The Telegram, Chapter VII. The Truth About Sam, Part One
Dean Winchester, son of John Eric Winchester and Mary née Albridge, has a very, very bad feeling about this.
He taps his Latin dictionary against the table edge in short, impatient raps. John reaches over and arrests the book.
“Stop it.”
Dean stops.
But after a moment, he shifts in his chair, turning all the way to the left to crane his neck and look out the window. It is dark outside, the sun having laid itself to rest behind the jagged silhouette of San Francisco almost three hours prior. Dean drops his eyes, idly checking the salt on the window-sill for inconsistencies when, unexpectedly, he finds one.
Dean frowns, tracing a finger through the salt. It’s moved since he poured it there in the Morning, and not by the usual pesky snag of air through the window. He shoots a glance over his shoulder-Dad continues to scribble into his old leather journal, one hand furiously penning while the other splays open a yellowed tome. Dean redirects his attention to the window.
With a mottled sense of foreboding, Dean pokes at the latch with a finger. It’s obvious the contraption’s been tried. Unsuccessfully, but nonetheless…Dean’s heart seizes painfully as he thinks…No. Please, please, no.
He shoves his chair back and Dad’s head jerks up as if on strings. “What is it, Dean?”
“Just gon’ get some air.”
A pause-then, “Don’t be long.” John goes back to his materials.
Dean feigns flippancy as he exits out the back porch, but the moment the door shuts behind him he frees the panic coiled in his belly and allows it to run as rampant as he does, tripping his way towards the arc of trees bordering the yard.
The thing is, Dean thought he caught-no, he had caught some unnatural movement in the trees earlier in the Day, in between throwing knives and strategy-making with John. At the time he’d dismissed the flicker as a trick of the light, perhaps glinted off a knife or filtered strangely from the sun between rustling leaves; but ever since, a nagging sensation has dogged him, threatening to distract Dean at a time when even the most negligible of such diversions could prove catastrophic.
Dean upends the area behind the trees, hunting for some clue or sign as to the identity of their Spy (and desperate to disprove who Dean dreads it to be), when he finds it.
Between blades of wild grass and half-rotted leaves, Dean picks up a clearly misplaced article and holds it up to the light-it is a beautiful, stately writing utensil. A fountain pen. Engraved upon the black, polished shuttle, is the signifier: Samuel J. Winchester, Esq.
With a savage curse, Dean buffets the nearest tree with strength enough to draw blood to his knuckles.
-----
Across the bay, over the piers and past the hills of South San Francisco, Mrs. Brady Gough-or Ava, as we are wont to call her-purses her pretty lips and re-attempts to make a telephonic connection.
“Are you doing it correctly, dear?” From his seat opposite, Ava’s husband sips at his evening coffee and peers at her with amusement.
“Of course, Brady. We’ve had the Telephone for two weeks now-I know how to use my own furniture,” she snaps, before returning her attention to the operator on the line.
Brady watches with increasing curiosity as Ava frowns, arguing with the disembodied voice: “Is he absolutely certain that Mr. Winchester is not in? I don’t know how much I trust the door-man. He doesn’t seem entirely present, at times-No, no, I am not trying to be rude, I’m simply surprised, is all. All right, very well. I suppose I shall try again in a little while.” Ava jams the earpiece onto its hook with undue force, and the object clatters off uselessly. Brady reaches over and hangs it back up, neatly.
“Perhaps he merely stepped out,” he gently suggests.
“But he told me he would inform me as to the merits of his trip immediately upon his return. It’s been hours already, Brady. It is not like Sam to renege on his word. It’s not like him at all.” Ava heaves a grand sigh, and her slender shoulders slope with unease. “I’m worried,” she adds in a small voice.
Brady sets his coffee down, freeing his hand so as to reach over the low table and holds his wife’s chin with a sure grip. Her large, liquid eyes meet with his. “There’s no need to be worried, Ava. You know better than I do, Sam’s hardly a boy who needs to be fussed over. Perhaps the meeting didn’t go so well as he-or you and I, for that matter-had hoped. Sam will find you when he is ready.”
Ava pulls his hand up to her cheek and holds it there, taking comfort in the constancy that is her husband’s presence. “I hope you’re right,” she murmurs.
-----
A twenty-minute’s trolley ride away from the regalities of the Wilson estate, in the dark, cluttered space of one of the Roadhouse Tavern’s small bedrooms, a young man turns his head.
Ashcroft McGinness-police sergeant of the SFPD and, more delicately, renowned researcher and contact for the ragtag collection of Hunters scattered across the West Coast-frowns at the electro-magnetic frequency reader that sits in the corner of his living space.
The hand-made contraption hums again, loudly, and Ash detaches all attention from the storm of papers on his desk to narrow his gaze upon the unassuming wooden crate.
He leaves his seat to kneel before it, examining the meter with growing consternation.
The small, silver needle installed into the meter is pointing to the far right-straining, as if it would prefer to leap out altogether. Nearly 180 degrees of indication away from the needle’s usual state of repose, the sight of it is alarming indeed.
Ash’s first thought is that the contraption must be broken. After all, over a full decade has passed since its conception at the resourceful hands of a young Dean Winchester; it would hardly be fantastical for the meter to have simply exhausted itself into disrepair.
But then, a low, sinister rumble of thunder climbs through the room in a palpable wave that electrifies the skin on Ash’s body into fraught goose-pimples.
A flash of lightning follows; it floods through the window, and the room explodes into cold, violet-tinged light. The EMF meter squeals in its wake and this time, the needle successfully escapes from its fixture. The tiny spear hurtles itself off like a lemming will do at cliff’s edge, piercing the wall with a deadened thwup.
While Ash may have initially doubted the readings of Dean’s EMF meter, the unnatural, thick thunderclouds gathering over the City warn him otherwise.
It’s here, Ash slowly thinks, as icy fear pumps through his veins.
Another thunderous growl punctuates the air and with sudden urgency, Ash abandons the EMF meter to leap towards door, jutting his head out to call:
“Ellen!”
Across the sparsely-filled tavern, an aged woman pulls away from conversation with a patron. Long, dirty-blonde strands of hair straggle out of her messy coif and she tucks a piece behind her ear, impatiently yelling back, “What now, Ash?”
Ash comes out from his room, and goes up to the bar. “John Winchester,” he broaches, wincing as her expression turns inclement.
“What about him?”
“I need to wire him.” Ellen opens her mouth as if to argue, but Ash quickly adds-“It’s urgent.”
Perhaps it is the naked fear cast over Ash’s ordinarily jovial countenance, or the humid malevolence that slowly, but perceptibly fills the air-either way, Ellen Harvelle pursues no line of questioning. She simply pulls Ash to the back room, where the Roadhouse telegraph key is affixed to a small, pock-marked desk, and kicks a small wooden stool over to him. Gruffly, she says, “His number’s 1094. Don’t blame me if you don’t catch him.”
“I hope we do. For everyone’s sake, I hope we do.”
Ellen leaves the room. Ash turns around and sets about connecting the wire, fingers fumbling in his haste.
-----
Above the City of San Francisco, dense, purple-gray clouds angrily blot out the sky.
Mothers involuntarily bundle their children closer to their bosoms. Folks see the heavy mass in the air and immediately take cover. Beasts of all shapes and forms stomp and bark and caw, smelling malice in the air-they smash down pens and fences in their panic, while those at water’s edge break for the shore, leaping headlong into tempestuous waves in their blinding desperation to get away.
Further inland rests the timeless ruins of Sweeney’s Observatory-only a wide ring of crumbled stone remain of the edifice once employed for celestial gazing. Regardless, there are no stars out to-night, only thunderclouds that slowly, purposefully revolve around a central axis…
It is here, where Samuel John Winchester stands. Young lawyer of the City, and ordinary citizen oblivious to the extent of his own Fate-Sam looks up at the sky and watches the swollen cotton bolls of clouds stretch down, as if pinched and twisted through a spindle.
Where the fibers pull down to Earth, a man slowly materializes under Sam’s watch. As he gains in solidity, his eyes open-they’re colored bright, eerie yellow and slit like those of a reptile.
Azazel, Sam thinks.
He is not mistaken. Azazel, demon of hell and murderer of Sam’s radiant young Mother, opens his carnivorous mouth, and says:
“Sam Winchester. Sammy, Sam-Sam. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to see you again.”
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