SPN FIC - In Dreams (Part 1 of 4)
Okay, here we go, kids: the infamous WIP, part 1 of 4. I promise (barring what they call in the legal biz force majeure, meaning circumstances out of my control) to post an additional section each weekend -- probably late Sunday -- until September 29th.
You can call this a "missing episode" -- takes place in between WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD NEVER BE and ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. It's case-focused, but of course there's angst and Dean whumpage because...that's what I do.
This is in two posts, due to the length; link to the second half is at the end of this.
Comments, of course, make my day. Hugs and cookies (as always) to janissa11 for the speedy beta-ing!
Characters: Sam, Dean, and assorted OCs
Pairings: none in this section; Dean/OFC later on
Length: 7295 words (this section)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: anything up through WHAT IS
Kleenex rating: this section, 0
Disclaimer: Kripke owns the sandbox, I just play
In Dreams
By Carol Davis
Prologue
Can’t…
Can’t see.
No…
Nothing around him but darkness. Shadows so deep, so completely black, they seemed to have weight.
Can’t…
I don’t know this place.
He tried to push one foot forward, take a step, but something held him back, kept him trapped in the shadows. His breath caught in his lungs, felt like small bubbles trying to work their way up through soup coming to a slow boil on the stove.
Can’t see.
Dammit, can’t…
Where the hell…
Someone was close by, in a room whose doorway he could barely make out. Asleep, maybe. Not aware he was there. Not aware he couldn’t move, or see; couldn’t find his way out of here. Someone who could help, if only they knew…
Sam?
‘S a dream. Just a dream. But…don’t know this place.
Sound came to him from another room, one that lay in front of him. At first he thought it was only a few steps away, then it seemed to be farther. A lot farther. Ten - twenty - maybe fifty yards. No; that was crazy. It was close, just a few steps.
Something rustled there. Thick fabric. The movement of a body. Not coming toward him, but…there.
He shifted his head, tried to look into the room where the someone lay sleeping. He could make out nothing inside it but shadows. Strange shapes that might be a bed, a dresser, a chair. Definitely a bedroom. His eyelids were nearly closed and he struggled to lift them, to see well enough to make out where the bed was, but the muscles that would let him do that had stopped working.
Another sound drifted down around him like smoke settling slowly from a fire in the ceiling. Almost a voice: the raw noise of someone too afraid to cry out. High-pitched at first, then lower, more from the gut. Nehhhhhuuhhhh.
Lower, and lower still, and then he could feel it rather than hear it. Felt it clutch at his belly, up underneath his ribs.
Calling to him.
Can’t…
Can’t…help you. Not like this.
He had no weapons. Couldn’t look down to verify that by sight, but he knew the absence of them at the small of his back, his hip, both legs. No gun, no knife. No holy water, no salt. For a moment he wasn’t even sure he was dressed.
Wasn’t sure he had a body.
The voice grabbed at him again, stole the breath from him.
And ahead of him, deep in the shadows, something loomed. He caught a flicker of light, as fleeting and insubstantial as the blink of a firefly.
Eyes.
Waiting for him.
Coming for him.
Ehhhhnnnnnuuuuhhhhh….
He began to tremble, fighting whatever it was that held him, pushing against air that felt as thick as slime. Couldn’t move his head, his arms, couldn’t drop to all fours and crawl away. Couldn’t cry out, waken the person who slept so quietly in that room only a few steps away, beg them for help.
Nuuuuuuhhhhhhoooooo…
Something was close, so close. He could feel the heat of it.
Hands reaching for him.
Deeeeennnnnn…
Reaching.
Coming for him.
His hands, his arms, snapped free and he thrashed, striking out blindly, still unable to open his eyes, to see what was trying to seize him. One hand connected with something and sent a shudder up his arm, into his chest.
“Dean? Dean, God, man, wake up. Dean?”
No…
Something grasped at his arms, tried to hold them down. He felt a shriek rise up through him and break free, high and shrill.
“Dean, man, wake up. It’s Sam. Dean, it’s me. Wake up.”
Sam?
The thing held on. Held his arms, his hands.
“You’re having a nightmare. Dean. Come on, man, it’s all right. Wake up.”
Sam.
It took him a minute to clear his vision enough to find Sam’s face, pillow-wrinkled and topped with hair that stuck out every which-way. Sam’s eyes were at half mast and he was frowning. Grimacing. One eye seemed more shut than the other.
“Did I hit you?” Dean murmured.
“Guess it’s true. Don’t wake somebody up suddenly.”
“Sorry, man.”
Sam lifted a finger and gingerly probed the flesh underneath the squintier eye. “It’s okay. All the bruises I got in Lynchville were fading. I kinda missed them.” He grunted a little and snuffled, still sleepy. “Are you okay? What the hell were you dreaming about? You kind of -“ Sam’s expression shifted. “You were screaming like a girl.”
“The hell I was.”
“Trust me, man. You were. What was it?”
Dean thought about it, frowning in a way he hoped looked more pensive than embarrassed. “Dunno.”
“Was it -?”
“What?”
“A - you know. Like mine.”
“A vision?” Dean winced and scrubbed a hand through his hair, then shifted back a little, away from Sam’s grasp. “No.” He’d intended to scoff at the idea but couldn’t find the energy. “Nothing like that. Nobody dying. Just a nightmare. So you can let go now. And I was so not squealing like a damn girl.” When one of Sam’s eyebrows slid up, Dean scowled at him. “It was the tacos. Thought they tasted a little funky. Must’ve really got my imagination going.”
Sam just sat there, blinking.
“Just a dream, Sam,” Dean grunted.
“Okay.”
And still Sam didn’t move.
“You wanna go back to your own bed? Or you figure you’re gonna sit here and rock me like I’m two? Dream, Sam.”
With a loud and very theatrical sigh Sam shifted to his feet and retreated to his own bed.
“Tacos,” Dean said. “Go back to sleep.”
Sam sat looking at him for what seemed like about a day and a half, then - finally - shrugged and crawled back underneath his covers. After one last intense but blessedly brief examination of his brother, he rolled over onto his side, facing away from Dean’s bed, and made himself comfortable. He was snuffle-snoring less than two minutes later.
Dean remained awake, staring into the darkness of the motel room.
One
“We could stay,” Sam offered.
Dean came out of the bathroom scrubbing at his wet hair with a towel. He’d been in there the best part of twenty minutes, showering and shaving, figuring Sam would use the time to get packed so they could hit the road, but Sam hadn’t moved from the table near the window. He was still in full research mode, from the look of it, but that could have been a fake-out; for all Dean knew he was looking at porn or playing online poker.
Or doing nothing at all.
Two and a half weeks since the thing with the djinn, and Sam was still all about caring and sharing. Tough to tell which was worse: the “let me feel your pain” crap or Sam yapping on about his destiny.
Things had sure been better a year ago, when they were just driving around the country killing things and looking for Dad. It’d seemed like the old days, when they were kids, when Dad had gone off somewhere on a hunt and had left the two of them on their own. They’d found things to hunt here and there, back then - small potatoes, but it was cool in a way normal-kid-stuff never could have been.
Way cooler than proms or algebra homework or trying out for some team.
Sam had been kind of a monstrous pain in the ass then, too, come to think of it, but at least it had nothing to do with people’s freaking destinies.
Holding back a sigh, Dean found clean jeans and t-shirt and yanked them on. “Stay for what?” he asked as he sat down to pull on his socks.
“You could get some rest.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sam. Could you give it up?”
Sam’s mouth pursed. “I’m serious. You haven’t slept more than a couple of hours the last three nights, and you didn’t sleep much more than that before we got here. You’re worn out, man. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and there’s no time crunch. We can stay in Eau Claire an extra day. It won’t make any difference.” Before Dean could protest, he added firmly, “If you drive like this… Think of the car, okay?”
“The car.”
“Can’t treat her the way she deserves if you’re dead on your feet. Or your ass.”
“Since when are you worried about the car?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Horse pucky. What do you really want to stick around scenic, delightful Eau Claire, Wisconsin for?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a crappy liar, Sam.”
Sam was silent for a moment, obviously building up to another volley of schmoop about the car, or something equally stupid. Then his gaze drifted down to the laptop screen. Could be porn, Dean thought. Sam’s version of porn, at least, which usually didn’t involve naked chicks. After a second Sam let out a long breath and rubbed gently with one finger at the spot on his temple where Dean’s fist had connected. It’d been a glancing blow; there was no bruise, but the spot had to be tender, at least a little.
“Was it about Mom?” Sam asked finally.
“What? No.” Before Sam could prod any more, Dean said with exasperation, “I was in someplace dark. There was something, I don’t know, lurking there. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t make any noise.”
Sam peered steadily at him. “You had a nightmare about being trapped.”
“I -“
“You feel trapped with me. In this life.”
If there had been anything movable within reach, Dean would have grabbed it and hurled it. Would’ve made a helluva dent in the drywall. Or Sam’s head. “I swear to God, if you don’t knock it off, I’m getting in that car and I’m gonna leave you here. Son of a bitch, Sam, would you drop it? Stop psychoanalyzing me. I had a nightmare. Okay? A nightmare. The cigar is a freaking cigar. Let it go.”
“Fine,” Sam muttered, his gaze dropping to the tabletop.
“Pack your stuff so we can get out of here.”
Dean picked up his duffel from its place alongside the dresser and dropped it on his bed. Sam didn’t move; he studied the surface of the table like there were ancient runes carved all over it as Dean shoved his belongings into the duffel. After a couple of minutes of tracing the runes with a fingertip he said, “There’s a haunting.”
“Where?”
“Here. In town.”
“Seriously.”
“Yeah. That Ghost Hunters thing I told you about. I pulled up some more background on it. Sounds like there might actually be something there.”
Dean pushed a fistful of socks into his bag. “Might be?”
“There’s been an increase in paranormal activity over the last few months.”
“Oh, that’s convenient. And let me guess. Since right around the time they started to sell tickets?”
“I - yeah, maybe. Whatever. But it’s tonight. We could check it out.”
With an eye roll so extreme it was almost painful, Dean looked around for Sam’s duffel, found it halfway underneath Sam’s bed, and dropped it on the table alongside the computer. “There’s nothing there to check. You know what those things are: a big setup for a bunch of geeks like those HellhoundsLair.com guys. They go hang around all night in some old house with their cameras and their fancy EMF meters thinking they’re gonna get the tinglies from somebody’s dear departed Aunt Millie. One person out of twenty gets a picture of something that looks like an orb and they all squeal about it for months.”
“Somebody did die in the house.”
“Somebody always died in the house, Sam.”
Sam didn’t reply. Which meant there was more.
“What?” Dean pressed with a groan.
“The person who’s running it. I’d kind of like to talk to her.”
Now that made some kind of sense. It hadn’t been that long since the mess with Madison - and the thought of her made Dean wince; he never would have expected Sam to make a turnaround this fast. But why bother trying to figure out whether Sam was keeping to the Sam-timetable or not? A smirk pulled at the corner of Dean’s mouth. “Her?”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting. What am I starting?”
“Her name is Kate Dahlgren. She’s the local expert on the paranormal. Teaches a graduate level course on myth, legend and superstition, among other things. She’s written some really interesting articles.”
“Articles.”
“Yes, Dean. Articles.”
“What’s she look like?”
“I have no idea what she looks like. She’s a really intelligent person with some thought-provoking ideas.”
“So you want to get your geek on with some gray-haired lady who teaches college kids about ghosts and goblins. For what? Extra credit? Maybe if you really lay it on thick, she’ll put in a good word for you with -“ Dean shook his head absently and reached for his boots. The lack of sleep was killing his talent for snark; he’d concede that much. “Whoever you put in a good word with at geek school.”
“Is it that big a deal?”
Something in Sam’s tone made Dean squint at his brother. It took him a moment to settle on what the answer might be. “She a demonologist?”
“What? No.”
“Then -“
“Look,” Sam said. Then he stopped. Stared at the laptop screen, then across the room at the corner where a microwave with about the same wattage as an Easy-Bake Oven, a tiny sink and a dorm-sized fridge served as the room’s version of a kitchenette. The foil take-out wrappers holding the remnants of last night’s tacos still sat on the counter beside the sink. “At school,” he said after a while. “We’d have these guest lecturers. A few times I went and talked to them afterwards. Sometimes we’d go for coffee or something, with a bunch of people. It’s - I like finding out what they think. What led them to the conclusions they drew in their work. It’s just -“
The unspoken word hung in the air between them.
“Normal,” Dean said.
“Yeah.”
Sam’s expression had turned plaintive. For all his yapping about Dean’s lack of sleep, he hadn’t gotten that much rest himself during the last couple of weeks. So, fine. If they stuck around for another day it wouldn’t hurt anything. And both of them could try to relax a little.
Not that that would actually happen - the relaxing. But given another minute, Sam was going to use the full-on puppy-dog eyes. He’d started using them years ago when he wanted the last cookie, or to stay up another half-hour to watch some TV show, and it hadn’t taken the little jerk long to understand that they worked. Like a charm. With Dad, maybe ninety percent of the time. With Dean, close to a hundred.
Normal, Dean thought.
There was nothing in it that Dean could object to. Not after the thing with the djinn.
“Okay,” he told Sam. “Whatever. Fine.”
* * * * *
“So what’s the deal?” Dean asked as he pulled the key out of the ignition. “There’s a lot of cars here.”
“Lucy’s a big draw, I guess.”
“Lucy?”
“The daughter of the family who built this house back in the 1890s. She died of influenza just after the turn of the century.”
Dean glanced up and down the street, taking note of the collection of vehicles. He’d taken the only remaining parking spot, in between a minivan and a Caprice with a collection of dents that said the owner attracted fender-benders like honey drew flies. Every house on the block had a driveway, and most of them had a driveway and a garage, so anything parked on the street was likely to belong to an attendee of the Ghost Academy. That conclusion made him wince softly.
“She died of the flu?” he said to Sam. “And they figure she stuck around?”
Sam shrugged.
“Orbs?” Dean suggested.
“And cold spots.”
“People and their freakin’ orbs.” To make a point, Dean cranked the car window down halfway and nodded at the crisp, damp breeze that swept through the Impala. “Weather’s not exactly balmy. And the house is a hundred years old. They don’t figure there’s such a thing as a draft? Light leaks? Reflections off glass?”
“You’re preaching to the choir, man.”
Dean palmed his keys and snorted softly. “Man, people are gullible.”
Not interested in whether Sam even had a response, he rolled the window back up and hopped out of the car. Sam had moved a little bit faster and was already standing alongside the Impala by the time Dean pushed his door shut. Being up on the sidewalk gave Sam a few additional inches of height; that and the less-than-indulgent expression he was wearing made Dean grunt in annoyance.
“You think maybe you could avoid playing with the fuse box this time, like you did that time back in Dayton?” Sam asked. “It is hilarious when the lights go on and off, but -“
“You don’t want me to mess with your sucking up to the professor.”
“You really scared that one guy.”
“Who, him? That guy wouldn’t have known a real orb if it bit him in the ass. I was just having some fun.”
The place was crazily well-kept-up for a haunted house. Manicured lawn, freshly-painted fence, tidy rows of shrubbery, neat beds of multicolored flowers. Slate pathway leading from the sidewalk up to a porch that made a U around three sides of the house. Even in the fading evening light the tall windows were obviously spotless.
“What d’you call that color?” Dean asked idly, meaning the pale green on the clapboards.
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m reluctant to get started on being bored out of my damn wits.”
“You could go back to the motel.”
“And miss my chance to meet Lucy the Friendly Ghost? No way.” Popping out a grin for Sam’s benefit, Dean skirted around the Impala to the sidewalk and led the way up the slate path to the porch.
“Stay away from the fuse box,” Sam said from behind him.
“Killjoy,” Dean snorted.
The small foyer of the house was as jammed with people as a mosh pit. Sam and Dean had to inch their way inside and could get no further than a couple of steps past the door. They’d been inside only a moment when a kid in a fatigue jacket, a University of Wisconsin cap, and a badge that said Historical Society - Staff leaned toward them and announced, “You got tickets?” When Sam shook his head, the kid stretched out a hand - not much of a stretch, given that he was practically on top of Sam. “Twenty dollar donation to the Historical Society.”
“Twenty bucks?” Dean’s eyes went wide. “That’s some expensive orbs, there, pal.”
“Dean,” Sam said.
“What? I ain’t paying for this. This was your idea, geek boy.”
With an unreadable shift in his expression Sam pulled out his wallet, fished out a twenty and held it out to the kid.
“Each,” the kid informed him.
“Forty bucks?” Dean hissed.
Sam paid, and the kid handed him two glossy-paper brochures, then disappeared back into the crowd.
“For forty bucks, we could’ve waited for her outside,” Dean grumbled.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Sam countered in a whisper.
There wasn’t much fun in this, either: being jammed in with forty or fifty people of exactly the types Dean had expected. A few teenagers, maybe a dozen college geeks, some middle-aged couples acting like this was a stop on the Tour of Nifty Stuff in Eau Claire (and for all he knew, maybe it was), and of course, the Serious Ghost Hunters, each one of them armed with his or her Serious Ghost-Hunting Equipment.
And two decent-looking chicks jammed into a corner, making out.
Well, that was new.
Grinning absently, Dean nudged his brother and tipped his head toward the corner. Sam took a look, frowning, then shifted his shoulders in a “So what’s the deal?” shrug.
“Dude,” Dean hissed. “You think once the lights go out, they’ll -“
“Ssshhh,” warned someone in front of him.
“What, ‘ssshhh’? Sssshhh for what?”
The lights throughout the ground floor of the house were apparently on a dimmer; the glow from the foyer chandelier and the half-dozen lamps visible from where the Winchesters were standing faded to about half of what it had been when they entered the house. The murmured conversations of the crowd fell silent, and one by one the heads of everyone jammed into the foyer turned toward the staircase. Even, Dean noted with some dismay, the two chicks in the corner.
The stair treads were uncarpeted. The old wood creaked with the weight of someone coming down the stairs.
An expectant hush fell over the crowd.
The staircase made a ninety-degree right turn halfway up, so that anyone on the top few steps wasn’t visible from the foyer. The curve of a full skirt of thick 19th-century fabric appeared first, along with the toe of a black shoe. Then the rest of the skirt, and a hand protruding from the open end of a lacy white sleeve.
“Damn,” Dean said. “Lucy’s looking pretty substantial for a dead chick.”
“That’s Dr. Dahlgren, jerk,” someone sniped.
The lights dimmed a little more - thanks to UW-cap-guy, no doubt - as the rest of the white blouse appeared.
The doc wasn’t sixty.
She had goofy blonde curls that to Dean’s eye made her look like Nellie Oleson from Little House on the Prairie. He couldn’t tell much else about her thanks to the lack of light and the big skirt and the long sleeves, but the white blouse did hint at a very respectable rack.
And she definitely wasn’t sixty.
Dean shifted to look at Sam and held back a sigh at the expression on Sam’s face. He’d dropped into full geek mode, ready to listen to all the whats and wherefores and whoosywhatsisses. Dean half expected him to whip out a notepad and pen and start taking notes. He was about to comment when somebody behind him jabbed him in the side with an elbow. Or something. Crap, it was crowded in here.
Dr. Dahlgren stopped descending the stairs at the midpoint landing, high up enough to let her see everybody in the foyer.
“Let’s go back a hundred years,” she said.
Continue reading here: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/37875.html
You can call this a "missing episode" -- takes place in between WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD NEVER BE and ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. It's case-focused, but of course there's angst and Dean whumpage because...that's what I do.
This is in two posts, due to the length; link to the second half is at the end of this.
Comments, of course, make my day. Hugs and cookies (as always) to janissa11 for the speedy beta-ing!
Characters: Sam, Dean, and assorted OCs
Pairings: none in this section; Dean/OFC later on
Length: 7295 words (this section)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: anything up through WHAT IS
Kleenex rating: this section, 0
Disclaimer: Kripke owns the sandbox, I just play
In Dreams
By Carol Davis
Prologue
Can’t…
Can’t see.
No…
Nothing around him but darkness. Shadows so deep, so completely black, they seemed to have weight.
Can’t…
I don’t know this place.
He tried to push one foot forward, take a step, but something held him back, kept him trapped in the shadows. His breath caught in his lungs, felt like small bubbles trying to work their way up through soup coming to a slow boil on the stove.
Can’t see.
Dammit, can’t…
Where the hell…
Someone was close by, in a room whose doorway he could barely make out. Asleep, maybe. Not aware he was there. Not aware he couldn’t move, or see; couldn’t find his way out of here. Someone who could help, if only they knew…
Sam?
‘S a dream. Just a dream. But…don’t know this place.
Sound came to him from another room, one that lay in front of him. At first he thought it was only a few steps away, then it seemed to be farther. A lot farther. Ten - twenty - maybe fifty yards. No; that was crazy. It was close, just a few steps.
Something rustled there. Thick fabric. The movement of a body. Not coming toward him, but…there.
He shifted his head, tried to look into the room where the someone lay sleeping. He could make out nothing inside it but shadows. Strange shapes that might be a bed, a dresser, a chair. Definitely a bedroom. His eyelids were nearly closed and he struggled to lift them, to see well enough to make out where the bed was, but the muscles that would let him do that had stopped working.
Another sound drifted down around him like smoke settling slowly from a fire in the ceiling. Almost a voice: the raw noise of someone too afraid to cry out. High-pitched at first, then lower, more from the gut. Nehhhhhuuhhhh.
Lower, and lower still, and then he could feel it rather than hear it. Felt it clutch at his belly, up underneath his ribs.
Calling to him.
Can’t…
Can’t…help you. Not like this.
He had no weapons. Couldn’t look down to verify that by sight, but he knew the absence of them at the small of his back, his hip, both legs. No gun, no knife. No holy water, no salt. For a moment he wasn’t even sure he was dressed.
Wasn’t sure he had a body.
The voice grabbed at him again, stole the breath from him.
And ahead of him, deep in the shadows, something loomed. He caught a flicker of light, as fleeting and insubstantial as the blink of a firefly.
Eyes.
Waiting for him.
Coming for him.
Ehhhhnnnnnuuuuhhhhh….
He began to tremble, fighting whatever it was that held him, pushing against air that felt as thick as slime. Couldn’t move his head, his arms, couldn’t drop to all fours and crawl away. Couldn’t cry out, waken the person who slept so quietly in that room only a few steps away, beg them for help.
Nuuuuuuhhhhhhoooooo…
Something was close, so close. He could feel the heat of it.
Hands reaching for him.
Deeeeennnnnn…
Reaching.
Coming for him.
His hands, his arms, snapped free and he thrashed, striking out blindly, still unable to open his eyes, to see what was trying to seize him. One hand connected with something and sent a shudder up his arm, into his chest.
“Dean? Dean, God, man, wake up. Dean?”
No…
Something grasped at his arms, tried to hold them down. He felt a shriek rise up through him and break free, high and shrill.
“Dean, man, wake up. It’s Sam. Dean, it’s me. Wake up.”
Sam?
The thing held on. Held his arms, his hands.
“You’re having a nightmare. Dean. Come on, man, it’s all right. Wake up.”
Sam.
It took him a minute to clear his vision enough to find Sam’s face, pillow-wrinkled and topped with hair that stuck out every which-way. Sam’s eyes were at half mast and he was frowning. Grimacing. One eye seemed more shut than the other.
“Did I hit you?” Dean murmured.
“Guess it’s true. Don’t wake somebody up suddenly.”
“Sorry, man.”
Sam lifted a finger and gingerly probed the flesh underneath the squintier eye. “It’s okay. All the bruises I got in Lynchville were fading. I kinda missed them.” He grunted a little and snuffled, still sleepy. “Are you okay? What the hell were you dreaming about? You kind of -“ Sam’s expression shifted. “You were screaming like a girl.”
“The hell I was.”
“Trust me, man. You were. What was it?”
Dean thought about it, frowning in a way he hoped looked more pensive than embarrassed. “Dunno.”
“Was it -?”
“What?”
“A - you know. Like mine.”
“A vision?” Dean winced and scrubbed a hand through his hair, then shifted back a little, away from Sam’s grasp. “No.” He’d intended to scoff at the idea but couldn’t find the energy. “Nothing like that. Nobody dying. Just a nightmare. So you can let go now. And I was so not squealing like a damn girl.” When one of Sam’s eyebrows slid up, Dean scowled at him. “It was the tacos. Thought they tasted a little funky. Must’ve really got my imagination going.”
Sam just sat there, blinking.
“Just a dream, Sam,” Dean grunted.
“Okay.”
And still Sam didn’t move.
“You wanna go back to your own bed? Or you figure you’re gonna sit here and rock me like I’m two? Dream, Sam.”
With a loud and very theatrical sigh Sam shifted to his feet and retreated to his own bed.
“Tacos,” Dean said. “Go back to sleep.”
Sam sat looking at him for what seemed like about a day and a half, then - finally - shrugged and crawled back underneath his covers. After one last intense but blessedly brief examination of his brother, he rolled over onto his side, facing away from Dean’s bed, and made himself comfortable. He was snuffle-snoring less than two minutes later.
Dean remained awake, staring into the darkness of the motel room.
One
“We could stay,” Sam offered.
Dean came out of the bathroom scrubbing at his wet hair with a towel. He’d been in there the best part of twenty minutes, showering and shaving, figuring Sam would use the time to get packed so they could hit the road, but Sam hadn’t moved from the table near the window. He was still in full research mode, from the look of it, but that could have been a fake-out; for all Dean knew he was looking at porn or playing online poker.
Or doing nothing at all.
Two and a half weeks since the thing with the djinn, and Sam was still all about caring and sharing. Tough to tell which was worse: the “let me feel your pain” crap or Sam yapping on about his destiny.
Things had sure been better a year ago, when they were just driving around the country killing things and looking for Dad. It’d seemed like the old days, when they were kids, when Dad had gone off somewhere on a hunt and had left the two of them on their own. They’d found things to hunt here and there, back then - small potatoes, but it was cool in a way normal-kid-stuff never could have been.
Way cooler than proms or algebra homework or trying out for some team.
Sam had been kind of a monstrous pain in the ass then, too, come to think of it, but at least it had nothing to do with people’s freaking destinies.
Holding back a sigh, Dean found clean jeans and t-shirt and yanked them on. “Stay for what?” he asked as he sat down to pull on his socks.
“You could get some rest.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sam. Could you give it up?”
Sam’s mouth pursed. “I’m serious. You haven’t slept more than a couple of hours the last three nights, and you didn’t sleep much more than that before we got here. You’re worn out, man. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and there’s no time crunch. We can stay in Eau Claire an extra day. It won’t make any difference.” Before Dean could protest, he added firmly, “If you drive like this… Think of the car, okay?”
“The car.”
“Can’t treat her the way she deserves if you’re dead on your feet. Or your ass.”
“Since when are you worried about the car?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Horse pucky. What do you really want to stick around scenic, delightful Eau Claire, Wisconsin for?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a crappy liar, Sam.”
Sam was silent for a moment, obviously building up to another volley of schmoop about the car, or something equally stupid. Then his gaze drifted down to the laptop screen. Could be porn, Dean thought. Sam’s version of porn, at least, which usually didn’t involve naked chicks. After a second Sam let out a long breath and rubbed gently with one finger at the spot on his temple where Dean’s fist had connected. It’d been a glancing blow; there was no bruise, but the spot had to be tender, at least a little.
“Was it about Mom?” Sam asked finally.
“What? No.” Before Sam could prod any more, Dean said with exasperation, “I was in someplace dark. There was something, I don’t know, lurking there. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t make any noise.”
Sam peered steadily at him. “You had a nightmare about being trapped.”
“I -“
“You feel trapped with me. In this life.”
If there had been anything movable within reach, Dean would have grabbed it and hurled it. Would’ve made a helluva dent in the drywall. Or Sam’s head. “I swear to God, if you don’t knock it off, I’m getting in that car and I’m gonna leave you here. Son of a bitch, Sam, would you drop it? Stop psychoanalyzing me. I had a nightmare. Okay? A nightmare. The cigar is a freaking cigar. Let it go.”
“Fine,” Sam muttered, his gaze dropping to the tabletop.
“Pack your stuff so we can get out of here.”
Dean picked up his duffel from its place alongside the dresser and dropped it on his bed. Sam didn’t move; he studied the surface of the table like there were ancient runes carved all over it as Dean shoved his belongings into the duffel. After a couple of minutes of tracing the runes with a fingertip he said, “There’s a haunting.”
“Where?”
“Here. In town.”
“Seriously.”
“Yeah. That Ghost Hunters thing I told you about. I pulled up some more background on it. Sounds like there might actually be something there.”
Dean pushed a fistful of socks into his bag. “Might be?”
“There’s been an increase in paranormal activity over the last few months.”
“Oh, that’s convenient. And let me guess. Since right around the time they started to sell tickets?”
“I - yeah, maybe. Whatever. But it’s tonight. We could check it out.”
With an eye roll so extreme it was almost painful, Dean looked around for Sam’s duffel, found it halfway underneath Sam’s bed, and dropped it on the table alongside the computer. “There’s nothing there to check. You know what those things are: a big setup for a bunch of geeks like those HellhoundsLair.com guys. They go hang around all night in some old house with their cameras and their fancy EMF meters thinking they’re gonna get the tinglies from somebody’s dear departed Aunt Millie. One person out of twenty gets a picture of something that looks like an orb and they all squeal about it for months.”
“Somebody did die in the house.”
“Somebody always died in the house, Sam.”
Sam didn’t reply. Which meant there was more.
“What?” Dean pressed with a groan.
“The person who’s running it. I’d kind of like to talk to her.”
Now that made some kind of sense. It hadn’t been that long since the mess with Madison - and the thought of her made Dean wince; he never would have expected Sam to make a turnaround this fast. But why bother trying to figure out whether Sam was keeping to the Sam-timetable or not? A smirk pulled at the corner of Dean’s mouth. “Her?”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting. What am I starting?”
“Her name is Kate Dahlgren. She’s the local expert on the paranormal. Teaches a graduate level course on myth, legend and superstition, among other things. She’s written some really interesting articles.”
“Articles.”
“Yes, Dean. Articles.”
“What’s she look like?”
“I have no idea what she looks like. She’s a really intelligent person with some thought-provoking ideas.”
“So you want to get your geek on with some gray-haired lady who teaches college kids about ghosts and goblins. For what? Extra credit? Maybe if you really lay it on thick, she’ll put in a good word for you with -“ Dean shook his head absently and reached for his boots. The lack of sleep was killing his talent for snark; he’d concede that much. “Whoever you put in a good word with at geek school.”
“Is it that big a deal?”
Something in Sam’s tone made Dean squint at his brother. It took him a moment to settle on what the answer might be. “She a demonologist?”
“What? No.”
“Then -“
“Look,” Sam said. Then he stopped. Stared at the laptop screen, then across the room at the corner where a microwave with about the same wattage as an Easy-Bake Oven, a tiny sink and a dorm-sized fridge served as the room’s version of a kitchenette. The foil take-out wrappers holding the remnants of last night’s tacos still sat on the counter beside the sink. “At school,” he said after a while. “We’d have these guest lecturers. A few times I went and talked to them afterwards. Sometimes we’d go for coffee or something, with a bunch of people. It’s - I like finding out what they think. What led them to the conclusions they drew in their work. It’s just -“
The unspoken word hung in the air between them.
“Normal,” Dean said.
“Yeah.”
Sam’s expression had turned plaintive. For all his yapping about Dean’s lack of sleep, he hadn’t gotten that much rest himself during the last couple of weeks. So, fine. If they stuck around for another day it wouldn’t hurt anything. And both of them could try to relax a little.
Not that that would actually happen - the relaxing. But given another minute, Sam was going to use the full-on puppy-dog eyes. He’d started using them years ago when he wanted the last cookie, or to stay up another half-hour to watch some TV show, and it hadn’t taken the little jerk long to understand that they worked. Like a charm. With Dad, maybe ninety percent of the time. With Dean, close to a hundred.
Normal, Dean thought.
There was nothing in it that Dean could object to. Not after the thing with the djinn.
“Okay,” he told Sam. “Whatever. Fine.”
* * * * *
“So what’s the deal?” Dean asked as he pulled the key out of the ignition. “There’s a lot of cars here.”
“Lucy’s a big draw, I guess.”
“Lucy?”
“The daughter of the family who built this house back in the 1890s. She died of influenza just after the turn of the century.”
Dean glanced up and down the street, taking note of the collection of vehicles. He’d taken the only remaining parking spot, in between a minivan and a Caprice with a collection of dents that said the owner attracted fender-benders like honey drew flies. Every house on the block had a driveway, and most of them had a driveway and a garage, so anything parked on the street was likely to belong to an attendee of the Ghost Academy. That conclusion made him wince softly.
“She died of the flu?” he said to Sam. “And they figure she stuck around?”
Sam shrugged.
“Orbs?” Dean suggested.
“And cold spots.”
“People and their freakin’ orbs.” To make a point, Dean cranked the car window down halfway and nodded at the crisp, damp breeze that swept through the Impala. “Weather’s not exactly balmy. And the house is a hundred years old. They don’t figure there’s such a thing as a draft? Light leaks? Reflections off glass?”
“You’re preaching to the choir, man.”
Dean palmed his keys and snorted softly. “Man, people are gullible.”
Not interested in whether Sam even had a response, he rolled the window back up and hopped out of the car. Sam had moved a little bit faster and was already standing alongside the Impala by the time Dean pushed his door shut. Being up on the sidewalk gave Sam a few additional inches of height; that and the less-than-indulgent expression he was wearing made Dean grunt in annoyance.
“You think maybe you could avoid playing with the fuse box this time, like you did that time back in Dayton?” Sam asked. “It is hilarious when the lights go on and off, but -“
“You don’t want me to mess with your sucking up to the professor.”
“You really scared that one guy.”
“Who, him? That guy wouldn’t have known a real orb if it bit him in the ass. I was just having some fun.”
The place was crazily well-kept-up for a haunted house. Manicured lawn, freshly-painted fence, tidy rows of shrubbery, neat beds of multicolored flowers. Slate pathway leading from the sidewalk up to a porch that made a U around three sides of the house. Even in the fading evening light the tall windows were obviously spotless.
“What d’you call that color?” Dean asked idly, meaning the pale green on the clapboards.
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m reluctant to get started on being bored out of my damn wits.”
“You could go back to the motel.”
“And miss my chance to meet Lucy the Friendly Ghost? No way.” Popping out a grin for Sam’s benefit, Dean skirted around the Impala to the sidewalk and led the way up the slate path to the porch.
“Stay away from the fuse box,” Sam said from behind him.
“Killjoy,” Dean snorted.
The small foyer of the house was as jammed with people as a mosh pit. Sam and Dean had to inch their way inside and could get no further than a couple of steps past the door. They’d been inside only a moment when a kid in a fatigue jacket, a University of Wisconsin cap, and a badge that said Historical Society - Staff leaned toward them and announced, “You got tickets?” When Sam shook his head, the kid stretched out a hand - not much of a stretch, given that he was practically on top of Sam. “Twenty dollar donation to the Historical Society.”
“Twenty bucks?” Dean’s eyes went wide. “That’s some expensive orbs, there, pal.”
“Dean,” Sam said.
“What? I ain’t paying for this. This was your idea, geek boy.”
With an unreadable shift in his expression Sam pulled out his wallet, fished out a twenty and held it out to the kid.
“Each,” the kid informed him.
“Forty bucks?” Dean hissed.
Sam paid, and the kid handed him two glossy-paper brochures, then disappeared back into the crowd.
“For forty bucks, we could’ve waited for her outside,” Dean grumbled.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Sam countered in a whisper.
There wasn’t much fun in this, either: being jammed in with forty or fifty people of exactly the types Dean had expected. A few teenagers, maybe a dozen college geeks, some middle-aged couples acting like this was a stop on the Tour of Nifty Stuff in Eau Claire (and for all he knew, maybe it was), and of course, the Serious Ghost Hunters, each one of them armed with his or her Serious Ghost-Hunting Equipment.
And two decent-looking chicks jammed into a corner, making out.
Well, that was new.
Grinning absently, Dean nudged his brother and tipped his head toward the corner. Sam took a look, frowning, then shifted his shoulders in a “So what’s the deal?” shrug.
“Dude,” Dean hissed. “You think once the lights go out, they’ll -“
“Ssshhh,” warned someone in front of him.
“What, ‘ssshhh’? Sssshhh for what?”
The lights throughout the ground floor of the house were apparently on a dimmer; the glow from the foyer chandelier and the half-dozen lamps visible from where the Winchesters were standing faded to about half of what it had been when they entered the house. The murmured conversations of the crowd fell silent, and one by one the heads of everyone jammed into the foyer turned toward the staircase. Even, Dean noted with some dismay, the two chicks in the corner.
The stair treads were uncarpeted. The old wood creaked with the weight of someone coming down the stairs.
An expectant hush fell over the crowd.
The staircase made a ninety-degree right turn halfway up, so that anyone on the top few steps wasn’t visible from the foyer. The curve of a full skirt of thick 19th-century fabric appeared first, along with the toe of a black shoe. Then the rest of the skirt, and a hand protruding from the open end of a lacy white sleeve.
“Damn,” Dean said. “Lucy’s looking pretty substantial for a dead chick.”
“That’s Dr. Dahlgren, jerk,” someone sniped.
The lights dimmed a little more - thanks to UW-cap-guy, no doubt - as the rest of the white blouse appeared.
The doc wasn’t sixty.
She had goofy blonde curls that to Dean’s eye made her look like Nellie Oleson from Little House on the Prairie. He couldn’t tell much else about her thanks to the lack of light and the big skirt and the long sleeves, but the white blouse did hint at a very respectable rack.
And she definitely wasn’t sixty.
Dean shifted to look at Sam and held back a sigh at the expression on Sam’s face. He’d dropped into full geek mode, ready to listen to all the whats and wherefores and whoosywhatsisses. Dean half expected him to whip out a notepad and pen and start taking notes. He was about to comment when somebody behind him jabbed him in the side with an elbow. Or something. Crap, it was crowded in here.
Dr. Dahlgren stopped descending the stairs at the midpoint landing, high up enough to let her see everybody in the foyer.
“Let’s go back a hundred years,” she said.
Continue reading here: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/37875.html