rendering his body completely immobile.
Frantically raging against the absolute loss of control, Sam tried to call out for his brother, laying all the fear he felt into his voice. His terror quadrupled when he found his mouth unable to form any sound, only low grunts and moans escaping his throat. There was no way for him to defend himself or alert Dean. The weight of that realization came crushing down on him like a ton of bricks.
Through the haze of his desolation, he felt the distinctive coolness of metal glide up his pant leg, then the other before it moved up his torso and down one sleeve after the other. The rough pair of scissors made short work of his clothes, leaving him feeling bared and exposed.
The dark shape moved away from the table, rummaging nearby for a couple of minutes. In the short reprieve Sam was granted, he tried to reign in his panic by forcing himself to look at his situation from a logical point of view. Maybe this could give him an edge. Judging from its appearance, MO and the way it moved, this was so not a Poltergeist they were dealing with. Poltergeists were nasty things, sure, but they usually didn’t take a form, however fuzzy; plus, they would have just dumped him unceremoniously into one of the candle wax tanks. Why the effort? Why bother rendering him paralyzed and stripping him? There had to be some kind of ritual to it.
The young hunter was catapulted out of his musings when sticky goo was smeared over his shin, the temperature verging on not-quite painfully hot. Obviously the thing had returned. For a moment he was confused, unable to comprehend what exactly was happening to him when something was lightly pressed onto the mass. Then the figure moved towards his other leg, also applying a liberal amount of the sludge, closely followed by soft pressure. A moment’s hesitation from the silhouette had the tension sizzling around the table.
A jolt of pain shot through Sam’s body the instant something was ripped off his legs. The sheer intensity and unexpectedness had him inwardly scream at the top of his lungs. As soon as the sharp pain ebbed away, leaving a burning ache in its wake, it slowly dawned on the hunter that the shadow must have removed the hair on his legs with hot wax. The implications for his further treatment grossed him out, his steadily rising panic skyrocketing while the shape hovered towards his right arm.
WHERE THE HELL WAS DEAN?!
xXxXx
The older Winchester stalked through the dimly-lit darkness of the factory building. He had a hard time reigning in the overwhelming feelings of anger and worry. The fuming hunter was positively in the mood for tearing the whole place apart, desperate to inflict pain upon the thing that had kidnapped his little brother when he was mere inches away from the kid.
In his lifetime, Dean Winchester had confronted wagonloads of nasty sons-of-bitches, and he hardly took a hunt personally, unless they put their proverbial hands on a certain sasquatch of a baby brother. On those occasions, Dean’s single focus became tearing the supernatural being limb from limb before it so much as looked wrong at Sam; none of those were still breathing air after the job was done!
Nevertheless, he was experienced enough a hunter to know that rash decisions and rookie moves were only good for one thing, getting them both killed. He needed to control his rage, channel it, calmly prepare for the hit, and then strike, swift and deadly like a hawk.
After the initial shock of his brother being taken by the thing that had already turned three watchmen into wax figures, Dean had forced himself to regain his equilibrium and use his head to find Sam in time. Preferably offing the supernatural entity in a particularly gory way while he was at it. Unfortunately, this required him to find them first. Although the older brother was fully aware of working on a tight schedule, the upside of this very case was that Sam was most definitely still somewhere on the premises.
At first Dean had given the building a rough sweep, searching for immediately obvious signs, lights, sounds, anything easily detectible. When that had proven futile, he had begun combing the area meticulously, in his mind recalling the layout of the factory and adjusting the search pattern accordingly.
In the past 15 minutes he had covered about a third of the ground floor. And while the minutes ticked away, his agitation reared its ugly head, threatening to make his schooled façade crumble. An inner voice told him time was almost up. If he wanted to save his brother, it had to be soon. Trusting his instinct was usually Sammy’s forte but in a dire situation like this, he knew better than to dismiss his gut feeling.
Just as he was about to walk down the next aisle, the hunter in him sensed more than saw a vague movement to the right in his periphery vision. Abandoning his current course and turning off the flashlight, Dean stealthily crept through the darkness, slowly making his way towards the first substantial hint in almost half an hour.
Approaching the spot where the movement must have come from, the young man quickly melted deeper into the shadows, increasing the death-grip he had on his sawn-off. Dean narrowed his eyes and peered into the dark. It took his eyes several seconds to fine-tune his pupils, so that he was able to make out shapes in the gloomy night ahead of him.
Suppressing a gasp, the elder Winchester suddenly recognized a very familiar figure lying on the even surface of a workstation, unmoving. By sheer power of will, he managed to hold himself back, keep himself from running to Sam. If the evil son-of-a-bitch got the drop on him, they were both toast.
And then he saw it. A blurry form, seemingly several shades blacker than the surrounding darkness, oozed from the shadows beside his baby brother’s left arm. With a lightning-fast move, the silhouette ripped a piece of cloth away from the limb. Still, Sam remained unnervingly motionless through the treatment, only a soft moan drifting over to Dean’s concealed position. Something was undeniably off with the kid’s behaviour. Moreover, whatever this thing was, they were clearly not dealing with a Poltergeist, so their cleansing packs were practically useless.
As his hunter’s instincts and reflexes took over, a dangerous calm spread through Dean’s body; it was the silence before the kill. No matter what kind of spook this thing was, it was threatening his little brother’s life; and it was certainly not immune to salt. A menacing smile turned his face into a cold mask of calculated skill and he let the predator in him take the lead.
The instant Dean got a clear shot at the shape when it fractionally backed away from his brother, he had the rock salt loaded gun up and firing. With an ear-splitting shriek, the figure exploded into a myriad of tiny wafts and disappeared. Dean dashed towards his brother, clasping the sawn-off in his right hand, ready to shoot again should the son-of-a-bitch return.
Arriving at the table, Dean took in his kid brother’s too still form but despite the fact that his clothes lay discarded on the ground next to him, Sam seemed unharmed at first glance.
“Thank goodness, Sammy!” His relief was palpable. “Are you alright, dude? Can you move?” No response was forthcoming, nor any indication Sam had heard him or was even aware of his presence - and that was really starting to bother the living daylights out of the big brother in him. Sam’s eyes were open, roaming, so he was probably conscious, even if a little spaced out. Now why didn’t he answer? Why on earth wasn’t he moving? What had that godforsaken thing done to his baby brother?!
Out of the corner of his eyes, Dean saw the fuzzy form approaching. Without hesitation he fired another round at the thing. A long, unearthly howl accompanied its dissipating into the darkness. Hurriedly reloading the gun, the older Winchester prepared for another attack while checking his brother’s still motionless body superficially for any injuries that might have caused Sam’s lack of response. When he couldn’t find anything during his precursory exam, he looked into his brother’s eyes and for the first time noticed his keen and pleading gaze. So Sam was indeed fully aware of what was going on.
“Sammy, I’m here, I’m here. You with me?”
Realizing he wouldn’t be able to elicit a verbal reaction from the younger man, Dean wrapped the shredded T-shirt loosely around his little brother’s sasquatch frame. ‘And when did the kid get so bulky anyway?!’
“You ready to blow this popsicle stand here, man? ‘Cause I’m so ready to hoof it!” Brushing a stray strand of hair out of Sam’s face while continuing to whisper reassurances, Dean gently lifted his brother into a fireman’s carry. With the dead weight of the considerably bigger man slowing him down, his hasty dash for the exit quickly turned into a hurried walk but he was determined not to let the effort show.
They were halfway to the gate when the malevolent entity charged them once more. The tiniest hitch in his brother’s breathing alerted Dean to its position and he shot it squarely in its non-existent face. This time there was no sound except for a gush of wind when the figure evaporated into thin air. Clutching his gun even tighter with his right, he strained to speed up his pace.
Heavily breathing, Dean passed the gates to the building, stumbling on towards the fence. Thank goodness they had opted to cut the chain of the gate on their way in instead of climbing over it. In the not-too-far distance, he could already make out the shape of his beloved Impala, the sleek black paintjob beautifully reflecting the pale moonlight.
Three minutes later he was finally able to ease Sam onto the backseat, rolling his aching shoulders contentedly once his brother was settled. He swiftly jogged to the trunk and returned with the old and threadbare army blanket they had stashed there, spreading it over Sam’s tall frame.
“There you go, kiddo. We’ll be at the motel in a minute; and then we’ll figure this out. Okay?” Dean affectionately patted the younger boy’s feet before he melted into the driver’s seat and floored the pedal.
As soon as they had put the factory well into their rear-view mirror, Dean released a shaky breath and fished for his phone.
“What?! It’s 3 am, idjit!” barked the familiar gruff voice; despite the fact that taking the call after only two rings strongly indicated that he must have been awake.
“Bobby, Hopkins/Minnesota, Minnetonka Motel.” Dean didn’t even wait for a reply before he cut the connection.
xXxXx
Less than ten minutes later, the Impala skidded to a hold on the gravel parking lot in front of their motel room. A soft rustling of fabric and a deep groan from the backseat caught Dean’s attention as he was about to open the driver’s door.
“Sammy?” he asked hesitantly. “You okay, man?”
Not really expecting an answer, Dean almost jumped through the roof at his brother’s slurred reply. “Yeah, ‘m good, jus’… numb is all.” For a moment they locked eyes when the older Winchester glanced over the backrest. He sighed inwardly, ‘Those expressive hazel eyes conveyed more emotion than a hundred words.’
Finally, Dean tore his gaze away from the feebly moving form behind him and got out of the car. Opening the backdoor, he reached inside, preparing to lift his brother out of the bench seat but his hands were batted away with surprising force behind it.
“Dude, I’m not a rag doll!”
“Bitchy much?!” Dean raised his hands in a placating manner. “Seriously, dude.”
“Just help me up. I can walk on my own.”
The older Winchester furrowed his brow doubtfully but thought better of prolonging the discussion. If Sam was determined to get into their room under his own steam, the kid wouldn’t admit defeat before he had face-planted in the mud - and neither boy would ever breathe a word about how close they had come to just that when Sam had tried to get his wobbly legs under him after crawling out of the backseat rather awkwardly.
Supporting a good part of his little brother’s weight, they made slow progress towards the door, which was thankfully only a good dozen feet away from the car. Dean was aware though that Sam was shuffling at the top of his speed right about now. The fact that he was puffing like an old steam train bore witness to how much this little effort took out of him.
Eventually, when they had covered the distance between the car and the second bed, seemingly going through the young hunter’s whole inventory of expletives, his rubber-like legs were ready to give out, and he let his exhausted body flop onto the top.
“Thanks, man,” Sam wheezed out after a moment, a deep-felt relief reverberating in his soft voice.
Grasping the different layers of meaning, Dean shrugged it off, not willing to go there. “Nah, don’t mention it.” He waved his hand dismissively, “I’m just too lazy to doing all the research again myself. That’s what I have my geek of a brother for.”
Sam smiled warmly up at his sibling, their normal banter providing much-appreciated comfort; and a welcome distraction from the night’s events.
Sensing the younger man’s relative unease, Dean hated to breach the topic but knew it needed to be addressed nevertheless. “So, what happened between you and the spirit back there?”
The taller boy gave one of his patented little-brother sighs, puppy-dog eyes trained on his brother full-force. At this moment Sam looked younger and more vulnerable than he had in years. It broke Dean’s heart to prod on. “Why couldn’t you talk or move when I found you? I mean… whatever it did, it seems to be wearing off pretty quickly now.”
“Thank God for that.” Sam sighed. “I don’t know,” he continued groggily, “it kind of touched my forehead and I went all limp.” His eyes blinked sleepily, slowly drifting shut, each time taking longer to reopen. Subconsciously he snuggled deeper into the mattress. Staying awake was clearly a losing battle, and one he wasn’t even willing to fight. He wanted to ask Dean to delay the conversation but his breathing evened out before he so much as completed the thought.
“Yeah, we can talk about it tomorrow.” He smiled affectionately at his little brother’s quietly snoring form, gently wrestling him into a more comfortable position on the bed before tucking him in and switching off the light.
xXxXx
“YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!” The eardrum-shattering yell woke him with a start, and he sat bolt upright. It was forceful enough to have the dead stand to attention.
“You gave me a friggin’ heart attack! Do you even have the slightest idea how I sped up here?! How many goddamn laws I broke?! The only thing I didn’t break - and simply ‘cause I fried my damn engine - was the freaking sound barrier; and even that just barely!”
“Great, now he’s awake-” Dean chimed in with a half-hearted roll of his eyes. Obviously that didn’t deter Bobby in the least; he didn’t so much as miss a beat before rambling on.
“You couldn’t even be bothered to pull your heads out of your asses long enough to give me a call that you boys were alright before I practically tore down your door?!” he groused. In his worry for the Winchester brothers, Bobby had undoubtedly set a new speed record for travelling from South Dakota to Minnesota; no wonder he was pissed.
“Dammit, Dean-” he deflated, leaving the sentence hanging in the air while chancing a glance at Sam. He plopped onto the end of Dean’s bed looking old beyond his years. Inhaling deeply he added, “I need a beer!”
Lights Out, Conclusion
.
~ Oh my, would the boys be in trouble if I had a say... Just one word: SFTCOL(AR)S
A/N: Muchísimas gracias to my twin sister twinchy for the beta! A special thank you goes out to K Hanna Korossy, who thankfully pointed out a middle-sized plot hole in my original concept. Plus, a huge thank you to Mikiya for the awesome banner.
A/N 2: Recipient: faye_dartmouth
This piece was written as a contribution for the Summer of Sam Love Fic-Exchange 2009. I absolutely loved your prompt, Faye, and had a total blast writing it! Plus, it provided such a nice excuse to go all whumpy on poor, unsuspecting Sammy. Due to other urgent commitments over the summer, this fic is pretty much on the latish side but I still hope you aren’t disappointed with the result. Now strap yourself in and enjoy the ride!
First Published: 24/08/2009
Summary:
The Winchester brothers investigate a string of creepy accidents in a candle factory. When Sam gets snatched from right underneath Dean’s nose, it all goes to hell in a hand-basket, and fast. House of Wax-ish
Prompt: Quasi-crossover with Jared’s movie House of Wax. Mostly, I’ve always wanted to see that abduction scene and near waxing done with Sam being the victim who gets saved by his awesome big bro at the last minute. That’s kind of specific, but you can take it lots of ways - mostly, that’s a creepy situation, and it’d be cool to see it done with Sam and Dean.
Word Count: 7,835
Setting: Probably sometime in season 3, no spoilers
Warning:
Language, violence, h/c, disturbing images… so, the usual by Winchester standards.
“Dean, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Dude, you always have a bad feeling.” Dean feigned exasperation, his cocky reply, however, was hardly able to disguise his own unease. While the two hooded figures watchfully snuck further into the unlit factory, the night inside the building was so complete that the mignon lights seemed hardly able to penetrate the darkness in their immediate vicinity. They passed abandoned workplaces and haphazardly strewn tools. Eerie tanks loomed gloomily at the edge of the flashlight’s reach.
“No,” Sam interjected in a hushed voice, “this is more than that.” He couldn’t really narrow it down to something solid, something more than a hunch but the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
In spite of his purposefully suave air, the older hunter subconsciously tightened the grip around the handle of his gun. “Your psychic powers making an uncalled for reappearance, or are you still sweating the last poltergeist one-on-one?” Playing it cool usually worked best for him… and Sammy.
Waiting for his little brother’s retort, he cautiously stepped a few paces ahead, his own sense of danger intensifying by leaps. A few more seconds dragged by but there was still no response, no smart-ass comment, nothing.
“Sam?” He asked hesitantly. Ogling back into the darkness behind to try and make out his little brother’s shape, Dean’s heartbeat quickened and his adrenaline levels shot through the ceiling while he listened intently into the surrounding silence, waiting for the soft voice that never came.
xXxXx
36 hours earlier
“Now that sounds like a gig for us,” Dean beamed form ear to ear.
“If you are suggesting to investigate in a strip bar again-”
“Give me a little credit, Sammy! When do I ever mingle job and pleasure?” Dean’s wiggled his eyebrows.
“Do you really want an answer to that?” Sam rolled his eyes. “When was it again that you convinced me to take this one hunt in a Finnish sauna paradise, on women’s day? - Oh right, last Thursday!”
“Hey, that was totally not my fault. Who would have thought that it was no spook but a serial killer? And you have to admit the old crow really looked like she was dead already. So no wonder I misjudged.”
Dismissing their current topic with a wave of his hand, Sam directed the conversation towards their next hunt again. “Okay then, tell me about the possible job you found.”
“Alright, listen up, Sammy. In Hopkins, MN they found this watchman working the nightshift in a candle factory completely coated in candle wax. Obviously he had taken a nose dive into one of the tanks with candle wax.”
“Could have been an accident,” the younger man reasoned. “Freak accidents do happen. What makes this one so special?”
“I don’t know, maybe that it was the third accident in as many months? Or that they didn’t find the poor guy inside one of the tanks but standing in his booth looking like a runaway from Ma’am T’s exhibition?” Dean grinned like a Cheshire cat; victory was sweet.
xXxXx
The next afternoon found the Winchester brothers already checked into their half-decent motel room in Hopkins. Trying to doze off the after-effects from the all-night drive up to and through North Dakota right into Minnesota, Dean reclined on the bed. Sam, who had been able to catch some z’s riding shotgun, sat uncomfortably in the too small chair doing his magic on research. The table had proven too low even for the tiny chair; therefore he was balancing the laptop precariously on his thighs. It was a shame that paying their old friend Bobby a visit had been out of the question; it would have been too much of a detour at the moment but they would most certainly amend that once the job was done.
“Not much info to be found on any of those accidents,” Sam sighed. “I even hacked into the digitalized archive of the state library, nothing.” He had feared as much but that neither made the search any less frustrating nor the truth any more appealing, “Could be practically anything killing those workers.”
“Okay, Sherlock, judging from the meagre information you managed to dig up, it’s probably a poltergeist of the very nasty kind.”
“The MO would certainly fit but it could still be something completely different, something not so easy to figure out.”
“What more proof do you need, Sam?” Dean’s impatience got the better of him. “All the circumstantial evidence points to a classic poltergeist haunting. First, the grisly way the workers died. Second, that you couldn’t find anything unusual about either the building itself or the company, or any of its owners for that matter. And last but not least,” he was counting off the arguments triumphantly with his fingers, “a poltergeist would be most practical to get rid of.”
Sam spared his big brother a doubtful look, “How so?”
“’Cause we wouldn’t have to find out what kind of whack-job is responsible for the killings and then dig up the bones to make a nice, little bonfire. Plus, if it’s not a poltergeist we’re dealing with,” Dean conceded, “the purging of the building won’t do much harm anyway.”
“Just make it in and out alive, I get it,” Sam answered sarcastically.
“Exactly. Now you get my drift!”
xXxXx
Present
The overwhelming nausea was slow to pass. One second he had been standing right next to his brother, talking to him, then suddenly, everything had shifted out of place, like clicking on replace background. Sam fruitlessly tried to shake the thick cobwebs out of his head. In spite of the surrounding darkness, he guessed from the shadowy silhouettes around him that he was still somewhere in the factory. And apparently lying down, going by his horizontal perspective.
Common sense kicking in, the younger Winchester jerked upwards in a valiant attempt at ignoring the persistent vertigo. Out of nowhere, a presence bled from the shadows, its shape even blacker than the darkness around it. A menace radiated off the fuzzy form that revealed a depth of evil the hunter had never sensed before. The figure extended a blurry hand towards him and, despite his best efforts to evade the touch, rested it on Sam’s forehead, slowly applying pressure. A peculiar tingling sensation made its way through his brain down the spine. Suddenly bereft of all strength, the young man sagged back onto the surface he had been lying on. As disturbingly comfortable warmth spread through his limbs, his muscles relaxed involuntarily, rendering his body completely immobile.
Frantically raging against the absolute loss of control, Sam tried to call out for his brother, laying all the fear he felt into his voice. His terror quadrupled when he found his mouth unable to form any sound, only low grunts and moans escaping his throat. There was no way for him to defend himself or alert Dean. The weight of that realization came crushing down on him like a ton of bricks.
Through the haze of his desolation, he felt the distinctive coolness of metal glide up his pant leg, then the other before it moved up his torso and down one sleeve after the other. The rough pair of scissors made short work of his clothes, leaving him feeling bared and exposed.
The dark shape moved away from the table, rummaging nearby for a couple of minutes. In the short reprieve Sam was granted, he tried to reign in his panic by forcing himself to look at his situation from a logical point of view. Maybe this could give him an edge. Judging from its appearance, MO and the way it moved, this was so not a Poltergeist they were dealing with. Poltergeists were nasty things, sure, but they usually didn’t take a form, however fuzzy; plus, they would have just dumped him unceremoniously into one of the candle wax tanks. Why the effort? Why bother rendering him paralyzed and stripping him? There had to be some kind of ritual to it.
The young hunter was catapulted out of his musings when sticky goo was smeared over his shin, the temperature verging on not-quite painfully hot. Obviously the thing had returned. For a moment he was confused, unable to comprehend what exactly was happening to him when something was lightly pressed onto the mass. Then the figure moved towards his other leg, also applying a liberal amount of the sludge, closely followed by soft pressure. A moment’s hesitation from the silhouette had the tension sizzling around the table.
A jolt of pain shot through Sam’s body the instant something was ripped off his legs. The sheer intensity and unexpectedness had him inwardly scream at the top of his lungs. As soon as the sharp pain ebbed away, leaving a burning ache in its wake, it slowly dawned on the hunter that the shadow must have removed the hair on his legs with hot wax. The implications for his further treatment grossed him out, his steadily rising panic skyrocketing while the shape hovered towards his right arm.
WHERE THE HELL WAS DEAN?!
xXxXx
The older Winchester stalked through the dimly-lit darkness of the factory building. He had a hard time reigning in the overwhelming feelings of anger and worry. The fuming hunter was positively in the mood for tearing the whole place apart, desperate to inflict pain upon the thing that had kidnapped his little brother when he was mere inches away from the kid.
In his lifetime, Dean Winchester had confronted wagonloads of nasty sons-of-bitches, and he hardly took a hunt personally, unless they put their proverbial hands on a certain sasquatch of a baby brother. On those occasions, Dean’s single focus became tearing the supernatural being limb from limb before it so much as looked wrong at Sam; none of those were still breathing air after the job was done!
Nevertheless, he was experienced enough a hunter to know that rash decisions and rookie moves were only good for one thing, getting them both killed. He needed to control his rage, channel it, calmly prepare for the hit, and then strike, swift and deadly like a hawk.
After the initial shock of his brother being taken by the thing that had already turned three watchmen into wax figures, Dean had forced himself to regain his equilibrium and use his head to find Sam in time. Preferably offing the supernatural entity in a particularly gory way while he was at it. Unfortunately, this required him to find them first. Although the older brother was fully aware of working on a tight schedule, the upside of this very case was that Sam was most definitely still somewhere on the premises.
At first Dean had given the building a rough sweep, searching for immediately obvious signs, lights, sounds, anything easily detectible. When that had proven futile, he had begun combing the area meticulously, in his mind recalling the layout of the factory and adjusting the search pattern accordingly.
In the past 15 minutes he had covered about a third of the ground floor. And while the minutes ticked away, his agitation reared its ugly head, threatening to make his schooled façade crumble. An inner voice told him time was almost up. If he wanted to save his brother, it had to be soon. Trusting his instinct was usually Sammy’s forte but in a dire situation like this, he knew better than to dismiss his gut feeling.
Just as he was about to walk down the next aisle, the hunter in him sensed more than saw a vague movement to the right in his periphery vision. Abandoning his current course and turning off the flashlight, Dean stealthily crept through the darkness, slowly making his way towards the first substantial hint in almost half an hour.
Approaching the spot where the movement must have come from, the young man quickly melted deeper into the shadows, increasing the death-grip he had on his sawn-off. Dean narrowed his eyes and peered into the dark. It took his eyes several seconds to fine-tune his pupils, so that he was able to make out shapes in the gloomy night ahead of him.
Suppressing a gasp, the elder Winchester suddenly recognized a very familiar figure lying on the even surface of a workstation, unmoving. By sheer power of will, he managed to hold himself back, keep himself from running to Sam. If the evil son-of-a-bitch got the drop on him, they were both toast.
And then he saw it. A blurry form, seemingly several shades blacker than the surrounding darkness, oozed from the shadows beside his baby brother’s left arm. With a lightning-fast move, the silhouette ripped a piece of cloth away from the limb. Still, Sam remained unnervingly motionless through the treatment, only a soft moan drifting over to Dean’s concealed position. Something was undeniably off with the kid’s behaviour. Moreover, whatever this thing was, they were clearly not dealing with a Poltergeist, so their cleansing packs were practically useless.
As his hunter’s instincts and reflexes took over, a dangerous calm spread through Dean’s body; it was the silence before the kill. No matter what kind of spook this thing was, it was threatening his little brother’s life; and it was certainly not immune to salt. A menacing smile turned his face into a cold mask of calculated skill and he let the predator in him take the lead.
The instant Dean got a clear shot at the shape when it fractionally backed away from his brother, he had the rock salt loaded gun up and firing. With an ear-splitting shriek, the figure exploded into a myriad of tiny wafts and disappeared. Dean dashed towards his brother, clasping the sawn-off in his right hand, ready to shoot again should the son-of-a-bitch return.
Arriving at the table, Dean took in his kid brother’s too still form but despite the fact that his clothes lay discarded on the ground next to him, Sam seemed unharmed at first glance.
“Thank goodness, Sammy!” His relief was palpable. “Are you alright, dude? Can you move?” No response was forthcoming, nor any indication Sam had heard him or was even aware of his presence - and that was really starting to bother the living daylights out of the big brother in him. Sam’s eyes were open, roaming, so he was probably conscious, even if a little spaced out. Now why didn’t he answer? Why on earth wasn’t he moving? What had that godforsaken thing done to his baby brother?!
Out of the corner of his eyes, Dean saw the fuzzy form approaching. Without hesitation he fired another round at the thing. A long, unearthly howl accompanied its dissipating into the darkness. Hurriedly reloading the gun, the older Winchester prepared for another attack while checking his brother’s still motionless body superficially for any injuries that might have caused Sam’s lack of response. When he couldn’t find anything during his precursory exam, he looked into his brother’s eyes and for the first time noticed his keen and pleading gaze. So Sam was indeed fully aware of what was going on.
“Sammy, I’m here, I’m here. You with me?”
Realizing he wouldn’t be able to elicit a verbal reaction from the younger man, Dean wrapped the shredded T-shirt loosely around his little brother’s sasquatch frame. ‘And when did the kid get so bulky anyway?!’
“You ready to blow this popsicle stand here, man? ‘Cause I’m so ready to hoof it!” Brushing a stray strand of hair out of Sam’s face while continuing to whisper reassurances, Dean gently lifted his brother into a fireman’s carry. With the dead weight of the considerably bigger man slowing him down, his hasty dash for the exit quickly turned into a hurried walk but he was determined not to let the effort show.
They were halfway to the gate when the malevolent entity charged them once more. The tiniest hitch in his brother’s breathing alerted Dean to its position and he shot it squarely in its non-existent face. This time there was no sound except for a gush of wind when the figure evaporated into thin air. Clutching his gun even tighter with his right, he strained to speed up his pace.
Heavily breathing, Dean passed the gates to the building, stumbling on towards the fence. Thank goodness they had opted to cut the chain of the gate on their way in instead of climbing over it. In the not-too-far distance, he could already make out the shape of his beloved Impala, the sleek black paintjob beautifully reflecting the pale moonlight.
Three minutes later he was finally able to ease Sam onto the backseat, rolling his aching shoulders contentedly once his brother was settled. He swiftly jogged to the trunk and returned with the old and threadbare army blanket they had stashed there, spreading it over Sam’s tall frame.
“There you go, kiddo. We’ll be at the motel in a minute; and then we’ll figure this out. Okay?” Dean affectionately patted the younger boy’s feet before he melted into the driver’s seat and floored the pedal.
As soon as they had put the factory well into their rear-view mirror, Dean released a shaky breath and fished for his phone.
“What?! It’s 3 am, idjit!” barked the familiar gruff voice; despite the fact that taking the call after only two rings strongly indicated that he must have been awake.
“Bobby, Hopkins/Minnesota, Minnetonka Motel.” Dean didn’t even wait for a reply before he cut the connection.
xXxXx
Less than ten minutes later, the Impala skidded to a hold on the gravel parking lot in front of their motel room. A soft rustling of fabric and a deep groan from the backseat caught Dean’s attention as he was about to open the driver’s door.
“Sammy?” he asked hesitantly. “You okay, man?”
Not really expecting an answer, Dean almost jumped through the roof at his brother’s slurred reply. “Yeah, ‘m good, jus’… numb is all.” For a moment they locked eyes when the older Winchester glanced over the backrest. He sighed inwardly, ‘Those expressive hazel eyes conveyed more emotion than a hundred words.’
Finally, Dean tore his gaze away from the feebly moving form behind him and got out of the car. Opening the backdoor, he reached inside, preparing to lift his brother out of the bench seat but his hands were batted away with surprising force behind it.
“Dude, I’m not a rag doll!”
“Bitchy much?!” Dean raised his hands in a placating manner. “Seriously, dude.”
“Just help me up. I can walk on my own.”
The older Winchester furrowed his brow doubtfully but thought better of prolonging the discussion. If Sam was determined to get into their room under his own steam, the kid wouldn’t admit defeat before he had face-planted in the mud - and neither boy would ever breathe a word about how close they had come to just that when Sam had tried to get his wobbly legs under him after crawling out of the backseat rather awkwardly.
Supporting a good part of his little brother’s weight, they made slow progress towards the door, which was thankfully only a good dozen feet away from the car. Dean was aware though that Sam was shuffling at the top of his speed right about now. The fact that he was puffing like an old steam train bore witness to how much this little effort took out of him.
Eventually, when they had covered the distance between the car and the second bed, seemingly going through the young hunter’s whole inventory of expletives, his rubber-like legs were ready to give out, and he let his exhausted body flop onto the top.
“Thanks, man,” Sam wheezed out after a moment, a deep-felt relief reverberating in his soft voice.
Grasping the different layers of meaning, Dean shrugged it off, not willing to go there. “Nah, don’t mention it.” He waved his hand dismissively, “I’m just too lazy to doing all the research again myself. That’s what I have my geek of a brother for.”
Sam smiled warmly up at his sibling, their normal banter providing much-appreciated comfort; and a welcome distraction from the night’s events.
Sensing the younger man’s relative unease, Dean hated to breach the topic but knew it needed to be addressed nevertheless. “So, what happened between you and the spirit back there?”
The taller boy gave one of his patented little-brother sighs, puppy-dog eyes trained on his brother full-force. At this moment Sam looked younger and more vulnerable than he had in years. It broke Dean’s heart to prod on. “Why couldn’t you talk or move when I found you? I mean… whatever it did, it seems to be wearing off pretty quickly now.”
“Thank God for that.” Sam sighed. “I don’t know,” he continued groggily, “it kind of touched my forehead and I went all limp.” His eyes blinked sleepily, slowly drifting shut, each time taking longer to reopen. Subconsciously he snuggled deeper into the mattress. Staying awake was clearly a losing battle, and one he wasn’t even willing to fight. He wanted to ask Dean to delay the conversation but his breathing evened out before he so much as completed the thought.
“Yeah, we can talk about it tomorrow.” He smiled affectionately at his little brother’s quietly snoring form, gently wrestling him into a more comfortable position on the bed before tucking him in and switching off the light.
xXxXx
“YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!” The eardrum-shattering yell woke him with a start, and he sat bolt upright. It was forceful enough to have the dead stand to attention.
“You gave me a friggin’ heart attack! Do you even have the slightest idea how I sped up here?! How many goddamn laws I broke?! The only thing I didn’t break - and simply ‘cause I fried my damn engine - was the freaking sound barrier; and even that just barely!”
“Great, now he’s awake-” Dean chimed in with a half-hearted roll of his eyes. Obviously that didn’t deter Bobby in the least; he didn’t so much as miss a beat before rambling on.
“You couldn’t even be bothered to pull your heads out of your asses long enough to give me a call that you boys were alright before I practically tore down your door?!” he groused. In his worry for the Winchester brothers, Bobby had undoubtedly set a new speed record for travelling from South Dakota to Minnesota; no wonder he was pissed.
“Dammit, Dean-” he deflated, leaving the sentence hanging in the air while chancing a glance at Sam. He plopped onto the end of Dean’s bed looking old beyond his years. Inhaling deeply he added, “I need a beer!”
Lights Out, Conclusion
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