All Nightmare Long Chapter Four
Chapter Four
The room was dark, curtains were drawn tight, and only one lamp provided a smattering of filtered light in the sitting room.
Penny's family sat on the large, bright red sofa, the father in the middle with his arms wrapped around the shoulders of his wife on one side and his daughter on the other.
Dean and Sam sat opposite them in sofa chairs; Sam had his notebook open and was jotting down the names of the kids that the wife was reciting to him.
"I'm sure that's all. There were eight of them, including Daniel." She wiped her eyes with a tissue. "Four boys and four girls. Yeah, eight, I'm sure"
"Um, Mrs. Carmichael? How did Penny get along with the other kids in the group?"
She looked up at him, her forehead scrunched in a frown, her red, tear rimmed eyes confused. "What do you mean?"
Dean leaned forward a little, his expression one of sympathy. "Did anyone have a problem with Penny? Any reason to think someone may have had a grudge against her?"
Penny's mom looked at her husband, then back at the boys. "No, gosh, no way! Penny was very popular! She was in all the right clubs, had heaps of friends, no, no one would want to hurt her."
Dean looked at the father, and saw no more than a tired, saddened, confused man. No subterfuge there.
He turned to the little sister. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks and her eyelashes were tented from crying.
She looked back at Dean and shook her head. "Penny was great. Best sister you could have. She wasn't one of those bitchy, mean girls. Everyone really did love her" She pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth as a sob escaped her.
"Would you mind if we took a look at her room?" Dean asked.
The father shrugged and the mother nodded.
"I'll show you" the little sister said as she pulled from her father's protective arm. She leaned back and left a soft kiss on his forehead before leading the 'FBI' agents up the carpeted stairs.
"So, um, Laurie?" Sam looked down at the pretty little girl as she stood at the doorway to her sister's room. "There's nothing else you could tell us? About your sister, I mean?"
Laurie peered up at the hunters through her bangs. "It's all true. You would have liked her too, if you met her. No one, not anyone, hated her. I used to be the luckiest girl alive. I had the world's best sister" she dissolved into tears and ran back down the stairs.
Dean looked at Sam. "Dude. You broke the little girl" he said as he pushed into the darkened room, flicking on the light as he entered.
"Smell that?" Sam bent to the floor and felt the carpet. "It's still soaking wet. It smells like a swamp"
Dean walked over to the bright pink dressing table, his shoes squelching at each step. "Just how much water came out of that girl to leave the carpet soaked two days later?"
Sam pulled a small computer from under the strawberry printed pillow and opened it up.
"No password. Good" he took it over to the corner desk and sat down as Dean started to look through the items on the dressing table, stopping when he found a diamante covered diary.
"Jackpot" he breathed as he opened it and started to read.
"I dunno Dean, looks like the parents were right. From her emails and her Facebook page, it looks like everyone really did like Penny"
Dean looked up from the bright colored book. "Yeah. Diary pretty much says the same thing." He walked over to the desk. "Says here that she knew this Daniel kid had a crush on her. She kinda liked him back"
Sam scrolled down the posts on Penny's Facebook page. "Yeah. Pretty much everyone knew they had a thing for each other. Teenage crush. No bad feelings there"
Dean leaned forward to read over his brother's shoulder. "That's coma boy's mom there" he pointed to a post. "Doesn't sound vengeful or hateful. Sounds like they liked Penny, too"
Sam shrugged. "Well, no one's gonna post anything but condolences and nice things on her page. I can't see anything here that helps us. Older posts would be the place to start"
"Dude, how do you know so much about Facebook?"
Sam didn't answer, he just scrolled through the site, stopping to write down a name or some information here and there.
"Well, nothing else useful here. Some pictures from school and some home work on her lap top. Pretty boring stuff. Diary got anything else to go on?"
Dean pulled open his jacket and tucked the bejeweled book into his breast pocket. "We can go through it properly later." He looked up at the floral wall paper, the book shelf lined with about a thousand Barbie dolls, the diamante adornment on almost every surface in the room. "Let's blaze, this room is giving me the jeebs"
The woman leaned forward and brushed her son's sandy red bangs from his face, his pale skin contrasted by a smattering of dark freckles across his nose.
The incessant noise from the ventilator, while quiet, seemed to dominate the room, the presence of it looming in the corner like some robotic monster while it kept the boy alive.
"He is a good boy. Just, you know, shy. He has this stammer, and he blushes terribly when he gets nervous, and the kids teased him a little about it"
"So, Mrs. Bradmere, would you say your son was bullied?" Dean asked her.
Daniel's mother looked across at him. "Gosh, no, he's very popular! Luckily for him, he's a fantastic sportsman. Quarterback and he runs track. Very talented. And he was a nice kid, you know? Never got into any trouble. Being a red head kid with a blushing problem only adds to his charm, I think. He has a large group of friends, see all the cards? The kids visited pretty much every day, until a few days ago. Now they don't come as much, but they still come."
Sam stood a little behind Dean, his EMF open and turned on, but it remained quiet. He turned it off and put it back in his pocket.
"He had a bit of a crush on one of the girls, didn't he?"
Mrs. Bradmere smiled. "Oh, yes, he was totally over the moon over this Penny girl. Poor thing" she turned back to her boy, brushing his bangs again. "I don't know how I'm going to break it to him when he wakes up"
Sam picked up the chart from the night stand and started to flick through it.
"Mrs. Bradmere? You have any resentment for the boy that pushed him under the water?"
The middle aged woman looked at Dean and a single tear found its way down her cheek, touching then passing the corner of her mouth. "Andrew? No. Not at all" she sighed. "They shouldn't have been at the lake, so they all were doing the wrong thing. But kids will be kids, I get that. I was sixteen once myself, you know. They were just fooling around. Andrew is Daniel's best friend, and he also gave my son CPR for fifteen straight minutes. Resent him? He pulled my boy out of the water and he saved his life. So, no, I don't resent him. I thank him. He's a hero"
She looked at her watch. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to go pick up my younger daughter from school. So if you're done here?"
"Yeah, thanks. We appreciate your help" Sam smiled at her and Dean nodded.
"I'm sure Daniel will wake up soon"
She gave them a smile as she left the room. "I have no doubt. No doubt at all"
Sam waited until the click of her heels faded from earshot.
"Kid's never waking up, Dean. He's only got the barest basic function left in his brain" Dean took the chart Sam was offering. "He doesn't even have enough juice to breathe on his own."
Dean flipped through the pages. "Nothing? Not even a dream?"
Sam shook his head. "No dreams, no thoughts, nada. Kid's got less in there than a clock radio"
"Geez, that sucks out loud. Seems like mom's not gonna give up, though, no matter what"
"Well, there's no EMF. No brain activity. We could try, maybe, a talking board, but I'm not getting a whole restless spirit vibe here, Dean"
Dean sighed and hung the chart on the end of the bed. "Yeah, me neither. So, I guess, let's go check out the friends. What else have we got to go on?"
Sam turned and followed his brother as they walked from the hospital room. "History of the lake, see if anything strange went on there?"
"Sure. Research. My favorite. One day I'd like to find a hunt where we didn't have to research anything. I mean nothin'. Just get out there and gank the suckers"
"Yeah. That's gonna happen"
"Kill joy"
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