Fic: John of the Cabin
Title: John of the Cabin
Author: Bella Temple
Category: Pre-series, gen, drama, case-fic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Language, some violence
Spoilers: None
Author's note: Written for 50states_spn, state of Maryland. Beta-ed by maisfeeka, who is a total doll.
Summary: In November, 1997, Sam finds a piece of pirate gold in the woods outside Washington, DC. As though Dean didn't have enough reasons to hate this place.
John of the Cabin -- a curious wight
Sprang out of the river one dark stormy night:
He built a warm hut in a lonely retreat,
And lived many years on fishes and meat.
When the last lone raccoon on the creek he had slain,
It is said he jumped into the river again.
As no name to the creek by the ancients was given,
It was called 'Cabin John' after John went to Heaven.
-- poem found in a grain bin in an old mill by Cabin John Creek in 1825
There was an old foundation in amidst the trees, jutting out of the side of the hill leading down to the parkway. Dean kicked at the corner of it with the heel of his boot and looked across the shallow valley, but unlike the remains of the old footbridge running next to Cabin John Bridge, there was no matching shadow on the other side. He looked back down at the foundation and started around it in a tight circuit. The whole thing was only maybe ten feet by ten feet, barely large enough for a double bed, with a thin crack running down the middle and a set of concrete steps leading up the hill away from it. He crouched down when a flash of waning sunlight reflected off a passing car made something in the steps sparkle, running his fingers over the surface. There were marbles set into the concrete, and Dean's fingers ran across the impression of an old pair of scissors that had since been pried back out.
"Huh." He straightened back up. "Sammy, get a load of this thing."
He looked up when no one answered. Sam wasn't leaning against the tree where Dean had left him. Dean rolled his eyes, adjusting the straps of his backpack, then turned slowly to scan the trees. Sam knew better than to wander off too far, and the thin little trees weren't crowded together thick enough to hide even a pipsqueak like him. Dean spotted him a bit further down the hill, close to the side of the massive brick structure that was the Cabin John Bridge, crouched low to the ground and sifting through the leaves.
"Tell me he's not collecting more slugs for science class," Dean grumbled, and started towards Sam. He took a breath, readying his best Dad impression -- would serve the kid right for not paying attention to his surroundings -- when another shape peeled away from one of the thicker trees, moving in Sam's direction.
The old man was about Dad's height and build, far thicker than Dean might have guessed, considering how well he'd hidden in the trees, with a bright shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks. He stepped up in front of Sam, blocking Dean's view. Dean clenched his teeth, anger bubbling up in his belly as he swung his backpack around his shoulder and reached his arm inside.
"You put that back," the old man hissed, looming over Sam. "You put it back and you forget you ever laid eyes on it!"
The leaves crunched under Sam's feet as he straightened. Whatever he was planning to say, Dean beat him to it.
"Hey asshole." He leveled the barrel of his sawed off with the back of the man's head. "Get the fuck away from my brother."
The man turned, staring wide-eyed down Dean's double barrel, then looked up to meet Dean's eye. Dean smirked and wiggled his eyebrows, just begging the man to call his bluff. The man's cheeks burned a darker red.
"Get rid of it," the man said, looking from Dean back to Sam, as though he didn't have a fucking gun to his head. "And maybe you won't screw us all." He glared at Dean one more time before turning and storming back up the hill.
Dean watched him until he lost him amidst the trees, then continued watching as he counted to ten. When he didn't see any further sign of him, he tucked the shotgun back into his backpack.
"What the hell was that about?" He asked Sam, expecting confusion, or maybe some of the morose poutiness that was Sam's default mood, these days. Instead, Sam's eyes were bright and excited -- and focused down at something shiny in his hands.
"Dean, look." Sam's voice had gone breathy with awe. He held the object up for Dean to see, hands cupped gingerly beneath it. Dean frowned and leaned in closer. It couldn't be.
"It's pirate gold," Sam said. He turned the thick coin between his fingers. "Dean, I just found the Cabin John treasure!"
*
"Run that by me again?" Dad asked, sitting half-slumped at the table. The job he was working currently didn't involve a lot of grave digging yet, but researching a haunted canal took a lot of footwork even when you'd managed to narrow it down to one of three locks, and Dean didn't envy his father trying to navigate around here. He'd always found the East Coast pretty claustrophobic, curled up too tight at the edges, the horizons too short and too high. Everything was packed in, the towns so close together that they all blended into one long stretch of houses and strip malls and office buildings, separated only by thin little strips of narrow trees that wouldn't last five minutes in a Midwestern storm. Hell, Dean could practically spit on Virginia from the house Dad's client had set them up in. Could probably spit on DC, too, but then the Feds might end up swarming up their asses.
Sam rolled his eyes towards the ceiling as though he thought Dad was being deliberately dumb. "In the eighteenth century, Cabin John Creek was called Captain John's Run, after a pirate captain who fled up the Potomac River to hide his treasure. He lived with the local natives for awhile, and then disappeared without retrieving his gold."
Dad shot Dean a look. Dean shrugged and scuffed at a spot on the floor with his toe. Dad turned back to Sam. "And how do you know this?"
"I read, Dad."
"Right." John leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "And you're sure you didn't just find a subway token or something."
"The Metro takes farecards."
"Right. Of course."
Dean cleared his throat, and when Sam caught his eye, lowered his chin meaningfully. Sam rolled his eyes again.
"And then as soon as I picked it up this spooky old guy showed up going 'Beware, beware!'"
Dad's eyes went wide. His jaw tightened. "Dean --"
"I made him leave it outside in a bucket of holy water," Dean said. "Surrounded by salt. I figured we could check it for curses."
"Should have left it where it was and marked the spot," Dad straightened in his seat, turning his head to look at Dean.
Dean looked back at the floor, shame burning his cheeks. "Yes, sir."
"There wasn't any more gold out there," Sam said. "I checked."
"Dean will check again tomorrow while you're in school," Dad said. "Now both of you go get some goddamn sleep."
"Yes, sir."
"Dad, it's only --" Sam broke off with a squawk as Dean grabbed the back of his shirt and shoved him towards the bedroom. Dad and Sam could go at it all night, and Dean just didn't want to deal with it right now. The sooner they got out of the whole godforsaken area, the better, and Dad couldn't focus on wrapping up the case if Sam kept bothering him.
The house they were staying in was a little two-bedroom affair, something Sam insisted on calling a "Sears" house, like he expected to walk into the bathroom and find a whole lingerie section. The man who'd hired Dad to check out a handful of incidents along the canal owned the place. Room and board wasn't supposed to have been included in the deal, but the man was trying to get the house ready for sale, so Dad had offered Dean as a handy-man of sorts. Dean winced as Sam slammed the bedroom door open. He'd just finished painting the place a couple days ago.
"It's only ten, Dean. What the hell?"
Dean eased the door closed behind him. The house wasn't big enough for Dad to have missed that little fit. Not that Sam's moods were new. He'd been in a funk for ages now, alternating between ignoring Dad and Dean or lecturing them on the way families were supposed to work.
"What the hell's with you?" Dean shot back. "Picking up random crap in the woods? Trying to bring it home with you? You know better than that!"
"It's gold, Dean! Real pirate gold! Do you know what we could do with that?!"
"Get our asses handed to us by real pirate ghosts?"
"Get our own place and live like real people!"
Dean groaned, sinking down onto his bed. Sam had been on this tack since Dean had turned eighteen the year before, and Dean was goddamn tired of it, too tired to get into the argument all over again. "Dude, it was just sitting in the leaves out there. If it was pirate gold, don't you think someone else would have found it by now?"
Sam sat down across from Dean on his own bed and pulled a battered spiral notebook out from under his pillow, flipping it open to a page covered in his messy scrawl. "They were definitely looking. There was even a clause in some of the earliest property deeds that specified that the seller got half of any treasure the buyer found on the lot."
"Why the hell do you even know that?"
"I researched the area when we got here," Sam said.
"Why?"
Sam gave Dean a look like he was the biggest idiot on the planet. "To find out about any local ghosts."
"Like, say, angry pirates?"
"Dean."
"You were warned off that thing by a crazy old man, Sam."
"Maybe he wanted it for himself!"
"Maybe he knows about the curse!"
"There is no curse!"
"Both of you, shut up!" called Dad from the living room. Dean glared at Sam.
"Great, now you got us in trouble."
"Yeah, 'cause he was totally only yelling at me."
"Boys!"
Sam huffed and lay down on top of his covers in his bed, thumping his head into the pillow with a vengeance. "He couldn't yell at us if we moved out," he hissed.
Dean flicked him off.
*
Dean wasn't sure what woke him. He opened his eyes to bare slivers of moon coming in through the tree shrouded window. A breeze whistled softly across the corner of the house, and Sam snored in the other bed. Dean threw glances at the window, each time struck with the certainty that he would see someone -- the old man from the woods, perhaps -- staring in at them. Each time he saw nothing but moonlight and branches. He made a mental note to install the blinds in the morning, then rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.
After a few minutes, his body let him know that he was in no way about to fall asleep without getting up for a piss first, and he levered himself up, wiping his hand over his face. He shot another glance at the window, then slipped through the door, careful not to make enough noise to wake Sam.
The bathroom was at the end of the hall at the back of the house, directly opposite the front door. As Dean stepped back into the hall and turned out the light, he was struck again with the sense that someone was watching him. He started to shake it off, then looked up toward the front door and froze.
Half of a man-shaped shadow lay across the sheer curtain covering the window in the upper half of the front door, silhouetted by the glow of the streetlight across the street. Dean crept down the hallway, eyes locked on the unmoving shadow until he ducked sideways into the living room. He grabbed a pistol from Dad's duffel, then stepped up to the far side of the living room window, pressing his back against the wall to stay as invisible as possible as he peered out toward the front porch. The angle was wrong to tell much more than that there was someone standing there, just to the side of the door, looking out at the street. Dean checked the magazine in the pistol and made his way back to the door, holding the gun ready as he wrapped his free hand around the door knob. He threw the door open as sharply as he could, raising the gun to the figure's head.
"Put that thing away, son," Dad said. "You're going to hurt someone."
Dean exhaled like someone had just pulled the plug on his lungs and lowered the gun. "Jesus, Dad. What the fuck are you doing out here?"
Dad didn't look in his direction. His gaze was locked on the gap between the two houses across the street, a gap that led straight back into the wooded valley by the bridge. "Just needed some air."
Dean tucked the gun away in the back of his sweatpants, then rubbed his hands together. His breath came out in a little white puff. "Are you kidding? It's freezing out here."
Dad chuckled. "How the hell did I ever raise a mother hen?" he asked, still not looking at Dean. He flipped something over between his fingers. Dean looked closer as the thing caught the light.
"Sam's coin," he said. "Not cursed after all, huh?"
Dad looked down, his brows going up like he was surprised to see it there. "Guess not," he said. "Not gold, either." He reached out and rapped it against the side of the house. Dean wasn't sure what gold was supposed to sound like when someone did that, but he guessed that the solid little *tink* wasn't it. "Gold plate, maybe. Some kid's souvenir."
"Sam'll be pissed."
"Sam needs to get his head out of the fucking clouds, or he'll never make it on his own."
Dean frowned. "Why the hell would Sam have to make it alone?"
Dad shrugged. "Just saying." He flipped the coin into the air and caught it in his fist. "Go the hell back to bed, Dean. I'll be in in a minute."
Dean nodded slowly. "Yes, sir." He pushed the door open behind him, then paused. "You'll get the canal thing worked out soon?"
"End of the week at the latest."
Dean nodded. "Okay." He hesitated again, then stepped back into the house. The end of the week wasn't too bad, not on a job that stretched over two miles of canal covered in bike trails and camp grounds. Sam would be pissed to have to leave again, but what else was new? This area was getting to Dad and Dean both. It'd be better for all of them to just finish up and get the hell out.
He'd still go out and check out where Sam found that coin, though. Just in case.
*
The next morning, when Sam and Dean got up at their usual time of way-too-early so Sam could catch his bus, Dad was already gone. Sam rushed out the door almost immediately, barely pausing long enough to catch the pop-tart Dean threw him, and Dean was left to his own devices again.
Most hunts, he'd be at Dad's side while Sam did his school thing, but hunt research didn't leave much time for handyman work, and Dean had to make sure they were keeping up Dad's end of the bargain for the house. So he found himself alone more often then not.
Dean hated to be alone.
After weeks of spending upwards of eight hours a day on his own in the house, he was starting to get paranoid. The feeling like he was being watched was almost ever-present, now, no matter how much salt and iron he scattered around, or how many verses of Latin he muttered.
Of course, it might also have been the area. Everywhere you turned here there was another bloody battlefield, another historical marker. Everything from the Revolutionary War to the Civil Rights Movement had left a mark and a body count all up and down the Potomac River, and the surrounding neighborhoods were absolutely steeped in it. It all just felt so old, and in Dean's experience, that kind of old always meant nasty.
He finished hanging the blinds in the bedrooms in short order, noticing as he did that Dad's bag of clothes didn't seem to have been touched since the day before. Neither did the bed, but Dad always made that up like he was still in boot camp, anyway. Dean took it as a good sign -- Dad must have made a breakthrough on the canal case last night, which meant they might not even have to stick around till the end of the week.
Lunch was a dry baloney sandwich, eaten standing up in the kitchen. They'd run out of mayo two days ago, and Dean hadn't taken the time to go get another jar. No point to it, now, since they'd be leaving soon. A jar of mayo was no good on a long car trip. Sam had left his notebook, full of his notes on local history, sitting on the kitchen counter. It wasn't the sort of thing Sam left just lying around, so Dean figured he wanted him to read it. He flipped through it, skimming over a few details -- the bridge was originally called the "Union Arch", built as part of the DC Aqueduct in the height of the Civil War, it had a bunch of politicians' names on it, all the geeky stuff that only a kid like Sam would be interested in -- then paused when he noticed a shakily drawn copy of a local map from circa way the fuck before modern times. Dean shoved the last of his sandwich into his mouth as he turned the notebook lengthwise to get a better look at the map. It was about the crappiest map he'd seen outside of directions to a high school kegger, but he could still pick out some key details: the river, of course, a broad swath filled in with little squiggly lines representing rippled water, and the canal running smooth and even next to it. The creek led the way northwest in a single line branching out from the river, and two little loops running over it were labeled "CJ BRIDGE" in all caps. The road leading across it, what was now MacArthur Boulevard, the main drag through town, was titled "Conduit Road", and beside that, right flush up against the side of the creek, was a big sprawling mass of hashmark lines titled "Cabin John Bridge Hotel". It sat right smack on top of the street they lived on now.
"Fuck," Dean muttered. He brushed his hands across the back of his jeans, sending crumbs flying, and pushed away from the counter. "Pirates weren't enough? We've gotta have a creepy old hotel, too? A thousands bucks says that place was haunted." He glanced up, waiting for a sarcastic reply, and remembered he was the only one here. "Fuck," he said again.
No wonder he always felt like he was being followed.
Dean flipped through the rest of the notebook without finding much else. The hotel had burned down in the 30s, but Sam hadn't made note of any suspicious circumstances, which either meant the place was clean -- which Dean doubted -- or the sources Sam had found were too busy crowing about the pirate to bother with anything else. Come to think of it, Dean and that pirate had business to settle. Dad had ordered him to double check the spot where Sam found the coin, and while he was pretty sure he'd find a grand total of absolutely nothing, Dean wasn't about to ignore a direct order. He grabbed his backpack from the bedroom, making sure he was stocked on salt, kerosene, and ammo, and set out towards the woods.
It wasn't so much raining out as aggressively misting, drizzling in such a way that everything ended up with a thin sheen of wetness rather than active puddles or streams. The leaves coating the ground slipped instead of crunched, and they stuck to Dean's boots and jeans like soggy stickers. He didn't have to go far. The neighborhood they were staying in -- Cabin John Gardens, of course, everything in this damn place had to be named Cabin-freaking-John -- ran right up against the creek valley. He set off down the hill cautiously, his head down as he watched his step. The leaves and rain made it just slick enough to send a person sliding all the way down to the parkway below, and the last thing Dean needed was to end up a muddy wreck in the middle of a busy road. He found the marble studded steps first and stepped out into the middle of the cracked foundation, looking around to pinpoint the spot where Sam had run into the old man. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw a shape peel away from the shadows of the trees.
This place was turning him into a nervous wreck.
Dean didn't reach for his gun. It was bright enough out still that he could easily see that this wasn't the old man who'd threatened Sam. He set his jaw instead, jumping down from the foundation to storm across the woods right up to the figure in question.
"What are you doing here?"
Dad didn't turn to look at him, just kept his eyes on the ground cover as he shifted sticks and leaves aside with his foot. "What's it look like I'm doing here?"
"I've got this, Dad." Dean's hand tightened on the strap of his backpack and he stared at the side of his father's face, trying to will him to look up. "You told me to get this. I've got it."
Dad shrugged, finally looking up. "You trying to tell me my business, Dean?"
Dean swallowed, all the anger he'd been feeling drying up at the dark look on his father's face. "No, sir. But I --"
"Go home, Dean."
"But Dad --"
Dad's eyes were back on the ground again, and he crouched down to run his hand over the damp dirt. "Go. Home."
Dean felt like he'd been hit in the chest. Both his hands spasmed against the backpack strap and he took a few steps back. "Right, I guess I should. . . ." He trailed off. Dad didn't even look like he was still listening. "Right." He stepped back a few more steps, then turned and forced himself to walk calmly back through the woods.
He was eighteen years old, only a few months shy of nineteen. He could handle a simple change of plans. The gold must have been connected with the canal somehow. Dad was working on a pattern, he always got grumpy when his train of thought was interrupted.
And if the very air in the woods felt oppressive, like it was bearing down and breathing on Dean's neck -- well. That was just what old places did.
*
Dad didn't make it home for dinner that night, which wasn't unusual. He didn't make it back before Sam decided to send himself to bed, which was, and he was out the door before they got up again the next morning.
The night after that, Dad was late enough that Dean started to worry he wasn't going to come back.
The third day, Dean broke down and bought a jar of mayo. He was just popping it open to make his lunch when Dad stormed in, making a beeline for his bedroom.
"Grab the guns," he said, while Dean could only stand in the door to the kitchen, mayo jar clenched in his hands. "The hunt ends tonight."
Dean practically threw the unopened mayo jar back on the counter, then rushed to gather up everything he and Dad might need to take out -- whatever was attacking tourists on the canal.
Well. Dad would give him the details on the way. He'd never throw him into a hunt blind.
*
"I left him a note," Dean said as he climbed into the car. Dad nodded absently, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, then frowned.
"Who?"
Dean stared, hand frozen on the car door. "Sam."
"Right," said Dad.
Dean yanked the door shut, still staring at Dad. It was one thing to leave Sam out of the dirty work of hunting -- he'd only bitch about it the whole time, anyway -- but Dad almost seemed like he didn't care about Sam at all. "We could wait," he said finally. "He'll be home soon. It's not even dark out, yet."
Dad shook his head. "Wasted enough time already." He glanced over, and Dean didn't recognize the look on his face. "You left him a note," he said, and he pulled the car out onto the road.
Dean nodded without saying anything else. It must've been a tough hunt to research -- Dad was in a hell of a mood. He'd feel better once they ganked the bastard.
The drive wasn't long -- was barely worth driving, really, just across the neighborhood and down the parkway a ways before they pulled into one of the little lock parking lots that dotted the road like tiny rest-stops. Dad parked the Impala front and center, the only car in the lot. It was cold out, and had been doing that misty-rainy thing again all day, and apparently no one wanted to catch up on local history on a rainy weekday afternoon in November. Dean headed for the trunk to grab the equipment bag as usual, but Dad beat him to it, practically throwing a shovel at Dean's head.
Spirit then. Salt and burn, easy as pie.
"Come on." Dad led the way down towards the tow path, a long gravelly stretch that ran down the side of the canal next to the river, the width of a single modern road lane. They crossed over the canal on a little wooden bridge just upstream of the lock itself, and Dean paused for a moment to stare at the water pouring through the open slots in the giant wooden doors that formed the upper lock gate. The gate was worked by massive wooden balance beams that stretched out like wings on either side of the gate. Years of exposure had weathered the beams, leaving them dark, slick, and pockmarked. Dean couldn't imagine having to wait for a team of workers to wrench the lock open and closed just to get up river, yet the canal went on like this for hundreds of miles.
"Dean!"
Dean snapped his head up. Dad was waiting for him on the tow path. He shook himself. "Sorry."
Dad pointed at his feet. "Dig."
"The middle of the path?!" Dean protested, then grimaced when Dad's face darkened. "Yes, sir." He came over, looking down at the spot Dad had indicated. As far as he could tell, it was just like all the other spots on the path. "Old one, huh?" he guessed. "One of the workers kick it while building this bitch?"
Dad didn't answer until Dean had tossed his first shovelful of gravel aside. "Lockkeeper," he said, and nodded to the ancient-looking white cottage that sat by the lock.
"Huh." Dean knew there was more, but Dad didn't elaborate, and the precise details were less important than digging the grave, so he just kept digging. It was slow going. The constant damp of the last few days had softened up the top layer under the gravel, but the tow path was densely packed beneath that, beaten down by more than a century of use, and Dean had to do a lot of chopping to loosen the soil enough to clear it off. He paused for breath between shovelfuls and glanced up in the direction of the parking lot, and the parkway behind it. "We have a permit for this?" he asked. "I'm feeling super-exposed, here."
"Dammit," Dad grumbled, and he yanked the shovel from Dean's hand. "Stand guard then. You're digging too slow."
Dean couldn't help but gape at him, then put up his hands in surrender. "Yes, sir." He went to grab his shotgun and a canister of salt from his bag, then moved over to lean against one of the balance beams on the upper gate. Dad's mood was rubbing off on him -- he felt almost itchy under his skin, and the feeling they were being watched had magnified several hundred times since they'd left the house.
It was rapidly approaching full dark and Dean's ass had gone numb on the beam when he finally heard something out of Dad that wasn't digging.
"Dammit," Dad said, throwing the shovel aside. "It's not here."
Dean wished he was back home with Sam, just now. "Maybe they moved the grave," he suggested.
Dad looked up. "What gra--"
"Behind you!" Dean shoved himself up and forward, eyes locked on the angry, spectral figure straight out of a historical reenactment that had flickered into existence behind Dad. Dad dropped, going for the shovel -- not pure iron, but could work in a pinch -- and Dean swung his salt can by the base, sending white crystals flying and scattering the spirit.
"Lockkeeper?" he guessed.
"That's the bastard," said Dad.
Dean turned to scan the area and caught little more than a glimpse of a pale blue hand before he was hurled backward. The spirit was a quick son of a bitch. He grunted as his body smacked into the balance beam, folding him almost in half across it. Breath and sense knocked out by the impact, Dean stared down at the water in the lock chamber, black and glimmering in the faint ambient light that washed everything this close to the city.
Dad shouted, the words incomprehensible, but the anger clear as day. Dean raised the gun he'd somehow managed to keep a hold of and fired a round of iron shot at the nearest source of light.
Either he missed, or the spirit was impossibly fast. A moment later, Dean was airborne again, this time tumbling back over the edge of the stone-lined lock chamber and down into the water below.
The impact was like being slapped over half his body by a board covered in sandpaper. It drove what little breath Dean had managed to get back from his lungs, to be immediately replaced by foul freezing canal water and silt. His body smacked into the stone floor of the chamber and jerked, his arms and legs flailing spasmodically as he searched for anything to grab on to. He scrabbled at the chamber floor, choking and panicked, before managing to slam his feet down and send himself up.
He breached the surface spewing water and staggered, all but blinded by the mud in his eyes and the pain in his chest. He flailed again as he tipped sideways, washed in the suddenly furious and circular current. The windows in the upper gate were open in full now, sending a swamping cascade of canal water down on top of him, and the lower gate, left open for what had to be at least fifty years, was creaking closed, leaving Dean stranded in what amounted to a large, flooding hole in the ground. He turned, barely able to keep his feet as the water rose up around his rib cage, searching for something to grab onto. A second current, this one on the floor, started flooding the chamber even faster, and Dean soon found it difficult to keep his head above the water level.
Why the hell couldn't the ghost be haunting one of the dry locks?
The walls of the lock chamber were slick and slimy and entirely unscalable, but when the current succeeded in forcing Dean back into the lower lock gate, his grasping hands discovered that the heavy wooden doors were built with crossbeams refurbished recently enough for him to wrap his hands around without slipping off, and he dragged himself up, slipping and gagging, until he finally managed to claw his way back onto solid ground. He lay prone on the grass on the parkway side of the canal, and when he finally stopped feeling like he was going to puke up his internal organs, he looked up to take stock.
Dad stood above him, Dean's gun in one hand, the shovel in the other, equipment bag on his back. He held the gun at ready, scanning the lock and the tow path, body on high alert, every inch a capable, powerful hunter. Dean shivered and spat, then rolled slowly to his knees.
Dad stood watch the whole time Dean needed to get back to his feet, and the sight of it kept something warm in Dean's chest, despite the way he shivered in the cold air. He wavered once, then straightened as much as he could with his aching ribs and stomach.
"More research?" he croaked. Dad looked him over, eyes pausing on the slump of Dean's shoulders, his arms wrapped over his chest, his water-logged boots. Then he turned and led the way back to the car.
More research it was.
*
The spitting, misting rain finally coalesced into a real downpour by the time Dad pulled up in front of the house. Dean paused before going into the house to stand in it, though he was already shuddering hard from the cold and the wet, turning his face up towards the sky and letting the fat, heavy drops wash away some of the black and green slime that still coated him. Dad gave him the fish eye as he walked past, but left Dean to it, pushing his way past Sam into the house with his shoulders slumped. Dean would be in for it when he finally went in, he knew. Dad had been planning to lay this one to rest, and Dean had screwed it up.
He wasn't sure how he'd screwed it up, but by the look on Dad's face, it'd been a doozy.
Dad and Sam had what looked like a minor skirmish over the door, then Sam made his way out onto the front porch, just to the edge of the stairs leading down to the yard. He stood there, out of the rain, with his arms crossed over his chest.
"You fixed the water heater two weeks ago," he called.
Dean tilted his head back down to look at him, wiping water from face and probably leaving streaks of slime across his cheeks. "And who do you think is going to have to clean the bathroom when I'm done?"
"So that's why you like it when we stay in a motel with a maid service."
"Preferably a h-hot one." Dean's voice wobbled, his shivering reaching the point of ridiculousness where he started to sound like he was speaking into a low speed fan. "S-somehow, you don't quite c-cut it."
"Jesus, Dean." Sam stepped out off the porch, and his hair swamped into his eyes in a matter of minutes. "Get your ass inside, already."
"Y-you're not the boss of me," Dean muttered, but let Sam usher him into the house, anyway. He stopped to peel his boots off on the porch, at least. It was bad enough he'd have to clean slime off the bathroom. They didn't really have a vacuum up to handling the mess if he stomped it all over the carpet.
Dean climbed into the shower with all his clothes on and stood beneath the hot spray until he started to feel like a lobster. Sam's shampoo stung his fingers and eyes as he worked it through his hair, trying to strip away the last of the clinging muck from the canal. By the time he was done, the shower looked like it'd been attacked by the love child of Slimer and the black oil from The X-Files, but at least he felt mostly human again. Sam had set out a fresh set of clothes by the door, and Dean took his time toweling off and pulling them on.
He was in no hurry to face Dad again.
He got back to the living room to find Dad slumped on the couch, a mess of papers, notes, and maps spread out on the coffee table in front of him, and Sam standing in the archway to the kitchen, arranging first aid supplies on the counter.
"Shit," Dean said. "Did Dad get hurt?" Dad hadn't been limping or anything, but he'd been up against the spirit of the old lockkeeper alone for however long it took Dean to climb back out of the lock, and there was no telling what it might have done to him.
Sam looked at him like he was an idiot. "It's for you," he said, holding out his hand, palm up. Dean frowned at him, and Sam rolled his eyes and grabbed his arm, tugging it up until Dean held it extended out in front of him.
The scrapes on his knuckles from the stone floor of the lock chamber were bleeding sluggishly, welling up bright red that webbed out through the folds and seams of his skin. Sam winced sympathetically and wiped them down with rubbing alcohol before laying a square of gauze over top of them. He turned Dean's hand carefully, and it was Dean's turn to wince. The insides of his fingers and his palm were riddled with small, wicked-looking splinters from the lower lock gates, gone unnoticed thanks to the adrenaline and the cold. A longer, thin sliver had jammed itself down under his middle finger nail, and now that he'd noticed it, it began to throb.
"What the hell did you guys do?" Sam asked. Dean shot a look towards Dad, who hadn't looked up from his research. "I mean, I can guess you went for an unscheduled swim, but. . . ."
"Spirit threw me into the lock," Dean mumbled, wincing again as Sam took a pair of tweezers and gently worked the splinter out from beneath Dean's nail. The persistent damp of the canal, the rain, and then the shower had expanded both the wood and Dean's skin, making it tough for him to get a grip on it, and Dean finally had to look away.
"That must've sucked," Sam said.
"Yeah. Then it shut the thing and started flooding it." Dean shot another glance at Dad. "Didn't realize it was that powerful."
"Isn't that the kind of thing you kind of want to know going in?" Sam asked.
Dad grunted and slammed his book shut. Dean pulled his hand back out of Sam's grip, pressing the gauze into his knuckles as he cradled it to his chest.
"Can you go check on that water heater?" he asked. "I think it's acting up again."
"Dude, I haven't even started on your other hand --"
Dean grabbed Sam's shoulder and pushed him towards the back of the house. "I'll deal with it."
Sam stumbled, shooting a glance from Dean to Dad. "Fine," he said. "Guess I'll start cleaning out the tub, too." He continued shooting glances at them even as he walked down the hallway and into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Dean turned to face Dad full on.
"I screwed up," he said.
Dad looked up at him from the couch, eyes roving over him before narrowing in on where Dean kept his hands tight to his chest. "Yeah," he said.
Dean tried not to flinch.
Dad sighed. "It's my fault," he said, and Dean felt some of the tension bleed out of his shoulders. Dad's eyes went back down to his research, and he shoved it all together before Dean could get a good look at what he'd found. "I should have known I'd have to do it alone."
Dean couldn't hold back the flinch this time. He hadn't done that badly, had he? It wasn't like Dad had filled him in on all the details. Hell, Dean had been lucky to get "lockkeeper" out of the man.
Which was really, really strange. Dad was usually as bad as Sam, when it came to knowing every little insignificant detail about a case. Dean was the impetuous one.
"Dad --"
"Doesn't matter," Dad said. He stacked his papers in a rough pile, then shoved them into his bag. "I know where the bastard's hiding it, now." He looked up at Dean again, and though he was warm enough after his shower, Dean shivered. "Don't follow me."
"Dad --"
Dad was out the door and slamming it before Dean had even quite finished the single syllable.
Dean's back hit the wall, and locking his knees was the only thing that kept him from sliding down it. He couldn't breathe. Even after the Striga, Dad had never looked at him like that. And he sure as hell hadn't walked out before he knew his kids were totally safe. Dean looked down at his hands, at his bloody knuckles and the splinters still dotting his fingers. None of it was life threatening, but Dad hadn't even checked.
How the hell had Dean managed to screw things up this badly?
"Dean?"
Dean heaved a breath, pressing his arm around his ribs as his bruises began to make themselves known. Sam peered out at him through the door to the bathroom.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"Did -- did Dad just leave?"
Dean flashed his teeth and hoped Sam thought it was a smile. That's right, Dad had left. Dean had managed to lose Sam's only remaining parent. He took another breath and let a lie slip out, issuing it forth like a leaky tire. "Nah," he said. "He just needs some air."
Sam stared at him. Dean stared back, braced for the questions, the demands for the truth. The house wasn't that big -- Sam had to have heard every word Dad and Dean had said. Instead, Sam just nodded, his shoulders drooping. "Okay," he said, looking all of five years old, accepting the lie because the truth was clearly so much worse. "Thanks."
Dean had to look away. "Yeah," he said again. "Whatever. Now get over here. These splinters aren't going to tweeze themselves."
Part 2
Author: Bella Temple
Category: Pre-series, gen, drama, case-fic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Language, some violence
Spoilers: None
Author's note: Written for 50states_spn, state of Maryland. Beta-ed by maisfeeka, who is a total doll.
Summary: In November, 1997, Sam finds a piece of pirate gold in the woods outside Washington, DC. As though Dean didn't have enough reasons to hate this place.
John of the Cabin -- a curious wight
Sprang out of the river one dark stormy night:
He built a warm hut in a lonely retreat,
And lived many years on fishes and meat.
When the last lone raccoon on the creek he had slain,
It is said he jumped into the river again.
As no name to the creek by the ancients was given,
It was called 'Cabin John' after John went to Heaven.
-- poem found in a grain bin in an old mill by Cabin John Creek in 1825
There was an old foundation in amidst the trees, jutting out of the side of the hill leading down to the parkway. Dean kicked at the corner of it with the heel of his boot and looked across the shallow valley, but unlike the remains of the old footbridge running next to Cabin John Bridge, there was no matching shadow on the other side. He looked back down at the foundation and started around it in a tight circuit. The whole thing was only maybe ten feet by ten feet, barely large enough for a double bed, with a thin crack running down the middle and a set of concrete steps leading up the hill away from it. He crouched down when a flash of waning sunlight reflected off a passing car made something in the steps sparkle, running his fingers over the surface. There were marbles set into the concrete, and Dean's fingers ran across the impression of an old pair of scissors that had since been pried back out.
"Huh." He straightened back up. "Sammy, get a load of this thing."
He looked up when no one answered. Sam wasn't leaning against the tree where Dean had left him. Dean rolled his eyes, adjusting the straps of his backpack, then turned slowly to scan the trees. Sam knew better than to wander off too far, and the thin little trees weren't crowded together thick enough to hide even a pipsqueak like him. Dean spotted him a bit further down the hill, close to the side of the massive brick structure that was the Cabin John Bridge, crouched low to the ground and sifting through the leaves.
"Tell me he's not collecting more slugs for science class," Dean grumbled, and started towards Sam. He took a breath, readying his best Dad impression -- would serve the kid right for not paying attention to his surroundings -- when another shape peeled away from one of the thicker trees, moving in Sam's direction.
The old man was about Dad's height and build, far thicker than Dean might have guessed, considering how well he'd hidden in the trees, with a bright shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks. He stepped up in front of Sam, blocking Dean's view. Dean clenched his teeth, anger bubbling up in his belly as he swung his backpack around his shoulder and reached his arm inside.
"You put that back," the old man hissed, looming over Sam. "You put it back and you forget you ever laid eyes on it!"
The leaves crunched under Sam's feet as he straightened. Whatever he was planning to say, Dean beat him to it.
"Hey asshole." He leveled the barrel of his sawed off with the back of the man's head. "Get the fuck away from my brother."
The man turned, staring wide-eyed down Dean's double barrel, then looked up to meet Dean's eye. Dean smirked and wiggled his eyebrows, just begging the man to call his bluff. The man's cheeks burned a darker red.
"Get rid of it," the man said, looking from Dean back to Sam, as though he didn't have a fucking gun to his head. "And maybe you won't screw us all." He glared at Dean one more time before turning and storming back up the hill.
Dean watched him until he lost him amidst the trees, then continued watching as he counted to ten. When he didn't see any further sign of him, he tucked the shotgun back into his backpack.
"What the hell was that about?" He asked Sam, expecting confusion, or maybe some of the morose poutiness that was Sam's default mood, these days. Instead, Sam's eyes were bright and excited -- and focused down at something shiny in his hands.
"Dean, look." Sam's voice had gone breathy with awe. He held the object up for Dean to see, hands cupped gingerly beneath it. Dean frowned and leaned in closer. It couldn't be.
"It's pirate gold," Sam said. He turned the thick coin between his fingers. "Dean, I just found the Cabin John treasure!"
*
"Run that by me again?" Dad asked, sitting half-slumped at the table. The job he was working currently didn't involve a lot of grave digging yet, but researching a haunted canal took a lot of footwork even when you'd managed to narrow it down to one of three locks, and Dean didn't envy his father trying to navigate around here. He'd always found the East Coast pretty claustrophobic, curled up too tight at the edges, the horizons too short and too high. Everything was packed in, the towns so close together that they all blended into one long stretch of houses and strip malls and office buildings, separated only by thin little strips of narrow trees that wouldn't last five minutes in a Midwestern storm. Hell, Dean could practically spit on Virginia from the house Dad's client had set them up in. Could probably spit on DC, too, but then the Feds might end up swarming up their asses.
Sam rolled his eyes towards the ceiling as though he thought Dad was being deliberately dumb. "In the eighteenth century, Cabin John Creek was called Captain John's Run, after a pirate captain who fled up the Potomac River to hide his treasure. He lived with the local natives for awhile, and then disappeared without retrieving his gold."
Dad shot Dean a look. Dean shrugged and scuffed at a spot on the floor with his toe. Dad turned back to Sam. "And how do you know this?"
"I read, Dad."
"Right." John leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "And you're sure you didn't just find a subway token or something."
"The Metro takes farecards."
"Right. Of course."
Dean cleared his throat, and when Sam caught his eye, lowered his chin meaningfully. Sam rolled his eyes again.
"And then as soon as I picked it up this spooky old guy showed up going 'Beware, beware!'"
Dad's eyes went wide. His jaw tightened. "Dean --"
"I made him leave it outside in a bucket of holy water," Dean said. "Surrounded by salt. I figured we could check it for curses."
"Should have left it where it was and marked the spot," Dad straightened in his seat, turning his head to look at Dean.
Dean looked back at the floor, shame burning his cheeks. "Yes, sir."
"There wasn't any more gold out there," Sam said. "I checked."
"Dean will check again tomorrow while you're in school," Dad said. "Now both of you go get some goddamn sleep."
"Yes, sir."
"Dad, it's only --" Sam broke off with a squawk as Dean grabbed the back of his shirt and shoved him towards the bedroom. Dad and Sam could go at it all night, and Dean just didn't want to deal with it right now. The sooner they got out of the whole godforsaken area, the better, and Dad couldn't focus on wrapping up the case if Sam kept bothering him.
The house they were staying in was a little two-bedroom affair, something Sam insisted on calling a "Sears" house, like he expected to walk into the bathroom and find a whole lingerie section. The man who'd hired Dad to check out a handful of incidents along the canal owned the place. Room and board wasn't supposed to have been included in the deal, but the man was trying to get the house ready for sale, so Dad had offered Dean as a handy-man of sorts. Dean winced as Sam slammed the bedroom door open. He'd just finished painting the place a couple days ago.
"It's only ten, Dean. What the hell?"
Dean eased the door closed behind him. The house wasn't big enough for Dad to have missed that little fit. Not that Sam's moods were new. He'd been in a funk for ages now, alternating between ignoring Dad and Dean or lecturing them on the way families were supposed to work.
"What the hell's with you?" Dean shot back. "Picking up random crap in the woods? Trying to bring it home with you? You know better than that!"
"It's gold, Dean! Real pirate gold! Do you know what we could do with that?!"
"Get our asses handed to us by real pirate ghosts?"
"Get our own place and live like real people!"
Dean groaned, sinking down onto his bed. Sam had been on this tack since Dean had turned eighteen the year before, and Dean was goddamn tired of it, too tired to get into the argument all over again. "Dude, it was just sitting in the leaves out there. If it was pirate gold, don't you think someone else would have found it by now?"
Sam sat down across from Dean on his own bed and pulled a battered spiral notebook out from under his pillow, flipping it open to a page covered in his messy scrawl. "They were definitely looking. There was even a clause in some of the earliest property deeds that specified that the seller got half of any treasure the buyer found on the lot."
"Why the hell do you even know that?"
"I researched the area when we got here," Sam said.
"Why?"
Sam gave Dean a look like he was the biggest idiot on the planet. "To find out about any local ghosts."
"Like, say, angry pirates?"
"Dean."
"You were warned off that thing by a crazy old man, Sam."
"Maybe he wanted it for himself!"
"Maybe he knows about the curse!"
"There is no curse!"
"Both of you, shut up!" called Dad from the living room. Dean glared at Sam.
"Great, now you got us in trouble."
"Yeah, 'cause he was totally only yelling at me."
"Boys!"
Sam huffed and lay down on top of his covers in his bed, thumping his head into the pillow with a vengeance. "He couldn't yell at us if we moved out," he hissed.
Dean flicked him off.
*
Dean wasn't sure what woke him. He opened his eyes to bare slivers of moon coming in through the tree shrouded window. A breeze whistled softly across the corner of the house, and Sam snored in the other bed. Dean threw glances at the window, each time struck with the certainty that he would see someone -- the old man from the woods, perhaps -- staring in at them. Each time he saw nothing but moonlight and branches. He made a mental note to install the blinds in the morning, then rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.
After a few minutes, his body let him know that he was in no way about to fall asleep without getting up for a piss first, and he levered himself up, wiping his hand over his face. He shot another glance at the window, then slipped through the door, careful not to make enough noise to wake Sam.
The bathroom was at the end of the hall at the back of the house, directly opposite the front door. As Dean stepped back into the hall and turned out the light, he was struck again with the sense that someone was watching him. He started to shake it off, then looked up toward the front door and froze.
Half of a man-shaped shadow lay across the sheer curtain covering the window in the upper half of the front door, silhouetted by the glow of the streetlight across the street. Dean crept down the hallway, eyes locked on the unmoving shadow until he ducked sideways into the living room. He grabbed a pistol from Dad's duffel, then stepped up to the far side of the living room window, pressing his back against the wall to stay as invisible as possible as he peered out toward the front porch. The angle was wrong to tell much more than that there was someone standing there, just to the side of the door, looking out at the street. Dean checked the magazine in the pistol and made his way back to the door, holding the gun ready as he wrapped his free hand around the door knob. He threw the door open as sharply as he could, raising the gun to the figure's head.
"Put that thing away, son," Dad said. "You're going to hurt someone."
Dean exhaled like someone had just pulled the plug on his lungs and lowered the gun. "Jesus, Dad. What the fuck are you doing out here?"
Dad didn't look in his direction. His gaze was locked on the gap between the two houses across the street, a gap that led straight back into the wooded valley by the bridge. "Just needed some air."
Dean tucked the gun away in the back of his sweatpants, then rubbed his hands together. His breath came out in a little white puff. "Are you kidding? It's freezing out here."
Dad chuckled. "How the hell did I ever raise a mother hen?" he asked, still not looking at Dean. He flipped something over between his fingers. Dean looked closer as the thing caught the light.
"Sam's coin," he said. "Not cursed after all, huh?"
Dad looked down, his brows going up like he was surprised to see it there. "Guess not," he said. "Not gold, either." He reached out and rapped it against the side of the house. Dean wasn't sure what gold was supposed to sound like when someone did that, but he guessed that the solid little *tink* wasn't it. "Gold plate, maybe. Some kid's souvenir."
"Sam'll be pissed."
"Sam needs to get his head out of the fucking clouds, or he'll never make it on his own."
Dean frowned. "Why the hell would Sam have to make it alone?"
Dad shrugged. "Just saying." He flipped the coin into the air and caught it in his fist. "Go the hell back to bed, Dean. I'll be in in a minute."
Dean nodded slowly. "Yes, sir." He pushed the door open behind him, then paused. "You'll get the canal thing worked out soon?"
"End of the week at the latest."
Dean nodded. "Okay." He hesitated again, then stepped back into the house. The end of the week wasn't too bad, not on a job that stretched over two miles of canal covered in bike trails and camp grounds. Sam would be pissed to have to leave again, but what else was new? This area was getting to Dad and Dean both. It'd be better for all of them to just finish up and get the hell out.
He'd still go out and check out where Sam found that coin, though. Just in case.
*
The next morning, when Sam and Dean got up at their usual time of way-too-early so Sam could catch his bus, Dad was already gone. Sam rushed out the door almost immediately, barely pausing long enough to catch the pop-tart Dean threw him, and Dean was left to his own devices again.
Most hunts, he'd be at Dad's side while Sam did his school thing, but hunt research didn't leave much time for handyman work, and Dean had to make sure they were keeping up Dad's end of the bargain for the house. So he found himself alone more often then not.
Dean hated to be alone.
After weeks of spending upwards of eight hours a day on his own in the house, he was starting to get paranoid. The feeling like he was being watched was almost ever-present, now, no matter how much salt and iron he scattered around, or how many verses of Latin he muttered.
Of course, it might also have been the area. Everywhere you turned here there was another bloody battlefield, another historical marker. Everything from the Revolutionary War to the Civil Rights Movement had left a mark and a body count all up and down the Potomac River, and the surrounding neighborhoods were absolutely steeped in it. It all just felt so old, and in Dean's experience, that kind of old always meant nasty.
He finished hanging the blinds in the bedrooms in short order, noticing as he did that Dad's bag of clothes didn't seem to have been touched since the day before. Neither did the bed, but Dad always made that up like he was still in boot camp, anyway. Dean took it as a good sign -- Dad must have made a breakthrough on the canal case last night, which meant they might not even have to stick around till the end of the week.
Lunch was a dry baloney sandwich, eaten standing up in the kitchen. They'd run out of mayo two days ago, and Dean hadn't taken the time to go get another jar. No point to it, now, since they'd be leaving soon. A jar of mayo was no good on a long car trip. Sam had left his notebook, full of his notes on local history, sitting on the kitchen counter. It wasn't the sort of thing Sam left just lying around, so Dean figured he wanted him to read it. He flipped through it, skimming over a few details -- the bridge was originally called the "Union Arch", built as part of the DC Aqueduct in the height of the Civil War, it had a bunch of politicians' names on it, all the geeky stuff that only a kid like Sam would be interested in -- then paused when he noticed a shakily drawn copy of a local map from circa way the fuck before modern times. Dean shoved the last of his sandwich into his mouth as he turned the notebook lengthwise to get a better look at the map. It was about the crappiest map he'd seen outside of directions to a high school kegger, but he could still pick out some key details: the river, of course, a broad swath filled in with little squiggly lines representing rippled water, and the canal running smooth and even next to it. The creek led the way northwest in a single line branching out from the river, and two little loops running over it were labeled "CJ BRIDGE" in all caps. The road leading across it, what was now MacArthur Boulevard, the main drag through town, was titled "Conduit Road", and beside that, right flush up against the side of the creek, was a big sprawling mass of hashmark lines titled "Cabin John Bridge Hotel". It sat right smack on top of the street they lived on now.
"Fuck," Dean muttered. He brushed his hands across the back of his jeans, sending crumbs flying, and pushed away from the counter. "Pirates weren't enough? We've gotta have a creepy old hotel, too? A thousands bucks says that place was haunted." He glanced up, waiting for a sarcastic reply, and remembered he was the only one here. "Fuck," he said again.
No wonder he always felt like he was being followed.
Dean flipped through the rest of the notebook without finding much else. The hotel had burned down in the 30s, but Sam hadn't made note of any suspicious circumstances, which either meant the place was clean -- which Dean doubted -- or the sources Sam had found were too busy crowing about the pirate to bother with anything else. Come to think of it, Dean and that pirate had business to settle. Dad had ordered him to double check the spot where Sam found the coin, and while he was pretty sure he'd find a grand total of absolutely nothing, Dean wasn't about to ignore a direct order. He grabbed his backpack from the bedroom, making sure he was stocked on salt, kerosene, and ammo, and set out towards the woods.
It wasn't so much raining out as aggressively misting, drizzling in such a way that everything ended up with a thin sheen of wetness rather than active puddles or streams. The leaves coating the ground slipped instead of crunched, and they stuck to Dean's boots and jeans like soggy stickers. He didn't have to go far. The neighborhood they were staying in -- Cabin John Gardens, of course, everything in this damn place had to be named Cabin-freaking-John -- ran right up against the creek valley. He set off down the hill cautiously, his head down as he watched his step. The leaves and rain made it just slick enough to send a person sliding all the way down to the parkway below, and the last thing Dean needed was to end up a muddy wreck in the middle of a busy road. He found the marble studded steps first and stepped out into the middle of the cracked foundation, looking around to pinpoint the spot where Sam had run into the old man. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw a shape peel away from the shadows of the trees.
This place was turning him into a nervous wreck.
Dean didn't reach for his gun. It was bright enough out still that he could easily see that this wasn't the old man who'd threatened Sam. He set his jaw instead, jumping down from the foundation to storm across the woods right up to the figure in question.
"What are you doing here?"
Dad didn't turn to look at him, just kept his eyes on the ground cover as he shifted sticks and leaves aside with his foot. "What's it look like I'm doing here?"
"I've got this, Dad." Dean's hand tightened on the strap of his backpack and he stared at the side of his father's face, trying to will him to look up. "You told me to get this. I've got it."
Dad shrugged, finally looking up. "You trying to tell me my business, Dean?"
Dean swallowed, all the anger he'd been feeling drying up at the dark look on his father's face. "No, sir. But I --"
"Go home, Dean."
"But Dad --"
Dad's eyes were back on the ground again, and he crouched down to run his hand over the damp dirt. "Go. Home."
Dean felt like he'd been hit in the chest. Both his hands spasmed against the backpack strap and he took a few steps back. "Right, I guess I should. . . ." He trailed off. Dad didn't even look like he was still listening. "Right." He stepped back a few more steps, then turned and forced himself to walk calmly back through the woods.
He was eighteen years old, only a few months shy of nineteen. He could handle a simple change of plans. The gold must have been connected with the canal somehow. Dad was working on a pattern, he always got grumpy when his train of thought was interrupted.
And if the very air in the woods felt oppressive, like it was bearing down and breathing on Dean's neck -- well. That was just what old places did.
*
Dad didn't make it home for dinner that night, which wasn't unusual. He didn't make it back before Sam decided to send himself to bed, which was, and he was out the door before they got up again the next morning.
The night after that, Dad was late enough that Dean started to worry he wasn't going to come back.
The third day, Dean broke down and bought a jar of mayo. He was just popping it open to make his lunch when Dad stormed in, making a beeline for his bedroom.
"Grab the guns," he said, while Dean could only stand in the door to the kitchen, mayo jar clenched in his hands. "The hunt ends tonight."
Dean practically threw the unopened mayo jar back on the counter, then rushed to gather up everything he and Dad might need to take out -- whatever was attacking tourists on the canal.
Well. Dad would give him the details on the way. He'd never throw him into a hunt blind.
*
"I left him a note," Dean said as he climbed into the car. Dad nodded absently, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, then frowned.
"Who?"
Dean stared, hand frozen on the car door. "Sam."
"Right," said Dad.
Dean yanked the door shut, still staring at Dad. It was one thing to leave Sam out of the dirty work of hunting -- he'd only bitch about it the whole time, anyway -- but Dad almost seemed like he didn't care about Sam at all. "We could wait," he said finally. "He'll be home soon. It's not even dark out, yet."
Dad shook his head. "Wasted enough time already." He glanced over, and Dean didn't recognize the look on his face. "You left him a note," he said, and he pulled the car out onto the road.
Dean nodded without saying anything else. It must've been a tough hunt to research -- Dad was in a hell of a mood. He'd feel better once they ganked the bastard.
The drive wasn't long -- was barely worth driving, really, just across the neighborhood and down the parkway a ways before they pulled into one of the little lock parking lots that dotted the road like tiny rest-stops. Dad parked the Impala front and center, the only car in the lot. It was cold out, and had been doing that misty-rainy thing again all day, and apparently no one wanted to catch up on local history on a rainy weekday afternoon in November. Dean headed for the trunk to grab the equipment bag as usual, but Dad beat him to it, practically throwing a shovel at Dean's head.
Spirit then. Salt and burn, easy as pie.
"Come on." Dad led the way down towards the tow path, a long gravelly stretch that ran down the side of the canal next to the river, the width of a single modern road lane. They crossed over the canal on a little wooden bridge just upstream of the lock itself, and Dean paused for a moment to stare at the water pouring through the open slots in the giant wooden doors that formed the upper lock gate. The gate was worked by massive wooden balance beams that stretched out like wings on either side of the gate. Years of exposure had weathered the beams, leaving them dark, slick, and pockmarked. Dean couldn't imagine having to wait for a team of workers to wrench the lock open and closed just to get up river, yet the canal went on like this for hundreds of miles.
"Dean!"
Dean snapped his head up. Dad was waiting for him on the tow path. He shook himself. "Sorry."
Dad pointed at his feet. "Dig."
"The middle of the path?!" Dean protested, then grimaced when Dad's face darkened. "Yes, sir." He came over, looking down at the spot Dad had indicated. As far as he could tell, it was just like all the other spots on the path. "Old one, huh?" he guessed. "One of the workers kick it while building this bitch?"
Dad didn't answer until Dean had tossed his first shovelful of gravel aside. "Lockkeeper," he said, and nodded to the ancient-looking white cottage that sat by the lock.
"Huh." Dean knew there was more, but Dad didn't elaborate, and the precise details were less important than digging the grave, so he just kept digging. It was slow going. The constant damp of the last few days had softened up the top layer under the gravel, but the tow path was densely packed beneath that, beaten down by more than a century of use, and Dean had to do a lot of chopping to loosen the soil enough to clear it off. He paused for breath between shovelfuls and glanced up in the direction of the parking lot, and the parkway behind it. "We have a permit for this?" he asked. "I'm feeling super-exposed, here."
"Dammit," Dad grumbled, and he yanked the shovel from Dean's hand. "Stand guard then. You're digging too slow."
Dean couldn't help but gape at him, then put up his hands in surrender. "Yes, sir." He went to grab his shotgun and a canister of salt from his bag, then moved over to lean against one of the balance beams on the upper gate. Dad's mood was rubbing off on him -- he felt almost itchy under his skin, and the feeling they were being watched had magnified several hundred times since they'd left the house.
It was rapidly approaching full dark and Dean's ass had gone numb on the beam when he finally heard something out of Dad that wasn't digging.
"Dammit," Dad said, throwing the shovel aside. "It's not here."
Dean wished he was back home with Sam, just now. "Maybe they moved the grave," he suggested.
Dad looked up. "What gra--"
"Behind you!" Dean shoved himself up and forward, eyes locked on the angry, spectral figure straight out of a historical reenactment that had flickered into existence behind Dad. Dad dropped, going for the shovel -- not pure iron, but could work in a pinch -- and Dean swung his salt can by the base, sending white crystals flying and scattering the spirit.
"Lockkeeper?" he guessed.
"That's the bastard," said Dad.
Dean turned to scan the area and caught little more than a glimpse of a pale blue hand before he was hurled backward. The spirit was a quick son of a bitch. He grunted as his body smacked into the balance beam, folding him almost in half across it. Breath and sense knocked out by the impact, Dean stared down at the water in the lock chamber, black and glimmering in the faint ambient light that washed everything this close to the city.
Dad shouted, the words incomprehensible, but the anger clear as day. Dean raised the gun he'd somehow managed to keep a hold of and fired a round of iron shot at the nearest source of light.
Either he missed, or the spirit was impossibly fast. A moment later, Dean was airborne again, this time tumbling back over the edge of the stone-lined lock chamber and down into the water below.
The impact was like being slapped over half his body by a board covered in sandpaper. It drove what little breath Dean had managed to get back from his lungs, to be immediately replaced by foul freezing canal water and silt. His body smacked into the stone floor of the chamber and jerked, his arms and legs flailing spasmodically as he searched for anything to grab on to. He scrabbled at the chamber floor, choking and panicked, before managing to slam his feet down and send himself up.
He breached the surface spewing water and staggered, all but blinded by the mud in his eyes and the pain in his chest. He flailed again as he tipped sideways, washed in the suddenly furious and circular current. The windows in the upper gate were open in full now, sending a swamping cascade of canal water down on top of him, and the lower gate, left open for what had to be at least fifty years, was creaking closed, leaving Dean stranded in what amounted to a large, flooding hole in the ground. He turned, barely able to keep his feet as the water rose up around his rib cage, searching for something to grab onto. A second current, this one on the floor, started flooding the chamber even faster, and Dean soon found it difficult to keep his head above the water level.
Why the hell couldn't the ghost be haunting one of the dry locks?
The walls of the lock chamber were slick and slimy and entirely unscalable, but when the current succeeded in forcing Dean back into the lower lock gate, his grasping hands discovered that the heavy wooden doors were built with crossbeams refurbished recently enough for him to wrap his hands around without slipping off, and he dragged himself up, slipping and gagging, until he finally managed to claw his way back onto solid ground. He lay prone on the grass on the parkway side of the canal, and when he finally stopped feeling like he was going to puke up his internal organs, he looked up to take stock.
Dad stood above him, Dean's gun in one hand, the shovel in the other, equipment bag on his back. He held the gun at ready, scanning the lock and the tow path, body on high alert, every inch a capable, powerful hunter. Dean shivered and spat, then rolled slowly to his knees.
Dad stood watch the whole time Dean needed to get back to his feet, and the sight of it kept something warm in Dean's chest, despite the way he shivered in the cold air. He wavered once, then straightened as much as he could with his aching ribs and stomach.
"More research?" he croaked. Dad looked him over, eyes pausing on the slump of Dean's shoulders, his arms wrapped over his chest, his water-logged boots. Then he turned and led the way back to the car.
More research it was.
*
The spitting, misting rain finally coalesced into a real downpour by the time Dad pulled up in front of the house. Dean paused before going into the house to stand in it, though he was already shuddering hard from the cold and the wet, turning his face up towards the sky and letting the fat, heavy drops wash away some of the black and green slime that still coated him. Dad gave him the fish eye as he walked past, but left Dean to it, pushing his way past Sam into the house with his shoulders slumped. Dean would be in for it when he finally went in, he knew. Dad had been planning to lay this one to rest, and Dean had screwed it up.
He wasn't sure how he'd screwed it up, but by the look on Dad's face, it'd been a doozy.
Dad and Sam had what looked like a minor skirmish over the door, then Sam made his way out onto the front porch, just to the edge of the stairs leading down to the yard. He stood there, out of the rain, with his arms crossed over his chest.
"You fixed the water heater two weeks ago," he called.
Dean tilted his head back down to look at him, wiping water from face and probably leaving streaks of slime across his cheeks. "And who do you think is going to have to clean the bathroom when I'm done?"
"So that's why you like it when we stay in a motel with a maid service."
"Preferably a h-hot one." Dean's voice wobbled, his shivering reaching the point of ridiculousness where he started to sound like he was speaking into a low speed fan. "S-somehow, you don't quite c-cut it."
"Jesus, Dean." Sam stepped out off the porch, and his hair swamped into his eyes in a matter of minutes. "Get your ass inside, already."
"Y-you're not the boss of me," Dean muttered, but let Sam usher him into the house, anyway. He stopped to peel his boots off on the porch, at least. It was bad enough he'd have to clean slime off the bathroom. They didn't really have a vacuum up to handling the mess if he stomped it all over the carpet.
Dean climbed into the shower with all his clothes on and stood beneath the hot spray until he started to feel like a lobster. Sam's shampoo stung his fingers and eyes as he worked it through his hair, trying to strip away the last of the clinging muck from the canal. By the time he was done, the shower looked like it'd been attacked by the love child of Slimer and the black oil from The X-Files, but at least he felt mostly human again. Sam had set out a fresh set of clothes by the door, and Dean took his time toweling off and pulling them on.
He was in no hurry to face Dad again.
He got back to the living room to find Dad slumped on the couch, a mess of papers, notes, and maps spread out on the coffee table in front of him, and Sam standing in the archway to the kitchen, arranging first aid supplies on the counter.
"Shit," Dean said. "Did Dad get hurt?" Dad hadn't been limping or anything, but he'd been up against the spirit of the old lockkeeper alone for however long it took Dean to climb back out of the lock, and there was no telling what it might have done to him.
Sam looked at him like he was an idiot. "It's for you," he said, holding out his hand, palm up. Dean frowned at him, and Sam rolled his eyes and grabbed his arm, tugging it up until Dean held it extended out in front of him.
The scrapes on his knuckles from the stone floor of the lock chamber were bleeding sluggishly, welling up bright red that webbed out through the folds and seams of his skin. Sam winced sympathetically and wiped them down with rubbing alcohol before laying a square of gauze over top of them. He turned Dean's hand carefully, and it was Dean's turn to wince. The insides of his fingers and his palm were riddled with small, wicked-looking splinters from the lower lock gates, gone unnoticed thanks to the adrenaline and the cold. A longer, thin sliver had jammed itself down under his middle finger nail, and now that he'd noticed it, it began to throb.
"What the hell did you guys do?" Sam asked. Dean shot a look towards Dad, who hadn't looked up from his research. "I mean, I can guess you went for an unscheduled swim, but. . . ."
"Spirit threw me into the lock," Dean mumbled, wincing again as Sam took a pair of tweezers and gently worked the splinter out from beneath Dean's nail. The persistent damp of the canal, the rain, and then the shower had expanded both the wood and Dean's skin, making it tough for him to get a grip on it, and Dean finally had to look away.
"That must've sucked," Sam said.
"Yeah. Then it shut the thing and started flooding it." Dean shot another glance at Dad. "Didn't realize it was that powerful."
"Isn't that the kind of thing you kind of want to know going in?" Sam asked.
Dad grunted and slammed his book shut. Dean pulled his hand back out of Sam's grip, pressing the gauze into his knuckles as he cradled it to his chest.
"Can you go check on that water heater?" he asked. "I think it's acting up again."
"Dude, I haven't even started on your other hand --"
Dean grabbed Sam's shoulder and pushed him towards the back of the house. "I'll deal with it."
Sam stumbled, shooting a glance from Dean to Dad. "Fine," he said. "Guess I'll start cleaning out the tub, too." He continued shooting glances at them even as he walked down the hallway and into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Dean turned to face Dad full on.
"I screwed up," he said.
Dad looked up at him from the couch, eyes roving over him before narrowing in on where Dean kept his hands tight to his chest. "Yeah," he said.
Dean tried not to flinch.
Dad sighed. "It's my fault," he said, and Dean felt some of the tension bleed out of his shoulders. Dad's eyes went back down to his research, and he shoved it all together before Dean could get a good look at what he'd found. "I should have known I'd have to do it alone."
Dean couldn't hold back the flinch this time. He hadn't done that badly, had he? It wasn't like Dad had filled him in on all the details. Hell, Dean had been lucky to get "lockkeeper" out of the man.
Which was really, really strange. Dad was usually as bad as Sam, when it came to knowing every little insignificant detail about a case. Dean was the impetuous one.
"Dad --"
"Doesn't matter," Dad said. He stacked his papers in a rough pile, then shoved them into his bag. "I know where the bastard's hiding it, now." He looked up at Dean again, and though he was warm enough after his shower, Dean shivered. "Don't follow me."
"Dad --"
Dad was out the door and slamming it before Dean had even quite finished the single syllable.
Dean's back hit the wall, and locking his knees was the only thing that kept him from sliding down it. He couldn't breathe. Even after the Striga, Dad had never looked at him like that. And he sure as hell hadn't walked out before he knew his kids were totally safe. Dean looked down at his hands, at his bloody knuckles and the splinters still dotting his fingers. None of it was life threatening, but Dad hadn't even checked.
How the hell had Dean managed to screw things up this badly?
"Dean?"
Dean heaved a breath, pressing his arm around his ribs as his bruises began to make themselves known. Sam peered out at him through the door to the bathroom.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"Did -- did Dad just leave?"
Dean flashed his teeth and hoped Sam thought it was a smile. That's right, Dad had left. Dean had managed to lose Sam's only remaining parent. He took another breath and let a lie slip out, issuing it forth like a leaky tire. "Nah," he said. "He just needs some air."
Sam stared at him. Dean stared back, braced for the questions, the demands for the truth. The house wasn't that big -- Sam had to have heard every word Dad and Dean had said. Instead, Sam just nodded, his shoulders drooping. "Okay," he said, looking all of five years old, accepting the lie because the truth was clearly so much worse. "Thanks."
Dean had to look away. "Yeah," he said again. "Whatever. Now get over here. These splinters aren't going to tweeze themselves."
Part 2