Fic: "Jinx"
Title: Jinx
Rating: PG for violence and gory scenes
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Word count: ~6900
Summary: An abandoned orphanage, two Winchester brothers, and three creepy spirits of deceased children deciding to use the brothers as pawns in their own twisted games. Hurt!Sam, Hurt!/Protective!Dean.
Chapter 1
"Ready or not, here we come!"
Fighting against vertigo, Sam pressed his back harder against the wall he was leaning against - his heart hammering rapidly and his blood running cold as the children's voices kept up their singsong around him.
"We know you're heeeere… Squeak, Piggy, Squeak!" One of them sang and giggled. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
In the pitch-dark hallway of the old, abandoned orphanage, Sam felt rather than saw the shadows creep closer. He slowly started edging his way along the walls; searching for an exit while his breath puffed out in little white clouds that were barely visible in the darkness of the room. The lights of the dusty-old lamps, hanging on each side of the walls of the narrow hallway, flickered shortly and allowed Sam a brief glimpse of pale, twisted children faces - their black holes instead of eyes staring unseeingly back at him - before the hallway fell dark once more.
Despite the chilly temperature of the hallway, a drop of sweat rolled down Sam's temple and got mixed with the trickle of blood from his hairline. Trying to blink his disorientation away, Sam desperately fumbled for a way out of the darkness - a way to escape the creepy spirits of the dead orphaned kids that was currently closing in on him, and a way to get back to Dean. The younger Winchester prayed his big brother was okay; had last seen Dean a few seconds before the ghosts had decided to make the brothers a couple of pawns in their own twisted version of Hide and Seek by separating the Winchesters by an invisible force. Sam could only wonder what had happened to Dean - could only hope that Dean hadn't been dragged through the various corridors in the old orphanage, as Sam had, until left in the situation where Sam found himself now; in darkness, bruised and alone. The youngest Winchester brother had lost his weapon and flashlight along the way, and was only left with a small container of salt in his pocket that Sam knew wouldn't be much to ward himself against the ghosts.
"Goosey goosey gander, where shall I wander? Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber.." The children voices reeled off while coming disturbingly closer.
Sam's heart pounded wildly in his chest as he desperately searched his pockets for anything useful - letting out a short sigh of relief when his fingers closed around his zippo. It wouldn't be a great defense against the ghosts but it could at least provide him with a little bit of light until he'd made a protective circle of salt around himself. The younger Winchester pulled the lighter out, and swiftly opened the lid with a clink-sound which easily ignited a glowing flame that lit up the smothering darkness around him - then gasped as he found himself face to face with one of the dead kids.
"There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers.." The ghost sang with a disconcerting smirk, and Sam's eyes widened as he, while reaching into his pocket for the salt, felt something grasp his ankle."I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs."
Sam yelped as he was suddenly airborne - his breath stolen from him a few seconds later as the ghost let go of him and sent his body tumbling down a set of stairs, before the young hunter connected with the bottom of the staircase with a sickening thud.
A small, pale hand closed around the zippo lighter and picked it up from where it had landed in the commotion - the gleam of the small flame lighting up the staircase underneath. The dead child looked down at the youngest Winchester, who was lying motionless and sprawled out on the bottom of the stairs, and the ghost smirked wickedly before turning towards the two other ghosts.
"Gotcha." The kid smirked and blew out the flame with a giggle that echoed into the night.
_ SPN _
"Saaaaam?" Dean called - then coughed from the dust of plaster that had rained down on him from when his body had collided with the drywall. "Sammy?"
Shotgun still in hand, Dean shook off the cobwebs and picked up his still luminous flashlight from the floor before letting the beam slide across the room. Through the dusty beam of light, the older Winchester's eyes fell upon the remains of what had most likely been the dining room back when the house had been a functioning home for orphaned kids. The room was more or less empty - apart from an oblong table in the middle of the room with a row of chairs on each side of it. Judging from the layer of dust covering the surface of the table and the enormous patterns of spider webs that decorated the space between the chairs, it was clear as day that the furniture hadn't been used in ages. It was like having entered a frigging museum.. or a tomb.
"Sam?" Dean called again and hissed a bit as a sharp stab of pain shot through his head.
Dean winced as he touched the back of his throbbing head, then gritted his teeth as his hand came back bloody.
"Those ghosts are in need of some serious ass-kicking!" Dean growled to himself.
He got back on his feet with a grunt, raised the shotgun and flashlight in front of him and left the dusty room in the direction he'd originally come from before he and his brother had been separated.
The brothers had arrived and checked into a motel room in the nearest town earlier that day after Dean had found the case in a local paper. Some teenagers had gone missing after they'd supposedly been camping in the nearby woods and played a round of I dare you-challenges that involved staying a night in the old orphanage. Only two out of five teenagers had made it out of the house alive. The bodies of the three other teenagers had been found the following day - one of them hanging from a banister with a set of jump ropes around her neck. Another one had bled out in the basement of the house after his tongue had been cut out, and the last one had died from eternal bleedings after having received multiple hard blows to his body.
Dean and Sam had talked shortly with the local police who thought the murders were the work of a serial killer, and the brothers then spent most of the day questioning the surviving teenagers before doing research about the abandoned orphanage. They found several testimonies and reports witnessing about weird experiences or mysterious deaths happening at the orphanage, and the brothers had then decided to pay the house a visit themselves.
After entering the house, they had decided to stay together and search the house in unison. The orphanage was a three stories house with lots of stairways, rooms in different shapes and sizes, and crooked hallways that seemed to go on forever.
"Hey, check this out." Sam had said at one point as he had used his flashlight to light up a framed picture hanging on the shabby yellowish wallpaper that covered the walls.
"Oak Hollow Orphanage, 1927." Dean read at the bottom of the picture and let his eyes scan the old black and white picture showing a bunch of kids lined up in front of the building.
"You see this?" Sam asked and tapped the glass with a finger, pointing at three kids that seemed a bit desolated from the rest of the kids. "I think these are the disabled kids who died here back in the early 30s."
"It was a blind kid, a mute and a cripple, right?" Dean had asked, thinking back at the article Sam had shown him at the motel room earlier in the day, while he studied the faces of the kids on the framed picture.
"Right." Sam nodded. "Although it was never proved, rumor has it that they were murdered by some of the other orphans because they didn't like how the disabled kids were different from the rest of them. They were the first reported deaths in this house, but all the mystery didn't start until years later."
"Still, several witnesses have mentioned hearing children's laughter and some even swear they've seen glimpses of kids here too." Dean said. "Could be the ghosts we're looking for."
"Yeah, seems plausible." Sam agreed and nodded towards a door behind Dean. "Maybe we can find their names in a register."
Dean turned around and let the beam of his flashlight slide over the sign on the outside of a door saying 'Private' before looking back at his younger brother.
"Time to do some more research, geek boy." Dean grinned.
It had all gone rather smooth from there. Sam had picked the lock of the door while Dean kept a look-out for any potential dangers, and the brothers had then entered the room. The dusty office-like room consisted of a wooden desk with a chair, and up against the walls were several card index cabinets filled with files about the orphans that had stayed in the house over the years.
Dean had to give it to his brother; Sam was skillful in everything that contained documents and systematics and it didn't take the youngest Winchester long to locate the files belonging to the murdered orphans. Since the kids hadn't had any families, their bodies had been buried in the woods behind the orphanage - no cremation involved.
It had all been rather easy.. too damn easy.
As the Winchester brothers headed back towards the entrance of the house to get outside to find the graves, Dean had suddenly been flung across the hall and through a large doorway before having connected with a wall. The impact shortly robbed him of consciousness and when he'd woken up again, everything around him had been eerily quiet and Sam had been nowhere in sight.
"Sammy?" Dean called again, then froze on the spot as he heard children's laughter echo through the big house.
Dean involuntarily shuddered from the sound of their giggles - there was always something extra creepy about the ghosts of dead kids, but the pure evilness in the sound also reminded the older Winchester brother that these ghosts could have done anything to Sam while Dean had been out cold.
"I swear to God, if you've hurt Sam.." Dean muttered and clenched his jaw hard before moving forward once more.
With his shotgun and flashlight still held out in front of him, Dean started ascending the stairs of the main hall as soundlessly as possible, while he listened carefully for any sound that could indicate where the ghosts were hiding and where Dean could find his missing brother.
"Olly olly oxen free!" A kid's voice singsonged.
"What is this? The Casper version of Hide and Seek?" Dean growled, his breath turning into white puffs in the now chilly temperature of the hallway. "Where's my brother?"
"Huckle Buckle Beanstalk!" One of the kids yelled.
"Your turn to find him! Close your eyes and count to sixty!" Another one of the kids giggled and Dean's knuckles turned white as he clenched the shotgun hard in anger.
"No more games!" He shouted. "What have you done to my brother?"
"Play with us!" One of the kids demanded and Dean then had to jump to the side when a ball, the size of a small boulder, suddenly came flying directly at him from the darkness.
"The hell..?" Dean muttered - then dodged as another ball swooshed through the air, barely missing his head.
"Peek-a-boo." One of the dead orphans announced as she all of a sudden showed up in front of him, but Dean was fast and fired off a round of rock salt bullets that pierced through the ghost and forced it to disappear before it could do any harm.
As the resound of the gunshot died out, Dean expected more hits to come his way - his finger resting over the trigger of the shotgun, alert and prepared for the next attack to appear. But nothing came at him. In fact, everything had once more turned eerily quiet around him and that actually felt more disconcerting to Dean than the straightforward attacks had done.
The hallway turned colder around him, and the flashlight in his hand started flickering. Dean tapped the flashlight against his thigh a couple of times, and when he raised it again to light up the surroundings in front of him, the older Winchester gaped a little from the sight that met him.
Jinx.
The word, that hadn't been present just a few seconds earlier, was now painted everywhere in front of him - on the walls, on the floor and even on the ceiling - and a cold feeling, that had nothing to do with the temperature of the hallway, crept up on Dean. The crimson-colored word, that had already started sagging, looked like it had been painted in blood, and Dean swallowed nervously while dread started filling his heart.
"It's not Sam's blood. It's not Sam's blood." Dean muttered to himself before he picked up his search for his little brother once more - slowly moving down the corridor while keeping his senses on high alert.
He rounded a corner and clenched his teeth as the word Jinx kept decorating the walls he passed by. Dean felt like a pawn in a sick game - like a mouse in a maze trying to find the piece of cheese without knowing that electrocution could be waiting right ahead. Dean knew that the ghosts could attack him at any time they wanted, but they didn't as much as make a sound, and that made the oldest Winchester feel even more like a piece in the dead orphans' twisted games.
Dean was about to call for Sam once again when the beam of his flashlight fell upon Sam's shotgun that was lying deserted in the middle of the floor. The older brother's worry for the youngest Winchester didn't lessen one bit by the thought of Sam being without a weapon to protect himself from the ghosts, but Dean still felt a little bit hopeful that the discovery of the gun meant that he was at least getting closer to finding Sam.
Drops of blood on the floor was the next thing Dean noticed - a fresh, bloody trail that could only have been left behind by Sam, and could only mean that Sam was hurt. The oldest Winchester followed the trail and his concern for Sam only grew bigger - especially when the trail abruptly ended like had the younger brother suddenly vanished into thin air.
Dean stopped in front of a staircase; his heart started hammering rapidly when he lit up the darkness below him and saw a small puddle of blood at the bottom of the stairs.
"Sam." Dean whispered, his mouth turning dry when he thought about the huge possibility that his younger brother had fallen down the stairs somehow.
Sam was nowhere in sight but Dean could clearly tell that a person had been dragged away from the bloody puddle on the floor - the red trail leading away from there surely indicating that much. The only question - one Dean didn't want to think about for even one second - was whether his brother had survived the fall or not.
"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water." The ghosts suddenly sang in unison, tearing Dean out of his dark thoughts while the temperature dropped once more around him. "Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after."
Dean thanked his great hunter reflexes when he all of a sudden felt something shove him in the back and the quick grasp he took of the wooden banister averted the fall he would have definitely taken down the stairs had he not been trained to react fast. Dean had dropped his flashlight in the hurry, but he picked it up from where it had landed a few steps down - then rushed down the rest of the stairs before the ghosts could try to push him a second time.
"You're it!" One of the ghosts giggled from somewhere above him.
"I'm done playing!" Dean growled at it, only barely holding off his desire to wildly fire off his shotgun until hitting one of the frigging spirits, but knowing it would be pretty damn stupid to waste the bullets. As soon as he'd found Sam though, those ghosts would be nothing but a burning pile of bones - and Dean would personally be the one to light up the fire!
The dead orphans went quiet yet again, and the hair on the back of Dean's neck stood up as the word Jinx turned up in his new surroundings as well. The older Winchester followed the bloody trail from the bottom of the stairs and through an opened set of doors - then found himself in a big room, containing a long row of beds on each side of the oblong walls, which he guessed must have been working as a dormitory in the orphanage's glory days. Dean let his flashlight slide across the empty beds but then stopped in his tracks when his eyes suddenly fell upon his missing little brother.
"Oh shi-, Sam!" Dean shouted and quickly ran towards his brother.
Chapter 2
Dean's heart pounded rapidly as he closed the distance to his brother - whose hands and legs were currently tied up to the chair he was slumped in.
Sam's head was bowed down, chin to chest, which made the younger Winchester's floppy brown mop of hair cover up his face so that Dean couldn't immediately tell whether or not his brother was conscious. By the sound of Dean's voice though, Sam stirred a bit - but he still kept his head down and didn't make as much as a sound when Dean called his name.
JINX.
Dean almost halted as the word he had passed by several times in his search for Sam, showed up once more. This time around though, the sight of it filled Dean with an unease that was ten times worse than anything else he'd experienced that night. It wasn't as much the fact that it had been painted in the same crimson color that had reminded Dean of blood, that freaked him out - it was more the fact that it had been written in a semicircle right in front of Sam's feet as if the word was directly related to the younger Winchester somehow.
"Sammy!" Dean exclaimed, dropped his shotgun right on top of the written word and crouched down in front of his brother, before placing the flashlight between his knees so that the beam of it could light up Sam's slumped form.
Sam still didn't say anything, and as Dean cupped Sam's bloody cheeks in his hands, tilted his brother's head up, and bent slightly forward to get a good look at the kid, the older Winchester brother almost flinched back by the sight that met him.
"S-Sam." Dean stuttered out on a gasp, fighting to catch his breath as he stared wide-eyed at his brother's face. "Oh shit, shit, shit."
Jinx..
The word made so much sense now.
Sam's mouth and eyes had been sewn shut with large black stitches - in a crisscross pattern that looked so twisted and grotesque in combination with the blood and bruises that covered Sam's face that Dean felt like crying.
"It's okay, it's okay." Dean soothed with hammering heart as Sam let out a whimpering sound - then immediately started working on the ropes, that kept the younger brother bound to the chair, with his now bloody palms. "I'll get you free, hang on. Hang on, Sammy."
As soon as he had one of his hands free, Sam instantly started clawing at the stitches across his mouth and eyes with his fingernails, before letting out a pitiful sound of distress as Dean grabbed his wrist and pulled Sam's hand away from his face.
"Whoa, Sam! Stop!" Dean exclaimed and kept a hold of Sam's wrist while his little brother struggled to bring it back towards his face. "You're gonna hurt yourself."
Despite Dean's warnings though, Sam kept trying to claw at his face while seeming to become more and more agitated with the fact that Dean didn't allow him to do it, so Dean let go of Sam's wrist and instead grabbed the younger brother's hand in his.
"Sammy, listen to me." Dean said in a soft voice, used his other hand to grab the back of Sam's neck and pulled him forward until their foreheads touched - then frowned when he sensed Sam's ragged breathing and the tremors that ran through his brother's body. "I know you're hurting and I know you're freaked out. But if you keep tearing at your face you're gonna mess it up pretty badly. And believe me when I say that you need all the beauty care you can get if people are ever gonna believe that you and I are related."
Sam huffed out an annoyed sound at Dean's attempt to lighten up the situation, then let out another whimper and sniffled miserably. Dean squeezed Sam's hand while fighting against the rage that burned inside of him from thinking about what those frigging ghosts had done to his brother - but he kept his tone light and soft nonetheless so that he wouldn't freak out his already freaked out little brother any further.
"Trust me, okay? I've got this. I'm gonna get you out of here and then I'll fix you up just fine." Dean promised. "Maybe even give you a manicure, huh? How about that?"
Dean wasn't sure how much Sam was able to comprehend in his current state, but even though the younger man was hurt and sagging heavily against Dean, Sam hummed out a sound in answer to Dean's words and gave his brother's hand a weak squeeze. Dean decided to call that a win and took the gesture as his cue to get on with the task of unbinding his brother - relieved that Sam had listened to his words and didn't try to claw at his face any more after that. Once Sam was free, his body slumped forward but Dean braced his hands against Sam's chest and managed to catch the youngest Winchester before he could fall out of the chair completely.
"Sam." Dean grunted under his brother's weight, and pushed Sam up and back until he was fully seated in the chair again. "Work with me here, buddy. You think you can walk?"
Instead of seeming to acknowledge the question, Sam's head lolled against his shoulder and Dean shook him a bit to try to keep him staying conscious.
"Hey! Stay with me here, bro." Dean said. "You with me? Sammy?"
Sam's head kept lolling, and Dean cursed the fact that he couldn't see his brother's eyes - couldn't tell whether or not his brother was coherent enough to understand anything Dean said to him. It was also a big problem that Sam couldn't talk because that left the older brother in the dark when it came to Sam's injuries. And there had to be injuries from the fall Sam had taken down the stairs, no question about that, but Dean didn't know the extent of them, and there wouldn't be time to care for those injuries until Dean had found a way to bring Sam safely out of the orphanage anyway. Dean wished he could remove the sutures from Sam's mouth and eyes right away, but he didn't dare touch any of them in the current situation - wouldn't risk all sorts of infections to set in or cause scarring to his little brother's face.
However, before Dean could figure out the best way to deal with the situation, the temperature of the room suddenly dropped significantly, and Dean wasted no time in picking up the shotgun and stepping in front of Sam to shield his brother from the attack he knew was about to come.
"Here's the little piggy, see him snout. Slit him open and the guts fall out!" The uncanny children's voices singsonged while Dean's finger hovered over the trigger of the shotgun, ready to fire off the gun the moment he caught even the slightest glimpse of the ghosts.
He didn't have to wait for long. The giggling ghosts decided to attack him all at once, and Dean fired off shot after shot of rock salt bullets at them. Only problem was that whenever one of the ghosts disappeared in a rain of salt, one of the others would show back up again, and Dean soon ran out of bullets. Not having time to reload the shotgun, Dean twirled around to take a hold of Sam, as if he could somehow drag the younger man out of the room before the dead orphans could get to him, but Dean was instantly flung to the side - once again separated from his brother.
Dean tumbled over one of the rusty old bedframes, hit the floor with an oomph-sound and slowly got back up on his knees - then gasped in terror as he saw a pale kid's hand snake a rope around Sam's neck. The youngest Winchester jolted when the rope tightened around his neck and he weakly started tearing at the material with his hands while his body writhed in a desperate attempt to escape the choking.
"No!" Dean shouted, wide-eyed, and frantically searched for some kind of weapon - then closed his hands around a bar of the eroded iron bed frame and gritted his teeth in effort as he started pulling at the bar with all of his strength.
The bar's poor resistance gave in, allowing Dean to pull it free of the bed and then, in one swift motion, the older Winchester jumped over the footboard of the bed and drew back the iron bar before swinging it at the first ghost he passed by. Even before the ghost had faded away completely, Dean had already swung the bar again at the second dead kid's head and ended his counterstrike with the spirit that was choking the life out of Sam.
As soon as the last ghost disappeared, Sam fell into a motionless heap on the floor. Dean pulled out a container of salt from his jacket and quickly made a circle of salt around them that could temporarily ward them against the dead orphans, before he dropped to his knees beside his fallen brother.
"Sam! Oh Jesus.. Sammy!" Dean exclaimed as he tore the rope away from Sam's neck and cradled his brother's face in his hands. "Sammy!"
Completely ignoring the reappearance of the ghosts outside of the circle of salt, Dean was relieved to discover that Sam was in fact still breathing - although very raggedly and weakly. The younger Winchester's neck looked bruised and had already started to swell a bit which did nothing to ease Dean's worries - neither did the fact that Sam stayed unconscious despite of Dean's ministrations.
"Damn it.. You stay with me, Sam. You hear me? No checking out on me!" Dean ordered, dug into his jacket and drew out a pocketknife that he swiftly flipped open.
Dean knew that Sam needed as much air as he could get after almost getting choked to death, so he went against his original decision to not touch the sutures and used the knife to start cutting through the stitches that kept Sam's mouth sewn together. Despite the pearls of perspiration that appeared on Dean's forehead and trickled down his temples, and the constant pestering from the dead kids that fortunately couldn't cross the salt, the older Winchester brother's hand remained steady and calm as he worked on Sam's face. He didn't remove the loosened sutures completely - only cut through them to free Sam's lips from each other, and it didn't take long before Sam wheezed in gulps of air through his mouth and stirred shortly.
"Sammy? Hey Sammy?" Dean called, though only managed to get a few unintelligible mutters from his brother before Sam fell still once more.
Dean didn't like the pallor of Sam's skin that he caught a glimpse of through all the blood on his brother's face, and he knew that he had to get Sam out of the house and taken care of as soon as possible. However, for that to happen, Dean had to find a way to get rid of the creepy dead children first.
"The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle in your snout. They eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your toes!" The ghosts sang in unison as they danced around the circle of salt, and the way they preceded into giggling and pointing at Sam made Dean's blood boil.
"Shut up!" Dean growled at them with eyes burning of anger.
He picked up his shotgun that was luckily just within reach, and reloaded it with rock salt bullets before focusing on Sam again. Dean hated to do it, but he knew that the only way for him to help Sam was to get rid of the ghosts - and the only way to do that was to leave Sam behind while the older brother took care of the salt and burn. It was a bit of a risk to take, sure, but Dean saw no other option as long as the youngest Winchester was out of action.
Being as gentle with his little brother as he possibly could be, Dean moved and rolled Sam into recovery position to prevent an obstruction of Sam's airway - downward mouth, chin up, and arms and legs locked in place. Dean wished he had a blanket or could at least have used his jacket to cover Sam up and keep the younger brother warm, but Dean unfortunately needed the contents of his jacket pockets for the salt and burn.
"I'll come back for you." Dean muttered and brushed Sam's bangs out of the younger man's eyes. "I promise."
The oldest Winchester then made sure that the salt circle was still unbroken around his little brother, before he put the iron bar into the waistband of the back of his pants and grabbed the shotgun and flashlight - then braced himself for the mission he had ahead of him.
"Hey, you fugly pieces of dead things!" Dean called out to the ghosts who slowly turned their heads in unison to stare back at him with their black holes instead of eyes. "How about we play something else for a change, huh?"
Dean cocked the shotgun and glared angrily at the three dead kids, before pointing the gun at one of them.
"You're it." He said and then fired off the gun - blasting the ghost away in a rain of salt while jumping over the salt circle and rushing towards the exit of the room.
The other two ghosts flickered up in front of him, but Dean blasted them away too before continuing his way out of the room and started looking for a door leading outside. It was a never-ending nightmare though as the deceased orphans kept showing up, but Dean was not a Winchester for nothing; he knew damn well how to defend himself against three dead kids - powerful spirits or not! Besides, he was a man with a mission, and with Sam on the line, he couldn't afford to make any mistakes. As soon as the shotgun ran out of bullets, Dean discarded it for the iron bar and in the end managed to get out of the house - without too much corporal damage to happen in the process.
Wiping some blood off his forehead with the back of his hand, the older Winchester brother stayed alert as he expected the ghosts to follow him outside of the house. But they didn't. Dean figured that the kids were either bound to the house somehow or had decided to let Dean go to go back to playing games with Sam instead - the thought of the latter making a shudder run through Dean's body, even though Sam was supposed to be safe inside the circle of salt.
Dean swung by the Impala to pick up a shovel and some more salt - then headed straight towards the backside of the house, towards the woods where the dead kids were thought to be buried, as fast as he could. His mind kept circling around the possible scenarios of the ghosts finding a way to hurt Sam again, or worse - finding a way to off the youngest Winchester brother before Dean could stop them. With those horrible thoughts in mind, Dean was more than a little relieved when the graves of the dead orphans were easily found. Just around the fringes of the woods, there was a little clearing and inside that clearing were three wooden crosses on top of each their small burial mound. There had once been names written on the crosses but, even though decadence had washed the names away over time, Dean didn't doubt for a second that these were the graves he was looking for.
"I'll frigging show them not to mess with the Winchesters.." Dean mumbled as he started digging into the dirt.
Several minutes, and a whole pile of dug-up dirt, later, Dean tossed the shovel aside and reached into his jacket for the salt and lighter fluid. He emptied the contains into the three graves - then found a matchbox, opened it up and picked up a pile of matches. As if sensing that something was about to go down, the three orphans suddenly flickered out in front of their graves, and Dean couldn't help but smirk in satisfaction by the vengeance he was about to get for what those kids had done to his brother.
"Game over, you sons of bitches!" Dean said, lit up the matches and dumped them into the graves - at the same time as the ghosts charged towards him.
Before they could reach him though, all three of the dead orphaned kids went up in orange flames - their screams ending as abruptly as they had started, and the night once again falling quiet.
_ SPN _
Sam was still pretty much out of it when Dean had returned to the old dormitory. Sam had remained protected inside the circle of salt, but judging from the fact that a big chunk of the salt was missing and the circle had been close to being broken, Dean knew that the ghosts had been disturbingly close to having reached Sam again - and Dean didn't even wanna think about what could have happened had he not burned their bones just in time.
The younger brother swam in and out of consciousness but had managed a few slurring calls of Dean's name - to which Dean had answered, before shushing his little brother and telling him not to talk. Although the oldest Winchester would have preferred to listen to Sam's voice after the whole Jinx-situation, the skin around Sam's mouth was a mess, and Dean didn't want him to make it worse by moving his mouth too much.
Since Sam was far from able to walk on his own, Dean half dragged, half carried his brother to the Impala before heading back to the motel room.
"D'n.." Sam slurred out once more as Dean helped lower Sam down on the bed farthest from the door.
"Right here, Sammy." Dean said in a soft voice, arranged the pillows behind Sam's neck and removed Sam's shoes and jacket before reaching for the first aid kit.
"Can't.. I can't see.." Sam croaked out and Dean winced by the hoarseness of his brother's voice.
"I know buddy. I'm working on it." Dean said while arranging an ice bag on Sam's swollen neck. "Now try not to talk, okay?"
Sam hummed in response - then wrinkled his brows as the action hurt his sore throat. Dean hissed in sympathy as he moved up Sam's shirt and saw the multi-colored bruises that covered most of Sam's chest and back. Dean fed the younger Winchester some painkillers and water, which soon made Sam drift off to sleep and allowed Dean some quietness to work on the stitches on Sam's face.
It was a long process but Dean eventually managed to remove all of the stitches, and treated Sam with some antibiotic cream before wrapping bandages around the affected areas - making sure that Sam could still both see and talk while the wounds healed up. The youngest Winchester also suffered from several broken ribs, a concussion and a few broken fingers, but considering that Sam had taken a tumble down the stairs, he got off rather cheaply after all.
With Sam finally cared for and settled into bed, sleeping peacefully, Dean took a shower to wash off blood and dirt before he went to his brother's bedside to make sure that Sam was properly tucked in.
"Dean.." Sam mumbled as Dean tugged the covers up to Sam's chin.
"Shh, just go back to sleep." Dean whispered.
A pair of green eyes blinked open and looked at him, and Dean couldn't help but smile by the sight of them - having missed seeing those familiar eyes and the complete trustful look that only Sam could send him.
"Did you finish the hunt?" Sam asked in a hoarse voice.
"Yup, all three ghosts are roasted and burned - done playing games for good now." Dean replied. "Now go back to sleep before I stitch up your mouth myself!"
Sam smiled tiredly, winced as the action caused him pain, but decided to do what Dean had told him to do for once, and his breath soon evened out in sleep.
Dean smiled fondly at his sleeping brother before he settled down on the other one of the motel room's two queen beds. He let out a deep sigh, groaning a bit as he stretched out sore muscles and then decided to turn on the TV to see if anything good was on. With the sound muted as not to disturb Sam, Dean flicked through the few TV channels - then almost flinched as the dead twin girls from The Shining suddenly turned up on the screen.
"Oh, come on!" Dean muttered in annoyance and turned off the TV again.
He tossed the remote aside on the nightstand next to the bed, and decided to catch some shuteye instead of watching more TV. After all, both Winchester brothers had had enough of dead children for one day.
THE END
Rating: PG for violence and gory scenes
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Word count: ~6900
Summary: An abandoned orphanage, two Winchester brothers, and three creepy spirits of deceased children deciding to use the brothers as pawns in their own twisted games. Hurt!Sam, Hurt!/Protective!Dean.
Chapter 1
"Ready or not, here we come!"
Fighting against vertigo, Sam pressed his back harder against the wall he was leaning against - his heart hammering rapidly and his blood running cold as the children's voices kept up their singsong around him.
"We know you're heeeere… Squeak, Piggy, Squeak!" One of them sang and giggled. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
In the pitch-dark hallway of the old, abandoned orphanage, Sam felt rather than saw the shadows creep closer. He slowly started edging his way along the walls; searching for an exit while his breath puffed out in little white clouds that were barely visible in the darkness of the room. The lights of the dusty-old lamps, hanging on each side of the walls of the narrow hallway, flickered shortly and allowed Sam a brief glimpse of pale, twisted children faces - their black holes instead of eyes staring unseeingly back at him - before the hallway fell dark once more.
Despite the chilly temperature of the hallway, a drop of sweat rolled down Sam's temple and got mixed with the trickle of blood from his hairline. Trying to blink his disorientation away, Sam desperately fumbled for a way out of the darkness - a way to escape the creepy spirits of the dead orphaned kids that was currently closing in on him, and a way to get back to Dean. The younger Winchester prayed his big brother was okay; had last seen Dean a few seconds before the ghosts had decided to make the brothers a couple of pawns in their own twisted version of Hide and Seek by separating the Winchesters by an invisible force. Sam could only wonder what had happened to Dean - could only hope that Dean hadn't been dragged through the various corridors in the old orphanage, as Sam had, until left in the situation where Sam found himself now; in darkness, bruised and alone. The youngest Winchester brother had lost his weapon and flashlight along the way, and was only left with a small container of salt in his pocket that Sam knew wouldn't be much to ward himself against the ghosts.
"Goosey goosey gander, where shall I wander? Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber.." The children voices reeled off while coming disturbingly closer.
Sam's heart pounded wildly in his chest as he desperately searched his pockets for anything useful - letting out a short sigh of relief when his fingers closed around his zippo. It wouldn't be a great defense against the ghosts but it could at least provide him with a little bit of light until he'd made a protective circle of salt around himself. The younger Winchester pulled the lighter out, and swiftly opened the lid with a clink-sound which easily ignited a glowing flame that lit up the smothering darkness around him - then gasped as he found himself face to face with one of the dead kids.
"There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers.." The ghost sang with a disconcerting smirk, and Sam's eyes widened as he, while reaching into his pocket for the salt, felt something grasp his ankle."I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs."
Sam yelped as he was suddenly airborne - his breath stolen from him a few seconds later as the ghost let go of him and sent his body tumbling down a set of stairs, before the young hunter connected with the bottom of the staircase with a sickening thud.
A small, pale hand closed around the zippo lighter and picked it up from where it had landed in the commotion - the gleam of the small flame lighting up the staircase underneath. The dead child looked down at the youngest Winchester, who was lying motionless and sprawled out on the bottom of the stairs, and the ghost smirked wickedly before turning towards the two other ghosts.
"Gotcha." The kid smirked and blew out the flame with a giggle that echoed into the night.
_ SPN _
"Saaaaam?" Dean called - then coughed from the dust of plaster that had rained down on him from when his body had collided with the drywall. "Sammy?"
Shotgun still in hand, Dean shook off the cobwebs and picked up his still luminous flashlight from the floor before letting the beam slide across the room. Through the dusty beam of light, the older Winchester's eyes fell upon the remains of what had most likely been the dining room back when the house had been a functioning home for orphaned kids. The room was more or less empty - apart from an oblong table in the middle of the room with a row of chairs on each side of it. Judging from the layer of dust covering the surface of the table and the enormous patterns of spider webs that decorated the space between the chairs, it was clear as day that the furniture hadn't been used in ages. It was like having entered a frigging museum.. or a tomb.
"Sam?" Dean called again and hissed a bit as a sharp stab of pain shot through his head.
Dean winced as he touched the back of his throbbing head, then gritted his teeth as his hand came back bloody.
"Those ghosts are in need of some serious ass-kicking!" Dean growled to himself.
He got back on his feet with a grunt, raised the shotgun and flashlight in front of him and left the dusty room in the direction he'd originally come from before he and his brother had been separated.
The brothers had arrived and checked into a motel room in the nearest town earlier that day after Dean had found the case in a local paper. Some teenagers had gone missing after they'd supposedly been camping in the nearby woods and played a round of I dare you-challenges that involved staying a night in the old orphanage. Only two out of five teenagers had made it out of the house alive. The bodies of the three other teenagers had been found the following day - one of them hanging from a banister with a set of jump ropes around her neck. Another one had bled out in the basement of the house after his tongue had been cut out, and the last one had died from eternal bleedings after having received multiple hard blows to his body.
Dean and Sam had talked shortly with the local police who thought the murders were the work of a serial killer, and the brothers then spent most of the day questioning the surviving teenagers before doing research about the abandoned orphanage. They found several testimonies and reports witnessing about weird experiences or mysterious deaths happening at the orphanage, and the brothers had then decided to pay the house a visit themselves.
After entering the house, they had decided to stay together and search the house in unison. The orphanage was a three stories house with lots of stairways, rooms in different shapes and sizes, and crooked hallways that seemed to go on forever.
"Hey, check this out." Sam had said at one point as he had used his flashlight to light up a framed picture hanging on the shabby yellowish wallpaper that covered the walls.
"Oak Hollow Orphanage, 1927." Dean read at the bottom of the picture and let his eyes scan the old black and white picture showing a bunch of kids lined up in front of the building.
"You see this?" Sam asked and tapped the glass with a finger, pointing at three kids that seemed a bit desolated from the rest of the kids. "I think these are the disabled kids who died here back in the early 30s."
"It was a blind kid, a mute and a cripple, right?" Dean had asked, thinking back at the article Sam had shown him at the motel room earlier in the day, while he studied the faces of the kids on the framed picture.
"Right." Sam nodded. "Although it was never proved, rumor has it that they were murdered by some of the other orphans because they didn't like how the disabled kids were different from the rest of them. They were the first reported deaths in this house, but all the mystery didn't start until years later."
"Still, several witnesses have mentioned hearing children's laughter and some even swear they've seen glimpses of kids here too." Dean said. "Could be the ghosts we're looking for."
"Yeah, seems plausible." Sam agreed and nodded towards a door behind Dean. "Maybe we can find their names in a register."
Dean turned around and let the beam of his flashlight slide over the sign on the outside of a door saying 'Private' before looking back at his younger brother.
"Time to do some more research, geek boy." Dean grinned.
It had all gone rather smooth from there. Sam had picked the lock of the door while Dean kept a look-out for any potential dangers, and the brothers had then entered the room. The dusty office-like room consisted of a wooden desk with a chair, and up against the walls were several card index cabinets filled with files about the orphans that had stayed in the house over the years.
Dean had to give it to his brother; Sam was skillful in everything that contained documents and systematics and it didn't take the youngest Winchester long to locate the files belonging to the murdered orphans. Since the kids hadn't had any families, their bodies had been buried in the woods behind the orphanage - no cremation involved.
It had all been rather easy.. too damn easy.
As the Winchester brothers headed back towards the entrance of the house to get outside to find the graves, Dean had suddenly been flung across the hall and through a large doorway before having connected with a wall. The impact shortly robbed him of consciousness and when he'd woken up again, everything around him had been eerily quiet and Sam had been nowhere in sight.
"Sammy?" Dean called again, then froze on the spot as he heard children's laughter echo through the big house.
Dean involuntarily shuddered from the sound of their giggles - there was always something extra creepy about the ghosts of dead kids, but the pure evilness in the sound also reminded the older Winchester brother that these ghosts could have done anything to Sam while Dean had been out cold.
"I swear to God, if you've hurt Sam.." Dean muttered and clenched his jaw hard before moving forward once more.
With his shotgun and flashlight still held out in front of him, Dean started ascending the stairs of the main hall as soundlessly as possible, while he listened carefully for any sound that could indicate where the ghosts were hiding and where Dean could find his missing brother.
"Olly olly oxen free!" A kid's voice singsonged.
"What is this? The Casper version of Hide and Seek?" Dean growled, his breath turning into white puffs in the now chilly temperature of the hallway. "Where's my brother?"
"Huckle Buckle Beanstalk!" One of the kids yelled.
"Your turn to find him! Close your eyes and count to sixty!" Another one of the kids giggled and Dean's knuckles turned white as he clenched the shotgun hard in anger.
"No more games!" He shouted. "What have you done to my brother?"
"Play with us!" One of the kids demanded and Dean then had to jump to the side when a ball, the size of a small boulder, suddenly came flying directly at him from the darkness.
"The hell..?" Dean muttered - then dodged as another ball swooshed through the air, barely missing his head.
"Peek-a-boo." One of the dead orphans announced as she all of a sudden showed up in front of him, but Dean was fast and fired off a round of rock salt bullets that pierced through the ghost and forced it to disappear before it could do any harm.
As the resound of the gunshot died out, Dean expected more hits to come his way - his finger resting over the trigger of the shotgun, alert and prepared for the next attack to appear. But nothing came at him. In fact, everything had once more turned eerily quiet around him and that actually felt more disconcerting to Dean than the straightforward attacks had done.
The hallway turned colder around him, and the flashlight in his hand started flickering. Dean tapped the flashlight against his thigh a couple of times, and when he raised it again to light up the surroundings in front of him, the older Winchester gaped a little from the sight that met him.
Jinx.
The word, that hadn't been present just a few seconds earlier, was now painted everywhere in front of him - on the walls, on the floor and even on the ceiling - and a cold feeling, that had nothing to do with the temperature of the hallway, crept up on Dean. The crimson-colored word, that had already started sagging, looked like it had been painted in blood, and Dean swallowed nervously while dread started filling his heart.
"It's not Sam's blood. It's not Sam's blood." Dean muttered to himself before he picked up his search for his little brother once more - slowly moving down the corridor while keeping his senses on high alert.
He rounded a corner and clenched his teeth as the word Jinx kept decorating the walls he passed by. Dean felt like a pawn in a sick game - like a mouse in a maze trying to find the piece of cheese without knowing that electrocution could be waiting right ahead. Dean knew that the ghosts could attack him at any time they wanted, but they didn't as much as make a sound, and that made the oldest Winchester feel even more like a piece in the dead orphans' twisted games.
Dean was about to call for Sam once again when the beam of his flashlight fell upon Sam's shotgun that was lying deserted in the middle of the floor. The older brother's worry for the youngest Winchester didn't lessen one bit by the thought of Sam being without a weapon to protect himself from the ghosts, but Dean still felt a little bit hopeful that the discovery of the gun meant that he was at least getting closer to finding Sam.
Drops of blood on the floor was the next thing Dean noticed - a fresh, bloody trail that could only have been left behind by Sam, and could only mean that Sam was hurt. The oldest Winchester followed the trail and his concern for Sam only grew bigger - especially when the trail abruptly ended like had the younger brother suddenly vanished into thin air.
Dean stopped in front of a staircase; his heart started hammering rapidly when he lit up the darkness below him and saw a small puddle of blood at the bottom of the stairs.
"Sam." Dean whispered, his mouth turning dry when he thought about the huge possibility that his younger brother had fallen down the stairs somehow.
Sam was nowhere in sight but Dean could clearly tell that a person had been dragged away from the bloody puddle on the floor - the red trail leading away from there surely indicating that much. The only question - one Dean didn't want to think about for even one second - was whether his brother had survived the fall or not.
"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water." The ghosts suddenly sang in unison, tearing Dean out of his dark thoughts while the temperature dropped once more around him. "Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after."
Dean thanked his great hunter reflexes when he all of a sudden felt something shove him in the back and the quick grasp he took of the wooden banister averted the fall he would have definitely taken down the stairs had he not been trained to react fast. Dean had dropped his flashlight in the hurry, but he picked it up from where it had landed a few steps down - then rushed down the rest of the stairs before the ghosts could try to push him a second time.
"You're it!" One of the ghosts giggled from somewhere above him.
"I'm done playing!" Dean growled at it, only barely holding off his desire to wildly fire off his shotgun until hitting one of the frigging spirits, but knowing it would be pretty damn stupid to waste the bullets. As soon as he'd found Sam though, those ghosts would be nothing but a burning pile of bones - and Dean would personally be the one to light up the fire!
The dead orphans went quiet yet again, and the hair on the back of Dean's neck stood up as the word Jinx turned up in his new surroundings as well. The older Winchester followed the bloody trail from the bottom of the stairs and through an opened set of doors - then found himself in a big room, containing a long row of beds on each side of the oblong walls, which he guessed must have been working as a dormitory in the orphanage's glory days. Dean let his flashlight slide across the empty beds but then stopped in his tracks when his eyes suddenly fell upon his missing little brother.
"Oh shi-, Sam!" Dean shouted and quickly ran towards his brother.
Chapter 2
Dean's heart pounded rapidly as he closed the distance to his brother - whose hands and legs were currently tied up to the chair he was slumped in.
Sam's head was bowed down, chin to chest, which made the younger Winchester's floppy brown mop of hair cover up his face so that Dean couldn't immediately tell whether or not his brother was conscious. By the sound of Dean's voice though, Sam stirred a bit - but he still kept his head down and didn't make as much as a sound when Dean called his name.
JINX.
Dean almost halted as the word he had passed by several times in his search for Sam, showed up once more. This time around though, the sight of it filled Dean with an unease that was ten times worse than anything else he'd experienced that night. It wasn't as much the fact that it had been painted in the same crimson color that had reminded Dean of blood, that freaked him out - it was more the fact that it had been written in a semicircle right in front of Sam's feet as if the word was directly related to the younger Winchester somehow.
"Sammy!" Dean exclaimed, dropped his shotgun right on top of the written word and crouched down in front of his brother, before placing the flashlight between his knees so that the beam of it could light up Sam's slumped form.
Sam still didn't say anything, and as Dean cupped Sam's bloody cheeks in his hands, tilted his brother's head up, and bent slightly forward to get a good look at the kid, the older Winchester brother almost flinched back by the sight that met him.
"S-Sam." Dean stuttered out on a gasp, fighting to catch his breath as he stared wide-eyed at his brother's face. "Oh shit, shit, shit."
Jinx..
The word made so much sense now.
Sam's mouth and eyes had been sewn shut with large black stitches - in a crisscross pattern that looked so twisted and grotesque in combination with the blood and bruises that covered Sam's face that Dean felt like crying.
"It's okay, it's okay." Dean soothed with hammering heart as Sam let out a whimpering sound - then immediately started working on the ropes, that kept the younger brother bound to the chair, with his now bloody palms. "I'll get you free, hang on. Hang on, Sammy."
As soon as he had one of his hands free, Sam instantly started clawing at the stitches across his mouth and eyes with his fingernails, before letting out a pitiful sound of distress as Dean grabbed his wrist and pulled Sam's hand away from his face.
"Whoa, Sam! Stop!" Dean exclaimed and kept a hold of Sam's wrist while his little brother struggled to bring it back towards his face. "You're gonna hurt yourself."
Despite Dean's warnings though, Sam kept trying to claw at his face while seeming to become more and more agitated with the fact that Dean didn't allow him to do it, so Dean let go of Sam's wrist and instead grabbed the younger brother's hand in his.
"Sammy, listen to me." Dean said in a soft voice, used his other hand to grab the back of Sam's neck and pulled him forward until their foreheads touched - then frowned when he sensed Sam's ragged breathing and the tremors that ran through his brother's body. "I know you're hurting and I know you're freaked out. But if you keep tearing at your face you're gonna mess it up pretty badly. And believe me when I say that you need all the beauty care you can get if people are ever gonna believe that you and I are related."
Sam huffed out an annoyed sound at Dean's attempt to lighten up the situation, then let out another whimper and sniffled miserably. Dean squeezed Sam's hand while fighting against the rage that burned inside of him from thinking about what those frigging ghosts had done to his brother - but he kept his tone light and soft nonetheless so that he wouldn't freak out his already freaked out little brother any further.
"Trust me, okay? I've got this. I'm gonna get you out of here and then I'll fix you up just fine." Dean promised. "Maybe even give you a manicure, huh? How about that?"
Dean wasn't sure how much Sam was able to comprehend in his current state, but even though the younger man was hurt and sagging heavily against Dean, Sam hummed out a sound in answer to Dean's words and gave his brother's hand a weak squeeze. Dean decided to call that a win and took the gesture as his cue to get on with the task of unbinding his brother - relieved that Sam had listened to his words and didn't try to claw at his face any more after that. Once Sam was free, his body slumped forward but Dean braced his hands against Sam's chest and managed to catch the youngest Winchester before he could fall out of the chair completely.
"Sam." Dean grunted under his brother's weight, and pushed Sam up and back until he was fully seated in the chair again. "Work with me here, buddy. You think you can walk?"
Instead of seeming to acknowledge the question, Sam's head lolled against his shoulder and Dean shook him a bit to try to keep him staying conscious.
"Hey! Stay with me here, bro." Dean said. "You with me? Sammy?"
Sam's head kept lolling, and Dean cursed the fact that he couldn't see his brother's eyes - couldn't tell whether or not his brother was coherent enough to understand anything Dean said to him. It was also a big problem that Sam couldn't talk because that left the older brother in the dark when it came to Sam's injuries. And there had to be injuries from the fall Sam had taken down the stairs, no question about that, but Dean didn't know the extent of them, and there wouldn't be time to care for those injuries until Dean had found a way to bring Sam safely out of the orphanage anyway. Dean wished he could remove the sutures from Sam's mouth and eyes right away, but he didn't dare touch any of them in the current situation - wouldn't risk all sorts of infections to set in or cause scarring to his little brother's face.
However, before Dean could figure out the best way to deal with the situation, the temperature of the room suddenly dropped significantly, and Dean wasted no time in picking up the shotgun and stepping in front of Sam to shield his brother from the attack he knew was about to come.
"Here's the little piggy, see him snout. Slit him open and the guts fall out!" The uncanny children's voices singsonged while Dean's finger hovered over the trigger of the shotgun, ready to fire off the gun the moment he caught even the slightest glimpse of the ghosts.
He didn't have to wait for long. The giggling ghosts decided to attack him all at once, and Dean fired off shot after shot of rock salt bullets at them. Only problem was that whenever one of the ghosts disappeared in a rain of salt, one of the others would show back up again, and Dean soon ran out of bullets. Not having time to reload the shotgun, Dean twirled around to take a hold of Sam, as if he could somehow drag the younger man out of the room before the dead orphans could get to him, but Dean was instantly flung to the side - once again separated from his brother.
Dean tumbled over one of the rusty old bedframes, hit the floor with an oomph-sound and slowly got back up on his knees - then gasped in terror as he saw a pale kid's hand snake a rope around Sam's neck. The youngest Winchester jolted when the rope tightened around his neck and he weakly started tearing at the material with his hands while his body writhed in a desperate attempt to escape the choking.
"No!" Dean shouted, wide-eyed, and frantically searched for some kind of weapon - then closed his hands around a bar of the eroded iron bed frame and gritted his teeth in effort as he started pulling at the bar with all of his strength.
The bar's poor resistance gave in, allowing Dean to pull it free of the bed and then, in one swift motion, the older Winchester jumped over the footboard of the bed and drew back the iron bar before swinging it at the first ghost he passed by. Even before the ghost had faded away completely, Dean had already swung the bar again at the second dead kid's head and ended his counterstrike with the spirit that was choking the life out of Sam.
As soon as the last ghost disappeared, Sam fell into a motionless heap on the floor. Dean pulled out a container of salt from his jacket and quickly made a circle of salt around them that could temporarily ward them against the dead orphans, before he dropped to his knees beside his fallen brother.
"Sam! Oh Jesus.. Sammy!" Dean exclaimed as he tore the rope away from Sam's neck and cradled his brother's face in his hands. "Sammy!"
Completely ignoring the reappearance of the ghosts outside of the circle of salt, Dean was relieved to discover that Sam was in fact still breathing - although very raggedly and weakly. The younger Winchester's neck looked bruised and had already started to swell a bit which did nothing to ease Dean's worries - neither did the fact that Sam stayed unconscious despite of Dean's ministrations.
"Damn it.. You stay with me, Sam. You hear me? No checking out on me!" Dean ordered, dug into his jacket and drew out a pocketknife that he swiftly flipped open.
Dean knew that Sam needed as much air as he could get after almost getting choked to death, so he went against his original decision to not touch the sutures and used the knife to start cutting through the stitches that kept Sam's mouth sewn together. Despite the pearls of perspiration that appeared on Dean's forehead and trickled down his temples, and the constant pestering from the dead kids that fortunately couldn't cross the salt, the older Winchester brother's hand remained steady and calm as he worked on Sam's face. He didn't remove the loosened sutures completely - only cut through them to free Sam's lips from each other, and it didn't take long before Sam wheezed in gulps of air through his mouth and stirred shortly.
"Sammy? Hey Sammy?" Dean called, though only managed to get a few unintelligible mutters from his brother before Sam fell still once more.
Dean didn't like the pallor of Sam's skin that he caught a glimpse of through all the blood on his brother's face, and he knew that he had to get Sam out of the house and taken care of as soon as possible. However, for that to happen, Dean had to find a way to get rid of the creepy dead children first.
"The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle in your snout. They eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your toes!" The ghosts sang in unison as they danced around the circle of salt, and the way they preceded into giggling and pointing at Sam made Dean's blood boil.
"Shut up!" Dean growled at them with eyes burning of anger.
He picked up his shotgun that was luckily just within reach, and reloaded it with rock salt bullets before focusing on Sam again. Dean hated to do it, but he knew that the only way for him to help Sam was to get rid of the ghosts - and the only way to do that was to leave Sam behind while the older brother took care of the salt and burn. It was a bit of a risk to take, sure, but Dean saw no other option as long as the youngest Winchester was out of action.
Being as gentle with his little brother as he possibly could be, Dean moved and rolled Sam into recovery position to prevent an obstruction of Sam's airway - downward mouth, chin up, and arms and legs locked in place. Dean wished he had a blanket or could at least have used his jacket to cover Sam up and keep the younger brother warm, but Dean unfortunately needed the contents of his jacket pockets for the salt and burn.
"I'll come back for you." Dean muttered and brushed Sam's bangs out of the younger man's eyes. "I promise."
The oldest Winchester then made sure that the salt circle was still unbroken around his little brother, before he put the iron bar into the waistband of the back of his pants and grabbed the shotgun and flashlight - then braced himself for the mission he had ahead of him.
"Hey, you fugly pieces of dead things!" Dean called out to the ghosts who slowly turned their heads in unison to stare back at him with their black holes instead of eyes. "How about we play something else for a change, huh?"
Dean cocked the shotgun and glared angrily at the three dead kids, before pointing the gun at one of them.
"You're it." He said and then fired off the gun - blasting the ghost away in a rain of salt while jumping over the salt circle and rushing towards the exit of the room.
The other two ghosts flickered up in front of him, but Dean blasted them away too before continuing his way out of the room and started looking for a door leading outside. It was a never-ending nightmare though as the deceased orphans kept showing up, but Dean was not a Winchester for nothing; he knew damn well how to defend himself against three dead kids - powerful spirits or not! Besides, he was a man with a mission, and with Sam on the line, he couldn't afford to make any mistakes. As soon as the shotgun ran out of bullets, Dean discarded it for the iron bar and in the end managed to get out of the house - without too much corporal damage to happen in the process.
Wiping some blood off his forehead with the back of his hand, the older Winchester brother stayed alert as he expected the ghosts to follow him outside of the house. But they didn't. Dean figured that the kids were either bound to the house somehow or had decided to let Dean go to go back to playing games with Sam instead - the thought of the latter making a shudder run through Dean's body, even though Sam was supposed to be safe inside the circle of salt.
Dean swung by the Impala to pick up a shovel and some more salt - then headed straight towards the backside of the house, towards the woods where the dead kids were thought to be buried, as fast as he could. His mind kept circling around the possible scenarios of the ghosts finding a way to hurt Sam again, or worse - finding a way to off the youngest Winchester brother before Dean could stop them. With those horrible thoughts in mind, Dean was more than a little relieved when the graves of the dead orphans were easily found. Just around the fringes of the woods, there was a little clearing and inside that clearing were three wooden crosses on top of each their small burial mound. There had once been names written on the crosses but, even though decadence had washed the names away over time, Dean didn't doubt for a second that these were the graves he was looking for.
"I'll frigging show them not to mess with the Winchesters.." Dean mumbled as he started digging into the dirt.
Several minutes, and a whole pile of dug-up dirt, later, Dean tossed the shovel aside and reached into his jacket for the salt and lighter fluid. He emptied the contains into the three graves - then found a matchbox, opened it up and picked up a pile of matches. As if sensing that something was about to go down, the three orphans suddenly flickered out in front of their graves, and Dean couldn't help but smirk in satisfaction by the vengeance he was about to get for what those kids had done to his brother.
"Game over, you sons of bitches!" Dean said, lit up the matches and dumped them into the graves - at the same time as the ghosts charged towards him.
Before they could reach him though, all three of the dead orphaned kids went up in orange flames - their screams ending as abruptly as they had started, and the night once again falling quiet.
_ SPN _
Sam was still pretty much out of it when Dean had returned to the old dormitory. Sam had remained protected inside the circle of salt, but judging from the fact that a big chunk of the salt was missing and the circle had been close to being broken, Dean knew that the ghosts had been disturbingly close to having reached Sam again - and Dean didn't even wanna think about what could have happened had he not burned their bones just in time.
The younger brother swam in and out of consciousness but had managed a few slurring calls of Dean's name - to which Dean had answered, before shushing his little brother and telling him not to talk. Although the oldest Winchester would have preferred to listen to Sam's voice after the whole Jinx-situation, the skin around Sam's mouth was a mess, and Dean didn't want him to make it worse by moving his mouth too much.
Since Sam was far from able to walk on his own, Dean half dragged, half carried his brother to the Impala before heading back to the motel room.
"D'n.." Sam slurred out once more as Dean helped lower Sam down on the bed farthest from the door.
"Right here, Sammy." Dean said in a soft voice, arranged the pillows behind Sam's neck and removed Sam's shoes and jacket before reaching for the first aid kit.
"Can't.. I can't see.." Sam croaked out and Dean winced by the hoarseness of his brother's voice.
"I know buddy. I'm working on it." Dean said while arranging an ice bag on Sam's swollen neck. "Now try not to talk, okay?"
Sam hummed in response - then wrinkled his brows as the action hurt his sore throat. Dean hissed in sympathy as he moved up Sam's shirt and saw the multi-colored bruises that covered most of Sam's chest and back. Dean fed the younger Winchester some painkillers and water, which soon made Sam drift off to sleep and allowed Dean some quietness to work on the stitches on Sam's face.
It was a long process but Dean eventually managed to remove all of the stitches, and treated Sam with some antibiotic cream before wrapping bandages around the affected areas - making sure that Sam could still both see and talk while the wounds healed up. The youngest Winchester also suffered from several broken ribs, a concussion and a few broken fingers, but considering that Sam had taken a tumble down the stairs, he got off rather cheaply after all.
With Sam finally cared for and settled into bed, sleeping peacefully, Dean took a shower to wash off blood and dirt before he went to his brother's bedside to make sure that Sam was properly tucked in.
"Dean.." Sam mumbled as Dean tugged the covers up to Sam's chin.
"Shh, just go back to sleep." Dean whispered.
A pair of green eyes blinked open and looked at him, and Dean couldn't help but smile by the sight of them - having missed seeing those familiar eyes and the complete trustful look that only Sam could send him.
"Did you finish the hunt?" Sam asked in a hoarse voice.
"Yup, all three ghosts are roasted and burned - done playing games for good now." Dean replied. "Now go back to sleep before I stitch up your mouth myself!"
Sam smiled tiredly, winced as the action caused him pain, but decided to do what Dean had told him to do for once, and his breath soon evened out in sleep.
Dean smiled fondly at his sleeping brother before he settled down on the other one of the motel room's two queen beds. He let out a deep sigh, groaning a bit as he stretched out sore muscles and then decided to turn on the TV to see if anything good was on. With the sound muted as not to disturb Sam, Dean flicked through the few TV channels - then almost flinched as the dead twin girls from The Shining suddenly turned up on the screen.
"Oh, come on!" Dean muttered in annoyance and turned off the TV again.
He tossed the remote aside on the nightstand next to the bed, and decided to catch some shuteye instead of watching more TV. After all, both Winchester brothers had had enough of dead children for one day.
THE END