SPN fic: Fire in the Hole 5/9, Part Two
Chapter 5/Full Fathom Five, Part Two
Because LJ is my friend. Sortof.
Okay, not really.
Because I write too much.
Read:
--
Although Dean wasn’t much for hockey, especially the fucking Red Wings, he watched the game. It was the only alternative to the Wizard of Oz, which was just at the part where the witch sent out the flying monkeys and, truth have it, those fucking things had always freaked him out a little.
He was going to go batshit crazy if he had to spend much more time in this motel room with its ‘howdy folks’ owner and the buffalo horns, Bonanza, and the fucking broken coffeemaker, which had been egregious insult on top of significant injury.
Helping Bobby at the Ameriminco offices this morning had only whet his appetite. He wanted back in, he was sick of therapy, was sick of being so sore after it he could barely move.
One step forward, two steps back. Shit.
Through the flimsy wall behind his head, Dean heard the shower shudder to a halt. After a moment, the bathroom door rattled and John came out, a towel around his shoulders. Dean flicked a look to him, then attention back to the hockey. Hard hits against the boards, stick from behind, gloves off, bunch of pussies pulling jerseys over the other guys’ heads. What a fuckin’ stupid game.
“Hey,” John said, rubbing his hair. “What’s the score?”
Dean snorted. Shit, hadn’t been paying attention. The score? What did it matter? “Think Detroit’s up.”
“All the way,” John muttered, going to the fridge for a beer.
“How’s it going, anyway?” Dean asked. “Down there?”
John pulled two from the box, held one up experimentally, but Dean shook his head. He’d have to sit up to drink it, and he just wanted to lay there for a while.
John twisted off the cap, spun it expertly into the wastepaper bin across the room. “It’s going. I really can’t see whatever pattern Bobby’s dreamed up in that mind of his.” He shook his head. “I mean, I’ll work off the favor, but it’s a big waste of time, you ask me. Why that man wants to be down there, I’ll never know.”
“How do you get down there?” Dean hoped if he kept asking questions, his dad wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t moving. “The elevators still work?”
John sat on his bed, back against the headboard, avoiding the sharp horns, pillow dropped behind his head. “Not a chance. That’d be too easy. But Bobby uses those tunnels, the ones on an incline? The ones that pump water, and for taking the ore out?”
“The adits,” Dean said, not having to feign interest, though he suspected it would annoy his dad. “So you just walk in?” That sounded possible, attainable. Might be able to talk his way into walking, for chrissake.
“Yeah,” John grunted. “The adits.” Winced as one of the forwards checked another player straight into the glass. More gloves on the ice. Not gloves. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yep.” Dean bent both knees, thought he might be able to push himself to upright with his feet. Shit, what he’d do for a beer. “Waste of good seafood.”
A laugh, as intended, but Dean hadn’t been quite sure what his dad would make of Detroit fans’ choice of projectiles. Close to the bone in some ways, but if you didn’t develop a gallows humor in this line of work, you probably didn’t have a pulse.
“Nothing quite like seafood served cold,” his father murmured. A pause, and John turned, small smile on his face. “I killed it, right? That thing’s dead.” A question, uncertain, and Dean squirmed.
“Pretty sure.” Tilted his head. “Almost sure.”
John expression changed, subtle as a cloud’s shadow moving across the day, brows drawn together, opened his mouth to say something, but then just watched as Dean struggled to sit up. Cocked his head to one side, that not-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth beneath the dark stubble. “What’d you do today, Dean?” He got up from the bed and stood over his son, arms crossed.
Shit. Busted.
“Hey.” Dean tried on a grin. He got his right hand under himself and pushed up to a sit, his arm doing all the work. “Yeah, so just some PT. The pool. Nice and-”
“Easy?” John finished, taking a slug of beer. “I ought smack you to next week. What the hell have you been doing to yourself?” To Dean’s amazement, his father’s voice cracked just then, and he walked a few steps away, one hand across his mouth like he could hold it in. A long moment followed, Dean trying to figure it out, because this was new and different and it scared him. “I thought I told you the only way this was going to work is if you followed instructions to the letter.”
I was the one who fell; what the hell do you have to be scared about?
Dean nodded, didn’t say anything. But he was sitting now and he reckoned he deserved that beer. Deep breath, held, used his legs and stomach muscles to come upright. Of a height with his dad, looked him straight in the eye. “I’m good,” he said, taking a small shuffle step around John.
Who crosschecked him, stopping him with shoulder and hip. “You,” he said, dark eyes gleaming in television’s blue light. “You don’t play with this. You hear me? Not with this.”
“I’m not,” Dean defended. “You think I don’t take this seriously? Of course I do.”
John let go of his shoulder, and Dean was stuck between wanting the beer and wanting to be back on the bed, and you’d think he’d be sick of that.
He opted for the beer still waiting for him on top of the bar fridge. Keep moving, give the muscles a chance to limber up, get loose. He opened the beer, spun the cap across the room and it hit John on the knee, where it dropped silently to the floor.
John stared at it for a moment, then raised his eyes to Dean. Mississippi and the Jenny. Bait and reward and bribes. The car, always the car. And betrayal, that too.
“I can’t believe a word you tell me, can I?”
“What?” Dean thought he hadn’t heard him right, hadn’t heard the words correctly. “Of course-”
John was shaking his head, and instead of fear, instead of despair, Dean found something else rushing to his head, like the blood flow had just started up again prickling its way along an unfamiliar path.
“If I phone the Rehab Unit, what’re they gonna tell me? You doing about twice as much as Bliss recommended? Three times? Come back here and push it some more?”
“Yeah,” Dean shook his head, finished skating around this. The beer was blessedly cold, beautiful, damn near perfect. “Because you know so much about not pushing things.”
John took two quick steps, and under normal conditions, Dean would have backed up a little, gotten out of the way. Under normal conditions, wouldn’t have said anything in the first place. But he was hurting something fierce and his mouth was the only part of him able to move fast.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.” Another hit of the bottle and he wished it was something stronger. “That was no poltergeist in Vegas. I knew it. You knew it.”
That stopped him cold and Dean didn’t look, felt sick all of a sudden.
A long day for both of them, and nothing but Nazi therapists and howdy folks, and the television with disappearing sons and flying monkeys. Nothing but hurt, and Dean closed his eyes as the door slammed, didn’t know which sounded worse - when John did it, or Sam.
Another three beers before he phoned. Drunk call. Good and mad now. Didn’t even want to listen to the message because it was stupid and there was Sam, open as a daisy when he knew how fucking dangerous it was. Was pretending normal, and Dean could imagine the ‘weirdo’ sign taped to Sam’s back like his brother was there right in front of him.
“You gotta change your message, dude. You should never say your name like that right off the bat.” Fucking idiot. Had he learned nothing? Was this his way of saying ‘fuck you’ to them, even in his message? “Jesus, amateur hour.”
Even as the words slid out, burst from him easy, lubricated by the beer, Dean bit the inside of his mouth. Swallowed all that was swimming in his mouth. “You gettin’ these, I wonder? It’s like being in…in… Oz, or something, just sending them out like this.”
Closed his eyes, pressed the cold beer bottle against the side of his face, hated this motel room, hated that he couldn’t move fast, hated that Dad was scared and far away like he was the one who’d fallen. John occupied space, but he wasn’t here.
This is Sam, he reminded himself. He asked me to go and he didn’t need me, not like Dad did. “It’s easier this way, maybe. No big deal. I mean, you don’t need…I don’t expect…” Too soft, and Sam would know something was up. Shit. “You know, I just…it’s all good.”
It had been the right decision. Letting him go. Staying with Dad. But it was hard, and the sand demon’s voice swirled through with cold malice, and Dean shook his head, trying to rid himself of it. Talked small and soft about nothing, about nonsense.
About the Wizard and how he didn’t know how to get home, any more than the rest of them.
--
No tequila. No Jack. Nothing but silence, silvery fishing lines down the silent hole, cut with a chainsaw red-neck style, he and his father the only ones out on the lake because it was Christmas Eve and no one went ice fishing on Christmas Eve.
Well, there were worse ways to spend the holiday, Dean thought, pouring some hot black coffee from the Thermos into a plastic mug, gloves off, still cold as a witch’s tit inside the hut, wishing that Winchester Christmases at least included rum and eggnog.
No such luck. Just ice and bait. Bait down the hole, fish guts tied to a line. Bait up here too, sitting on the ice with a big fucking target pinned to them. Come ‘n git it! Even though Dean had his dad’s rifle with him, his dad was the one with the iron tipped harpoon, a jerry-rigged weapon, a broom handle and a drill bit held together with fishing twine. Dad was the one with the chance of killing it. Dean was merely an entree with a fancy gun.
Midnight came and went. Dean didn’t know if this qualified as the worst Christmas ever, but it sure came close. He didn’t know why he bothered to keep track, actually. Sam. It had mattered to Sam; he had always made sure they’d ended up in some crappy-assed restaurant having the lonely guy Christmas dinner special with cardboard turkey and wobbly cranberry jelly still bearing the imprint of the can.
Still, better than waiting to be kraken-food in a stupid little fishing shack on the middle of Teal Lake.
Wonder what Sam’s doing, Dean thought, staring into the dark hole, water deep down the opalescent opening, at the bottom, dark like blood. On a beach somewhere, watching a sunset.
Far away, across the ice, he heard the sound of festive music coming from some cabin, the lone buzz of a snowmobile. John yawned, got up and stretched, checking the oil left in the lamp. He pulled his zipper up tight around his neck, slapped his hands together. “I’m outta coffee. There’s more in the truck. Game?” Held out his hands, fist on flat palm. Rock, paper, scissors.
Dean lost, groaned, got up. Goddamn man could read his mind.
Outside, it was freezing, no two ways to describe it. The fishing hut out on the lake protected them from a fierce wind that cut across the UP, came straight down from the Arctic, right across Lake Superior on its way to Teal Lake. Snow didn’t stick to the frozen lake, was whipped clear across. All the hair in Dean’s nostrils immediately turned to ice, and he took shallow breaths, not wanting the cold to penetrate that deep into his lungs.
The truck was only twenty feet away from the hut, and Dean looked over his shoulder as he approached it, mistrusting the ice, though he knew it was at least two feet thick. The ice-hole proved it. Still, it seemed asinine to drive a fucking truck onto the middle of lake, especially when the thing they were hunting could burst through at any minute.
In fact, they were hoping it’d do that.
The lake looked solid, yes, a flat desert landscape sculpted in white, but underneath was a vast black world of cold viscosity, alive with winter fish. Alive with other things. One other large thing half-legend, work of nature twisted out of time, taken to the extreme.
The shoreline was discernable in the moonlight, a far line of pine, several football fields from the hut. He glanced around the frigid scene, the only sound the groan of the wind, the crunch of crystallized snow under his feet. A whole world under there, he thought, an underworld and tonight the door is open.
Dean rooted around in the truck’s cab where he knew his dad stashed extra supplies. A fork. A badly-folded map of Arizona. The journal, crammed to capacity.
Dean tossed it back under the seat, finally found the second Thermos of coffee. Straightened and a shudder ran through at his feet, like something big had just knocked at the door. He jumped out the cab, left the door open, dome light pathetic, illuminating nothing, and looked around jerkily. All quiet. Nothing. Getting spooked maybe.
Hell, no. I don’t spook, he thought, mouth dry. Then the little hut exploded.
Not with a fireball, but with a roar of water and the sharp crack of ice, like a glacier calving into deep water. The splinter of wood cracking wide, the hut disintegrating in a plume of inky water. Dean dropped the Thermos and had the rifle up in less than a second, looking where to aim.
The kraken was huge, nominally white, but against the snow and ice it looked gray. Tentacles, shining with water black as oil, reached onto the ice, each about thirty feet long. A slapping sound accompanied its blind fury as the rubbery, muscular appendages thrashed onto the ice. Not slaps. Cracks. A huge bulbous head emerged from the dark water, two eyes the size of dinner plates to either side of a flapping sac, each a deep glowing red.
Twenty feet was too close, really, and one of the tentacles curled voluptuously towards Dean, powerful muscles and suction cups adhering to the ice. It strained, and Dean saw what it was doing: it was pulling itself forward onto the ice. It smelled of rotten fish and printers ink, like newspapers left out in the rain. It was coming for him. Slosh, thup, skritch.
Dean kept one eye on the nearest tentacle, brought up the rifle, aiming for the spot between the two eyes. It writhed suddenly, and Dean cracked off a shot at almost the same time. He saw his father then, very close to it, on his knees on the ice, John just a dark smudge against the bright albedo, his arm back.
Harpoon in hand and he would only have one shot at this. Dean needed to distract it. So he pulled the trigger again, edged closer. One tentacle was now wrapped around the side view mirror of the truck, lingering like a lover’s caress. It ripped the mirror off with a lurching screech of torn metal.
Slosh, thup, skritch and he watched, horrified, as a tentacle whipped around, caught his father on the side of his neck and threw him across the ice. Not far, though, because the arm curled back around John like a croupier gathering chips from a betting table.
John rolled, came to his feet, and in one movement threw the spear. Dean couldn’t see where it landed but the thing roared, the noise not unlike an elephant. The tentacle nearest him dropped the side view mirror, then flobbered over the ice, thrashing, huge cracks spreading with the sound of gunshots, water sloshing darkly up around Dean’s ankles as he scrambled towards the massive hole where the fishing hut used to be.
He couldn’t see his father anywhere.
The kraken slowly disappeared into the black water, not willingly, malevolent eyes seemingly on Dean the whole time, red light fading. It retreated so incrementally it didn’t even splash, slipped over the ice and fell, like it just couldn’t hold on anymore.
“Dad!” he screamed, unsure how close to the open water he could get before the whole surface just splintered and collapsed. “Dad!” Then, on the far side of the opening, a piece of flat ice, maybe ten feet by fifteen, John Winchester sprawled on it, unmoving.
Shit.
But not in the water, not under the ice, not dragged under, so Dean ran to the back of the truck, got a length of rope, tied a grappling hook to it with shaking frozen fingers.
He was running, slipping hard to his knees and it was like landing on cement, and he worried if the ice would hold him so he kept down, crept as close to the open water as he could. A far throw, maybe thirty feet. Dad would kill him if he nailed him with the grappling hook.
Swung, threw, and the hook plunged into the water, short. Dean hauled back, hands soaked, sleeves soaked, shivering in earnest now, swearing under his breath. Had the hook back in his hand again. Better to nail Dad and sew him up later than not get him at all.
Swung again, thought, full fathom five, watched the dark watery hell, John on the edge of it, and his breath sobbed in his lungs, creaking with cold. This time, the hook bit into the ice floe and Dean tested the hold. Satisfied the hook had found good purchase, he slowly pulled the ice to him, hoped the kraken wasn’t looking for round two.
“Dad?” he called, and John stirred a little. Dean couldn’t tell anything in this light. Sure the moon was bright and so was the snow, but it was night and John wasn’t giving him any clues. “Dad, grab the rope. Grab the rope and I’ll pull you to me. Grab the rope!” And John unlatched the hook from its bite, and Dean pulled him off the floe and onto the ice. A little closer, but he was a big man soaked with water, twice Dean’s weight maybe, and Dean couldn’t feel his fingers, didn’t know blood was running from his hands until it hit his wrists, where it felt hot.
He grabbed John’s damp shoulder, hauled for all he was worth, then he was safe.
Another ominous crack. A groan like rubbing two pieces of Styrofoam together. Dean held his breath like that would matter. Goddamn goofy idea, doing anything with heavy machinery on frozen water and that kind of thing down below.
Dean got his shoulder under his father, took three tries before he got him to his feet. He took most of his father’s weight but not all, because John had heard that crack too.
“Come on,” Dean whispered, amazed that his voice sounded so steady, because he was terrified.
Dean dropped his dad in the passenger seat, started the truck and threw it into reverse, wrenching the wheel and sliding around in a 180, popped it into gear and gunned for shore. He hoped it made no difference if he went fast or slow, because once behind the wheel there was nothing more he wanted than to be off the fucking lake, and he was going to do that at sixty miles an hour, thanks very much. He only lost control once, when the wheels slipped sideways, but soon the vast dark hole in the ice disappeared in the rearview mirror.
Once on land, the trees sheltering them from the wind, Dean stopped only to turn on the interior light and briefly examine his father. A huge series of dark circles ran down his neck onto his chest. The thing had grabbed him, tried to pull him under. John was wet, cold, maybe hypothermic. Semi-conscious.
Needed to get him warm.
Dean turned up the truck’s heater, drove hell bent for leather to the Wonderland Cabins.
They’d left the antique kerosene heater off because it was a fucking fire hazard even when you were keeping an eye on it, and as Dean tried to light it, get some heat going, he swore methodically, fluently, almost a song. John was murmuring, not saying anything coherent. They sounded like Yoko Ono’s backup singers.
Dean took John’s wet things off, wrapped him in three sweaters, a parka, a blanket, propped him up on the cot beside the heater.
“Dean,” John said clearly, teeth chattering.
“Yeah, Dad?” He hunkered down close beside him. The red circles that the suction cups had left were now dark red, tinged with blue. What the hell should I put on that? Antiseptic cream?
“Did we get it?”
Okay, there was a right answer to this and Dean knew it. “Sure did. It won’t bother anyone else.”
John opened one eye, fixed it on Dean. Even barely conscious, he could scare the living crap out of Dean. “Did I kill it?”
Direct fucking question. “Yep, dead as a doornail.” Dean didn’t break eye contact. No way was John going back out there tonight, and they had probably killed it.
“Good,” John exhaled. “Get the vodka.”
What? “Dad, I don’t know if that’s the best idea, think you should down some of these antibiotics-”
“Dean,” John warned.
Dean found a bottle of Finnish vodka in the cupboard, new, unopened. Not his dad’s drink of choice.
“Soak a cloth with it,” John continued, voice faint.
Dean did so, knowing that what John forgot on any given day was more than he’d ever know in a lifetime of trying. “What now?”
John told him to wash out the places where the kraken had touched him, irrigate it with pure vodka, then rub salt in it. Dean winced as he did that, but John didn’t flinch. When he was done, Dean wondered if they could name some kind of drink after this: blood, poison, salt and vodka. Kraken shooters. He took a long gulp of the vodka himself, wiped his lips, felt it hit his stomach like a warm fuzzy bomb.
“Okay, son,” John said. “Now I’ll have those antibiotics. And some Tylenol. I’ll probably spike a fever in the next day or two. Don’t worry. Keep the wound clean. Use the vodka.” Eyed him with a bright glance. “Don’t drink it all.”
Dean smiled, but it was half-hearted, grim. He put his father to bed and settled in the stuffing-less armchair. The bedroom was freezing, no way was he sleeping in there tonight. This was the only warm room in the cabin.
He took another swig from the bottle, then capped it, knew he’d need it later. Dawn was coming up through the barely-winterized window, clear and cold and bright.
Christmas morning. Thought of Sam. Fell asleep.
--
The adit that connected the Crown Point mine with the Sutro Tunnel was a cakewalk and that was all that mattered to Singer. Easy access, he’d surveyed it a dozen times before, electric lights set up by the historical society, Dean would never need to know that this was about as dangerous as a school field trip to the Hershey factory.
They passed the main shaft, all boarded up now, and with good reason: it went straight down more than 1600 feet. Bobby watched Dean bend carefully down, not quite graceful but not wincing either, and drop a piece of gravel between the planks. Waiting for a sound that never came.
John grunted beside him, and Dean looked up, wonder in his eyes. He said nothing, brushed his hands on his thighs and stood.
They crunched over gravel beds, steel rails curving out, useful still, even after a hundred years of disuse. Some historical society plaques. Singer had special permits, not even forged. He’d built good relations with the old guys who maintained some of the shafts, because they worked to have mines designated as historical sites and kept big guns like Ameriminco at bay; those companies would make this whole area one big open-pit mine if you gave them half the chance. Who the hell knew what they’d let loose if you let them do that?
The adit ran for miles and miles, winding through the mountain, connecting up hundreds of drift tunnels and ratholes. The Sutro, the big tunnel, ran all the way down to Dayton, drained the upper levels of the Comstock mines to 1640 feet. Safe enough today. If you were careful.
Only a hundred feet in, and it started to warm up. Singer stopped at his usual spot, stripped down to t-shirt and jeans, left his coat and vest on hooks that miners had been using for a century and more. The Winchesters did likewise, Dean with that awestruck look that people got when they hadn’t been underground before.
Singer watched the boy with delight as he stared wide-eyed at the square-set timbering, realized how much rock the frail-looking timber held up. Mouth a little open. Television and tall tales and the very closeness combining. Dean looked down after a moment, sweat already staining his shoulders, running down the side of his face.
Singer wasn’t the only one studying Dean, but instead of wonder, Winchester seemed to be registering soundness, like he was looking at draft horse ready to pull. Assessing his son, looking for faultlines. Then he locked eyes with Singer. “So,” Winchester said. “What’s the plan today?”
Singer gave them instructions, meticulous ones so Winchester could see he was being cautious, not putting anyone at any risk. “Okay, then,” Winchester said when Singer was done. “Dean, you’re with me. Here’s some chalk.”
Mark out the ratholes down this one drift. Take them an hour or two. Easy. Nothing dangerous about it. Use your five senses, be alert. Dean asked what they were looking for, and Singer didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d find nothing, so he said instead, “Weird smells. Watch out for that. Noises. You hear pings and water, that’s normal. Anything else? I’d be interested in knowing. These tunnels are pretty picked over, so you aren’t likely to find much of anything, but check the timbers anyway. Sometimes the miners left symbols. Charms. Mark ‘em down if you see any.”
They separated, arranged to meet back in an hour.
When Singer saw them at the lunch break, Dean’s face was bathed in sweat. Hot work down here, all right. Out of time, somehow, because it was ageless, changeless. This could be the twenty-first century, or the eighteenth. Winter or summer. Nevada or Argentina.
Singer had carried in several large bottles of water, and he watched as both Winchester and his son downed two of them in short order. They ate lunch silently, the rush of warm wind and sound of water soothing to Singer, used to it. Drove some guys nuts, of course. Not him.
Not Evan. Bobby unfolded wax paper from a stack of sandwiches, remembered a couple of hundred days spent like this. With his boy. Too few, of course. Not hunting, not precisely. Keeping track. Evan had been good at it, cheerful, attention to details like a German engineer. Cracking jokes.
Singer stayed quiet, and Winchester was never much for talk. Dean was too keyed up to notice if he was tiring himself out, and Singer hoped Winchester was on the lookout for that. So what if lunch was twice as long as he usually allowed?
He kept a bite of his sandwich, wrapped it in the paper. One quarter of his chocolate bar. He looked up, noticed that Dean was watching him. Singer smiled gruffly, and Winchester’s hawk’s eyes were on him like a mouse in a field.
“You don’t still do that, do you?” he asked. “Superstitious old fart.” With a chuckle, and Singer got to his feet, dusted his ass off with one hand, kept the wrapped food in the other.
“Doesn’t hurt,” he said, looking for a good spot. “Those Cornishmen were the best miners, brought a lot of good practice to American mining. No wonder they were paid top dollar, even by assholes like Hearst. But, yeah. Superstitious bunch.”
Dean was on the verge of asking, Singer could see. Not the kind of kid who liked not knowing. Liked asking less, though.
“Tommyknockers,” Singer said finally.
“Mine fairies,” Winchester disparaged, throwing the last bite of sandwich in his mouth, washing it down with the water. “Maybe they’ll wave a wand and grant you a wish.”
“Yeah, well, in Cornwall, the tommyknockers warned miners of cave-ins, but only if you treated them right.” He glanced at Dean, then set the food on top of a timber, well back and out of sight. “But here in the American mines, the tommyknocker legends got all mixed up with actual ghost lore.”
“So,” Dean asked, trying to find the most succinct question, “are they fairies or ghosts?”
“Bit of both,” Singer replied.
“Big rats, probably, and getting bigger with all that food you’re leaving for them,” Winchester got to his feet, wordlessly held out a hand to help Dean, who ignored it, getting to his feet without any assistance. With a glance to his father, Dean took a handful of M&Ms, placed them in a line near broken lamp resting on a timber.
“Rat food,” Winchester said dryly.
“Yessir,” Dean said with a grin. “But it never hurts to hedge your bets.”
“Two more hours, then we’ll call it a day,” Singer said, but it was a question, directed at Winchester.
“One,” Winchester replied, not looking at him and not needing to. He was noticing how far and how fast his son was pushing himself.
“Okay, then,” Singer agreed.
Within half an hour, Winchester was back. Singer had worked his way down the main adit, a little bit of a make-work project really, just cleaning up some old gear that some placer miners had left in the thirties, old junk really. The historical guys sometimes liked having it.
A shout, and Singer turned. Not panic, really, in that voice. Command. “Bobby!” Came the call, and Singer started up the adit to the junction of the drift tunnel he’d sent the Winchesters through.
Winchester’s face was pale and sweating in the lamplight. “He come back this way?” he asked, unnecessarily. He’d know it was a dumb question.
Ah, shit. Singer shook his head. “Probably just went up one of the ratholes. Don’t worry, he can’t have gotten far.”
Dripping sweat, Singer moved fast, because you could actually get quite far if you fell down a thousand foot shaft straight into the heart of the mountain. No shafts that he knew about around here, but he didn’t know everything; part of the profession, to acknowledge the your deficits. He just wasn’t going to do it in front of Winchester.
Down the drift to the place where Winchester said he’d last seen him. Singer held up a hand, stopping Winchester’s low urgent monologue. Stopped movement and voice, listening.
There.
A knock. Two, like someone along the line was tapping on the timbers.
“What?” Winchester hissed in his ear. The electric lights made them both look a little green, didn’t really illuminate much. Singer held up a hand again.
A tapping.
“This way,” Singer said, turning on his flashlight and leading Winchester down a slender rathole that was just big enough for one man at a time. Didn’t get twenty feet before they met Dean coming up the other way, his face shining and filthy, teeth white.
“This is so cool!” he said, maybe not noticing his father, who was hidden behind Singer. “Wait till you see this.”
He had something in his hand, but Singer didn’t look. He’d been gone maybe ten minutes and Winchester was freaking. “Dean,” he dropped his voice in warning, but it was no good; Winchester was right behind him. “We’re going to have to back up.”
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Winchester rounded on him as soon as they were back in the drift tunnel, wide enough to accommodate several people at once. Dean stood still, surprise marking his flushed features.
“What?” Genuinely surprised. “I was gone maybe two minutes, Dad. I had to take a leak, so I ducked down there,” gestured with his thumb, “and-”
“You do not go anywhere out of my sight!” Winchester’s voice was loud enough to echo, and Singer held his breath. He knew this kind of fury: Argentina had been way too far for him, and he’d told Evan not to go. “There are shafts and firedamp and cave-ins. That’s not even counting anything supernatural!”
“Like this?” Dean said with a fireproof grin, holding up what was in his hand. It was a dwarf, the world’s ugliest garden gnome.
Singer took a step closer. Made of clay maybe, with a little pipe and two milky marbles pressed into the face for eyes. “I’ll be damned.”
Dean passed it to him, turned carefully to his father. “I was only taking a leak.”
Winchester pulled up like a cat hitting a sliding glass door. I meant to do that. “Yeah. Well, next time, tell me.” Small, worried. There for all of them to hear and that was not the John Winchester that Singer had come to know.
Dean looked surprised, a little cowed. He nodded. “Sure.”
Singer turned the thing over in his hands. “Cornishman must have left it down here.” No sense in rubbing Winchester’s face in it, but still. “Tommyknockers, for sure. Keep your eyes peeled. They can help, or they can hinder.”
“Think we’ll see one?” Dean asked as they walked back out. He wasn’t stumbling at all, was sure footed, looked better than in the whole time Singer had known him. Feeling normal. He almost laughed. Normal being hearing tommyknockers a hundred feet below a mountain.
Singer stared at the little clay figure in his hands. “Good chance, I’d say.” Smile passed to Dean like they were sharing a bottle of hootch. Lucky, maybe, this one.
--
John didn’t miss the look the clerk behind the cash machine gave them: surprise, followed quickly by keen interest. Dean had always turned heads, attracted female attention like a clearance shoe sale.
Laying low wasn’t exactly an option with a kid like this, but it could be an advantage today.
The girl - Elena, student volunteer, according to her nametag - came around the counter of the Negaunee Mining Museum’s front desk. She was exceptionally pretty, tall, strong boned, plenty of Nordic blood evident in cheekbones and the length of her femur. And since she seemed to be the only soul incarcerated here at the brick house-now-museum this day before Christmas Eve, John could be about his business.
“I’m gonna look around,” John said with a manufactured smile, leaving his son to spin some tale about why they were in this part of Michigan so close to Christmas, something about pickled herring and Finnish folk festivals.
He ducked behind a panel display that outlined the recent history of pneumatic drill technology, eyeing the old machinery. He heard Dean asking if it always snowed this much in the UP, if she knew where he could rent a snowmobile now that they’d lifted the restrictions on Teal Lake. Yeah, right, dream on, kiddo. That’s the shit that’s got these folks in trouble in the first place. New noise waking up an old predator, off season when there was nothing to eat but drunk fishermen out on the lake, cocktail shrimp on ice. Almost serves them right.
He couldn’t see what he was looking for in this room; the drill bits were all too big, attached to pieces of machinery he’d never be able to fit under his coat.
He stuck his head back in the lobby. “More displays upstairs?” he asked. Dean was leaning against the desk, had taken off his big coat, the one that smelled of oil and must, smelled of the Impala’s trunk, a grin on his face, directing all his attention on the girl and John was pretty sure he wasn’t faking any of it.
Elena nodded, smoothed a strand of dark silky hair over her shoulder, eyes a memorable blue even from this far away. “Yeah, the nineteenth century stuff’s up there.”
“So,” Dean continued as John disappeared up the stairs. A smaller brick house, and John could hear every word, “What are you doing here, working this close to Christmas?”
“Oh, I volunteer,” John heard. Then, a small catch. “Community hours.” And John grinned at his luck. Probably caught shoplifting at the Target in Marquette, left to mind the museum store. Purgatory. Trust Dean to find Negaunee’s one Bad Girl in under half an hour.
There, a whole showcase of homemade drill bits lined up like they were artwork or something. Homemade of the nearest material in this area, which is what they were mining in the first place: local iron. Any one of those bits, some as long as his arm, would do.
Utility knife out, and the case lid was off in under ten seconds. Crown jewels these were not. John hefted one of the iron bits in his hand, slipped it under his coat. Refastened the lid, knew they’d have to stick around the museum for a little while for it to be believable, because who the fuck visited a mining museum in the dead of winter? He’d been expecting to have to break in, for pete’s sake, was surprised they were open.
He could still hear them downstairs; Dean’s voice carried. “So what do you know about the lake? I heard this was a great time of year for ice fishing.”
“Yeah, lots of lake trout and Northern pike. Walleye. You fishing Teal Lake?” A pause, and John hovered out of sight at the head of the stairs, wanted to hear what the girl made of the recent disappearances. “Be careful. Wouldn’t you rather…” and he couldn’t make out what she thought Dean would rather be doing.
“Well, you know, my dad’s pretty set on getting some walleye,” and John could hear the laughter in his son’s voice as he said the word ‘walleye’. Dean just loved some words, loved the sound of them sliding around in his mouth, slippery as Scotch mints, and walleye was one of them. “Should I be worried?”
“No, no, no,” but that was Chamber of Commerce quick. “Just, some of the guys drink too much, eh? They make dumb mistakes out on the ice.”
“You sound like you know something about it.” Dean didn’t ask a question, he was too good for that, but that reminded John of Idris, and of questions, and of lessons learned the hard way.
John looked over the railing and saw her shrug, lean forwards across the counter. “If you’re gonna be around, my folks are away for New Years. So my sister and I, we’re going to have a party. She goes to NMU, eh? So, mostly her friends are coming. Mostly her party, I guess. My parents own the resort on the near side of the lake.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She looked at Dean through a fringe of hair. “Yeah. I don’t know them all that well. No chance I’ll be going there, not with my…record.”
And Dean laughed low in his throat and John thought he should probably rescue this poor thing before she got swallowed whole. He came down the stairs, the piece of pilfered iron safely tucked away, ready to send Dean and his smile packing.
“I’m sorry; must be near closing time.” He smiled at Dean. “Come on, son. We should pick up a turkey on the way back.”
Dean just about choked with laughter on the drive back to the Negaunee Wonderland Cabins, asking John about how the fuck he was going to roast a turkey on the Bunsen burner masquerading as a stove. Functional humor: they hadn’t had a homemade Christmas dinner in years.
Out on the ice in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, far enough away from any cell phone signal that no one needed to worry about who was phoning whom. Or not.
Ho fucking ho.
--
Wasn’t just to take a leak, but he didn’t have to let Dad know that. He’d felt faint down there, dizzy, maybe the heat, maybe just being someplace that wasn’t a hospital or a therapeutic torture chamber or that moronic motel room. Odd and dislocated, warm and close, things in dark corners, unnatural. Dean had heard the knocking, followed it, curious.
Simple as that.
He hadn’t been thinking, should have told Dad what he’d heard, but Dad was looking for other shit, wasn’t paying any attention to the little mine fairies or whatever the fuck they were. John’s mind was on chasing capital E Evil. Screw whatever got in the way.
Whoever gets in the way.
Up on the surface, it was cold, and his sweat froze in the high mountain air before he could get his coat on, still snow in some spots. Below them, Virginia City crawled halfway up the mountainside, stupid place for a town, built for the proximity of the mines, no other reason at all. No natural water, no easy transportation routes, not like the flat town in Bonanza, what a load of Technicolor bullshit.
Dean wanted to be alone, didn’t want John breathing down his neck, drill sergeant or wet nurse. He’d made sure he’d brought his keys when they’d come up here, held on to them like a talisman, worried them in his pocket.
“Hey,” he turned quickly, and Christ if his back didn’t shoot with pain as he did so. Tired, I’m tired of feeling like an old man. I don’t think they noticed, otherwise I’d have a fight on my hands. Gotta be believable. I don’t want to fight. I don’t- “Think it’s time for me to get behind the wheel. Could you ride with Bobby, maybe debrief with him at the camper? I’ll swing by rehab, see if I can get a massage. I want to…” cocked his head to the side, tried to select the right weapon for the job, “play some music. Loud.”
Truth. Not a bad weapon sometimes.
His dad looked at him. Owed him. Dean didn’t know if he’d see that, crazy bastard. Long slow consideration, not quite believing, not quite ready to call him on it.
“It’s only two now.” John appeared to be weighing it. Finally, “Bobby and I can go over some stuff at his camper and he can drop me off at dinnertime. Pizza maybe? After your massage.” Said it a certain way, letting Dean know he didn’t quite buy the excuse, but wasn’t going to get into it now.
Dean nodded, slid into the Impala like it was a Titanic lifeboat, knew his dad was watching, so he didn’t rest his forehead against the steering wheel like he wanted to.
“All right,” he whispered to the car, turning his head slightly so his dad wouldn’t see. “Let’s find out if this is like riding a bike.”
Sort of and not quite. His back twinged every time he lifted his foot from the gas pedal to the brake. Unfortunately, he needed to do that fairly often on the way down, so he stopped for a rest before the 341 joined the 50 heading into Carson City, pulled to the side of a shallow canyon, turned down the music, just sat there for a few minutes before killing the engine and getting out.
He looked into the far distance, sun breaking against rock and stone. Awful, hard light. Alone. That’s what was wrong. He’d fallen, they both had and now they were in different places, like they’d been dropped off in separate foreign countries. Hadn’t started with Vegas, but that sure had made it worse.
He opened his phone. No signal. Not up here. Closed it again and held it in his pocket. Probably just as well.
“Sam,” he whispered, but the wind was kicking up, a Washoe Zephyr, and the air filled with dust and that was too much, brought back too much memory, wind and sand twisting together into hard truth. I chose right for Sam, chose right for Dad, and why the fuck should anything else matter?
“I don’t know what you’re doing.” It hurt, to say that. Because for most of their lives, Dean had known exactly what his brother was up to, and now he didn’t. He really, truly didn’t. Didn’t know how Sam worked.
Dean leaned against the car, felt its warmth. “One day you’re gonna come back and we won’t be speaking the same language. Need a fucking translator.” Trusted that he’d come back, because anything else…he’ll come back. Dean rumbled on low about college and how smart Sam was and how it made him proud and how it broke his heart.
How it made Sam into them, while Dean just stayed us.
He didn’t speak out loud even here alone on a mountainside, but had thought the words a hundred times: You’re right about Dad. You are. He’s chasing around this obsession of his, this idea about evil and he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s chasing.
His back ached and he knew that a massage might work out some of the pain, but not all of it. What if…what if something was wrong? What if something was really wrong? Would you call back then?
“Fuck you, Sam,” he said softly, under his breath, gaze on the far mountains, dust stinging his eyes. “Well, yeah. So that’s all I wanted to say.”
And he got back in the car, leaned his head against the wheel for a good few minutes until he felt able to drive.
--
TBC
Research notes: we’re coming to part of the story where I geek out on 19th century mining history. For this, I have many sources, the most valuable of which is The Roar and the Silence by historian Ronald M. James. Fabulous online resources are plentiful, but I’m particularly enamoured with Nevada Online (see ‘Mining’ section), where you can take a virtual tour of the Sutro Tunnel and other locations. Also, everything I really need to know, I learned from Bonanza.
The UP of Michigan came to life with Lemmypie’s fabulous descriptions. Though not a ‘proper’ Yooper, she’s spent time at her aunt’s barely-winterized cabins. The Negaunee Mining Museum is only open during the summer, alas. The Olympic boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling programs DO train at nearby NMU in Marquette. I’m sure they’re all really nice guys who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
As a Canadian, I’m delighted to report that only Detroit hockey fans throw octopi on the ice…has something to do with the number of games they historically needed to win the Cup (eight - legs, yeah?). Waste of good seafood in my opinion. Not that Dean looks the type to eat octopus.
Read next chapter
ETA: fixed the link to the Nevada site and one small correction because Sasquashme is always right. This I've learned.
Because LJ is my friend. Sortof.
Okay, not really.
Because I write too much.
Read:
--
Although Dean wasn’t much for hockey, especially the fucking Red Wings, he watched the game. It was the only alternative to the Wizard of Oz, which was just at the part where the witch sent out the flying monkeys and, truth have it, those fucking things had always freaked him out a little.
He was going to go batshit crazy if he had to spend much more time in this motel room with its ‘howdy folks’ owner and the buffalo horns, Bonanza, and the fucking broken coffeemaker, which had been egregious insult on top of significant injury.
Helping Bobby at the Ameriminco offices this morning had only whet his appetite. He wanted back in, he was sick of therapy, was sick of being so sore after it he could barely move.
One step forward, two steps back. Shit.
Through the flimsy wall behind his head, Dean heard the shower shudder to a halt. After a moment, the bathroom door rattled and John came out, a towel around his shoulders. Dean flicked a look to him, then attention back to the hockey. Hard hits against the boards, stick from behind, gloves off, bunch of pussies pulling jerseys over the other guys’ heads. What a fuckin’ stupid game.
“Hey,” John said, rubbing his hair. “What’s the score?”
Dean snorted. Shit, hadn’t been paying attention. The score? What did it matter? “Think Detroit’s up.”
“All the way,” John muttered, going to the fridge for a beer.
“How’s it going, anyway?” Dean asked. “Down there?”
John pulled two from the box, held one up experimentally, but Dean shook his head. He’d have to sit up to drink it, and he just wanted to lay there for a while.
John twisted off the cap, spun it expertly into the wastepaper bin across the room. “It’s going. I really can’t see whatever pattern Bobby’s dreamed up in that mind of his.” He shook his head. “I mean, I’ll work off the favor, but it’s a big waste of time, you ask me. Why that man wants to be down there, I’ll never know.”
“How do you get down there?” Dean hoped if he kept asking questions, his dad wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t moving. “The elevators still work?”
John sat on his bed, back against the headboard, avoiding the sharp horns, pillow dropped behind his head. “Not a chance. That’d be too easy. But Bobby uses those tunnels, the ones on an incline? The ones that pump water, and for taking the ore out?”
“The adits,” Dean said, not having to feign interest, though he suspected it would annoy his dad. “So you just walk in?” That sounded possible, attainable. Might be able to talk his way into walking, for chrissake.
“Yeah,” John grunted. “The adits.” Winced as one of the forwards checked another player straight into the glass. More gloves on the ice. Not gloves. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yep.” Dean bent both knees, thought he might be able to push himself to upright with his feet. Shit, what he’d do for a beer. “Waste of good seafood.”
A laugh, as intended, but Dean hadn’t been quite sure what his dad would make of Detroit fans’ choice of projectiles. Close to the bone in some ways, but if you didn’t develop a gallows humor in this line of work, you probably didn’t have a pulse.
“Nothing quite like seafood served cold,” his father murmured. A pause, and John turned, small smile on his face. “I killed it, right? That thing’s dead.” A question, uncertain, and Dean squirmed.
“Pretty sure.” Tilted his head. “Almost sure.”
John expression changed, subtle as a cloud’s shadow moving across the day, brows drawn together, opened his mouth to say something, but then just watched as Dean struggled to sit up. Cocked his head to one side, that not-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth beneath the dark stubble. “What’d you do today, Dean?” He got up from the bed and stood over his son, arms crossed.
Shit. Busted.
“Hey.” Dean tried on a grin. He got his right hand under himself and pushed up to a sit, his arm doing all the work. “Yeah, so just some PT. The pool. Nice and-”
“Easy?” John finished, taking a slug of beer. “I ought smack you to next week. What the hell have you been doing to yourself?” To Dean’s amazement, his father’s voice cracked just then, and he walked a few steps away, one hand across his mouth like he could hold it in. A long moment followed, Dean trying to figure it out, because this was new and different and it scared him. “I thought I told you the only way this was going to work is if you followed instructions to the letter.”
I was the one who fell; what the hell do you have to be scared about?
Dean nodded, didn’t say anything. But he was sitting now and he reckoned he deserved that beer. Deep breath, held, used his legs and stomach muscles to come upright. Of a height with his dad, looked him straight in the eye. “I’m good,” he said, taking a small shuffle step around John.
Who crosschecked him, stopping him with shoulder and hip. “You,” he said, dark eyes gleaming in television’s blue light. “You don’t play with this. You hear me? Not with this.”
“I’m not,” Dean defended. “You think I don’t take this seriously? Of course I do.”
John let go of his shoulder, and Dean was stuck between wanting the beer and wanting to be back on the bed, and you’d think he’d be sick of that.
He opted for the beer still waiting for him on top of the bar fridge. Keep moving, give the muscles a chance to limber up, get loose. He opened the beer, spun the cap across the room and it hit John on the knee, where it dropped silently to the floor.
John stared at it for a moment, then raised his eyes to Dean. Mississippi and the Jenny. Bait and reward and bribes. The car, always the car. And betrayal, that too.
“I can’t believe a word you tell me, can I?”
“What?” Dean thought he hadn’t heard him right, hadn’t heard the words correctly. “Of course-”
John was shaking his head, and instead of fear, instead of despair, Dean found something else rushing to his head, like the blood flow had just started up again prickling its way along an unfamiliar path.
“If I phone the Rehab Unit, what’re they gonna tell me? You doing about twice as much as Bliss recommended? Three times? Come back here and push it some more?”
“Yeah,” Dean shook his head, finished skating around this. The beer was blessedly cold, beautiful, damn near perfect. “Because you know so much about not pushing things.”
John took two quick steps, and under normal conditions, Dean would have backed up a little, gotten out of the way. Under normal conditions, wouldn’t have said anything in the first place. But he was hurting something fierce and his mouth was the only part of him able to move fast.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.” Another hit of the bottle and he wished it was something stronger. “That was no poltergeist in Vegas. I knew it. You knew it.”
That stopped him cold and Dean didn’t look, felt sick all of a sudden.
A long day for both of them, and nothing but Nazi therapists and howdy folks, and the television with disappearing sons and flying monkeys. Nothing but hurt, and Dean closed his eyes as the door slammed, didn’t know which sounded worse - when John did it, or Sam.
Another three beers before he phoned. Drunk call. Good and mad now. Didn’t even want to listen to the message because it was stupid and there was Sam, open as a daisy when he knew how fucking dangerous it was. Was pretending normal, and Dean could imagine the ‘weirdo’ sign taped to Sam’s back like his brother was there right in front of him.
“You gotta change your message, dude. You should never say your name like that right off the bat.” Fucking idiot. Had he learned nothing? Was this his way of saying ‘fuck you’ to them, even in his message? “Jesus, amateur hour.”
Even as the words slid out, burst from him easy, lubricated by the beer, Dean bit the inside of his mouth. Swallowed all that was swimming in his mouth. “You gettin’ these, I wonder? It’s like being in…in… Oz, or something, just sending them out like this.”
Closed his eyes, pressed the cold beer bottle against the side of his face, hated this motel room, hated that he couldn’t move fast, hated that Dad was scared and far away like he was the one who’d fallen. John occupied space, but he wasn’t here.
This is Sam, he reminded himself. He asked me to go and he didn’t need me, not like Dad did. “It’s easier this way, maybe. No big deal. I mean, you don’t need…I don’t expect…” Too soft, and Sam would know something was up. Shit. “You know, I just…it’s all good.”
It had been the right decision. Letting him go. Staying with Dad. But it was hard, and the sand demon’s voice swirled through with cold malice, and Dean shook his head, trying to rid himself of it. Talked small and soft about nothing, about nonsense.
About the Wizard and how he didn’t know how to get home, any more than the rest of them.
--
No tequila. No Jack. Nothing but silence, silvery fishing lines down the silent hole, cut with a chainsaw red-neck style, he and his father the only ones out on the lake because it was Christmas Eve and no one went ice fishing on Christmas Eve.
Well, there were worse ways to spend the holiday, Dean thought, pouring some hot black coffee from the Thermos into a plastic mug, gloves off, still cold as a witch’s tit inside the hut, wishing that Winchester Christmases at least included rum and eggnog.
No such luck. Just ice and bait. Bait down the hole, fish guts tied to a line. Bait up here too, sitting on the ice with a big fucking target pinned to them. Come ‘n git it! Even though Dean had his dad’s rifle with him, his dad was the one with the iron tipped harpoon, a jerry-rigged weapon, a broom handle and a drill bit held together with fishing twine. Dad was the one with the chance of killing it. Dean was merely an entree with a fancy gun.
Midnight came and went. Dean didn’t know if this qualified as the worst Christmas ever, but it sure came close. He didn’t know why he bothered to keep track, actually. Sam. It had mattered to Sam; he had always made sure they’d ended up in some crappy-assed restaurant having the lonely guy Christmas dinner special with cardboard turkey and wobbly cranberry jelly still bearing the imprint of the can.
Still, better than waiting to be kraken-food in a stupid little fishing shack on the middle of Teal Lake.
Wonder what Sam’s doing, Dean thought, staring into the dark hole, water deep down the opalescent opening, at the bottom, dark like blood. On a beach somewhere, watching a sunset.
Far away, across the ice, he heard the sound of festive music coming from some cabin, the lone buzz of a snowmobile. John yawned, got up and stretched, checking the oil left in the lamp. He pulled his zipper up tight around his neck, slapped his hands together. “I’m outta coffee. There’s more in the truck. Game?” Held out his hands, fist on flat palm. Rock, paper, scissors.
Dean lost, groaned, got up. Goddamn man could read his mind.
Outside, it was freezing, no two ways to describe it. The fishing hut out on the lake protected them from a fierce wind that cut across the UP, came straight down from the Arctic, right across Lake Superior on its way to Teal Lake. Snow didn’t stick to the frozen lake, was whipped clear across. All the hair in Dean’s nostrils immediately turned to ice, and he took shallow breaths, not wanting the cold to penetrate that deep into his lungs.
The truck was only twenty feet away from the hut, and Dean looked over his shoulder as he approached it, mistrusting the ice, though he knew it was at least two feet thick. The ice-hole proved it. Still, it seemed asinine to drive a fucking truck onto the middle of lake, especially when the thing they were hunting could burst through at any minute.
In fact, they were hoping it’d do that.
The lake looked solid, yes, a flat desert landscape sculpted in white, but underneath was a vast black world of cold viscosity, alive with winter fish. Alive with other things. One other large thing half-legend, work of nature twisted out of time, taken to the extreme.
The shoreline was discernable in the moonlight, a far line of pine, several football fields from the hut. He glanced around the frigid scene, the only sound the groan of the wind, the crunch of crystallized snow under his feet. A whole world under there, he thought, an underworld and tonight the door is open.
Dean rooted around in the truck’s cab where he knew his dad stashed extra supplies. A fork. A badly-folded map of Arizona. The journal, crammed to capacity.
Dean tossed it back under the seat, finally found the second Thermos of coffee. Straightened and a shudder ran through at his feet, like something big had just knocked at the door. He jumped out the cab, left the door open, dome light pathetic, illuminating nothing, and looked around jerkily. All quiet. Nothing. Getting spooked maybe.
Hell, no. I don’t spook, he thought, mouth dry. Then the little hut exploded.
Not with a fireball, but with a roar of water and the sharp crack of ice, like a glacier calving into deep water. The splinter of wood cracking wide, the hut disintegrating in a plume of inky water. Dean dropped the Thermos and had the rifle up in less than a second, looking where to aim.
The kraken was huge, nominally white, but against the snow and ice it looked gray. Tentacles, shining with water black as oil, reached onto the ice, each about thirty feet long. A slapping sound accompanied its blind fury as the rubbery, muscular appendages thrashed onto the ice. Not slaps. Cracks. A huge bulbous head emerged from the dark water, two eyes the size of dinner plates to either side of a flapping sac, each a deep glowing red.
Twenty feet was too close, really, and one of the tentacles curled voluptuously towards Dean, powerful muscles and suction cups adhering to the ice. It strained, and Dean saw what it was doing: it was pulling itself forward onto the ice. It smelled of rotten fish and printers ink, like newspapers left out in the rain. It was coming for him. Slosh, thup, skritch.
Dean kept one eye on the nearest tentacle, brought up the rifle, aiming for the spot between the two eyes. It writhed suddenly, and Dean cracked off a shot at almost the same time. He saw his father then, very close to it, on his knees on the ice, John just a dark smudge against the bright albedo, his arm back.
Harpoon in hand and he would only have one shot at this. Dean needed to distract it. So he pulled the trigger again, edged closer. One tentacle was now wrapped around the side view mirror of the truck, lingering like a lover’s caress. It ripped the mirror off with a lurching screech of torn metal.
Slosh, thup, skritch and he watched, horrified, as a tentacle whipped around, caught his father on the side of his neck and threw him across the ice. Not far, though, because the arm curled back around John like a croupier gathering chips from a betting table.
John rolled, came to his feet, and in one movement threw the spear. Dean couldn’t see where it landed but the thing roared, the noise not unlike an elephant. The tentacle nearest him dropped the side view mirror, then flobbered over the ice, thrashing, huge cracks spreading with the sound of gunshots, water sloshing darkly up around Dean’s ankles as he scrambled towards the massive hole where the fishing hut used to be.
He couldn’t see his father anywhere.
The kraken slowly disappeared into the black water, not willingly, malevolent eyes seemingly on Dean the whole time, red light fading. It retreated so incrementally it didn’t even splash, slipped over the ice and fell, like it just couldn’t hold on anymore.
“Dad!” he screamed, unsure how close to the open water he could get before the whole surface just splintered and collapsed. “Dad!” Then, on the far side of the opening, a piece of flat ice, maybe ten feet by fifteen, John Winchester sprawled on it, unmoving.
Shit.
But not in the water, not under the ice, not dragged under, so Dean ran to the back of the truck, got a length of rope, tied a grappling hook to it with shaking frozen fingers.
He was running, slipping hard to his knees and it was like landing on cement, and he worried if the ice would hold him so he kept down, crept as close to the open water as he could. A far throw, maybe thirty feet. Dad would kill him if he nailed him with the grappling hook.
Swung, threw, and the hook plunged into the water, short. Dean hauled back, hands soaked, sleeves soaked, shivering in earnest now, swearing under his breath. Had the hook back in his hand again. Better to nail Dad and sew him up later than not get him at all.
Swung again, thought, full fathom five, watched the dark watery hell, John on the edge of it, and his breath sobbed in his lungs, creaking with cold. This time, the hook bit into the ice floe and Dean tested the hold. Satisfied the hook had found good purchase, he slowly pulled the ice to him, hoped the kraken wasn’t looking for round two.
“Dad?” he called, and John stirred a little. Dean couldn’t tell anything in this light. Sure the moon was bright and so was the snow, but it was night and John wasn’t giving him any clues. “Dad, grab the rope. Grab the rope and I’ll pull you to me. Grab the rope!” And John unlatched the hook from its bite, and Dean pulled him off the floe and onto the ice. A little closer, but he was a big man soaked with water, twice Dean’s weight maybe, and Dean couldn’t feel his fingers, didn’t know blood was running from his hands until it hit his wrists, where it felt hot.
He grabbed John’s damp shoulder, hauled for all he was worth, then he was safe.
Another ominous crack. A groan like rubbing two pieces of Styrofoam together. Dean held his breath like that would matter. Goddamn goofy idea, doing anything with heavy machinery on frozen water and that kind of thing down below.
Dean got his shoulder under his father, took three tries before he got him to his feet. He took most of his father’s weight but not all, because John had heard that crack too.
“Come on,” Dean whispered, amazed that his voice sounded so steady, because he was terrified.
Dean dropped his dad in the passenger seat, started the truck and threw it into reverse, wrenching the wheel and sliding around in a 180, popped it into gear and gunned for shore. He hoped it made no difference if he went fast or slow, because once behind the wheel there was nothing more he wanted than to be off the fucking lake, and he was going to do that at sixty miles an hour, thanks very much. He only lost control once, when the wheels slipped sideways, but soon the vast dark hole in the ice disappeared in the rearview mirror.
Once on land, the trees sheltering them from the wind, Dean stopped only to turn on the interior light and briefly examine his father. A huge series of dark circles ran down his neck onto his chest. The thing had grabbed him, tried to pull him under. John was wet, cold, maybe hypothermic. Semi-conscious.
Needed to get him warm.
Dean turned up the truck’s heater, drove hell bent for leather to the Wonderland Cabins.
They’d left the antique kerosene heater off because it was a fucking fire hazard even when you were keeping an eye on it, and as Dean tried to light it, get some heat going, he swore methodically, fluently, almost a song. John was murmuring, not saying anything coherent. They sounded like Yoko Ono’s backup singers.
Dean took John’s wet things off, wrapped him in three sweaters, a parka, a blanket, propped him up on the cot beside the heater.
“Dean,” John said clearly, teeth chattering.
“Yeah, Dad?” He hunkered down close beside him. The red circles that the suction cups had left were now dark red, tinged with blue. What the hell should I put on that? Antiseptic cream?
“Did we get it?”
Okay, there was a right answer to this and Dean knew it. “Sure did. It won’t bother anyone else.”
John opened one eye, fixed it on Dean. Even barely conscious, he could scare the living crap out of Dean. “Did I kill it?”
Direct fucking question. “Yep, dead as a doornail.” Dean didn’t break eye contact. No way was John going back out there tonight, and they had probably killed it.
“Good,” John exhaled. “Get the vodka.”
What? “Dad, I don’t know if that’s the best idea, think you should down some of these antibiotics-”
“Dean,” John warned.
Dean found a bottle of Finnish vodka in the cupboard, new, unopened. Not his dad’s drink of choice.
“Soak a cloth with it,” John continued, voice faint.
Dean did so, knowing that what John forgot on any given day was more than he’d ever know in a lifetime of trying. “What now?”
John told him to wash out the places where the kraken had touched him, irrigate it with pure vodka, then rub salt in it. Dean winced as he did that, but John didn’t flinch. When he was done, Dean wondered if they could name some kind of drink after this: blood, poison, salt and vodka. Kraken shooters. He took a long gulp of the vodka himself, wiped his lips, felt it hit his stomach like a warm fuzzy bomb.
“Okay, son,” John said. “Now I’ll have those antibiotics. And some Tylenol. I’ll probably spike a fever in the next day or two. Don’t worry. Keep the wound clean. Use the vodka.” Eyed him with a bright glance. “Don’t drink it all.”
Dean smiled, but it was half-hearted, grim. He put his father to bed and settled in the stuffing-less armchair. The bedroom was freezing, no way was he sleeping in there tonight. This was the only warm room in the cabin.
He took another swig from the bottle, then capped it, knew he’d need it later. Dawn was coming up through the barely-winterized window, clear and cold and bright.
Christmas morning. Thought of Sam. Fell asleep.
--
The adit that connected the Crown Point mine with the Sutro Tunnel was a cakewalk and that was all that mattered to Singer. Easy access, he’d surveyed it a dozen times before, electric lights set up by the historical society, Dean would never need to know that this was about as dangerous as a school field trip to the Hershey factory.
They passed the main shaft, all boarded up now, and with good reason: it went straight down more than 1600 feet. Bobby watched Dean bend carefully down, not quite graceful but not wincing either, and drop a piece of gravel between the planks. Waiting for a sound that never came.
John grunted beside him, and Dean looked up, wonder in his eyes. He said nothing, brushed his hands on his thighs and stood.
They crunched over gravel beds, steel rails curving out, useful still, even after a hundred years of disuse. Some historical society plaques. Singer had special permits, not even forged. He’d built good relations with the old guys who maintained some of the shafts, because they worked to have mines designated as historical sites and kept big guns like Ameriminco at bay; those companies would make this whole area one big open-pit mine if you gave them half the chance. Who the hell knew what they’d let loose if you let them do that?
The adit ran for miles and miles, winding through the mountain, connecting up hundreds of drift tunnels and ratholes. The Sutro, the big tunnel, ran all the way down to Dayton, drained the upper levels of the Comstock mines to 1640 feet. Safe enough today. If you were careful.
Only a hundred feet in, and it started to warm up. Singer stopped at his usual spot, stripped down to t-shirt and jeans, left his coat and vest on hooks that miners had been using for a century and more. The Winchesters did likewise, Dean with that awestruck look that people got when they hadn’t been underground before.
Singer watched the boy with delight as he stared wide-eyed at the square-set timbering, realized how much rock the frail-looking timber held up. Mouth a little open. Television and tall tales and the very closeness combining. Dean looked down after a moment, sweat already staining his shoulders, running down the side of his face.
Singer wasn’t the only one studying Dean, but instead of wonder, Winchester seemed to be registering soundness, like he was looking at draft horse ready to pull. Assessing his son, looking for faultlines. Then he locked eyes with Singer. “So,” Winchester said. “What’s the plan today?”
Singer gave them instructions, meticulous ones so Winchester could see he was being cautious, not putting anyone at any risk. “Okay, then,” Winchester said when Singer was done. “Dean, you’re with me. Here’s some chalk.”
Mark out the ratholes down this one drift. Take them an hour or two. Easy. Nothing dangerous about it. Use your five senses, be alert. Dean asked what they were looking for, and Singer didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d find nothing, so he said instead, “Weird smells. Watch out for that. Noises. You hear pings and water, that’s normal. Anything else? I’d be interested in knowing. These tunnels are pretty picked over, so you aren’t likely to find much of anything, but check the timbers anyway. Sometimes the miners left symbols. Charms. Mark ‘em down if you see any.”
They separated, arranged to meet back in an hour.
When Singer saw them at the lunch break, Dean’s face was bathed in sweat. Hot work down here, all right. Out of time, somehow, because it was ageless, changeless. This could be the twenty-first century, or the eighteenth. Winter or summer. Nevada or Argentina.
Singer had carried in several large bottles of water, and he watched as both Winchester and his son downed two of them in short order. They ate lunch silently, the rush of warm wind and sound of water soothing to Singer, used to it. Drove some guys nuts, of course. Not him.
Not Evan. Bobby unfolded wax paper from a stack of sandwiches, remembered a couple of hundred days spent like this. With his boy. Too few, of course. Not hunting, not precisely. Keeping track. Evan had been good at it, cheerful, attention to details like a German engineer. Cracking jokes.
Singer stayed quiet, and Winchester was never much for talk. Dean was too keyed up to notice if he was tiring himself out, and Singer hoped Winchester was on the lookout for that. So what if lunch was twice as long as he usually allowed?
He kept a bite of his sandwich, wrapped it in the paper. One quarter of his chocolate bar. He looked up, noticed that Dean was watching him. Singer smiled gruffly, and Winchester’s hawk’s eyes were on him like a mouse in a field.
“You don’t still do that, do you?” he asked. “Superstitious old fart.” With a chuckle, and Singer got to his feet, dusted his ass off with one hand, kept the wrapped food in the other.
“Doesn’t hurt,” he said, looking for a good spot. “Those Cornishmen were the best miners, brought a lot of good practice to American mining. No wonder they were paid top dollar, even by assholes like Hearst. But, yeah. Superstitious bunch.”
Dean was on the verge of asking, Singer could see. Not the kind of kid who liked not knowing. Liked asking less, though.
“Tommyknockers,” Singer said finally.
“Mine fairies,” Winchester disparaged, throwing the last bite of sandwich in his mouth, washing it down with the water. “Maybe they’ll wave a wand and grant you a wish.”
“Yeah, well, in Cornwall, the tommyknockers warned miners of cave-ins, but only if you treated them right.” He glanced at Dean, then set the food on top of a timber, well back and out of sight. “But here in the American mines, the tommyknocker legends got all mixed up with actual ghost lore.”
“So,” Dean asked, trying to find the most succinct question, “are they fairies or ghosts?”
“Bit of both,” Singer replied.
“Big rats, probably, and getting bigger with all that food you’re leaving for them,” Winchester got to his feet, wordlessly held out a hand to help Dean, who ignored it, getting to his feet without any assistance. With a glance to his father, Dean took a handful of M&Ms, placed them in a line near broken lamp resting on a timber.
“Rat food,” Winchester said dryly.
“Yessir,” Dean said with a grin. “But it never hurts to hedge your bets.”
“Two more hours, then we’ll call it a day,” Singer said, but it was a question, directed at Winchester.
“One,” Winchester replied, not looking at him and not needing to. He was noticing how far and how fast his son was pushing himself.
“Okay, then,” Singer agreed.
Within half an hour, Winchester was back. Singer had worked his way down the main adit, a little bit of a make-work project really, just cleaning up some old gear that some placer miners had left in the thirties, old junk really. The historical guys sometimes liked having it.
A shout, and Singer turned. Not panic, really, in that voice. Command. “Bobby!” Came the call, and Singer started up the adit to the junction of the drift tunnel he’d sent the Winchesters through.
Winchester’s face was pale and sweating in the lamplight. “He come back this way?” he asked, unnecessarily. He’d know it was a dumb question.
Ah, shit. Singer shook his head. “Probably just went up one of the ratholes. Don’t worry, he can’t have gotten far.”
Dripping sweat, Singer moved fast, because you could actually get quite far if you fell down a thousand foot shaft straight into the heart of the mountain. No shafts that he knew about around here, but he didn’t know everything; part of the profession, to acknowledge the your deficits. He just wasn’t going to do it in front of Winchester.
Down the drift to the place where Winchester said he’d last seen him. Singer held up a hand, stopping Winchester’s low urgent monologue. Stopped movement and voice, listening.
There.
A knock. Two, like someone along the line was tapping on the timbers.
“What?” Winchester hissed in his ear. The electric lights made them both look a little green, didn’t really illuminate much. Singer held up a hand again.
A tapping.
“This way,” Singer said, turning on his flashlight and leading Winchester down a slender rathole that was just big enough for one man at a time. Didn’t get twenty feet before they met Dean coming up the other way, his face shining and filthy, teeth white.
“This is so cool!” he said, maybe not noticing his father, who was hidden behind Singer. “Wait till you see this.”
He had something in his hand, but Singer didn’t look. He’d been gone maybe ten minutes and Winchester was freaking. “Dean,” he dropped his voice in warning, but it was no good; Winchester was right behind him. “We’re going to have to back up.”
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Winchester rounded on him as soon as they were back in the drift tunnel, wide enough to accommodate several people at once. Dean stood still, surprise marking his flushed features.
“What?” Genuinely surprised. “I was gone maybe two minutes, Dad. I had to take a leak, so I ducked down there,” gestured with his thumb, “and-”
“You do not go anywhere out of my sight!” Winchester’s voice was loud enough to echo, and Singer held his breath. He knew this kind of fury: Argentina had been way too far for him, and he’d told Evan not to go. “There are shafts and firedamp and cave-ins. That’s not even counting anything supernatural!”
“Like this?” Dean said with a fireproof grin, holding up what was in his hand. It was a dwarf, the world’s ugliest garden gnome.
Singer took a step closer. Made of clay maybe, with a little pipe and two milky marbles pressed into the face for eyes. “I’ll be damned.”
Dean passed it to him, turned carefully to his father. “I was only taking a leak.”
Winchester pulled up like a cat hitting a sliding glass door. I meant to do that. “Yeah. Well, next time, tell me.” Small, worried. There for all of them to hear and that was not the John Winchester that Singer had come to know.
Dean looked surprised, a little cowed. He nodded. “Sure.”
Singer turned the thing over in his hands. “Cornishman must have left it down here.” No sense in rubbing Winchester’s face in it, but still. “Tommyknockers, for sure. Keep your eyes peeled. They can help, or they can hinder.”
“Think we’ll see one?” Dean asked as they walked back out. He wasn’t stumbling at all, was sure footed, looked better than in the whole time Singer had known him. Feeling normal. He almost laughed. Normal being hearing tommyknockers a hundred feet below a mountain.
Singer stared at the little clay figure in his hands. “Good chance, I’d say.” Smile passed to Dean like they were sharing a bottle of hootch. Lucky, maybe, this one.
--
John didn’t miss the look the clerk behind the cash machine gave them: surprise, followed quickly by keen interest. Dean had always turned heads, attracted female attention like a clearance shoe sale.
Laying low wasn’t exactly an option with a kid like this, but it could be an advantage today.
The girl - Elena, student volunteer, according to her nametag - came around the counter of the Negaunee Mining Museum’s front desk. She was exceptionally pretty, tall, strong boned, plenty of Nordic blood evident in cheekbones and the length of her femur. And since she seemed to be the only soul incarcerated here at the brick house-now-museum this day before Christmas Eve, John could be about his business.
“I’m gonna look around,” John said with a manufactured smile, leaving his son to spin some tale about why they were in this part of Michigan so close to Christmas, something about pickled herring and Finnish folk festivals.
He ducked behind a panel display that outlined the recent history of pneumatic drill technology, eyeing the old machinery. He heard Dean asking if it always snowed this much in the UP, if she knew where he could rent a snowmobile now that they’d lifted the restrictions on Teal Lake. Yeah, right, dream on, kiddo. That’s the shit that’s got these folks in trouble in the first place. New noise waking up an old predator, off season when there was nothing to eat but drunk fishermen out on the lake, cocktail shrimp on ice. Almost serves them right.
He couldn’t see what he was looking for in this room; the drill bits were all too big, attached to pieces of machinery he’d never be able to fit under his coat.
He stuck his head back in the lobby. “More displays upstairs?” he asked. Dean was leaning against the desk, had taken off his big coat, the one that smelled of oil and must, smelled of the Impala’s trunk, a grin on his face, directing all his attention on the girl and John was pretty sure he wasn’t faking any of it.
Elena nodded, smoothed a strand of dark silky hair over her shoulder, eyes a memorable blue even from this far away. “Yeah, the nineteenth century stuff’s up there.”
“So,” Dean continued as John disappeared up the stairs. A smaller brick house, and John could hear every word, “What are you doing here, working this close to Christmas?”
“Oh, I volunteer,” John heard. Then, a small catch. “Community hours.” And John grinned at his luck. Probably caught shoplifting at the Target in Marquette, left to mind the museum store. Purgatory. Trust Dean to find Negaunee’s one Bad Girl in under half an hour.
There, a whole showcase of homemade drill bits lined up like they were artwork or something. Homemade of the nearest material in this area, which is what they were mining in the first place: local iron. Any one of those bits, some as long as his arm, would do.
Utility knife out, and the case lid was off in under ten seconds. Crown jewels these were not. John hefted one of the iron bits in his hand, slipped it under his coat. Refastened the lid, knew they’d have to stick around the museum for a little while for it to be believable, because who the fuck visited a mining museum in the dead of winter? He’d been expecting to have to break in, for pete’s sake, was surprised they were open.
He could still hear them downstairs; Dean’s voice carried. “So what do you know about the lake? I heard this was a great time of year for ice fishing.”
“Yeah, lots of lake trout and Northern pike. Walleye. You fishing Teal Lake?” A pause, and John hovered out of sight at the head of the stairs, wanted to hear what the girl made of the recent disappearances. “Be careful. Wouldn’t you rather…” and he couldn’t make out what she thought Dean would rather be doing.
“Well, you know, my dad’s pretty set on getting some walleye,” and John could hear the laughter in his son’s voice as he said the word ‘walleye’. Dean just loved some words, loved the sound of them sliding around in his mouth, slippery as Scotch mints, and walleye was one of them. “Should I be worried?”
“No, no, no,” but that was Chamber of Commerce quick. “Just, some of the guys drink too much, eh? They make dumb mistakes out on the ice.”
“You sound like you know something about it.” Dean didn’t ask a question, he was too good for that, but that reminded John of Idris, and of questions, and of lessons learned the hard way.
John looked over the railing and saw her shrug, lean forwards across the counter. “If you’re gonna be around, my folks are away for New Years. So my sister and I, we’re going to have a party. She goes to NMU, eh? So, mostly her friends are coming. Mostly her party, I guess. My parents own the resort on the near side of the lake.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She looked at Dean through a fringe of hair. “Yeah. I don’t know them all that well. No chance I’ll be going there, not with my…record.”
And Dean laughed low in his throat and John thought he should probably rescue this poor thing before she got swallowed whole. He came down the stairs, the piece of pilfered iron safely tucked away, ready to send Dean and his smile packing.
“I’m sorry; must be near closing time.” He smiled at Dean. “Come on, son. We should pick up a turkey on the way back.”
Dean just about choked with laughter on the drive back to the Negaunee Wonderland Cabins, asking John about how the fuck he was going to roast a turkey on the Bunsen burner masquerading as a stove. Functional humor: they hadn’t had a homemade Christmas dinner in years.
Out on the ice in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, far enough away from any cell phone signal that no one needed to worry about who was phoning whom. Or not.
Ho fucking ho.
--
Wasn’t just to take a leak, but he didn’t have to let Dad know that. He’d felt faint down there, dizzy, maybe the heat, maybe just being someplace that wasn’t a hospital or a therapeutic torture chamber or that moronic motel room. Odd and dislocated, warm and close, things in dark corners, unnatural. Dean had heard the knocking, followed it, curious.
Simple as that.
He hadn’t been thinking, should have told Dad what he’d heard, but Dad was looking for other shit, wasn’t paying any attention to the little mine fairies or whatever the fuck they were. John’s mind was on chasing capital E Evil. Screw whatever got in the way.
Whoever gets in the way.
Up on the surface, it was cold, and his sweat froze in the high mountain air before he could get his coat on, still snow in some spots. Below them, Virginia City crawled halfway up the mountainside, stupid place for a town, built for the proximity of the mines, no other reason at all. No natural water, no easy transportation routes, not like the flat town in Bonanza, what a load of Technicolor bullshit.
Dean wanted to be alone, didn’t want John breathing down his neck, drill sergeant or wet nurse. He’d made sure he’d brought his keys when they’d come up here, held on to them like a talisman, worried them in his pocket.
“Hey,” he turned quickly, and Christ if his back didn’t shoot with pain as he did so. Tired, I’m tired of feeling like an old man. I don’t think they noticed, otherwise I’d have a fight on my hands. Gotta be believable. I don’t want to fight. I don’t- “Think it’s time for me to get behind the wheel. Could you ride with Bobby, maybe debrief with him at the camper? I’ll swing by rehab, see if I can get a massage. I want to…” cocked his head to the side, tried to select the right weapon for the job, “play some music. Loud.”
Truth. Not a bad weapon sometimes.
His dad looked at him. Owed him. Dean didn’t know if he’d see that, crazy bastard. Long slow consideration, not quite believing, not quite ready to call him on it.
“It’s only two now.” John appeared to be weighing it. Finally, “Bobby and I can go over some stuff at his camper and he can drop me off at dinnertime. Pizza maybe? After your massage.” Said it a certain way, letting Dean know he didn’t quite buy the excuse, but wasn’t going to get into it now.
Dean nodded, slid into the Impala like it was a Titanic lifeboat, knew his dad was watching, so he didn’t rest his forehead against the steering wheel like he wanted to.
“All right,” he whispered to the car, turning his head slightly so his dad wouldn’t see. “Let’s find out if this is like riding a bike.”
Sort of and not quite. His back twinged every time he lifted his foot from the gas pedal to the brake. Unfortunately, he needed to do that fairly often on the way down, so he stopped for a rest before the 341 joined the 50 heading into Carson City, pulled to the side of a shallow canyon, turned down the music, just sat there for a few minutes before killing the engine and getting out.
He looked into the far distance, sun breaking against rock and stone. Awful, hard light. Alone. That’s what was wrong. He’d fallen, they both had and now they were in different places, like they’d been dropped off in separate foreign countries. Hadn’t started with Vegas, but that sure had made it worse.
He opened his phone. No signal. Not up here. Closed it again and held it in his pocket. Probably just as well.
“Sam,” he whispered, but the wind was kicking up, a Washoe Zephyr, and the air filled with dust and that was too much, brought back too much memory, wind and sand twisting together into hard truth. I chose right for Sam, chose right for Dad, and why the fuck should anything else matter?
“I don’t know what you’re doing.” It hurt, to say that. Because for most of their lives, Dean had known exactly what his brother was up to, and now he didn’t. He really, truly didn’t. Didn’t know how Sam worked.
Dean leaned against the car, felt its warmth. “One day you’re gonna come back and we won’t be speaking the same language. Need a fucking translator.” Trusted that he’d come back, because anything else…he’ll come back. Dean rumbled on low about college and how smart Sam was and how it made him proud and how it broke his heart.
How it made Sam into them, while Dean just stayed us.
He didn’t speak out loud even here alone on a mountainside, but had thought the words a hundred times: You’re right about Dad. You are. He’s chasing around this obsession of his, this idea about evil and he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s chasing.
His back ached and he knew that a massage might work out some of the pain, but not all of it. What if…what if something was wrong? What if something was really wrong? Would you call back then?
“Fuck you, Sam,” he said softly, under his breath, gaze on the far mountains, dust stinging his eyes. “Well, yeah. So that’s all I wanted to say.”
And he got back in the car, leaned his head against the wheel for a good few minutes until he felt able to drive.
--
TBC
Research notes: we’re coming to part of the story where I geek out on 19th century mining history. For this, I have many sources, the most valuable of which is The Roar and the Silence by historian Ronald M. James. Fabulous online resources are plentiful, but I’m particularly enamoured with Nevada Online (see ‘Mining’ section), where you can take a virtual tour of the Sutro Tunnel and other locations. Also, everything I really need to know, I learned from Bonanza.
The UP of Michigan came to life with Lemmypie’s fabulous descriptions. Though not a ‘proper’ Yooper, she’s spent time at her aunt’s barely-winterized cabins. The Negaunee Mining Museum is only open during the summer, alas. The Olympic boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling programs DO train at nearby NMU in Marquette. I’m sure they’re all really nice guys who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
As a Canadian, I’m delighted to report that only Detroit hockey fans throw octopi on the ice…has something to do with the number of games they historically needed to win the Cup (eight - legs, yeah?). Waste of good seafood in my opinion. Not that Dean looks the type to eat octopus.
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ETA: fixed the link to the Nevada site and one small correction because Sasquashme is always right. This I've learned.