SPN Fic: Three Times the Supernatural Found Garth and One Time He Went Looking for It (2/2)
Title: Three Times the Supernatural Found Garth and One Time He Went Looking for It (2/2)
Author: borgmama1of5
Wordcount: 7400
Summary: Exactly what the title says J
Genre/pairing: Gen, no pairing
Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Beta: sandymg, as wonderfully helpful as always!
Disclaimer: Not even close to being mine.
A/N: I was prepared to dislike Garth for being a buffoonish parody of a hunter when he showed up…but by the end of his second appearance I was totally intrigued by the completely un-angsty approach he had to the job, and the smarts hiding behind the clownish exterior. And I wanted to know how he got started hunting since it didn’t seem he was traumatized into it. So I waited for someone to write a story about it…but I finally got tired of waiting and wrote it myself. Hope you enjoy!
Part One: http://borgmama1of5.livejournal.com/70578.html
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#4
He was halfway through his bowl of oatmeal, skimming the headlines and leisurely turning pages, when his eyes and brain connected.
Family Claims Poltergeist Attacking Them
Garth read the article quickly. In the Baltimore suburb of Pikesville, the Ambroise family reported objects being thrown, foul odors, and inexplicable electrical problems in the home they had recently purchased. Both a police investigation and a home inspection had not been able to account for the bizarre occurrences; meanwhile the family had moved to a motel while trying to figure out what to do.
It was none of his business.
Surely one of the ‘professionals’ would see this and take care of it.
There was a picture of the family: mom, dad, a twelve-year-old boy, and a little girl. They all looked so scared.
He really wasn’t going to do this, was he?
Garth sucked on his lower lip as he reread the story.
He still had Bobby Singer’s number-had put it in his phone contacts on crazy impulse.
Okay.
“Mr. Singer? This is Garth, Garth Fitzgerald the Fourth…you helped me last year with a cursed ring.”
“And?”
The dismissive tone made Garth sit up straight.
“There’s a report of a poltergeist in Pikesville near me, and I thought…I’d take care of it. I wondered if you had any advice besides salting and burning the corpse?”
“No, boy, just stay out of it. You don’t want to start mixing up with this stuff, trust me.”
“Is there anyone else near here who can do the job?”
“I don’t know, ’s not like I’m dispatch central here!”
“There’s a family, with kids, and they’re getting hurt. I’d just like to know if there’s anything different about getting rid of a poltergeist than a ghost.”
Another phone rang faintly in the background.
“Hold on.”
Garth could hear Bobby’s second conversation. How should I know?...So no hex bags or EMF…Acting weird how?...From the corpse? I gotta look something up, hold on, I gotta deal with this this kid…Garth could hear the exasperation when Mr. Singer spoke to him again.
“So what’s this thing doing?”
“Bad smells, flickering lights, but the big problem is it’s hitting people with stuff it’s throwing around. The six-year-old got clobbered by a candlestick.”
“Balls! I’m tied up here and don’t know anyone down there. Okay, listen careful. Poltergeist’s a bit different than a run-of-the-mill ghost. Poltergeist is attached to the house and only way to get rid of it is with gris-gris bags. Write this down…”
***
A list of peculiar items in hand, Garth began an on-line search for angelica root and whatever van-van oil was. Crossroad dirt…that he could get from any dirt road intersection, right?
Seven hours later Garth tied the cord on the fourth cotton bag and debated whether it mattered if he went to Pikesville tonight or in the morning. It would be late when he got there, and he really didn’t want to do this in the dark. The family wasn’t in the house right now, no one would be in danger, at least not until he went in there, so he’d take the time to eat and get a good night’s sleep. And it would give him time to think of how to approach the family so they’d listen to him.
A dark-skinned couple answered Garth’s knock on door one-fifteen of the Holiday Inn.
“Mr. Ambroise, Mrs. Ambroise, my name is Garth and I’m here to help you with the trouble with your house.”
He saw the guarded look the tired couple exchanged. “We’ve had three different home inspectors and the cops say there’s nothing wrong with our house,” the husband stated tersely.
“Right, they couldn’t find anything, which is why I’m here.”
“And how can you help when no one else can?” Mrs. Ambroise had a subtle Jamaican lilt to her speech, and her wide eyes were fastened on him suspiciously.
“Okay, this is going to sound a little strange, but don’t shut the door in my face,” Garth spoke quickly. He’d decided he was just going to be direct and go with the truth even if it sounded outrageous, because he didn’t want to worry about keeping a story straight. And because he really believed honesty was the best policy. “Your house has a spirit haunting it, a poltergeist.” He tried to subtly edge his foot across the doorway so they couldn’t slam the door in his face. “For whatever reason, it has decided it doesn’t want you living there, so it causes things to happen to make you afraid and think you’re going crazy until it gets you to leave. I know how to banish it and I can do that if you’ll allow me.”
As he expected, Mr. Ambroise moved to shut the door. “Before you make me leave, just think for a minute. What harm would it do to let me try? I believe what you say has been happening is real, why don’t you believe I can help?”
“Donat.” Mrs. Ambroise’s quiet voice stopped the door more effectively than Garth’s foot. “Something is wrong in that house. Maybe we should listen to what he has to say.”
Garth knew how to take advantage of an opening. “I just want to help, I don’t want any money or anything, but I need your permission to do this.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to help strangers?” Mrs. Ambroise asked quietly.
“Because…you need it and I think I can do it.”
Mr. Ambroise frowned. “Have you done anything like this before?”
Garth evaded a direct answer on that one. “I’ve had experiences with ghosts and haunted objects. They all turned out well.”
“Excuse us a moment.” The couple stepped back into the room and pushed the door closed, but Garth noticed they didn’t lock it. Their voices were a low murmur, but after a brief conversation they came back.
“What do you want us to do?” Mr. Ambroise was still on the fence, but he was going along with his wife for the moment.
“I need the key to the house, and your permission to make four holes in the walls, one on each of the north, south, east, and west corners. Then I put pouches with the banishing ingredients in the holes and, poof! Your troubles are over.”
“We will give you the keys…and permission. I trust you, Mr. Garth.” Both pairs of eyes looked at him soberly.
Suddenly feeling uncomfortably responsible, Garth held out his hand for the keys.
Garth changed in a Citgo station washroom. He’d thought about how he was going to do the four corners, he was pretty certain the poltergeist wouldn’t just sit around while he tried to get rid of it, so he’d come up with the plan to tackle the job in two parts.
First, he was going in undercover, so to speak, as electrician. He would make the four holes and then in step two he would place the gris gris bags in them. Wearing Wal-Mart issue workshirt and pants, he opened the door to the Ambroise’s haunted house and set about convincing the spirit he was harmless by carrying on a running monologue.
“So, the family thinks they need some new outlets to fix the electrical problems…I’ll just make the holes for the outlets right now…hmmm…” Garth discretely checked the compass he’d pulled from the duffel bag he was carrying. “Let’s see, that looks like a good spot…”
He shoved the armchair away from the wall and crouched down with the keyhole saw he’d brought. The tip of the blade poked through the drywall easily and Garth quickly made a small rectangular opening. He was tempted to put the banishing bag in immediately, but he was pretty sure the poltergeist would object to more holes in the walls if Garth did that, so he casually stood and stretched.
“Okay, they wanted four outlets…where to put the next one?” He meandered toward the east wall and realized he would have to make a hole in the ceramic tile of the bathroom.
“Darn!” He would just have to smash a hole with the hammer, he guessed. And he’d do that one last.
He was almost done with the hole in the bedroom on the south side of the house when he smelled it-a putrid reek that combined the worst of vomit, excrement, and spoiled meat. “Ewww!” He covered his nose and tried to breathe through his mouth, but the odor even made the taste of the air sickening.
Trying to keep his real purpose hidden, Garth mumbled, “They seriously have something wrong with the sewer pipes,” while he consulted his compass again to find the west corner of the house. Just as he bent over, all the light bulbs in the ceiling fixture shattered. Garth felt the prick of the shards on his unprotected neck. He was running out of time and this time his hole was a ragged mess. Shaking glass out of his hair, he pondered the best way to finish now that the poltergeist was aware of him.
He still had to make the opening in the bathroom tile. He would just have to smash through it with a hammer. “Sorry, Ambroises,” he muttered, “but easier to patch the wall than you.” He could get the bag in that wall as soon as he opened it, but how would he manage to get to the other three walls with a pissed spirit after him?
This just wasn’t a job for one person. He would get the first bag in place, then bug out to get reinforcements. He set his duffel at the front door, grabbed the hammer and hid one of the gris gris in his hand. As he headed to the bathroom, all the doors in the house slammed shut, the force causing several pictures to fall off the walls. More broken glass.
“I just have to use the bathroom, then I’m out of here,” Garth announced loudly. He tucked his hammer under his arm to open the bathroom door, it had slammed with the rest. He didn’t want it to close behind him…Garth pulled several towels from the hooks and wedged the door open with them.
“Here goes nothing!”
Three bashes and there was a big enough gap in the splintered tile for him to stuff the pouch in…and the house roared.
There was no other way to describe the noise that sucked the air from the room as the bathroom door heaved back and forth trying to close. Garth flung himself out, running for the front door through a hail of papers, books, and knick-knacks. A large hardcover caught his chin, briefly stunning him, and he flailed wildly to keep from getting hit again.
He grabbed the duffel and the doorknob simultaneously…and the door was stuck shut.
Garth tried to avoid profanity, he really did, but as a crystal paperweight, a wooden candlestick, and several paperbacks thumped painfully on his back, he allowed that an expletive was appropriate.
“Damn!”
He still had the hammer in his hand and he flashed back to standing on the porch with Olivia trying to get to Aunt Margaret, and the grumpy stranger getting them out of the Lilburn House…and he threw the hammer through the picture window, used the duffel to push the glass slivers out, and jumped headfirst into a rosebush.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!”
Unfortunately, there was no way to disentangle from the thorns without using his hands to push away. Finally on his feet, Garth looked at the myriad tiny bleeding punctures in his hands and didn’t want to think what his face lookedlike based on how much it stung.
And he still had to get three more bags in the walls.
***
“What happened?!” Mrs. Ambroise was suitably horrified when she opened the motel door.
“May I wash up in your bathroom?” Garth asked calmly.
The Ambroise children looked up from the game they were playing as Garth passed by and he heard them gasp. “Henry, that man, he’s bleeding!”
Regretfully ruining the nice white washcloth, Garth checked in the mirror when he’d sopped up the blood. The tiny red pinpricks looked like he had a nasty case of acne.
“Do you have some antibiotic I could use?” he asked when he opened the door to see Mrs. Ambroise standing right there.
“Sit down,” she ordered instead, and Garth perched the edge of the tub as she dabbed ointment across his cheeks and forehead.
“I need to talk to you and your husband,” he said when she finished.
“It’s a logistical problem,” Garth explained to the two of them. “The walls are too far apart for one person to get the banishing bags in all the holes before the poltergeist attacks.” He looked at them unflinchingly. “The only way you’re going to get your house back is if you help me. It will be a little dangerous, no question. But I think if three of us go in together the spirit won’t know who to go after first, and we only need minutes to get the job done. So will you take the risk to get your lives back?”
“What about Henry and Marie? We can’t just leave them here alone, and we don’t know anyone else in the area.”
Garth thought a minute. “I know. I can ask my Aunt Margaret to stay with them for the afternoon.”
He just said he was doing a special consulting job and needed to ask a favor on behalf of his clients. His aunt fussed when she saw his face, but he explained he’d had a close encounter with a rosebush, and she told him to be more careful before Mrs. Ambroise introduced her to Henry and Marie-Frances.
***
“My window!” Mrs. Ambroise exclaimed when Garth parked in front of the house. “You should file an insurance claim for vandalism,” Garth said as he got out of the car. “I’m afraid it’s even worse on the inside. But once the poltergeist is gone, you’ll be able to put it back to rights and have a safe, happy home.”
On the porch he handed out the tied pouches and explained exactly which hole each of them would tackle. He turned the key in the lock.
“Ready?”
“Oh my lord!”
“Go! Go! Look around later! Bedroom, now!”
Garth didn’t think there was any glass left to break, but the shatter and Mrs. Ambroise’s scream corrected his mistake.
“Keep going!” he shouted as he headed for the farthest hole. He was almost there when a lamp cord suddenly slithered around his ankles and he smacked full-length on the floor.
“You’re. Not. Stopping. Me.” Garth shoved himself forward on his elbows, stretched as far as he could reach, and just managed to tip his bag into the opening.
Complete silence.
“Yahoo! We did it! Take that, you nasty!”
***
“Just make sure when you get the repairs done that those bags stay in the walls.”
The couple stood together, shaking slightly. Mr. Ambroise hugged his wife around the shoulders. She was holding a tissue to the lightly bleeding scratch on her cheek. “What if…is there a way to reach you?”
Garth started to reach for his wallet to retrieve his business card but stopped. They couldn’t call his father’s company for something like this…He rummaged in his pants pocket until he found the receipt from the gas station, and scribbled his cell phone number on it.
“If you ever have any more trouble, you call me, okay?”
The couple’s shaky smiles stayed with him as they drove off to retrieve their kids.
Shifting around behind the wheel, his bruises making it a challenge to get comfortable, Garth thought he just might get some special business cards made up.