The Lonely Souls - Part 2
Part 1 | Master Post | Part 3
Dean popped a chip into his mouth as he walked back along the covered sidewalk to the room. The old vending machine at the far end of the motel hadn’t wanted to surrender the bag of Lays after eating Dean’s sixty-five cents, catching the bag on a spiral two rows down, but Dean had been able to persuade it using a little bit of muscle. Dean smiled. It had even given him a bag of Fritos and a Snickers as concessions after the battle. Not a bad haul if he did say so himself.
The sun had set, darkness blanketing the motel and the flickering outside lights collecting swarms of bugs. The night, thought, only slightly eased the heat that had been pouring off the blacktop earlier in the day. The good news was, though, that Mo the motel owner doubled as the local handyman and had managed to fix the air conditioner after swinging around his wrench for an hour or two. Dean didn’t know how long the cool air was going to hold up against the ‘melt off your face’ temperatures, but he’d take what he could get.
Mo had apparently moved on to other projects because he was banging on the door to number nine, the little brass numeral jumping with each hit. Dean gave Mo a quick smile as he neared, just in case Mo was watching. “Come on, lady,” Mo said. “If you’re gonna stay an extra day, you gotta pay for it. This ain’t a charity service! I got bills, you know?” After a moment of silence, Mo sighed and pulled out his chain of keys, flipping through them.
“Yikes,” Dean mouthed and trotted the next few steps to number eight, knocking for Sam to let him in.
Sam opened the door with a scowl, filling up the doorway. His wet hair curled around his neck, still dripping from his shower and his shirt clung to his stomach, hinting that he hadn’t been dry when he’d put it on. “You left.”
Taken aback by the accusing tone of Sam’s voice, Dean frowned and held up his trophies. “And came back with food. What’s the problem?” Dean had been gone for five minutes, tops.
“Nothing,” Sam said, his little huff implying anything but, and stepped back to let Dean in.
Dean shot a glance to his left where Mo had left the door to number nine open, buying himself some time, and then followed Sam into the room. He closed the door behind him and took a deep breath, relaxing in the cooler air. “Look, I’m sorry, man.” He hadn’t even thought about telling Sam where he was going when he left because he hadn’t left the motel. He had, however, left the room and Sam was paranoid now about Dean going missing, ever since the whole ‘Tuesday’ thing and Hell… Guilt prickled through Dean. “I just went to go get some chips. You were in the shower… I’ll make sure next time.” Dean wrapped his finger in the belt loop of Sam’s jeans, jerking Sam off balance. “Maybe I’ll just join you in the shower?” he added with a wink.
Sam snorted. “That shower?” he asked and Dean chuckled, relieved to be off the hook.
“Well, maybe not that shower,” Dean said. The motel’s shower stall was barely big enough for one. He didn’t know if two would even fit, not without a whole lot of togetherness and someone willing to have the plumbing jabbing him in the ass.
Letting go of Sam’s belt loop, Dean skirted around the nearest bed where he had left a series of books scattered on the sheets. He popped another chip into his mouth and wiped the grease off on his jeans before turning one around to face Sam. “So, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing in particular about the area. Nothing about weird thefts, no past abductions, no local monsters… Closest we’ve got is the White River monster. I’ve got nothing, man.”
Sam took the book and flipped a couple of pages. “White River monster?”
“Some kind of crocodile thing,” Dean said with a wave. “We’re about a hundred miles west of the White River.”
“So we’re dealing with something new to the area.”
“Looks like it. But, I mean, far as I can tell…” Dean snatched the laptop off a pillow and dragged it toward him. “…There haven’t even been any suspicious deaths in town in years. Last guy to die was…” Dean scrolled down. “Joe Stranger. Used to co-own one of the local restaurants with his wife until he died two years ago. Cancer.”
Sam closed the book and dropped it back on the bed. “So we’ve got…”
“Bupkis.”
Castiel floated in a void of nothingness, drifting along like flotsam. There was nothing below him, nothing above, and nothing around. This, he surmised, was a problem. He couldn’t even be certain which plane he was on besides the fact that it was not the physical. The sheer emptiness of his surroundings didn’t exist on the physical plane.
Inside, he felt just as empty, as if he’d been cut off from the rest of the world, from his brothers, from his Father. He was hollow, with nothing to fill him-just an empty shell about to crumble. It was disconcerting.
He reached out with his mind, attempting to feel the edges of this existence, and could feel no cracks, no edges. Putting more force into the effort, he slammed his thoughts outward, bidding the space to bend to his will. The nothingness flickered, existence momentarily asserting itself, and Castiel caught sight of a cavern, its rough-hewn walls closing in over his head before they were covered by long fingers of darkness clawing their way over the stone. “Full of life, full of grace…” a voice hissed, joined in unison by a multitude of others, forming a chorus of whispers. Castiel turned his head and saw the blackness closing in, faces forming in the spreading dark. Small bodies split off from the dark, turning into creatures that crept forward, their grinning mouths full of sharp, pointed teeth and their eyes bright with hunger. They climbed over a human woman’s body-unconscious but still alive-as they reach out for him. “We would have you.”
Castiel willed himself to be elsewhere but as he moved, he felt something holding him back. It twanged tightly, like a rope tied around him, and Castiel gasped in panic, calling out to his brothers for help before the darkness embraced him, closing over him like a vast, empty sea. He struggled to escape and found himself pulled deeper and deeper into the void.
Around him, the emptiness started to laugh.
Fingertips ghosted over Dean’s lips and he turned towards them, flicking his tongue out to wet the pads, encouraging them closer. They dipped inside his mouth, just an inch, and pulled back, pushing at his bottom lip. Dean sighed and followed them up, awash in contentment, a buzz of pleasure rippling through him. He could happily stay like this for the rest of his life, indulging in a little oral fixation.
Recapturing a finger with his mouth, he sucked, feeling a thrill at the small gasp that accompanied the motion, a quiet intake of air that reverberated: the lazy power of the hedonist. Dean reached outward with his hands, exploring with touch, and felt solid flesh underneath his palms. Moaning, he moved closer, sliding the fingers of one hand under a cuff while his other wrapped around a smooth thigh.
It used to always be like this with them. Easy, natural, a lifetime of experience and intimate knowledge packed into each touch, each kiss. They’d been doing this for years before Dad chased Sammy off, picked up right where they left off not long after Sammy came back.
It was the distance that hurt Dean the most-the secrets, the lies. Sam never used to kept secrets, not from Dean. Sam used to tell Dean everything and he never lied. They were the only people in the world that they could trust. There was no reason to tell lies and there were no secrets to keep.
Things had started falling apart a long time ago. There were things that Dean had decided that Sam was better off not knowing. Little did he know that Sam thought the same thing about him. Since he’d come back, it was even worse-a deep divide that ran through the middle of their relationship, obvious and unavoidable. Dean had yet to figure out how to cross it.
He’d come back from the dead. He’d come back from Hell. It was a motherfucking miracle, straight out of the Bible, complete with angels, and it’d only seemed to make things worse. Then again, Dean knew that he had no right to be topside anymore. He knew that he belonged down below. He might have been unsure when Lilith had dragged him kicking and screaming into the pit but after forty years, after all the things he’d done, there was no denying it. And yet fucking angels had dragged him out.
“Sammy,” Dean whispered, pulling the body in his arms close to him. He had no idea if this was a dream-too perfect, too easy-or not, but he’d take it either way. The skin underneath his fingers was hot, almost too hot, burning bright, but it felt good. Clothes melted away-settled the question, but reality was overrated anyway-and Dean ran his hands up Sam’s arm, over his shoulder and cradled his neck. He leaned in for a kiss.
“Dean.” The voice was strangled, dying in the throat before it barely had a chance to live, and Dean frowned. That wasn’t Sam’s voice. No, that was…
“Cas.” Dean opened his eyes and came face to face with Castiel. Dean swallowed, instinctive panic coating his nerves but as scared as he felt, Castiel looked worse. Dean didn’t think that he’d ever seen an angel-any of them-look quite so terrified. It was Castiel’s wide-eyed stare that stopped Dean from shoving him away and backpedaling for the wall. Castiel looked ready to bolt at the drop of a hat as Dean untangled himself, his breathing quick and sudden. Either Dean was having a sex dream about Castiel-which was fucked-up-or Castiel… Castiel was really there, standing smack dab in another one of Dean’s dreams.
Castiel’s skin blazed where Dean’s hands had been, ebbing back into a normal color. The heavy trench coat reappeared like it had never been missing, and Castiel trained his eyes downward. “I…”
“Don’t even say it,” Dean warned. He had no idea what the fuck Castiel had been thinking not only turning up in one of Dean’s dreams but casually invading a sex dream and casting himself in the starring role but Dean was pretty sure he didn’t want to know. It was disturbing enough to know that he’d been feeling up an angel when he’d thought that he’d been making out with his brother. The fact that most people would have been disturbed by his original thought was barely a blip on his radar anymore.
“Dean,” Castiel said, his voice more like himself. The sheer terror in his eyes was gone but it was replaced by an urgency that made Dean’s hair want to stand on end. “I…” He glanced behind him, at the blank wall, seeing something that Dean evidently didn’t, and finished in a rush. “I need your help.”
“What? Are you fucking kidding-”
“I don’t have much time,” Castiel interrupted, his face set in stone. “I barely escaped them. They’ve been blocking my attempts and they’re already-”
Laughter filled the room, drowning out Castiel’s words and everything else. Dean covered his ears as it swelled to a crescendo, shouting through the noise. “They’re what?” Around him, long claws were scraping into his dreams, shredding the façade as they pulled themselves into his mind. Pain lanced through his skull and Dean curled in on himself. “Fuck!”
A hand wrapped around Dean’s ankle, grasping and climbing upward, and a head took shape out of nothing, all bright slitted eyes and sharp fangs. “So alone…” the thing hissed. “So afraid… Come with us…” Dean screamed and kicked his leg, shaking the creature off. It sailed through the air before disappearing in a puff of smoke but others were taking its place.
“Jar!” Castiel yelled. “Find the-” The dream slipped away like falling water, the room, Cas, the noise sloshing downward in a steady gush.
Dean jerked awake, staring at the pockmarked ceiling, panting, his lower brain running a few short laps before the rest of him managed to catch up. He shot upwards, glancing wildly around the room, looking for any trace of angels secretly creeping on him in the night, ready to fight if any were still hanging around, but besides Sam, the room was empty. “Fuck,” Dean breathed. What the fuck were those things?
He took a deep breath, slowing his breathing and scrambled off the bed, his boots hitting the floor. In two short strides, he was kneeling on top of Sam’s bed and checking for a pulse. Sam snapped awake, his hands batting at Dean’s arms, instinctively reaching for a hold before Sam’s brain was even fully online. “Dean?” Dean rememorized Sam’s face and then turned away, sitting down on the bed, his feet back on the floor. “Dean?” Sam rolled over onto his side and pushed himself upward. His hand ghosted over Dean’s back. “What’s going on?”
“I just got dreamjacked,” Dean said. “Touched by an Angel.” Literally, but Dean wasn’t quite ready to confess to that just yet. And they had bigger things to worry about than some creepy, potential blasphemy.
“What?” The bed sheet rustled as Sam tossed it off of him. “By who?”
“Castiel,” Dean admitted. “And I think he might be in trouble.”
“This is crazy, Dean.” Sam stopped his pacing beside the TV, turning to face Dean.
“You think I don’t know that?” Dean asked, sitting on the bed. “I mean, come on, he’s a friggin’ angel.”
“Exactly. So why wouldn’t he go to the other angels for help?” Dean had to give Sam that. It was a pretty good point. “What can we do that they can’t?”
“Look, I don’t know.” Dean shrugged. “Maybe he couldn’t. He did say that he’s being blocked. All I know, Sam, was that he was asking for our help. I mean, I don’t even know if we should. Like I said, he’s a friggin’ angel. You know what kind of dicks those guys are. It could be another one of their mindfucks.”
“Okay.” Sam crossed his arms and sighed. “So assuming that it’s not a trick, did he say what he expects us to do?”
Dean frowned, trying to recall the bits and pieces of the dream. All he was really getting, beyond the sheer terror at the end, was how damn warm Cas had felt when Dean had been touching him. Anna hadn’t felt that way but, then again, Anna hadn’t been all angeled up when he’d slept with her, either. He wondered if sleeping with her now would be like sinking into a nuclear reactor. “Something about a jar.”
“A jar,” Sam repeated, deadpan. “What kind of jar?”
“How should I know? Maybe he just needs help opening the fucking pickles.” Dean didn’t need any reminders of just how crazy he was.
Sam quirked a smile. “Okay, so a jar. We need to figure out what kind of jar.”
“Probably could call Bobby. See if he’s ever heard anything about angels having a fetish for jars.” Dean snapped his finger as another thought occurred to him. “It probably has something to do with the creatures that were after him. Man, those were creepy fuckers. You should have seen the teeth. Friggin’ Jaws.”
Sam was back to being concerned. “You said that there was a lot of them?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “I mean they were just ripping into the dream and I got the feeling that there were a lot more trying to get in.”
“Could you tell what they were?”
Dean shook his head. “Never seen ‘em before in my life. They were coming out of the darkness, though.” Dean slid his eyes away from Sam to focus on the maniacally grinning lizard painted on the wall. “I think they wanted me to go with ‘em,” he added. “That’s what one told me.”
“With them?”
“Yeah. And they were laughing.” It had sounded familiar as well, like Dean had already heard it before. “Like, full on horror movie soundtrack with the creepy kids laughing.”
Sam paused, frowning. “Laughing, like the same that we keep hearing about?”
Dean slapped his forehead, ashamed that he’d needed Sam to connect the dots on that one. “Yeah. So whatever it is we’re hunting has got Cas right now.”
“And are managing to hold him,” Sam added.
“So, they are potentially some badass motherfuckers.” Dean leaned across the bed and grabbed the cell phone off the nightstand. “Badass motherfuckers that like snatching angels and gnomes. And clocks and little crystal unicorns…” Dean stared at the cell’s screen. “Fuck. Cas got snatched by some kind of twisted, black flea market vendors.”
“Whatever got Cas, probably got Paul Sutter, too.” Sam sat down on the opposite bed and dragged the laptop toward him.
Dean scrolled through his contacts, selecting Bobby’s number. “Yeah. I hope we don’t find Old Man Sutter being sold out of the back of a station wagon. Hey, Bobby.”
“Do I even want to know?” Bobby asked, sounding weary.
“Probably not,” Dean said and switched the phone to his other ear. “So Sam and I were hoping that you could help us out…”
Castiel opened his eyes, taking in the void of his makeshift prison once again. The creatures were battering at his defenses but there was little he could do to fend them off. They wanted inside of him, wanted to possess him inside and out, but Castiel knew that they had no chance of that. They’d be incinerated if they tried but that didn’t stop them from wanting. They were ruled completely by their hunger for more, having been locked away from the world for far too long to retain any sense of sanity. They’d been twisted in their captivity, whispering to him stories of their loneliness and how for centuries they’d only wished to be set free and be part of the world once again. In between their tales and their desperate attacks upon his person, they’d offer soft, sweet promises of companionship and camaraderie, if only he’d let them in. Castiel ignored them.
Outside of his mind was a maze, purely of the creatures’ construct and one that kept Castiel trapped inside the emptiness like a locked box. He tried multiple ways to escape, only to find the creatures a step ahead of him, their multiple minds joining together to compensate for their relative weakness. He’d evaded their trap one last time after his contact with Dean, returned to himself, only to catch a glimpse of yet another body deeper in the cave before he’d been sucked back into the void. It had looked like it had been there for days. Castiel hoped that it would not be days before he was found.
He hadn’t thought that the creatures would be able to silence him so effectively. They shouldn’t have been able to do so, but they reeked of otherness, existing on a separate plane that Castiel seemed unable to fully grasp. It was frustrating. There were too many twists and knots in the distortion of reality and it made even the simplest of things unpredictable. It had taken the creatures some time but they’d severed the tentative connection that Castiel had made.
He should have communicated more efficiently. He’d thought that he’d have time, though, that the creatures wouldn’t be able to sense the small hole he’d made in their barrier-and he hadn’t been prepared for what he’d found inside of Dean’s mind. When he entered a sleeper’s dreams, the option was always open to him if he would construct a new reality or merely enter into the current scenario. This one had been…compelling.
Castiel felt a surge of irritation at the direction of his thoughts. He would forbid himself from thinking such things, but there wasn’t much else for him to do besides wait and they, at least, kept him occupied. After his unanswered call for help, he’d already attempted to bridge a connection to Uriel or anyone that was listening and had found it blocked as surely as if a wall had been built in his mind. It was like static on a radio, an impenetrable haze. Somehow, the creatures that surrounded him were interfering with his natural pathways.
Inserting himself into Dean’s dreams had been a desperate last attempt. He felt that even that was blocked now, though not as surely as the connection with his brothers. He didn’t dare try again, however. There was something inside of Dean that the creatures craved. When they’d followed Castiel into Dean’s dream, Castiel knew that they had been after more than just retrieving Castiel. They’d been drawn to Dean like a moth to a flame, and they would have stayed if Castiel had not made sure to drag them back with him.
If he made contact with Dean again, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to protect Dean’s subconscious again. He’d only just barely managed to pull them out of Dean’s mind when he had exited. No, he had to hope that Dean would be able to piece together what he needed from what Castiel had given him.
After all, the brothers had already been on the creatures’ trail. It was just a matter now if them picking up the right scent.
The creatures circled around him in the darkness, unseen but felt. He could feel their hunger, their desire to touch him. He could feel their emptiness, how they sought to fill their vacant souls with the light of others. They craved him. Every now and then, one would muster its courage and reach its hand towards him only to snatch it back again with a hiss when Castiel rebuffed it. It would silently slink back into the shadows and hours would pass before another one tried again.
With nothing else to occupy his time, Castiel was left to his thoughts as they careened wildly through self-recriminations and detailed remembrances of the touch of another upon him before detouring into the dangerous territory of the countless what-ifs. What if Castiel had let Dean do as he had intended? What if…
Such thoughts were for the sinners and the fallen. They had no place in the mind of the righteous. Castiel blamed it on the presence of the creatures. They must have been affecting him more than he had guessed.
“The unseasonable heat wave that is gripping the area has many local residents worried,” the blonde on the TV announced. Dean turned the page of the book of incantations and spells in front of him, skimming down the words. On his side on the bed, he was curved around so that he could still look up at Sam sitting against the other headboard and see the TV flicker at the same time. He wasn’t really paying attention but the bright, moving lights just beyond his field of vision stopped him from drifting as he read.
“It’s unusual to be this warm at this time of year,” a male voice said, probably one of the ‘many local residents.’ “The growing season is going to be cut short.”
“We’re going to cut over to Dan, the Weather Man,” the woman said. “Dan is there any chance of this heat wave breaking soon?”
“Well, Lori, many are puzzled as to why this particular area of the state is receiving record highs. Now, as you can see here on the map, in this red zone here, this is only an area a couple miles wide. Outside of this perimeter, the rest of Arkansas is having normal temperatures in the fifties and sixties. It’s only here, in this area, where we’re reaching ninety and better. It is a temperature pocket-”
Dean placed his finger over a small, scrawled paragraph on the ancient page. …enchanted. They will find the jar irresistible and climb inside only to be trapped until summoned again… “Hey, Sam?”
“Mmm?” Sam turned away from the TV as Lori and Dan bantered back and forth.
“You think Cas needed a jar in order to catch those things? I’ve got an incantation here for catching creepy crawlies with one.”
Sam pushed away his own pile of books and leaned forward. “What kind of creepy crawlies?”
Dean shook his head, reading both the passage before the incantation and flipping the page the read the notes on the back side. “Doesn’t say. Something small. In groups. Some kind of magical beings.” The book stuck to its topic with a focus that a See Spot Run author would find envious and, unfortunately, that didn’t include detailing the exact types of monsters that could be affected. It was typical of the books in the time period; it had just been assumed that you would be already familiar with the various monsters. “It’s something at least.”
“Bookmark it,” Sam said, nodding. He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and stretched, his arms reaching out to the side. “I think I could use some coffee. It’s eight. The diner’s probably open. You hungry?”
Dean slid his eyes over to the clock and then back up at Sam. “Starved.”
The bells jingled overhead as Dean entered the diner, holding the door open for Sam. Two customers sat in a back booth and Dean saw Lacey’s red hair spilled over one of the front center tables, the girl leaning forward and concentrating hard on the pad of paper in front of her. A rainbow of colored pencils fanned out around her, the empty box discarded in the corner.
“Mornin’,” Nan greeted, coming out from around the counter, a pot of coffee in her hands. “I knew you boys would be back. Can I get you some coffee?”
“That’d be great,” Sam said, pushing Dean toward a booth.
Dean swung around the table and slid across the vinyl seat. “Some bacon, too,” he added.
Nan dropped two white cups onto the table, filling each one to the brim. “Maybe add some hashbrowns to that?” she asked. “Some eggs? I’ll get you boys the Hungry Man’s breakfast. It comes with everything you need right down to the grits. Bacon, hashbrowns, eggs, two pancakes and then biscuits, grits and gravy. That sound good? Dead cheap.”
Dean grinned across the table at Sam. “Sammy here does love his grits.”
“Yeah,” Sam deadpanned.
“Well then you’re in for a treat,” Nan said. “’Cause Sal makes the best grits in Arkansas.” She turned, her blue skirt swishing around her legs, and headed for the kitchen. She tapped Lacey’s shoulder on her way by, letting the girl know that she was there.
“Your arteries are going to be screaming for mercy,” Dean teased.
Sam tilted his head in acknowledgement, his eyebrows briefly rising, and took a swallow of coffee. “Yours already are,” he shot back and then launched into a new topic. “I think that the heat wave might be connected.” The sun had only peeked up over the horizon about an hour ago, but already the boggy heat from the past two days was starting to set in. “These temperatures are pretty normal for summer but this is supposed to be the middle of winter. So we’re possibly looking for something with an affinity for high temperatures.”
“Something else to add to the list,” Dean said. “Shady flea market vendors with a fetish for high thermostats.”
“Is that the man you saw last night?” Nan asked. Dean glanced over Sam’s shoulder to see Nan’s red curls bowed over Lacey’s shoulder, pointing to the paper on the table.
“Yeah,” Lacey said quietly. “I remember him.”
“He’s got awfully blue eyes.” Nan’s finger traced a section of the paper. “Give Bobby Jenkins a run for his money. But I don’t know who would be wearing a trench coat in this heat. He’d expire from heat stroke out there.” Dean cut his eyes back over to Sam who’d turned his head to the side, listening carefully while pretending that he wasn’t. “We can give this to Sheriff Bailey, Honey,” Nan said, picking up the paper. “Have him keep a look out for a drifter?”
Lacey snatched the paper back, staring down at it. “I…don’t think he meant to hurt me, Grandma. I think he was protecting me.”
“Protecting you from what, Sweetie?” Nan asked gently. “You don’t really think that there was something out in the woods, do you?”
“They were laughing, Grandma, I heard them.”
“Honey, there’s nothing out in those woods besides squirrels. If you heard anyone laughing, it was probably this drifter here and that’s why you shouldn’t go outside late at night on your own. When you were with Sarah and her daddy, it was different. I know you miss her, sweetie. We all miss her. But her daddy had to take that job up north and there’s just nothing any of us can do about that but stay in touch.” Nan ran her hand softly over Lacey’s hair. “And Lord knows that I like to look at the stars, too, but your Mama and Daddy were terrified last night when they found out that you were gone. You need to promise me that you’ll stay inside.”
Lacey dropped her eyes to the table, picking at a spot with her fingernail. “Okay.”
Nan patted Lacey’s shoulder and took the paper again. “Now, I’m going to tell Sheriff Bailey what to look for, okay? I’ll be right back.” Looking down at the drawing, Nan headed back behind the counter and opened a hidden door, closing it behind her.
“Be right back,” Dean said, sliding out of the booth. Lacey was still glaring at the table top when Dean dropped down into chair opposite her. She flicked her eyes up at him, still pulling at a loose piece of Formica.
“Grandma says that I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
“That’s good advice,” he told her, putting a smile on his face. “Your grandma’s pretty smart.”
Lacey sighed, glancing towards the office. She crossed her arms and sank farther into her chair. “Yeah but she doesn’t believe me.” Her voice implied that the oversight was a good indication that her grandmother wasn’t as smart as previously thought.
“What doesn’t she believe?” Dean asked. Lacey threw him a wary look and he held his hands up defensively. “I’ve heard some pretty weird things. Maybe I’d be more likely to believe it.”
Lacey rolled her eyes. “No one believes it. Mama says I’m grounded until I tell the truth.”
Dean winced. “That’s pretty harsh.” He leaned forward, his hand flat on the table. “What if I tell you that I’ve seen the man in the trench coat, too?”
Lacey locked on him with a laser focus and Dean mentally chalked up a victory. “You have?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, lowering his voice into a whisper. “And I don’t think he’s all that bad, either.” It was the truth, mostly. After all, Cas had yanked him out of Hell so Dean could afford to give the guy a little bit of goodwill. “I think that he’s trying to protect people, too. Like…a guardian angel.”
“He didn’t look like an angel,” Lacey told him. “He didn’t have any wings.”
Dean had to give her the point. “But he’s still a good guy.” Lacey nodded in agreement. “Where did you see this guy?”
Lacey went back to staring at the table. “He was out in the woods. Behind my house. I wasn’t supposed to be out there.” She nudged a couple of colored pencils. “I don’t know why I was out there…”
“You don’t remember?”
“No,” Lacey said, quietly. “Everyone thinks that I was out looking at the stars like Sarah and I used to. But I wasn’t. I was sleeping. And I heard them.”
Dean’s heart constricted. “Heard who?” The laughter from his dream echoed in his head.
“The kids,” Lacey said. The light blue rolled away and she stopped it with a finger. “They were laughing. They wanted me to come play with them.”
“They were in the woods?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to be out there but they told me I had to. Daddy thinks I just made it all up. Mama thinks that maybe it was the Galpis boys out in the woods but it wasn’t. It wasn’t them. I would have known.” She met Dean head-on again, willing him to believe her. Dean nodded slowly.
“I don’t think it was, either,” he said. “The man in the trench coat, what did he do?”
“He stopped me from going in the woods. I think that whoever was in the woods, I don’t think that they were very nice.”
“Probably not. So, the guy in the trench coat, did he do anything else?”
Lacey shook her head. “No, I only saw him for a few seconds before I ran home. Grandma thinks that he’s a ‘no account drifter’ looking to steal away little girls. She says that we get those. But I don’t think the man wanted to steal me. But I still shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Dean said and pushed himself to his feet. “Me and my brother are going to go find the man in the trench coat because we need to talk to him. So you make sure that you’re good for your grandma, alright? But don’t worry, because I know that the man didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Alright,” Lacey said, picking up another pencil. “But you’d better not hurt him. Grandma wants to throw him in jail, she says. You should probably find him before she does.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Lacey went back to her drawing after Dean left, sketching out another shape on the paper. It looked suspiciously like Cas’s hair. Dean heard the office door open again and Nan start chatting with the cook as he made his way back to the table. Sam raised his eyebrows when Dean sat down across from him again.
“Well,” Dean said, leaning forward. “At least we know where Cas was. We can start there.”
Sam moved his head closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “So something lured that girl out of her house?”
“Sounds like it. Remind you of anyone?”
“Whatever it is we’re hunting may have taken more people than Paul Sutter and Castiel.”
Dean nodded. “We’re a few missing person reports away from a panic.” Dean sipped at his coffee. They needed to figure this out and find Cas fast.
“Okay, are you boys ready?” Three large plates dropped onto the table, followed swiftly by two more. “Two Hungry Man specials, all for you,” Nan said with a smile.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Dean said.
“Enjoy. Here, let me give you a little warm up on that coffee.” Nan refilled both of their cups with a quick little dollop each. “I think I should have myself a cup, too. Didn’t get much sleep last night, you know. What with the drama and the bad dreams. I hardly got a wink.” Nan frowned. “Kept dreaming that somebody was trying to get me to leave the house so that they could steal me away. Darnedest thing. Thought that somebody was laughing at me the whole time.”
“Oh?” Sam asked, his eyebrows raised.
“Yeah…” Nan shook her head. “Brought on by that one’s antics, no doubt.” She pointed at Lacey. “She tells a story and gets me all wound up. I think it’s just the loneliness eatin’ away at her. Poor thing. She doesn’t make friends easily, you know, and her and that Sarah Rhoads she used to run around with were thick as thieves. I know how lonely it can get. My husband of forty three years died two years ago and it gets hard, let me tell you. Oh, here, let me take that for you.” Nan grabbed up the plate that Sam had scraped his hashbrowns off of. “But, anyway, you boys be careful out and about, now. I’ve heard that there’s a drifter in town and he’s up to no good. You never know what those drifters are going to do. They go from town to town like tumbleweeds, always looking to do something bad. Oh, me and my mouth. Look at me, talking away when you want to be enjoying your breakfast. You boys dig in and I’ll be back around with some more coffee for you if you need it. Lord, but it is going to be another scorcher today, I can already feel it.” Nan and her coffee pot moved on to the table in the back, carrying on a constant conversation that other people just happened to be a part of.
Both Dean and Sam watched her go before turning back to each other. “The dreams,” Sam said. “They’re in the dreams.”
Flashes of another half-forgotten dream echoed through Dean’s head but he pushed it to the side. “But why are some just shaking it off while others are following it like rats after a Pied Piper?”
Sam shrugged. “You got me. But whatever these things are, they’re working fast.”
The slate slab was cold underneath Dean’s back. Dean groaned as he came to, blinking against the surrounding twilight darkness. A haze of red coated the world, flames flickering just beyond his sight line and leaving just enough room for a little bit of imagination to flare up, guessing what it was: a torch, an Aztec ritual, a fucking Boy Scout campfire… It could be anything and Dean knew better than to underestimate Alastair’s creativity.
His arms were stretched out to the side, bound by rope, leaving him vulnerable and bare. He glanced down at his naked body and then let his head settle back against the stone and closed his eyes. The soft parts would go first. They always went first.
Dean wondered if he’d be eating his intestines later in the day, choking on his own blood, or if Alastair had something even more pleasant planned. Maybe he’d just rip Dean’s heart out of his chest to watch it beat. Of course then, Dean would have to listen to the bastard wax poetic about heroes, spitting out some iambic pentameter or some such shit. A demon who liked poetry was its own special brand of torture, Dean thought. Maybe he’d just sing some show tune.
“Come on out, you Shakespeare-loving freak!” Dean yelled, covering his lingering fear with bluster. Alastair would see right through him but that wasn’t the point. His voice echoed in the darkness. “Read me some fucking poetry and get on with it because I feel like that fucking lion in the wardrobe!” When silence greeted him, Dean growled and yanked against his bonds. “Fuck!”
Laughter quietly echoed around Dean, growing louder. Dean curled his upper lip. “You think some kind of mindfuck is going to-” Long fingers trailed over Dean’s leg, tickling his skin. He jerked away from the touch and lifted his head up. “What the fuck…?” A tiny black head popped up into his vision, covered with shaggy black hair and a wide smile full of white pointed teeth. The creature’s slender fingers drifted over Dean’s knee, keeping on course despite how Dean struggled. “Get off me!”
“So lonely,” it rasped, its voice a sibilant whisper. “So empty…” It crawled upward onto his torso and Dean flattened himself to the slab, sucking in his stomach. “Come play with us…” the creature said, still grinning. “Never be lonely…”
“Us?” Dean asked and two more sets of hands wrapped around his arms. “Don’t touch me!”
“We’ve been lonely for so long…” one said, followed by another’s “So empty…”
“Stay with us,” a third said, climbing up Dean’s shoulder. “Whatever you want…” It held out its black hands, spindly fingers curving upwards. Gold coins, glinting in the fire light spilled out of its cupped palms.
“We will stay with you…” another offered, rubbing Dean’s bicep. “Never leave you…”
“Stay with you forever…”
“Get away from me!” Dean yelled, fighting against his restraints. He rocked upward, trying to unseat the creatures crawling over him.
“So empty. So lonely.”
“It calls to us…”
“Want to touch… Need to feel…” The maniacal grins faltered. “Never leave us…” They moved closer, leaning over him, their dark hair combining as they mashed their heads together overtop of Dean’s face. “You can’t leave…”
“Make sure he never leaves…”
“Yes,” another agreed. “Never leave…” It hissed, baring its teeth again and darted downward, heading for Dean’s throat.
Dean jerked upward, his breath coming hard and fast as he glanced around the motel room, disoriented. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered, tugging at the sheet that had wrapped around his legs and untangling himself. He stumbled to his feet, books tumbling off the bed around him.
Sitting on the other bed, Sam raised his eyebrows in a question that he knew better than to ask. Dean shrugged it off. “Gotta piss,” he said and shut himself in the bathroom.
The man that stared back at Dean in the mirror wasn’t someone Dean wanted to see. The eyes held knowledge that Dean wanted to forget. He turned away and moved to the toilet, figuring that since he was already there, he should at least try. It would keep up the pretense between him and Sam even though they both knew the lie.
He supposed that he should be grateful. As far as the dreams went, the last one had been pretty mild. Alastair hadn’t even made an appearance nor had Dean been holding a knife. He hated to sleep nowadays because Alastair and those damned knives were waiting for him whenever he closed his eyes. They lived inside his head and try as he might, he couldn’t get them out. The laughing creatures, disturbing as they were, couldn’t hold a candle to either one of those options. Dean frowned. Laughing creatures?
Memories of another dream slammed into him, flashes of being hung up in a basement, surrounded by laundry and fucking laughter. “Son of bitch…” Dean zipped himself up. “Sam!”
Sam stared at him, laptop sitting on his thighs, and finally asked the question. “Are you alright?”
“Those fuckers were trying to get me,” Dean said, feeling outraged.
Sam shoved the laptop to the side and stood up, moving towards Dean. “Are you alright? What did they do?” His hands hovered over Dean’s shoulders like he wasn’t sure if he should touch Dean or not but wanting to.
“Laughing, ‘Come play with us, Danny!’ bullshit, the whole shebang.”
“Why you?” Sam asked and Dean shrugged.
“How should I know?” Sam’s hands finally settled on Dean’s shoulders and Dean slid out from under them, eyeing the mess that he’d made of the books. He hadn’t been getting anywhere fast, seeing as how he’d been up most the night and had decided that when faced with the choice reading the same paragraph five times over or getting in a few winks, the nap was much more of a time saver. “Maybe they followed Cas back or something.”
“Was he there?” Sam asked. “In your dream?” Dean shook his head, his thoughts heading towards what Cas had been doing in his last dream with the guy before he shut them down. Sam eyed him like he was trying to decide if Dean was telling the truth or not and then his face slipped into the familiar, odd look that Dean had caught him wearing all too often lately. Sam turned away before Dean could call him on it, turning to the laptop on the bed. “Mo stopped by while you were out.”
“Okay,” Dean said, trying to figure out how that bit of information placed into their conversation.
“The woman in the room next door is missing.”
“Son of a bitch…” Dean swore and Sam nodded.
“So, that’s at least two victims.” Sam held up two fingers.
“That we know of. How many more don’t we know about?” Besides Nan and her little granddaughter, how many other people had the creatures tried luring away?
“Right.” Sam grabbed the laptop off the bed. “And I think I found something. Check this out,” he said and angled the screen towards Dean as he began to read. “’Enchanted jars were usually thought to capture fairies, gnomes, imps, and other spirits. The owners would recite an incantation over the jar and the captured spirits were presumed to confer good luck. Some, however, claim that it’s not so much good luck that was gained but instead the absence of bad luck such as the kind that fairies and imps were said to bring.’”
Dean peered over Sam’s shoulder at the preserved wood carving of a man holding up a large jar with tiny, deformed hands reaching out of it, their long black fingers curling along the outside. “Fairies don’t exist,” Dean said. “Do they?”
Sam shrugged. “You got me. But we know that gnomes do and look at this.” Sam clicked to another tab. “‘Imps were notorious for their practical jokes, all in the hopes of gaining human attention. Often lonely creatures, they craved interaction and would often steal away prized possessions or lure away human individuals to join them. They preyed on the lonely, perhaps seeing an echo of themselves. Imps often had an affinity for high temperatures and so seemed a natural fit for early Christians’ idea of demons and hellspawn. They were often associated with witches though earlier fables place them as more akin to fairies than demons.’”
“So, you’re saying that we’ve got a bad imp infestation?” Preyed on the lonely?
“It’s certainly possible,” Sam said. “’Prized possessions’? ‘Lure away humans’? ‘Affinity for high temperatures’? We’ve got an unnatural heat wave and people and objects missing. It’s a pretty good chance that they are imps.”
“Okay.” Dean skimmed down the screen. “So how do we stop them?”
“It says here that you need to ‘banish’ the imps which I don’t think that we have time to wait until the next full moon.”
“What’s Plan B?” Dean read past the required list for the banishment spell and hit the edge of the screen.
Sam scrolled downward, displaying another picture of a monk holding out a jar. “It also says that imps can be captured in one of these enchanted objects. Jars, vases, boxes… Basically they’re irresistible to imps and they crawl inside and get stuck.”
“…Like a supernatural roach motel.”
“Well…yeah.” Sam shrugged.
“Great,” Dean said. “So, all we need is one, big, irresistible imp motel. Where can we find one? Do we make it? How?”
Sam shook his head. “I’m still working on-” He cut off as Dean’s phone started to ring. Dean fished the phone out of his pocket and snapped it open.
“Yeah?”
“I think you’ve got an imp infestation,” Bobby said across the line.
“That’s what Sam thinks, too.”
“Well if you knew that,” Bobby grumbled, sounding disgusted, “why did you call me?”
“Just figured it out.” Dean pulled back the motel room curtain, glancing outside and checking the salt lines. He clutched the phone tighter to his ear. “Hey, Bobby, so how do we stop these things? You ever dealt with them?”
“No, but I know a few who have. Imps like dark places. Natural. They’re probably holed up in some cave or even a basement. As for how to catch them, the simplest thing to do is to just find their original container.”
“Original container?” Dean caught Sam’s eyes from across the room and Sam’s eyebrows rose, getting the vibe if not the exact message.
“Those things didn’t just pop up out of the earth like a spring well, Dean,” Bobby continued. “They had to have arrived in something and if you find out what, you can use it to lure them all back in again. Whoever set them free has got to have it lying around.”
“So you’re saying that we’ve got to find whoever let the imps out of the bottle and steal it from them.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Thanks, Bobby.” Dean flipped the phone closed and turned to Sam. “Hey, what was the first incident?” he asked.
Sam took a moment to think, flipping through a couple of the print outs. “Uh…Sutter disappeared? I think?” A few papers fluttered to the floor and Sam stooped to pick them up.
Dean grinned, pocketing his phone. “’Cause I think I just might now where to find us an enchanted jar.”
Part 1 | Master Post | Part 3