A Very Supernatural Journey Chapter 5
A Birthday Story Written for Enkidu07, in appreciation for the work she and Onyx Moonbeam do and for the community they built
Co-Written by Woman of Letters, mainegirlwrites, theymp and wynefred
This chapter written by womanofletters
Previous Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4]
Chapter 5: Wading In
Rachelle prodded Dean Winchester's lean, muscled chest with her fingers, and when he winced in pain, placed the bandage in position slightly above the site of the injury. "I'll need you to exhale," she started to say but then, when he said, "Yeah, yeah, I know the drill," remembered that this was Dean Winchester. He'd done this how many times before?
This wasn't the first time Rachelle had taped someone's ribs; she thought wryly of those idiots at the pool who thought it was a great idea to pretend they were Evel Knievel in a speedo. And it was - until they hit the water full force. She'd never had any trouble keeping her professional face on while patching them up. But this was Dean Winchester, and she had to admit it was a challenge not to let her hands wander or stare too much at his firm torso.
He seemed to know it, too, because there was a slight curl to his lips and a knowing look in his eye.
"Do you do mouth-to-mouth too?" he quipped. She nearly dropped the tape.
"Dean Winchester, before you hit on me, you should know I'm a black belt in Tai Kwan Do."
"Scary." He said it in a voice that said quite the opposite and reminded her just why she'd become a Dean girl in the first place.
She decided to change the subject. "You know you probably should get yourself x-rayed at some point."
"Right," he said, "I'll just signal for a time out while I go to the ER... I'm sure whatever's in the water will respect that."
She rolled her eyes. "Fine... but try not to get yourself knocked around. You don't want to make things worse."
"Can't promise anything. So, are you finished yet? The crime scene is getting colder..."
She finished taping his ribs and Dean eased himself off the table. "Not bad for a medic."
She flushed. "Thanks."
As she was about to leave the room, he stopped her. "Rachelle, I know you're dead set on going with us, but I'm asking you not to."
She stared at him. This was not what she had expected.
"You know I have to," she said. "My friend was murdered."
"Rachelle, you don't know what you're getting into." His voice was rough with urgency; she could tell that pleading was not natural for him. This must be very important to him.
"On the contrary, I know exactly what's involved in a hunt," she said. "I've watched the shows, some episodes a dozen times over."
"Rachelle, this isn't a TV show! You don't know - you can't know until you're out there." She remembered how concerned he had been for Haley in the wendigo episode, and how he had wanted to keep her out of the hunt. Suddenly, she knew where this was coming from.
"Dean, I know you're worried about me getting hurt... but I need to do this. I need answers."
He sighed. "Fine, but promise me you'll follow our lead here. Let us do the talking."
"Sure," she promised. "Don't worry, I'll be a good little mouse."
"I doubt that," said Sam, as he came into the room, dressed in a suit and tie. He looked quizzically at the two of them. "What did I miss? Come on, Dean, get your shirt on! Time's a-wasting!"
Dean snapped his shirt at Sam. "Keep your panties on, Samantha, we're coming."
X X X
Rachelle tried to look nonchalant but felt like a fish out of water as the boys flashed their FBI badges at the coroner. Dean still walked a bit stiffly, though he was definitely doing better than before. Rachelle smiled, remembering how bravely she'd insisted on needing to find the answers. But now, an hour later and on site with the boys, Rachelle wasn't feeling quite so courageous. The sense of unreality, the shock that had gripped her, was dissipating, and the truth of her situation was finally sinking in. My God, she thought, I'm hunting with Sam and Dean. The Sam and Dean! It was like being thrust into the lead part on a Broadway production with no rehearsals or time to learn your lines.
The coroner, a short man whose tag read Cody Tippens, MD, was pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. His long, curly blond hair framed a face that looked too babyish to be dealing daily with corpses. He nodded to the boys but eyed Rachelle with surprise. She smiled at him and he shrugged, then took out three pairs of gloves and handed them out.
"Thanks," Sam said, taking the gloves. "It was good of you to fit us into your busy schedule."
Dr. Tippens laughed. "You certainly are the most polite group of FBI agents I've met." He led them to Dr. Jackson's body, covered by a sheet that was standing up a bit higher than usual. "In the ten years I've been a coroner, I've never seen anything like this..."
"Ten years?" Rachelle couldn't keep the doubt from her voice. "Who are you, Doogie Howser?"
Sam shot her a warning glance. Rachelle stifled a giggle but quickly stopped herself when the three men looked at her. "Sorry, don't mind me," she said.
Dr. Tippens laughed. "That's all right. I've been getting that all my life... good genes." He winked at Rachelle.
"That kid was so lucky to make it through med school so fast. I actually met him once!" the coroner said with pride.
"So...Doogie is real...?" Rachelle ventured. Sam abruptly cleared his throat, prompting her silence. Right...television shows are real in this universe! she chided herself.
"No, of course not... But the show is based on a true story."
Inwardly, Rachelle breathed a sigh or relief. It was enough that Supernatural was real. To have other TV shows come to life, well... it strained her sense of reality.
"Of course," said Sam. "So you were saying... this was weird?"
Dr. Tippens pulled back the sheet. "All those burns. Burns in the water... And we couldn't get his arms down due to the rigor mortis... Made it very hard to work," he said ruefully, then thought better of it. "I mean... no disrespect to the dead..."
Dean and Sam stared at Dr. Jackson's body, arms still up as if pressed against the glass. Rachelle hung back shyly, deliberately not looking at her teacher's corpse, unwilling to view the hideous sight a second time, but the coroner's words brought the image forcefully back. Instead, she observed the boys.
Sam's face got a little grey, and he swallowed. Funny, he's seen so much, you'd think it wouldn't bother him, thought Rachelle. Then she remembered Sam saying he was going to puke when the boys were examining a decapitated woman in the episode "Bloodlust". Dean gave his brother a quick, searching glance, and when Sam nodded back, looked up at the coroner. "So, what was the cause of death?" Dean asked, "Drowning?"
"What you'd expect," said the coroner. "He drowned... but it doesn't make sense. He shouldn't even have been in that tank."
"That's right," Rachelle said, remembering. "Dr. Jackson's tank... it's got a heavy cover on top, with only a small opening for feeding the fish. He never opened the cover. Wouldn't even clean the tank himself, had someone else come in to do it every couple of weeks."
Dean gave her a quick, sidelong glance, and she could see he was impressed. "So what, you're thinking murder?" Dean asked the coroner.
"Seems like it," he said. "But I don't know how it's possible." The man's voice picked up a little bit, as if the weirdness of this case excited him.
"Why not?" asked Sam.
"The top was closed. Locked. Like she said, the opening to feed the fish is too narrow for him to have fallen in."
"So how did he get in - through the glass?" Rachelle joked. All three men looked at her silently, and she looked down at her shoes and bit her lip. The coroner continued as if he had not been interrupted.
"...and then there are the bruises on his face..."
"What about them?" Dean asked.
Dr. Tippens pointed to Dr. Jackson's face. "Do you see a pattern?"
Rachelle's curiosity won out over her squeamishness. She had noticed the burns on her professor's face earlier but she hadn't noticed the bruises. They lay in a curious pattern - lighter in the center of the face, darker around the edges - that looked vaguely familiar. Around these bruises, along the edges of her teacher's forehead and cheekbones, his face was burned down almost to the bone, his skin a mottled red, his hands up as if still pressed against the sides of the tank. The skin on his hands had lost their color and his mouth was frozen in a perpetual rictus of horror. Dimly she noted the coroner's incisions, which, together with the effect of the burns and bruises, made him seem like some alien test subject from one of the old sci-fi movies.
She shuddered, the bile rising in her throat, her stomach heaving. Don't you dare, she thought. Don't you dare mess this up for them.
"Rachelle?" Sam asked, looking at her worriedly. The concern radiating from Sam warmed her but Dean's glance strengthened her - a look of solidarity and compassion, not of censure or pity for the "weak civilian". He's been through this before, she realized.
She forced the bile back down. "I'm fine," she said. Then she looked at Dr. Jackson's face again. "That looks like a..."
She and Dean said it at the same time. "...handprint!"
"And also, look at this!" Dr. Tippens pointed out five slash marks that Rachelle had taken for incisions.
"At first I thought those were knife marks, but the scoring, their shape, aren't consistent with wounds from a blade..." he said.
"But consistent with claws?" Dean guessed.
"I thought..." The coroner looked a bit sheepish. "Well, this doesn't make sense at all..."
"It looks as if something were holding his face and burning it?" asked Sam.
"You didn't hear it from me. I want to keep my job!" Rachelle thought it remarkable that this man had a sense of humor after ten years of working with the dead.
"Well what caused the burns?" she asked.
"The effect on the skin was caused by some kind of acid, though it would have to be something powerful to work in water," the coroner said. "But I still don't know how he even got in the tank."
"Well, let us know if you find out anything new," Sam said, handing Dr. Tippens a card.
"Of course."
He covered the body again and he and the boys walked towards the door. Rachelle took one last look around the room. Was it an effect of the light? The room was clothed in mist, a grey cloud, but that was impossible; the windows were all closed. It's the fog of death, she realized, unsure of how she knew that. Then she noticed patches of grey, like some strange spiritual mold, covering many of the room's surfaces - along the sides of the slabs, dotting the sheets that covered the bodies, on the edges of the drawers where bodies were stored.
The more you wear it, the more you'll see... The voice from her dream echoed in her head.
Without thinking, she took out her necklace and slipped on her ring, but the effect only got stronger, the fog denser and the grey of the mold starker to her vision. She shivered and pulled her finger out so fast she thought she might have bruised herself.
All at once, the bile she had kept down began to rise, and she ran, shoving past the others, not stopping until she was leaning against the concrete of the coroner's building, in the cool October sunshine. Sam and Dean arrived just in time to see the last vestiges of breakfast spraying onto the concrete.
Sam helped her up, his face a mask of compassion. Dean didn't say a word, handing her a crumpled cocktail napkin from his pocket. She looked at it a moment. "Cyndi 555-2370?" she asked, eyebrows raised.
"Never mind that. Get yourself cleaned up," he said gruffly. "We're going to the police station and then to lunch."
She wiped her mouth as well as she could. Who could think of food at a time like this? she thought. Right, this is Dean Winchester.
X X X
Detective Tyrone McFarling stared in frustrated resignation as Sam and Dean flashed their badges. "Federal agents? Don't you guys have bigger fish to fry?" And where have I heard those names before? he wondered."We're doing fine on our own..." he protested, but stopped when he remembered his conversation just a half hour ago with the Chief.
"So what have you got on the 'burning water' cases?" his boss had asked him. Tyrone thought the name an unfortunate choice, sounding like a commercial for some kind of whisky, but Kelly Appleman, the junior squad member, had picked it and it stuck. What made the biggest impression in this case were the burns on the victims' bodies.
"Not much yet, Chief. I'm afraid we're dead in the water on this one." The words slipped out before Tyrone had thought them through.
"Well, we'd better start moving soon, Tyrone. I've got parents and faculty members ringing me off the hook, demanding answers, and the Board at the University are making noise. And these are the big cheeses in this town."
Tyrone came out of his reverie and realized he'd better add one more person to the list of people clamoring for answers. The shorter Fed, Agent Brody, seemed peculiarly fired up about this case. He stood in a posture of sheer arrogance, arms folded across his chest, and stared at Tyrone in disbelief. "So you've got a suspect in mind already?" he asked. "Because from this end, it looks like you've got three dead bodies in the space of two days and you're coming up empty."
A small voice piped up in the back. "Er- three? I thought - ," whispered a woman who looked familiar. Where had he seen her before? The arrogant agent held up a hand to cut her off. She looked embarrassed, and fell silent.
Where his partner was all belligerence, the taller agent, Hooper, was all calmness and diplomacy. "Don't mind my partner," he said, stepping in quickly. "He's always a bit too blunt on an empty stomach. But he does have a point." His arms were out, palms open. "This is a tough case and three people have died already. If we want to find this killer, we'd do better to pool our resources."
Suddenly Tyrone remembered where he had met the young lady standing behind the two agents. "Rachelle!" he said. "You're the witness from the attack in the pool! Your name is Rachelle, right? What are you doing here?"
"I'm with Agents Brody and Hooper," she said. "I'm here as a material witness to Laura's murder." She had been watching the exchange with the detective and was a bit in awe of Sam's diplomatic wiles. He could sweet-talk a lion out of its prey, she thought. She came out of her musings when the detective said, "You were so distraught that night. Understandably. Are these two giving you a hard time?"
"No, no, they just had a few more questions. I'm okay, really." Rachelle hoped it wouldn't seem strange for her to be hanging around with two FBI agents. This detective seems a little too sharp, she thought. "I'm just hoping I can remember something to help you guys find whoever did this to Laura."
Rachelle's straight plea did the trick. Tyrone stared at her for a minute, then sighed, turning to Sam and Dean. "So what do you two need to know?"
Dean asked, "I understand you got the call about Dr. Jackson's death some time this morning?"
"That's right, about 8:40 am, from his secretary, Kathy Flint. She found the body when she came in to work."
"And the tank was closed?" Sam prompted.
"Locked tight from the outside, and no fingerprints on it but Dr. Jackson's. Whoever did this could have wiped the tank clean but I really don't see how they could have slipped Dr. Jackson into the tank to begin with... There just isn't enough room on top."
"Were there any signs of forced entry to Dr. Jackson's office?" Sam asked.
"No, nothing. Ms. Flint found the door open but there were no signs of breaking and entering."
"Was there anything odd about the room?" Dean asked.
"Odd? Odd how?"
"Lights flickering on and off weirdly, strange marks on the walls or floor, people behaving in unexpected ways..." Dean said.
Tyrone's look was puzzled. "No, nothing like that... Only, of course, the curious burns on Dr. Jackson's body and the mystery of how he got into the tank in the first place."
"We'd like to see the tank for ourselves," Sam said.
"I expected that. The tank is over in the evidence lockup. I'll have Lieutenant Appleman escort you."
The lieutenant led the three of them to the evidence lockup and left the room, waiting outside until they were done.
The boys and Rachelle stood around the tank, a man-sized glass case, the water inside now murky. The top was sealed with a heavy plastic cover that latched from the outside, with only a half inch of air space between the cover and the glass top in front. When Sam unlatched the cover, only part of it lifted up, leaving barely enough room to dip a vial into the water to scoop out a sample.
"Definitely no room to fall in from the top," said Dean. "And the cover was locked..."
"Trapping poor Dr. Jackson inside," Sam said.
Rachelle shivered. She could still remember watching Dr. Jackson wax poetic about his prized tropical fish in lectures on the biological aspects of psychology. "Killed by his own fish..." she whispered.
Sam came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She leaned against his solid bulk. But Dean just looked at her. "No," he said, "not by his fish. By something in the tank with him. It's gone now, whatever it was."
"The same thing that killed Laura in the pool." She nodded. "My friend. My professor. So how are we going to find this son-of-a-bitch?"
Sam smiled, a purposeful glint in his eye. "Research."
X X X
The names bothered Tyrone, and finally, he called them up on the computer. There was no Agent Brody or Hooper listed in the FBI database. Only then did he remember where he'd seen those names...
He raced to the evidence lockup but they were already long gone.
X X X
While Rachelle was finding her legs as a hunter, her friends were still immersed in the world of academia, a place with its own mysteries: lectures in large halls trying to catch the words of droning professors, reading assignments in tomes that were never meant to be understood by the human mind, tests that were either difficult to master (or unfairly graded) and life lived in the trenches with like-minded comrades struggling to gain knowledge.
Occasionally, though, one found a professor gifted in understanding and in teaching, and Amy had been lucky that year, finding Dr. Shaw, her anthropology teacher and mentor. For the last day she had been immersed in studying for a test, completely oblivious to the outside world.
She was sitting on the black futon sofa that was the centerpiece of their cramped dorm room, sipping a cup of tea, anthro notes on her lap, when Shawna burst into the room, her short red hair bouncing wildly. "Amy, did you hear about Rachelle?" said Shawna, secretly relishing the guilty pleasure of relating bad news and interesting gossip.
"What about Rachelle?" Amy looked up worriedly. She put the tea down on the coffee table.
"Remember that death we heard about last night, where some girl drowned in the pool?"
Amy nodded.
"That was Laura, Rachelle's swimming partner, and Rachelle was with her!"
"Oh my God, is Rachelle all right?" Amy got up from the couch, the whole pile of paper notes slipping to the floor, forgotten.
"I don't know. I heard she's fine physically but..."
"We've got to go see her!" Amy said. "She must be in terrible shock."
"Not only that," Shawna said, "this morning some girl found Dr. Jackson - you know, the head of the Psychology department, Rachelle's professor - dead in his fish tank!"
"Come on." Amy didn't even bother to pick up the papers. They can wait, she thought. "Rachelle needs us."
X X X
"I don't know how you two do this," Rachelle said, picking at her turkey sandwich.
"Do what?" asked Dean, his mouth stuffed with the diner's Roast Beef Special, french fries and ketchup.
"Eat after seeing the bodies," she admitted.
Sam sighed. "I know what you mean. But you get used to it. Hazards of the job... "
For the next few minutes, the boys made short work of their food while Rachelle watched, picking at her sandwich. Dean put passion into everything he did, even his chewing, swallowing his food with glee, enjoying every bite. Sam was more methodical, thoughtful, biting and chewing carefully.
"You mind?" Dean looked up from his sandwich.
"Mind what?" she asked, jerked out of her thoughts.
"You always stare at people while they eat?"
"Only the ones who annoy me," she said.
Sam laughed. "She's got you there, bro."
"Bitch."
"Jerk."
"So," Rachelle mused aloud, "Where to next? Do we interview Kathy?"
"Might be a good idea... Then we should go to the university library. Do they have good wireless here? I think we should start on the Net," said Sam.
"Are you kidding?" Rachelle laughed. "This is a university."
"Also, we need to have someone analyze these samples. Do you know a good chemistry professor?"
Dean, whose face had been slowly getting harder as the conversation went on, shook his head. "No way," he said. "You shouldn't be part of this, Rachelle. We're dropping you back at your house. Then Sam and I will go alone to do the research."
Rachelle's mouth dropped open. What the Hell? I thought he was past this phase!
"Uh-uh." Rachelle shook her head emphatically. "Some thing, some monster, killed two people I cared about. I'm not just gonna stand by and let things be. This is my fight too!"
Dean leaned over the table, his eyes steely with determination. "Look, Rachelle, you did well, I'll grant you. But this is way too dangerous. This thing has attacked three people already..."
"Three people? There was one before Laura?" Rachelle demanded, "Why didn't you guys tell me?"
"There was a fisherman named Earl in the river near the university," Sam explained. "And it wasn't intentional, Rachelle. We're used to working alone." He looked pointedly at his brother. "And I think that's part of what this is about."
"You know that's not true, Sam," Dean looked exasperated. "Rachelle isn't a hunter. She doesn't have the training, the reflexes... She'll make mistakes."
"You're right," said Sam. "But she's already in danger. She's got the ring, and the ring is involved somehow. There's a reason she's here, Dean."
Dean just continued talking, as if sheer cussedness could win the argument. "Hell, she'll get shot, or this friggin thing will come at her and she'll freeze..." He looked about ready to shoot something himself.
It was like a tennis match, with the boys thinking of all sorts of reasons for and against Rachelle staying on the case.
Rachelle was getting more than a little annoyed at being talked about as if she wasn't there. "Uh, hello, guys... I'm here, you know!" she said pointedly, but they continued arguing and ignored her.
Then Sam mentioned the elephant in the room. "Besides," he pointed out, "without us, what chance does she have of getting back to her own world?"
In the sudden silence, Rachelle realized that she had not even thought of getting back home. She'd gotten so involved with the case, she'd only just got used to the idea that she was here at all. Hell, she was just getting to know the boys. She pushed the thought away. Not ready to deal.
"You're forgetting something else," she pointed out. "This is my turf. I know the layout on campus, the school rules, the people... I know Kathy. Battleaxe Kathy, they call her." She stared at them. "You need me."
Dean stared right back at her. A note of desperation crept into his voice. "Rachelle, listen to me. You don't have to get drawn into this. Look what happened at the morgue. You still have a chance to walk away! You don't have to see things like..."
"Like my friend murdered right in front of me?" Rachelle asked quietly.
The boys stopped talking.
Rachelle continued. Now that she'd started, it seemed like she couldn't stop. "It happened, you know, and the funny thing is - I didn't see it. I didn't do anything. Because I was in that damn vortex!"
She pounded her fist on the table. "And maybe I could have!" Suddenly, she was angry. Angry at the vortex. Angry at the thing that had killed her friend and teacher. Angry at her own helplessness.
Sam shook his head. "No, Rachelle... You couldn't have. Any more than Dean and I could have saved our mother from burning."
Dean nodded. "He's right, Rachelle... You can't save the world, you know."
Rachelle giggled, a high-pitched laugh bordering on hysteria. "You, Dean Winchester, are telling me I can't save the world?"
The brothers stared at each other, baffled, as she put her head in her hands and laughed. She laughed and laughed for a good five minutes. Finally, she subsided, exhausted. Dean was giving her that look again.
"I'm not crazy!" she said. "It's called hysteria. You know, when you have a totally inappropriate response to a stressful situation."
"Do you feel better now," he asked, "because the geek-talk is a real turn-off."
"Jerk," she said. "Yes, I feel better now."
"Good, because we really do need to get going. If you're up to it, I'd like to interview that witness, Kathy, while it's still light."
And just like that, Rachelle found, she was in again. Out again, in again. Winchesters, she thought. Can't live without 'em. Can't understand 'em.
X X X
Read Chapter 6: Rising Tides