Now Ashes Rise in My Footprints (2/3)
John
settles in at the motel with his boys, and for the first couple of
hours he's pretty much fine. He does some reading, orders takeout,
and even helps Dean make an improvised igloo of chairs and pillows so
the three of them can be eskimos. Why eskimos, he has no idea, but he
dutifully goes kayaking and harpoons a whale. Sammy falls over
laughing, and Dean skins the whale with serious concentration, so
that John can almost see
the animal.
The clock turns four, then five, then six, and John
tries to read, but can't make any sense of the words. He paces the
room, fidgets with this thing and that. Should he call them, see
what's going on? He goes to the phone, almost picks it up, and then
sternly reminds himself that it's their fight, not his, and that the
ball is in their court. He can't force some poor family to do things
his way.
But, God, five fires... he'd be running so fast or
fighting so hard...
When the door knocks, he almost jumps out of his skin,
and he yanks it open so fiercely the girl on the other side flinches.
She's a lanky thing, slightly hunched over to make her
seem smaller, dirt-blonde hair falling into her face, and... John
can't help but wince, seeing the scars travelling from her forehead
down onto her cheek, white spots spreading past her nose and chin,
drooping eyelid hanging over a blueish, blind eye.
She looks up at him. Her other eye has long lashes and a
steady gaze.
”John
Winchester?” she asks.
He nods. ”You must be Melanie. I was expecting you to
call.”
”Sorry.”
She bites her lip. ”I had to come.”
And come alone, as it turns out. He asks for her father,
and she scoffs: ”You want me to talk, right? He shuts me up. Every
time.”
He looks at her for a long time, and then opens the door
wider without a word, letting her in.
In a way, he's with her father on this. He's faced the
worried disbelief and suspicious glances when he tried to tell people
the truth, and the thought of putting a child through that makes his
stomach churn. But he also recognizes the fervor in the girl's
speech, the rushed way she talks as if trying to get as much as
possible out before the objections come.
Objections that he doesn't have - all he gives her are
questions to prompt her further.
”The
doctors said it couldn't have happened that way,” she explains.
”First of all that the candle couldn't have flared up that big, and
then that even if it did, it shouldn't have burned me bad enough to
do this.” She gestures towards her face. ”They thought someone
had done something to it - like drenched it in something as a bad
joke. But no one had. And they said maybe Anthea had picked up the
wine bottle instead of the water bottle...”
”Anthea?”
”One
of the girls in the choir. It was Lucy Blake's funeral mass, but the
communion hadn't started yet, so Anthea poured the bottle of water in
my face. Then Father Michael took off his chasuble and threw it over
me, so they stopped the fire together. The chasuble was synthetic, so
they thought maybe that was it, except it wasn't burned even a little
bit. And Anthea is too smart to throw wine on a fire. Even if she
wasn't, it's red wine.
Someone would have noticed.”
”Yes,”
he agrees.
”It
was the witch.”
”Your
father thinks that fire hates your family.”
Her eye widens. ”He said that? And didn't take it
back?”
”He
did take it back. But that's what he believes, isn't it?”
She
nods, then shakes her head. ”It's not true. If it was the fire, it
would happen all the time, and it doesn't. I've been around millions
of fires. We all have. There's no way not to. No, it has to be a
witch.”
He likes her reasoning, but isn't convinced of the
solution. ”Why a witch?”
”Because
of the lightning,” she says. ”Everything else, sure, someone
could have done. Tampered with the candle, and with the electrics in
Scott's house, and made Mom trip. But the only ones who can make
lightning are witches and God, and God only punishes bad people.”
He wishes that were true.
Something in his expression must give him away, because
she says, accusingly, ”You don't believe me.”
”There
are other things it could be besides witches.”
”Like
what?”
He watches her, knowing that if he tells her, he can
never take it back. Lifting his gaze even further, he sees the boys
over by the pillow igloo. Sammy is throwing himself on the pillows
and Dean is watching him, seemingly occupied with the game, but John
can tell that he's listening. God knows how much he understands;
probably far too much.
”Ghosts,”
he says. ”Curses. Demons. The Satirmu. Ask-wee-da-eed. Lots of
creatures from all over the world, and most of them evil as hell from
what I've read.”
She stares at him, shock-still, and he tries to think of
something to say, but nothing comes up. Sammy starts whimpering, and
when John goes over to have a look, he finds that it's time for
another diaper change.
He returns to find Melanie still immobile, and Dean
sitting under the table. He pauses and shifts Sammy's weight on his
arm, uncertain what to do.
Finally, she raises her head and asks him, desperate,
”How do we stop it?”
From where he's standing, he can see that Dean raises
his head too, and looks at him as if asking the same question. The
difference is that Dean's expression shows every confidence that John
has an answer to offer.
He pays for a full month at the motel, and takes to
learning everything he can.
He learns that Ross Quentin doesn't believe his presence
will make any difference, but is willing to humour him.
He
learns that Scott Quentin is every bit as broken as his father says
he is. John makes one visit to the hospital, which is awkward but
promising - he's clearly a bright guy - right up to the point
where John mentions the fire and Scott starts to hyperventilate. The
only information he gets on the subject is a whispered sentence, when
the nurse has already asked him to leave: ”She should
never have married me.”
He
learns that there's an adventure park two miles left of the motel
where Dean can sometimes be convinced to climb around wild if John
pays really good attention
to Sammy in the meantime. If John's attention drifts even for a
minute, Dean will jump straight down and run back to them.
He learns that Bobby Quentin will make Sammy pout,
because he's used to being the baby and this town ain't big enough
for the two of them. When this happens, Ross will offer a rare smile.
For a guy who's miserable all the time, he's got quite the sense of
humor.
He learns that Joan Quentin lives in Phoenix and has no
interest whatsoever in discussing her late husband or his family,
thank you very much.
He
learns that what scares Melanie most of all isn't dying. It isn't
even her family dying. She looks down when she talks about it, her
hair falling down over her face, as she describes the other children
in the burn unit. ”I know I look like shit,” she says, panic
making her voice shrill, ”but they... I don't ever
want to end up like them. Not ever.”
There's nothing he can say to that, no comfort, because
lightning does strike twice.
He
learns that he's still selfish enough to get scared, to wonder if his
meddling is putting him in danger. Putting the boys in danger. Ross
offers to babysit while John does research, and he hesitates,
thinking, what if there's a fire while I'm gone?
He sees the resigned pain in Ross's eyes, but that's not what sways
him to agree. It's just that he wonders what makes more sense -
setting fire to the guy who's determined to stop you, or the guy
who's too tired to do anything at all.
He learns that Morgan Quentin owned part of the forest,
and died of a heart attack only months after the fire that put an end
to his fortune as well as claiming his younger son. ”Lucky bastard
missed the rest,” Ross puts it with cynical dryness. Melanie refers
to her grandfather as ”not a very nice man,” with the cautious
phrasing of someone who's retelling hearsay.
Yes, John learns everything about the Quentin family,
and old Morgan seems a promising clue, but even so, no matter how
hard John tries he can't find a ghost, or a curse, or a malevolent
god. He looks at photographs, diaries, the sites of the different
fires, and feels like he's running headfirst into a wall over and
over again.
At
the end of two weeks, he stands where the forest once was, at the
edge of a large golf course, and curses his own thick head for
refusing to come up with the answer. He turns around and heads for
the exit, and that's when he sees the sign. Properly sees
it, notices it, not just casts a glance at it like he's done before.
Blake Golf Course.
Lucy Blake's funeral.
”Son
of a bitch,” he mutters, telling himself that it's just a name, it
might be nothing, but still hurrying back to his car.
”Who
owns Blake Golf Course?” he demands of Ross.
Ross lets him in, looking slightly puzzled, though by
now he should be used to all kinds of questions. ”Josiah Blake.”
”Do
you know him?”
”Not
well. I knew his wife.” Ross waves towards the kitchen. ”I'm
cooking, do you mind?”
”Sure,
right.” John follows him, and then prompts further. ”His wife was
Lucy Blake?”
”Yes.”
”And
it was during her funeral that Melanie...”
”Yes.”
Ross frowns. ”Why are you asking?”
”I'm
not sure.” He rubbed his face and stood there for a while, watching
Ross chop carrots. ”How well did you know her?”
”She
was Janyne's - my wife's - friend, really. Though she did live
here for a while, before Janyne died. Rough patch in her marriage -
they sorted it out later.”
”What
kind of rough patch?”
Ross laughs a little. ”The regular kind, I guess. How
should I know? Will you be staying for dinner?”
”Thanks,
but...” John starts. Having someone else prepare his meal would
mean some time off to relax between research periods, and he could
use that. The boys would probably like it too. They're starting to
get comfortable in this house, and Dean no longer looks at him as if
he's committing a major act of betrayal every time he leaves the
house.
Doesn't matter. The thought of sitting at someone else's
dinner table still gives him hives.
”Think
about it,” Ross suggests. ”It's no trouble.”
John manages to smile. ”I will. Are you sure you can't
tell me anything more about the Blakes?”
”Like
what?”
”Like...
anything.”
For the next twenty minutes, he listens to simple,
mundane facts that Ross shakes out from the corners of his memory.
Then he gives up. Another dead end, based on coincidence. Instead, he
goes upstairs to fetch the boys.
They're sitting in Melanie's room on a bed with
surprisingly childish Muppet bedsheet. Sammy's got his thumb in his
mouth and is almost falling asleep, but Dean listens with a
concentrated expression to Melanie, who's reading from a book.
”'Sweet
my eye,' said Moominpappa, inspecting his bitten tail.” Little
Bobby, who's sitting in Melanie's lap, grabs hold of his aunt's hair,
and she tucks it behind her ears so she can see to read. ”'She's
the silliest, nastiest, badly-brought-uppest child I've ever seen,
with or without a head.'”
John snorts, and Dean's head whips up so fast Sammy
wakes up slightly and makes a disgruntled sound. Dean pats his cheek
reassuringly, but he's already on his way down from the bed, knocking
the book over in the process. Once on the floor, he rushes over to
John and buries his face in the fabric of his father's pants.
John strokes Dean's hair and tells Melanie, ”Sorry.
He's like that sometimes.”
”Yeah,”
she says without surprise. She opens her mouth to say something
further and then bites her lip, frowning a little. Finally, she
blurts out, ”Was it quick?”
”Was
what quick?”
”Your
wife.”
For a second, he hates her deeper than he has thought
himself capable of hating anybody - certainly not this harmless,
scarred child. Then he sighs and answers softly, ”Yes. It was.”
She nods, looking down and pulling at her hair. ”So
was Linda.”
There's a long silence, during which Sammy wakes up
completely and picks up the book, poking Melanie with it. ”Wuffa!”
he orders her. ”Wuffa, wuffa!”
Sammy's got quite a few words by now - they just
aren't English. There's no mistaking the meaning of this one. He
wants more story.
”Yeah,
yeah,” Melanie says, and John glimpses a smile between the curtains
of hair. It makes her face almost pretty. ”Dean, do you want to
hear the rest of the story too?”
Dean looks up, but at John, not at Melanie.
”Go
on, kid,” John tells him. ”I'll stay and listen too. Actually,
we...” He halts, and then reluctantly continues: ”We could stay
for dinner, if you'd like.”
Dean gives him a long, searching look and then nods,
slowly letting go and returning to the bed. He puts his arms around
Sammy and they both settle down, ready tolisten.
John keeps his promise and stays in the room, even
though storytime isn't really his thing. At first, Melanie's reading
is stilted and uncomfortable, but soon she seems to forget that
there's an adult in the room and relaxes. So does he.
There's only a few paragraphs left of the story, and
Melanie moves on to the next one, about creatures sailing the sea
without ever reaching whatever it is they search for. She tells it
well, but the story makes him shudder, and he wonders if it's quite
suitable for such small kids. They don't seem to mind, though.
Sammy's eyes are starting to drift shut again, and he's leaning
heavily against his brother. Dean doesn't take his gaze off John for
a second, but it's light and calm, almost happy. Even little Bobby,
who couldn't possibly understand more than a few words of the story,
seems perfectly content.
When Ross shows up to tell them dinner is ready, John
realizes that he never actually gave him an answer to whether they'd
stay or not.
”Don't
worry about it,” Ross says when he tries to apologize. ”I made
enough for all of us, just in case.”
During dinner, Melanie asks, shyly, ”Any luck?”
John sighs and shakes his head. ”I thought I was onto
something with the Blakes, but...”
”The
Blakes? Lucy Blake?”
”I
was thinking more in the line of her husband. I thought there might
be a connection, what with the golf course and the funeral. But I
can't find anything.”
”Severe
lack of motive,” Ross says, scooping up some mashed potatoes.
Melanie looks thoughtful. ”Didn't Granddad screw him
over once?”
”Language,
Mel,” Ross says. ”And not that I know of. Who told you that?”
”I
can't remember. Lucy, I think.” She frowns hard. ”It was a really
long time ago. I don't even know if it's true.”
”Knowing
your granddad, it probably is.” He thinks about it. ”Might serve
as a motive for the forest fire, I suppose. But the rest of it?”
”Revenge,”
John says. His heart is pounding very fast.
”Against
us?” Ross sounds
very sceptic.
”Sins
of the father,” Melanie says, her face tense.
”Can
you really see Josiah Blake spending fifteen years wrecking vengeance
on us for something a dead man did?”
John watches Melanie very carefully. She sighs and
shakes her head. ”In Agatha Christies, you should never trust
people just because they seem nice,” she says, but without
conviction.
”Life
isn't like Agatha Christies,” her father says.
”No,”
John says slowly, ”but the old lady had a point there. Can
you trust a guy just because he seems nice?”
Father and daughter watch each other in a silence that
drags on until Sammy has had enough of it. He pounds his empty plate
on the table and declares in rhythm with the bangs, ”Effa looba
mimma nun!”
John takes the plate and fills it up with mashed
potatoes and green peas. ”I'll take that as a no?” he asks the
Quentins.
”Listen,”
Ross says, ”whatever it is you plan on doing...”
”Right
now, I just plan on checking the man out. See if there's anything to
find.”
”Can
I come with?” Melanie asks, looking surprised at her own question.
John glances at Ross, who just raises his eyebrows and
takes a sip of water.
”It's
not gonna be very interesting,” John tells Melanie. ”I'll be
searching newspapers and stuff. Boring as hell, most likely.”
”I
don't care.” Her voice is low but determined - more determined
than her shivering chin. ”I have to do something. I can't just sit
here.”
After a moment's thought, he nods. ”All right. You
come along. Maybe you can keep an eye on the boys for me.”
An odd expression comes on her face, and then she
smiles. ”One, I think I can manage.”
He's so caught up in his research plans that he's
halfway out the door before he gets the joke.
There
are definite advantages to having a workplace babysitter. For the
first time, he feels he can relax. The boys are right
there, he can see them if he
turns his head, and yet he doesn't have to watch them all the time.
He can even leave them in the car while he talks to the archivists on
the local newspaper.
After he's said good-bye to Melanie and put the boys to
bed, he sits up most of the night piecing information together,
comparing his notes on the Blakes with his notes on the Quentins.
It's promising, very promising, but there are still pieces missing,
and the next day he takes a shower, puts on his nicest suit, and
heads over to the bank. He almost gets caught bluffing his way
through, and decides that as soon as he's done here, he should look
into getting some fake IDs. Maybe a fake credit card to match -
he's starting to run out of money, and the way this is going he won't
be able to get a steady job any time soon.
Leaving the bank, the sound of his son crying sends him
racing across the street. He yanks the back car door open, and both
Melanie and Dean flinch. Not Sammy, though - he's crimson-faced and
absolutely furious.
”What's
going on?” John growls. Sammy's okay, they're all okay,
but it takes a while to start breathing properly again, and it
doesn't put him in the best of moods.
”He
needs changing,” Melanie says.
”So
change him!”
”Where?”
John looks around, but of course there's no public
bathroom or anything like it nearby. He curses and takes the
necessary items from the trunk, putting Sammy on top of it.
The moment he's rid of the stinky diaper, Sammy takes a
deep breath and stops crying. John wipes him off and gives him a new
diaper, and when he looks down, he finds Dean standing right next to
them.
”Here
you go,” he says, lifting Sammy down to Dean. He wipes his hands
off with a washcloth and watches as Dean half-leads half-carries his
brother back inside.
”I'm
sorry,” Melanie says from the back seat when John gets back into
the car.
”Try
thinking one step further next time,” he says.
She bows her head down. ”Did you find anything?”
”Maybe,
yeah. Could you hand me my journal?”
She does, and he sits right there in the car, making the
final comparisons.
It's almost too easy. Bastard didn't even bother to hide
the connections, which makes John almost suspect that he's innocent
after all - but of course, by regular standards this isn't proof.
It's not even a proper motive, except, as Ross said, for the first
fire. And when the first fire happened, Josiah Blake was in Virginia.
No reason you can't do a spell from Virginia.
”M'hungry,”
Dean mutters, and John looks up, bewildered. How long have they been
sitting there? If Dean's hungry enough to say
he's hungry, it must have been quite some time.
”There's
a Chinese place two blocks away,” Melanie says. ”Want me to get
some takeout?”
”Please,”
he says, handing her his wallet.
By the time she returns with the food, he has started
working on the timeline. They all sit down on the curb, and he
juggles his journal and the box of Chinese all through the meal,
until the point where he spears his final bamboo shoot on the
chopstick, underlines the dates he's found, and puts the box down
with a ”Son of a bitch.”
”You
got something?” Melanie asks with her mouth full.
”You
could say that.” He reads off his notes. ”April 1969, Josiah
Blake is forced to declare bankrupcy after a series of bad financial
decisions. His financial advisor is the head of Wellside Corporations
- one Morgan Quentin.”
”He
did screw him over,” Melanie says softly.
”I
guess he did. August 1969, there's the forest fire than kills Jake
Quentin. Hot summer, no one's surprised - but Wellside Corporation
suffers severe financial losses which it never really recovers from.
Morgan Quentin retires, and dies a few months later. September
1969, Blake catches a lucky break as his new retail company starts
doing really well. It continues to do well until 1971, when there's a
dip in the finances. Fortunately, after her house is struck by
lightning, Joan Quentin decides to sell the land - which mainly
consists of part of the old forest.”
”The
golf course.”
”Exactly.
Josiah Blake buys it, and has had nothing but financial successes
ever since. January 1976, Lucy Blake files for a divorce. March...”
He throws a glance at her. ”March was your mom. By April, Lucy has
changed her mind.”
”1982,”
Melanie says with a quivering voice, ”February. Lucy dies. I get
like this.” She bites her lip. ”What happened in March?”
”I
couldn't find anything for March,” he says. ”November, however,
there's the birth of one Simon Blake - I'm guessing grandson.”
”Oh
wow,” she says bitterly. ”I made a baby. Bit young for it,” she
adds with an attempt at laughter.
”I'm
sorry.”
”And
now? Why Linda?”
He sighs and hands her the copy of the obituary he
found. ”Another baby. Stillborn.”
Tears
well up in her eyes. ”She didn't make that baby die!” she says
vehemently. ”I didn't make Lucy die - I liked
her! Mom didn't make her leave her husband, none of us had anything
to do with anything except Granddad, and it isn't fair.”
She's crying outright now, in big angry sobs.
”It's
not revenge,” he says. ”Not just revenge. He's transferring his
misfortunes to you guys.”
Sammy starts crying too, upset by the tension even
though he doesn't understand the causes. Even Dean's starting to go
teary-eyed.
”All
right, listen,” John says, figuring he has to do something. ”It's
only 3PM, he's bound to be at work. I'll go check his house, see if I
can find anything iffy. At least now we know that he's doing it. We
figure out how, and I think we've got a fair chance of stopping it.”
She's still crying as hard as ever. He shifts a little.
”You want me to call your dad?”
She shakes her head and does her best to stifle the
sobs. ”No, it's okay.” The smile she offers him is even more
skewed than usual. ”Really. It's okay.”
Part 3