SPN FIC - Bus Me (Part 4 of 4)
It's been a long six months, hiding out in abandoned houses, eating cold Hot Pockets and mourning the loss of the ones they love. So Dean signs himself and Sam up for what amounts to a little R&R: a six-day chartered bus tour. On a haunted bus. Destination: Dollywood. But what starts out as a simple case (a series of mysterious injuries that all took place on the bus) turns into something more, when one of their fellow travelers disappears ... and so does Dean.
Part 1 is here.
"Hey," Dean said, raising a finger that he waggled in Sam's face. "No dissing of Dolly Parton. Woman's an American icon. Queen of country music. Sold a hundred and seventy-four million records. Tell me that's not friggin' awesome."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, various OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 10,590 words overall; this part is 2725 words
BUS ME
By Carol Davis
Sam took a moment to get his bearings, the way Dad had taught him to do when he was barely into middle school, impatient and annoyed, anxious to get back to things that "mattered." Eventually, the lessons (being blindfolded, compelled to find his way from one end of an unfamiliar building to the other) took hold, and they'd stayed with him all these years. He let himself remember the passageway - how long it was, how wide, whether there were any obstacles in his way, any doorways that offered a place for someone, or something, to hide. A rising cold made him shiver and huddle a little deeper into the warmth of his flannel button-down.
There was no draft down here, no air conditioner suddenly turned on. The air outside was mild.
So…spirit.
Somehow, not a surprise.
The passageway was sixty, maybe seventy feet long, and forked off to the right at the end of that distance. The gun would do him no good against a spirit, so he tucked it away and replaced it with the small canister of salt he'd stashed in the pocket of his jeans, then continued moving down the hall, testing the space ahead of him with his free hand and stepping cautiously to avoid slipping on the damp floor. He reached the far end of the passageway without incident, although the pure darkness of his surroundings had begun to make him uneasy. He had no idea what lay ahead of him after that dogleg to the right, and he cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight.
"Sam?"
Soft. Just a murmur.
"Dean?"
"Yeah."
"Where are you?"
He could judge the distance; that had been another of Dad's lessons. Fifteen, twenty feet; no more than that. The quiet hum of machinery suggested he was somewhere near the core of the HVAC system, and he thought fleetingly of Freddy Krueger and those movies' fatal furnace. Beneath it was another sound: his brother, humming one of his favorite rock tunes in fits and starts, providing a beacon for Sam to follow.
"Slow, Sam," Dean cautioned him as he got closer. "Don't want to startle him."
"Are you all right?"
"Whatever," Dean sighed. "Son of a bitch thumped me down half a flight of stairs. I'll live. Just be careful."
Then Dean went back to humming, and within a few seconds Sam was able to crouch down beside him. "Are you tied up?" Sam whispered. "And…who are we trying not to startle?"
He'd barely finished asking the question when Dean's lighter flickered into life, startlingly bright after several minutes spent in pure darkness. Dean smiled fleetingly at Sam, then nodded at something a few yards away: the crumpled, unconscious figure of Evelyn, lying on her left side on the floor. And beside her, the hazy image of a stout, balding man in coveralls, who sat gently stroking Evelyn's hair, his lips moving as though he was crooning to a child.
"Heard her screaming," Dean said quietly. "I could hear it inside, then it seemed like it was outside. Tracked it around past the pool. There's a door out there, leading in to a bunch of steps coming down here. I got the door open, got inside, then Freaky Deaky there slammed it shut on me, and sent me ass over teakettle down the stairs. Every time I try to get up, he bounces me off a friggin' wall. Getting a little sore, here. And I didn't want to leave her alone."
"Is she -"
"Alive? I think so. Saw her move a little before the lights went out."
"The hell, Dean."
"Tell me about it. I left my salt and nails on the damn bus."
"Always be prepared?"
"I know. Dad'd have me for breakfast."
Sam showed his brother the container of salt he'd brought down from their room. Dean nodded in acknowledgment, then closed the lid of the lighter and cut off the flame. Somehow, the spirit remained dimly visible, still tenderly caressing Evelyn's hair.
"There's enough salt here for one shot, maybe two," Sam said. "Is that enough to get her out of here?"
"Might be enough to get us out of here. One of us, at least."
"Why'd she come down in here in the first place?"
"Chased the dog, is my guess. I'm figuring the door was open, and the little monster came bailing down here on its itty bitty legs."
"The -"
Something pressed against the middle of Sam's chest - something small, warm, and squirming. When Sam didn't accept the bundle, Dean pressed a little harder. With a sigh, Sam took the little dog into his free hand and held it against his chest until it settled down. Apparently, life inside its owner's tote bag had accustomed it to being confined, and it seemed quite content with being snuggled against Sam's flannel shirt.
"Take it out of here," Dean whispered. "That's one rescue, at least. Come back with some stuff we can use. I'll keep The Singing Dead, there, distracted."
Nodding, Sam passed the salt to Dean and began to shift slowly to his feet.
Off in the distance, something creaked.
"HELLO!!!" a voice called out. "HELLO! G-man! You down here?!?"
The spirit's head cranked around. Looking.
"Go back!" Sam shouted. "Get out of here!"
A beam of light appeared, visible at the near end of the long passageway Sam had groped his way down - a big flashlight, being wielded by someone who was trotting down the hall.
No…several someones.
"Go back!" Sam yelled. "You've got to -"
A short distance away, the spirit was rising to its feet.
"The hell you doing down here in the dark!?" the voice demanded. "Donny, find the damn lights! There, there's a switch right there!"
The spirit was pissed.
"Take the dog," Dean insisted. "Get those people out of here."
"You take the dog," Sam said. "I'll carry Evelyn."
The spirit was brighter now, its own source of light, its face contorted with anger and frustration.
"Are they down here?" Yet another voice, this one female.
Sam had little choice but to clamber to his feet, the little dog held tightly against his chest as he ran toward the end of the passageway, nearly colliding with a flustered and indignant Charlie McGraw. He tried his best to shepherd Charlie and his companion - the scrawny man who'd been wearing only boxer shorts a while ago, and, Sam saw to his consternation, still was - back down the hall, but Charlie slipped on past him and caught sight of Evelyn.
And the ghost.
"What the sweet flaming -" he blurted.
"I WANT HER BACK!!!" the spirit screeched.
Suddenly, even more people were spilling into the passageway, some of them in nightwear, some dressed; only eight or nine of them, really, but it seemed to Sam like a full platoon. Some of them had flashlights, and the passageway filled with dancing beams of light, like the inside of a disco. Behind Sam, in the room where Dean had chosen to wait, the spirit began to keen, a sound that sputtered out once, then twice - because of Dean flinging salt, Sam assumed. He did his best to herd the invading army back toward the door at the far end of the hall, but cries of "Evelyn!" and "She's here!" broke out, and then there was no stopping them. They careened past Sam, jamming him up against the wall with the dog burrowing into his shirt, and the cries turned to "Is she dead?" and "What in the hell is going on?!?"
A minute later there was no one left in the passageway but Sam. He was far enough from the dogleg that he was unable to see Dean, or the spirit, or Evelyn, or any of the cavalry that had come to their rescue, and he let out a sigh of relief when Dean rounded the corner, clearly overwhelmed.
"Now, there's a procedure Dad never thought of," Dean said, and shook his head.
~~~~~~~~
They were unable to return to the basement until early in the morning - after Evelyn had been taken off to a local hospital, after the trembling Ricky had been reunited with his sobbing owner, after the police had scoured the passageway and the adjoining room for any sign that someone had been hiding there and had declared Evelyn's ordeal nothing more than an accident, and after the various members of the Spring 2012 Dollywood Adventure Tour had adjourned to their rooms for some rest, to be followed by a hearty and no doubt cholesterol-laden breakfast.
This time, Sam and Dean brought with them a duffel of supplies. It took little time to set things up, less time to recite the incantation.
The spirit flickered into sight a few steps away.
"Who are you?" it asked. "Where is Mother?"
After a night of very little sleep, Dean looked as frayed as Sam felt. "That wasn't your mom, dude," he told the spirit.
"But I heard her singing."
An hour's worth of questioning all the available staff members, including an assistant manager who had been with the motel almost a decade, had turned up the identity of the spirit: one Burton McPhee, who had worked as a maintenance man at the motel until shortly after the unexpected death of his mother, after which he had - in the words of the manager - "lost his marbles."
"She liked to sing, huh?" Dean asked the spirit.
"She's a beautiful singer. She has the voice of an angel."
The late Mrs. McPhee, according to the manager, had been particularly fond of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You." After her death, her grieving son had disturbed a number of motel guests with his incessant singing of that particular number in the corridors and in their rooms, when he arrived to do some minor repair. When he refused to seek counseling, and refused to stop doing what he insisted was "just something to help brighten the day" as he worked, the management fired him.
Four days later, he ran his Ford Fiesta into a tree.
"It's time for you to move on, man," Sam told him, not without sympathy.
"Nooo," the spirit murmured. "Where is she? Where is Mother?"
Sam exchanged a long look with his brother. Despite having been to Heaven any number of times (one of which they both remembered), neither of them had any real idea what lay "beyond the light," no more than they'd had on a brisk, early spring morning five years ago, when they'd convinced a mournful woman named Molly to take a chance and let go of her grasp on her earthly life. Whatever it was had to be better than lingering in a damp motel basement, Sam figured - though after what he'd gone through these past few years, courtesy of Heaven's ambassadors, he couldn't be sure.
He also wasn't at all sure of the veracity of what he said next. "She's waiting for you, man. On the other side."
"But I caaaaan't."
"You can't stay here. You can't hurt people."
"I didn't hurt anyone."
"Beg to differ," Dean said. "I got bruises all over me from you using me as a damn volleyball."
"You were going to take her away."
"That wasn't your mother, dude. Your mom's gone. You need to be gone."
During his time on earth, Burton McPhee had been a kind soul, according to the manager. Quick with a smile, eager to hold open a door for a guest or a fellow staff member. He'd been the target of some mockery because he still lived with his mother, well into his forties, but he had accepted the teasing with good grace.
Outwardly, at least.
"Dude," Dean said in a tone that was as caring as anything Sam had ever heard come out of Dean's mouth. "She's waiting to sing for you again. Okay? She's waiting. You don't want to stay here. There's nothing for you here. You're in a damn basement. You don't want that."
A few steps away from the Winchesters, the spirit began to cry.
"What do I do?" he murmured.
"Just let go," Dean said.
A minute later, in a flood of pale white light, Burton McPhee did as he was told.
~~~~~~~~
"No way," Sam said.
"Dude," Dean groaned. "Fully paid for. Come on. Wild Eagle ride? Seats are on the side of the track, so there's nothing between you and the friggin' Smoky Mountains but twenty-one stories of empty air."
"And you're going to ride on something like that."
"Me? Hell no. The fun part's watching you get off, walk five steps and blow chunks."
"I was in the eighth grade when that happened," Sam said between clenched teeth.
A short distance away, the bus driver - no less grouchy than he had been the day before - was checking names off a list as he herded the Dollywood tour group aboard. They were without Evelyn, who was still in the hospital, recovering from a minor concussion, and Ricky's owner, who had decided to rent a car so she could take her beloved little dog back to the safety and security of their home in Pittsfield; but the rest of the group seemed to be in good spirits and ready to hit the road.
"Still need to figure out what's going on with that bus," Dean pointed out.
"Is there anything going on with that bus?"
"Could be."
"Dean."
"Funnel cakes, Sam. Granny Ogle's Ham and Beans."
Dean had indeed been bruised and battered by his encounter with the late Burton McPhee, but after twenty minutes under a hot shower, he seemed to be none the worse for it. He had a duffel slung over each shoulder, one bag unzipped to accommodate the gigantic bag of donuts that hadn't quite fit inside. He was smiling, the kind of "the world is my oyster" expression he'd been sporting off and on as far back as Sam could remember, and there was no suggestion in it that he'd spent a good part of the night staring out the motel room window at the parking lot.
"You seriously want to sit through something called 'The Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud'," Sam said.
"Title would imply that there's dinner involved. I'm good."
"The bus comes back here on Friday night. We could wait here. Pick it back up then."
"And what if something crazy happens on that bus in between?"
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of."
Before Sam could figure out a better way to tilt the scales in his direction, two members of the tour group broke away from the others and walked back across the parking lot toward him and Dean. Lavender Hair and Gladys, he realized, dressed for the new day in coordinating red track suits with white piping, and matching, brilliantly white sneakers.
"We took a vote," Gladys announced, grasping Dean by the arm. "Since Evelyn can't be with us for the rest of the trip, we've elected you as our Tour Captain."
"It was unanimous," Lavender Hair added.
"Except for Sidney," Gladys demurred. "But don't pay any attention to him."
Dean broke into a broad grin. If "humble gratitude" had been his aim, Sam thought, he had failed miserably. "That's awesome," he told the two women, then gave Sam a tilt of the head that clearly said, You want me to turn this down?
"You people COMING, or WHAT?" the driver bellowed from his position alongside the bus.
Still beaming, Dean nudged the two women back toward the big silver-and-blue cruiser. They began chattering happily as they walked, with several backward glances meant to urge Dean along.
"Well?" Dean asked his brother. "You can stay here, if you want. Be back Friday night."
Sam sighed.
"Dude," Dean said. "Twelve-pound Lumberjack Pizza. Big Skillet Taters."
With that, Dean apparently thought he'd done enough convincing. He set off toward the bus, the jammed-full duffel bags swinging from his shoulders, his step light and jaunty. Halfway to the bus he began to croon, "Jo-lene, Jo-lene, Jo-LENE, Jooooooooleeeeeeene… please don't take him juuuuust becaaaaause you caaaaan…"
He looked back. Winked at Sam.
And the bus driver yelled out, "You COMING? Or WHAT?"
"Haunted bus, Sam," Dean said with solemn conviction - and a smirk. "Family business."
He sprinted up the steps onto the bus.
A minute later, Sam followed him.
* * * * *
Part 1 is here.
"Hey," Dean said, raising a finger that he waggled in Sam's face. "No dissing of Dolly Parton. Woman's an American icon. Queen of country music. Sold a hundred and seventy-four million records. Tell me that's not friggin' awesome."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, various OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 10,590 words overall; this part is 2725 words
BUS ME
By Carol Davis
Sam took a moment to get his bearings, the way Dad had taught him to do when he was barely into middle school, impatient and annoyed, anxious to get back to things that "mattered." Eventually, the lessons (being blindfolded, compelled to find his way from one end of an unfamiliar building to the other) took hold, and they'd stayed with him all these years. He let himself remember the passageway - how long it was, how wide, whether there were any obstacles in his way, any doorways that offered a place for someone, or something, to hide. A rising cold made him shiver and huddle a little deeper into the warmth of his flannel button-down.
There was no draft down here, no air conditioner suddenly turned on. The air outside was mild.
So…spirit.
Somehow, not a surprise.
The passageway was sixty, maybe seventy feet long, and forked off to the right at the end of that distance. The gun would do him no good against a spirit, so he tucked it away and replaced it with the small canister of salt he'd stashed in the pocket of his jeans, then continued moving down the hall, testing the space ahead of him with his free hand and stepping cautiously to avoid slipping on the damp floor. He reached the far end of the passageway without incident, although the pure darkness of his surroundings had begun to make him uneasy. He had no idea what lay ahead of him after that dogleg to the right, and he cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight.
"Sam?"
Soft. Just a murmur.
"Dean?"
"Yeah."
"Where are you?"
He could judge the distance; that had been another of Dad's lessons. Fifteen, twenty feet; no more than that. The quiet hum of machinery suggested he was somewhere near the core of the HVAC system, and he thought fleetingly of Freddy Krueger and those movies' fatal furnace. Beneath it was another sound: his brother, humming one of his favorite rock tunes in fits and starts, providing a beacon for Sam to follow.
"Slow, Sam," Dean cautioned him as he got closer. "Don't want to startle him."
"Are you all right?"
"Whatever," Dean sighed. "Son of a bitch thumped me down half a flight of stairs. I'll live. Just be careful."
Then Dean went back to humming, and within a few seconds Sam was able to crouch down beside him. "Are you tied up?" Sam whispered. "And…who are we trying not to startle?"
He'd barely finished asking the question when Dean's lighter flickered into life, startlingly bright after several minutes spent in pure darkness. Dean smiled fleetingly at Sam, then nodded at something a few yards away: the crumpled, unconscious figure of Evelyn, lying on her left side on the floor. And beside her, the hazy image of a stout, balding man in coveralls, who sat gently stroking Evelyn's hair, his lips moving as though he was crooning to a child.
"Heard her screaming," Dean said quietly. "I could hear it inside, then it seemed like it was outside. Tracked it around past the pool. There's a door out there, leading in to a bunch of steps coming down here. I got the door open, got inside, then Freaky Deaky there slammed it shut on me, and sent me ass over teakettle down the stairs. Every time I try to get up, he bounces me off a friggin' wall. Getting a little sore, here. And I didn't want to leave her alone."
"Is she -"
"Alive? I think so. Saw her move a little before the lights went out."
"The hell, Dean."
"Tell me about it. I left my salt and nails on the damn bus."
"Always be prepared?"
"I know. Dad'd have me for breakfast."
Sam showed his brother the container of salt he'd brought down from their room. Dean nodded in acknowledgment, then closed the lid of the lighter and cut off the flame. Somehow, the spirit remained dimly visible, still tenderly caressing Evelyn's hair.
"There's enough salt here for one shot, maybe two," Sam said. "Is that enough to get her out of here?"
"Might be enough to get us out of here. One of us, at least."
"Why'd she come down in here in the first place?"
"Chased the dog, is my guess. I'm figuring the door was open, and the little monster came bailing down here on its itty bitty legs."
"The -"
Something pressed against the middle of Sam's chest - something small, warm, and squirming. When Sam didn't accept the bundle, Dean pressed a little harder. With a sigh, Sam took the little dog into his free hand and held it against his chest until it settled down. Apparently, life inside its owner's tote bag had accustomed it to being confined, and it seemed quite content with being snuggled against Sam's flannel shirt.
"Take it out of here," Dean whispered. "That's one rescue, at least. Come back with some stuff we can use. I'll keep The Singing Dead, there, distracted."
Nodding, Sam passed the salt to Dean and began to shift slowly to his feet.
Off in the distance, something creaked.
"HELLO!!!" a voice called out. "HELLO! G-man! You down here?!?"
The spirit's head cranked around. Looking.
"Go back!" Sam shouted. "Get out of here!"
A beam of light appeared, visible at the near end of the long passageway Sam had groped his way down - a big flashlight, being wielded by someone who was trotting down the hall.
No…several someones.
"Go back!" Sam yelled. "You've got to -"
A short distance away, the spirit was rising to its feet.
"The hell you doing down here in the dark!?" the voice demanded. "Donny, find the damn lights! There, there's a switch right there!"
The spirit was pissed.
"Take the dog," Dean insisted. "Get those people out of here."
"You take the dog," Sam said. "I'll carry Evelyn."
The spirit was brighter now, its own source of light, its face contorted with anger and frustration.
"Are they down here?" Yet another voice, this one female.
Sam had little choice but to clamber to his feet, the little dog held tightly against his chest as he ran toward the end of the passageway, nearly colliding with a flustered and indignant Charlie McGraw. He tried his best to shepherd Charlie and his companion - the scrawny man who'd been wearing only boxer shorts a while ago, and, Sam saw to his consternation, still was - back down the hall, but Charlie slipped on past him and caught sight of Evelyn.
And the ghost.
"What the sweet flaming -" he blurted.
"I WANT HER BACK!!!" the spirit screeched.
Suddenly, even more people were spilling into the passageway, some of them in nightwear, some dressed; only eight or nine of them, really, but it seemed to Sam like a full platoon. Some of them had flashlights, and the passageway filled with dancing beams of light, like the inside of a disco. Behind Sam, in the room where Dean had chosen to wait, the spirit began to keen, a sound that sputtered out once, then twice - because of Dean flinging salt, Sam assumed. He did his best to herd the invading army back toward the door at the far end of the hall, but cries of "Evelyn!" and "She's here!" broke out, and then there was no stopping them. They careened past Sam, jamming him up against the wall with the dog burrowing into his shirt, and the cries turned to "Is she dead?" and "What in the hell is going on?!?"
A minute later there was no one left in the passageway but Sam. He was far enough from the dogleg that he was unable to see Dean, or the spirit, or Evelyn, or any of the cavalry that had come to their rescue, and he let out a sigh of relief when Dean rounded the corner, clearly overwhelmed.
"Now, there's a procedure Dad never thought of," Dean said, and shook his head.
~~~~~~~~
They were unable to return to the basement until early in the morning - after Evelyn had been taken off to a local hospital, after the trembling Ricky had been reunited with his sobbing owner, after the police had scoured the passageway and the adjoining room for any sign that someone had been hiding there and had declared Evelyn's ordeal nothing more than an accident, and after the various members of the Spring 2012 Dollywood Adventure Tour had adjourned to their rooms for some rest, to be followed by a hearty and no doubt cholesterol-laden breakfast.
This time, Sam and Dean brought with them a duffel of supplies. It took little time to set things up, less time to recite the incantation.
The spirit flickered into sight a few steps away.
"Who are you?" it asked. "Where is Mother?"
After a night of very little sleep, Dean looked as frayed as Sam felt. "That wasn't your mom, dude," he told the spirit.
"But I heard her singing."
An hour's worth of questioning all the available staff members, including an assistant manager who had been with the motel almost a decade, had turned up the identity of the spirit: one Burton McPhee, who had worked as a maintenance man at the motel until shortly after the unexpected death of his mother, after which he had - in the words of the manager - "lost his marbles."
"She liked to sing, huh?" Dean asked the spirit.
"She's a beautiful singer. She has the voice of an angel."
The late Mrs. McPhee, according to the manager, had been particularly fond of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You." After her death, her grieving son had disturbed a number of motel guests with his incessant singing of that particular number in the corridors and in their rooms, when he arrived to do some minor repair. When he refused to seek counseling, and refused to stop doing what he insisted was "just something to help brighten the day" as he worked, the management fired him.
Four days later, he ran his Ford Fiesta into a tree.
"It's time for you to move on, man," Sam told him, not without sympathy.
"Nooo," the spirit murmured. "Where is she? Where is Mother?"
Sam exchanged a long look with his brother. Despite having been to Heaven any number of times (one of which they both remembered), neither of them had any real idea what lay "beyond the light," no more than they'd had on a brisk, early spring morning five years ago, when they'd convinced a mournful woman named Molly to take a chance and let go of her grasp on her earthly life. Whatever it was had to be better than lingering in a damp motel basement, Sam figured - though after what he'd gone through these past few years, courtesy of Heaven's ambassadors, he couldn't be sure.
He also wasn't at all sure of the veracity of what he said next. "She's waiting for you, man. On the other side."
"But I caaaaan't."
"You can't stay here. You can't hurt people."
"I didn't hurt anyone."
"Beg to differ," Dean said. "I got bruises all over me from you using me as a damn volleyball."
"You were going to take her away."
"That wasn't your mother, dude. Your mom's gone. You need to be gone."
During his time on earth, Burton McPhee had been a kind soul, according to the manager. Quick with a smile, eager to hold open a door for a guest or a fellow staff member. He'd been the target of some mockery because he still lived with his mother, well into his forties, but he had accepted the teasing with good grace.
Outwardly, at least.
"Dude," Dean said in a tone that was as caring as anything Sam had ever heard come out of Dean's mouth. "She's waiting to sing for you again. Okay? She's waiting. You don't want to stay here. There's nothing for you here. You're in a damn basement. You don't want that."
A few steps away from the Winchesters, the spirit began to cry.
"What do I do?" he murmured.
"Just let go," Dean said.
A minute later, in a flood of pale white light, Burton McPhee did as he was told.
~~~~~~~~
"No way," Sam said.
"Dude," Dean groaned. "Fully paid for. Come on. Wild Eagle ride? Seats are on the side of the track, so there's nothing between you and the friggin' Smoky Mountains but twenty-one stories of empty air."
"And you're going to ride on something like that."
"Me? Hell no. The fun part's watching you get off, walk five steps and blow chunks."
"I was in the eighth grade when that happened," Sam said between clenched teeth.
A short distance away, the bus driver - no less grouchy than he had been the day before - was checking names off a list as he herded the Dollywood tour group aboard. They were without Evelyn, who was still in the hospital, recovering from a minor concussion, and Ricky's owner, who had decided to rent a car so she could take her beloved little dog back to the safety and security of their home in Pittsfield; but the rest of the group seemed to be in good spirits and ready to hit the road.
"Still need to figure out what's going on with that bus," Dean pointed out.
"Is there anything going on with that bus?"
"Could be."
"Dean."
"Funnel cakes, Sam. Granny Ogle's Ham and Beans."
Dean had indeed been bruised and battered by his encounter with the late Burton McPhee, but after twenty minutes under a hot shower, he seemed to be none the worse for it. He had a duffel slung over each shoulder, one bag unzipped to accommodate the gigantic bag of donuts that hadn't quite fit inside. He was smiling, the kind of "the world is my oyster" expression he'd been sporting off and on as far back as Sam could remember, and there was no suggestion in it that he'd spent a good part of the night staring out the motel room window at the parking lot.
"You seriously want to sit through something called 'The Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud'," Sam said.
"Title would imply that there's dinner involved. I'm good."
"The bus comes back here on Friday night. We could wait here. Pick it back up then."
"And what if something crazy happens on that bus in between?"
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of."
Before Sam could figure out a better way to tilt the scales in his direction, two members of the tour group broke away from the others and walked back across the parking lot toward him and Dean. Lavender Hair and Gladys, he realized, dressed for the new day in coordinating red track suits with white piping, and matching, brilliantly white sneakers.
"We took a vote," Gladys announced, grasping Dean by the arm. "Since Evelyn can't be with us for the rest of the trip, we've elected you as our Tour Captain."
"It was unanimous," Lavender Hair added.
"Except for Sidney," Gladys demurred. "But don't pay any attention to him."
Dean broke into a broad grin. If "humble gratitude" had been his aim, Sam thought, he had failed miserably. "That's awesome," he told the two women, then gave Sam a tilt of the head that clearly said, You want me to turn this down?
"You people COMING, or WHAT?" the driver bellowed from his position alongside the bus.
Still beaming, Dean nudged the two women back toward the big silver-and-blue cruiser. They began chattering happily as they walked, with several backward glances meant to urge Dean along.
"Well?" Dean asked his brother. "You can stay here, if you want. Be back Friday night."
Sam sighed.
"Dude," Dean said. "Twelve-pound Lumberjack Pizza. Big Skillet Taters."
With that, Dean apparently thought he'd done enough convincing. He set off toward the bus, the jammed-full duffel bags swinging from his shoulders, his step light and jaunty. Halfway to the bus he began to croon, "Jo-lene, Jo-lene, Jo-LENE, Jooooooooleeeeeeene… please don't take him juuuuust becaaaaause you caaaaan…"
He looked back. Winked at Sam.
And the bus driver yelled out, "You COMING? Or WHAT?"
"Haunted bus, Sam," Dean said with solemn conviction - and a smirk. "Family business."
He sprinted up the steps onto the bus.
A minute later, Sam followed him.
* * * * *