Frayed Ends Of Sanity, 5/?
Title: Frayed Ends Of Sanity
Chapters: 5/?
Warnings: R, Gen. Only s2 spec--no spoilers.
Summary: AU. Post Devil's Trap. Everything has an aftermath...
Sorry for the wait guys. And again
pixel_0 is a lifesaver!
Part Five
They’re staying in San Bernardino for the night when Dean’s cell phone rings suddenly.
They’re exhausted and trying their best to get some god-damn shut eye when the chiming tone is loud in their ears, and Dean doesn’t think twice before flipping it open just to shut it up.
“Hello?” he answers, stifling a yawn and running his free hand over his tired eyes.
“Dean.” The voice sounds relieved, gruff and familiar...
When Dean drops his cell and rushes out the door without a single word spoken into the phone, Sam picks it up and knows just how to greet the caller.
“Dad.”
John’s worried, understandably, and he asks about his sons. Their wellbeing.
And Sam tells him the truth. “We’re okay.”
Because they really are, considering, though Dean running off is the only time he’s ever shown a lack of control in regards to that night so many months ago. John starts apologising to Sam, knowing he isn’t the one who needs to hear it.
John already knows about Missouri, got the call, and he thinks it’s more of vindication than targeting. Sam thinks the same.
John asks about his oldest, and Sam isn’t sure how to reply.
“He’s just...he hasn’t heard your voice since...you know.”
John’s silent, and he doesn’t dare bring up all of the times he spoke to his son in his comatose state because he knows it doesn’t count. He doesn’t even think Dean would believe him if he told his son about the many days and nights John kept a steady vigil by his son’s side.
“Tell him-” he begins, but Sam cuts him off.
“I’ll get him to call, okay, Dad? Just...just answer your phone, okay?” he says, not unkindly, and John whispers, All right, okay.
And they both hope it’s enough.
*-*-*
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Sam asks carefully, as he joins his brother in the parking lot outside of their room. Dean glares quickly, and Sam backs off.
For a second.
“He’s trying, Dean.”
The fear from Dean’s eyes is gone, but it’s been replaced with something Sam hasn’t seen for a long time and doesn’t care to see much longer.
Betrayal.
“Since when do you take Dad’s side?” Dean asks with a mirthless snort.
“Since you started flinching every time he’s mentioned,” Sam replies sadly, but Dean is looking away.
“You don’t understand,” Dean says finally, so quietly that Sam nearly doesn’t catch the words spoken in the cold night air.
“What?” Sam isn’t sure how he’s supposed to react to what his brother’s saying. How could he not understand? He was there!
“You don’t-” Dean begins, but never gets the chance to finish.
“No, Dean, I don’t! I don’t get why you’re acting like this because you won’t tell me!”
“Why do you think that is, Sam?” Dean asks, his tone quietened drastically.
“I haven’t got a damn clue.”
“That’s because you don’t know, Sam!”
“I don’t know? Dean, I was there, I had to watch, I had to listen too, you think I liked hearing him talk about mom and Jess and you? You think it was just a walk in the park for any of us? You can’t blame him!”
“Do you think I want to blame him? It’s Dad, Sam.” Dean stops, takes a deep breath, and Sam recognizes the signs as Dean tries to shut his emotions away from the world.
Sure enough, when Dean looks up again, Sam sees his eyes as cold and indifferent.
“I can’t change what happened, and I can’t-it’s Dad’s voice in my head, Sam. It’s him telling me I’m not good enough, and it’s him looking at me. I can’t see the demon anymore.”
Sam feels a gnawing in his stomach and knows it’s a result of his brother’s emotions. Sam’s unprepared and uncomfortable to have Dean bare his soul.
“I just see Dad.” And once again, Dean’s looking away, avoiding his brother’s concerned gaze.
“Dean, just call him.”
Sam knows by the hunched shoulders that Dean’s silently agreed.
*-*-*
Sam doesn’t listen in, he’s almost afraid to do so, but he’s waiting outside of the door. Dean thinks he’s in the car, it doesn’t matter, all Sam hears are muffled responses and even then it’s only one side of a very long and overdue conversation. There was hesitance to begin with he knows, and it was only after ten minutes of getting used to his father’s voice, void of malice that Dean could shoo Sam out of the room.
When the door opens, Dean’s face cannot be read, but the bags under his eyes seem somewhat lighter, and he’s carrying himself differently.
“What did he say?” Sam asks, and Dean shrugs.
“Got a job for us.”
And both of them know that wasn’t what Sam meant.
*-*-*
The job is simple. More of an investigation than a job. They don’t have a target. Yet.
Five deaths in and around the area. Five brutal deaths-all described as vicious attacks but not once has an animal been found.
The bodies-nearly impossible to identify-were too destroyed to be left over from a domestic animal attack.
Whatever it was wasn’t to be messed with, and all seemed to originate from the only abandoned house on the block.
The Adams’ Residence.
*-*-*
Sam’s on stakeout duty.
Normally, Dean and he would do it together, but with the lack of leads, information, and theories to go on, the older Winchester was far too immersed in research.
Sam had scanned every page of their father’s journal, while Dean promptly ignored it.
That much, confused Sam.
The fact that he was researching that is, not Dean’s discarding of the book; he knew exactly why his brother was doing that.
He was the one Dean called the geek, and yet, Dean is the one in their motel room reading one police report after the other of disturbances in the area, momentarily borrowed from the station, thanks to a certain homeland security alias.
“You go,” Dean had said simply, not even looking up.
“What?”
Dean looked up then, adopted a stern face and began the list.
“Check the place out. Don’t go in, don’t touch anything, don’t draw attention to yourself, and don’t piss off any spirits or demons, or old ladies on the neighbourhood watch, okay?”
And then his eyes were back on the reports without missing a beat.
It wasn’t that Sam hadn’t listened. He had heard the undertone of Dean’s that said going in meant a pissed off older brother, but...
His first thought is that it’s his instinct. A sixth sense that isn’t really there, brought on by general foreboding and events calculated previously-leading to the conclusion that something is wrong. Something is off.
His second thought, the least rational but most logical-is to blame his ability. Psychic alarm bells ringing in his head as he stares up at the house, [delete comma] that seems to leer above, windows like eyes glaring.
And that’s when he sees it hanging on the porch door and forgets all of Dean’s warnings.
The amulet seems to shine when his finger touches the intricate detail in the centre, but the sun is out, and the glint was no doubt from there. He pays it no heed, and as he’s walking down the steps of the house, he hears a snarl, a low, menacing growl, and feels his stomach drop before he starts running full pelt to the motel room.
*-*-*
“H-hellhounds!” Sam cries, his breath heaving as he throws himself against the door as though to stop something from coming in.
Dean’s eyebrows are raised.
“What?”
“Did you not just hear me?!” Sam shouts. “Hellhounds! Here, now!”
“Dude, you wouldn’t be alive if there were hellhounds aft-”
A massive thud against the door makes Sam falls forward, before shuffling backwards in record time and barring himself against the door once more.
“What the hell?” Dean cries, rushing forward, peering through the window on the side only to have a ghastly canine thrust himself forward, teeth bared, snarling.
“Holy shit!” Dean curses falling backwards from the shock, still seeing the fangs at the window, dripping with...something.
“Dean!” Sam calls out to him, shaking him out of his stupor as he too throws his back against the door to stop the monsters from entry.
“What did you do?!” he directs at Sam, his head now aching from the pounding at the door.
“What did I do? What? You’re blaming me?!”
“You’re the one who got hellhounds after you!”
“You’re the one who wouldn’t believe me!”
“For like ten seconds Sam, how the hell would that have made a difference?”
“I don’t know, why don’t you ask them?”
Another thud as the dog throws himself toward the door, trying to break it down, howling, and scratching, and adjusting his jaw, trying to bite his way through.
“Why don’t they just come through the windows?” Sam asks, confused, as another thud throws him forward, before once again, he shuffles back, helping his brother brace the door.
“Do you have a death wish?” Dean asks, incredulous at Sam’s complaints, and at the younger brother’s glare, Dean answers the initial question, “I salted the windows.”
“But not the door?!”
“I was about to when you came running in, dude!”
“They’re not spirits, why does it repel them?”
“It doesn’t.”
“What?”
“Well not really, they just get...pissy.”
“Pissy?!”
“Do you have to repeat everything I say? Damn it, Sam...Sam what the hell are you doing?!” he cries as Sam suddenly relinquishes his hold on the door, leaving Dean alone in fending them off with his own strength, while Sam dives for their bags, throwing clothes everywhere, searching for something.
“Sam!” Dean cries, his body jutting back and forth as the door is pushed and pulled and yanked against its hinges. Oh holy mother of god, we’re dead, we are so dead.
Sam appears finally. But instead of helping Dean, he opens the small knife he had retrieved from his pack and begins carving symbols into the doorframe; the dogs’ growling from outside, as well as Dean’s, is beginning to irritate him.
“Sam, a little help?!” The door is pushed harshly once more, and for the moment where Dean was not pressing himself hard against it, the hound knew and threw itself against the door. As soon as it begins to give way, Sam mutters something under his breath and helps Dean scramble away from the door’s trajectory as it falls, wood shattering slightly.
Dean rolls away from his brother’s hold, his hands taking hold of the first weapon-his trusty shotgun-and he spares no time in aiming, but just as the hound leaps into the air, as soon as he reaches the doorway, he’s thrown backwards with an unseen force. A barrier between himself and his prey.
“Why the hell are they after you?” Dean asks, now that the two hounds have settled for marching outside of the door.
“How the hell should I know, Dean?”
“Wait, what did you do to the door?”
“Protection symbols, from the book.”
“What book?” Dean presses, frowning.
“The red one.”
“What?” Dean mutters as he picks it up, scanning pages in a hurry, confused. “These don’t work with hellhounds,” And he turns back to the two dogs still circling the porch outside. “They’re just possessed, you ass!”
“What does it matter, Dean?”
“I told you not to go.” Dean ignores his brother, muttering about Sam’s insistence earlier to check out the abandoned house alone.
“Can we focus on the demon-dogs? Please?”
“Why possess a dog anyway?” Dean asks incredulously.
“Worked with Cujo,” Sam says in an attempt to answer.
“What the hell dude, Cujo wasn’t possessed.”
“Oh ‘cause all dogs are that evil.”
“Considering all the evil we’ve actually faced, I don’t think Cujo even comes close.”
“I’d take a Wendigo over a possessed demonic-killing-dog any day.”
“Nothing demonic about it, he had rabies!”
“...wait, from the bat?”
“Yes!”
“Then maybe the bat was possessed.”
“Grasping at straws.”
“Clutching.”
“What?”
“It’s clutching at straws,” Sam corrects.
“It’s grasping,” Dean insists.
“It’s clutching.”
“What do you know?”
“More than you,” Sam replies with a smirk, and Dean matches it perfectly.
“Sure you do Mr. Help me, the hellhounds are coming.”
“Speaking of which...” Sam turns back to the door.
“Oh nice, just change the subject, that’ll save you.”
“Can we just exorcise them already?”
“What do they even want?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters Sam, look, I doubt you-know-who sent them, I mean, they’re dogs, and if they can’t get in, that means the symbols are working so they can’t be that evil. Let’s look at the facts: they came after you at the Adams house right?”
“Right.”
“So, did you touch something, take something, do something?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He turns back to the demon dogs still prowling, and growling...and scowling, come to think of it.
“Oh wait, there was an amulet thing that I touched.”
“An amulet thing?”
“Yeah, on the door, felt kinda...tingly.”
“What are you, six?”
“Excuse me?”
“All tactile and oooh shiny I wanna touch, god Sammy, grow up.”
“Hey!”
“What? You touched it, not me, and now we have demon dogs outside of our motel room.”
“Just exorcise them.”
Dean pauses, almost amused at how their conversation has covered pretty much everything except a solution.
“If we send them back to Hell, and they had a reason for being here, it could blow up in our face, Sam,” he says, changing his tune from earlier, “God, they might not even be demonic; they’re probably just pissed you activated that damn amulet or something.”
“Not demonic? Dean, look at them.”
“Yeah, and you thought Cujo was possessed so forgive my lack of faith on this one.”
“If they’re not demonic, why can’t they get in?”
“I bet the symbols aren’t even the right ones. You’re such an idiot,” Dean berates his brother.
“So what are they?” Sam says, through gritted teeth.
“I don’t know, guards or-”
“Like hellhounds.”
“No, they guard hell, and I know the world sucks, but it isn’t that bad, Sammy.”
“It’s Sam.”
“Must you?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the amulet now?” Dean asks rolling his eyes at his brother’s hatred toward his old nickname.
“In my pocket.”
Dean stops, his head spinning around to stare at his brother. “What?”
“Oh come on, mystical amulet, I wasn’t just going to leave it there.”
Dean drags a hand down his face in exasperation. “Give it to me.”
“What? Why, what are you going to do?”
“Sam, need I remind you, that you’re the one who started all of this? Now give me the damn amulet.”
Sam grumbles, but otherwise complies in handing over the amulet. Dean takes in the engravings if only to lull Sam into a false sense of security before flinging it hard at the wall, smirking as it smashes into tiny pieces.
The mad barking turns to confused whimpering as the dogs stalk off, and Dean grins triumphantly.
“Now that’s what I’m talking ‘bout.”
*-*-*
The house wasn’t abandoned; its occupants just weren’t bipeds anymore.
Sam and Dean deliberate and research. They interview the locals and pass theories back and forth to each other while simultaneously ridding the room of any demon-dog evidence, before they finally learn the truth.
They find police reports going back nearly five years of neighbours’ complaints about the loud racket, and the growling of two Alsatians in the garden. Particularly from the woman next door, Emma Marks.
There are many clues pointing toward her less than normal life. The most obvious of which becomes apparent when the Winchesters interview her son, who had died three years prior.
Who catches his fingers in the door and didn’t even flinch, whose breath stinks of formaldehyde and soap.
“So the necromancer got revenge on her neighbours...” Dean mutters, aware of how strange it sounds.
“Yup,” Sam confirms as they stand over the now rotting zombie corpse of the Marks’ son at their feet. Emma screams from behind a locked door, and Dean destroys every altar in the basement that he can find.
*-*-*
When they get back to the motel in the early hours of the morning, they’re wired from the hunt. The victory makes the adrenaline pump, and they’re wide awake.
Dean switches on the TV and finds nothing but children’s programmes. Purple dinosaurs and men in bright clothing smiling and grinning, singing to a tune. Sheep dance across the screen and all Sam hears is, “Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb...”
Sam leaves the room as soon as the headache begins. He slams the door behind him and leaves a semi-shocked Dean on the bed.
The TV lies broken on the floor.
Neither one of them touched it.
TBC
Chapters: 5/?
Warnings: R, Gen. Only s2 spec--no spoilers.
Summary: AU. Post Devil's Trap. Everything has an aftermath...
Sorry for the wait guys. And again
pixel_0 is a lifesaver!
Part Five
They’re staying in San Bernardino for the night when Dean’s cell phone rings suddenly.
They’re exhausted and trying their best to get some god-damn shut eye when the chiming tone is loud in their ears, and Dean doesn’t think twice before flipping it open just to shut it up.
“Hello?” he answers, stifling a yawn and running his free hand over his tired eyes.
“Dean.” The voice sounds relieved, gruff and familiar...
When Dean drops his cell and rushes out the door without a single word spoken into the phone, Sam picks it up and knows just how to greet the caller.
“Dad.”
John’s worried, understandably, and he asks about his sons. Their wellbeing.
And Sam tells him the truth. “We’re okay.”
Because they really are, considering, though Dean running off is the only time he’s ever shown a lack of control in regards to that night so many months ago. John starts apologising to Sam, knowing he isn’t the one who needs to hear it.
John already knows about Missouri, got the call, and he thinks it’s more of vindication than targeting. Sam thinks the same.
John asks about his oldest, and Sam isn’t sure how to reply.
“He’s just...he hasn’t heard your voice since...you know.”
John’s silent, and he doesn’t dare bring up all of the times he spoke to his son in his comatose state because he knows it doesn’t count. He doesn’t even think Dean would believe him if he told his son about the many days and nights John kept a steady vigil by his son’s side.
“Tell him-” he begins, but Sam cuts him off.
“I’ll get him to call, okay, Dad? Just...just answer your phone, okay?” he says, not unkindly, and John whispers, All right, okay.
And they both hope it’s enough.
*-*-*
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Sam asks carefully, as he joins his brother in the parking lot outside of their room. Dean glares quickly, and Sam backs off.
For a second.
“He’s trying, Dean.”
The fear from Dean’s eyes is gone, but it’s been replaced with something Sam hasn’t seen for a long time and doesn’t care to see much longer.
Betrayal.
“Since when do you take Dad’s side?” Dean asks with a mirthless snort.
“Since you started flinching every time he’s mentioned,” Sam replies sadly, but Dean is looking away.
“You don’t understand,” Dean says finally, so quietly that Sam nearly doesn’t catch the words spoken in the cold night air.
“What?” Sam isn’t sure how he’s supposed to react to what his brother’s saying. How could he not understand? He was there!
“You don’t-” Dean begins, but never gets the chance to finish.
“No, Dean, I don’t! I don’t get why you’re acting like this because you won’t tell me!”
“Why do you think that is, Sam?” Dean asks, his tone quietened drastically.
“I haven’t got a damn clue.”
“That’s because you don’t know, Sam!”
“I don’t know? Dean, I was there, I had to watch, I had to listen too, you think I liked hearing him talk about mom and Jess and you? You think it was just a walk in the park for any of us? You can’t blame him!”
“Do you think I want to blame him? It’s Dad, Sam.” Dean stops, takes a deep breath, and Sam recognizes the signs as Dean tries to shut his emotions away from the world.
Sure enough, when Dean looks up again, Sam sees his eyes as cold and indifferent.
“I can’t change what happened, and I can’t-it’s Dad’s voice in my head, Sam. It’s him telling me I’m not good enough, and it’s him looking at me. I can’t see the demon anymore.”
Sam feels a gnawing in his stomach and knows it’s a result of his brother’s emotions. Sam’s unprepared and uncomfortable to have Dean bare his soul.
“I just see Dad.” And once again, Dean’s looking away, avoiding his brother’s concerned gaze.
“Dean, just call him.”
Sam knows by the hunched shoulders that Dean’s silently agreed.
*-*-*
Sam doesn’t listen in, he’s almost afraid to do so, but he’s waiting outside of the door. Dean thinks he’s in the car, it doesn’t matter, all Sam hears are muffled responses and even then it’s only one side of a very long and overdue conversation. There was hesitance to begin with he knows, and it was only after ten minutes of getting used to his father’s voice, void of malice that Dean could shoo Sam out of the room.
When the door opens, Dean’s face cannot be read, but the bags under his eyes seem somewhat lighter, and he’s carrying himself differently.
“What did he say?” Sam asks, and Dean shrugs.
“Got a job for us.”
And both of them know that wasn’t what Sam meant.
*-*-*
The job is simple. More of an investigation than a job. They don’t have a target. Yet.
Five deaths in and around the area. Five brutal deaths-all described as vicious attacks but not once has an animal been found.
The bodies-nearly impossible to identify-were too destroyed to be left over from a domestic animal attack.
Whatever it was wasn’t to be messed with, and all seemed to originate from the only abandoned house on the block.
The Adams’ Residence.
*-*-*
Sam’s on stakeout duty.
Normally, Dean and he would do it together, but with the lack of leads, information, and theories to go on, the older Winchester was far too immersed in research.
Sam had scanned every page of their father’s journal, while Dean promptly ignored it.
That much, confused Sam.
The fact that he was researching that is, not Dean’s discarding of the book; he knew exactly why his brother was doing that.
He was the one Dean called the geek, and yet, Dean is the one in their motel room reading one police report after the other of disturbances in the area, momentarily borrowed from the station, thanks to a certain homeland security alias.
“You go,” Dean had said simply, not even looking up.
“What?”
Dean looked up then, adopted a stern face and began the list.
“Check the place out. Don’t go in, don’t touch anything, don’t draw attention to yourself, and don’t piss off any spirits or demons, or old ladies on the neighbourhood watch, okay?”
And then his eyes were back on the reports without missing a beat.
It wasn’t that Sam hadn’t listened. He had heard the undertone of Dean’s that said going in meant a pissed off older brother, but...
His first thought is that it’s his instinct. A sixth sense that isn’t really there, brought on by general foreboding and events calculated previously-leading to the conclusion that something is wrong. Something is off.
His second thought, the least rational but most logical-is to blame his ability. Psychic alarm bells ringing in his head as he stares up at the house, [delete comma] that seems to leer above, windows like eyes glaring.
And that’s when he sees it hanging on the porch door and forgets all of Dean’s warnings.
The amulet seems to shine when his finger touches the intricate detail in the centre, but the sun is out, and the glint was no doubt from there. He pays it no heed, and as he’s walking down the steps of the house, he hears a snarl, a low, menacing growl, and feels his stomach drop before he starts running full pelt to the motel room.
*-*-*
“H-hellhounds!” Sam cries, his breath heaving as he throws himself against the door as though to stop something from coming in.
Dean’s eyebrows are raised.
“What?”
“Did you not just hear me?!” Sam shouts. “Hellhounds! Here, now!”
“Dude, you wouldn’t be alive if there were hellhounds aft-”
A massive thud against the door makes Sam falls forward, before shuffling backwards in record time and barring himself against the door once more.
“What the hell?” Dean cries, rushing forward, peering through the window on the side only to have a ghastly canine thrust himself forward, teeth bared, snarling.
“Holy shit!” Dean curses falling backwards from the shock, still seeing the fangs at the window, dripping with...something.
“Dean!” Sam calls out to him, shaking him out of his stupor as he too throws his back against the door to stop the monsters from entry.
“What did you do?!” he directs at Sam, his head now aching from the pounding at the door.
“What did I do? What? You’re blaming me?!”
“You’re the one who got hellhounds after you!”
“You’re the one who wouldn’t believe me!”
“For like ten seconds Sam, how the hell would that have made a difference?”
“I don’t know, why don’t you ask them?”
Another thud as the dog throws himself toward the door, trying to break it down, howling, and scratching, and adjusting his jaw, trying to bite his way through.
“Why don’t they just come through the windows?” Sam asks, confused, as another thud throws him forward, before once again, he shuffles back, helping his brother brace the door.
“Do you have a death wish?” Dean asks, incredulous at Sam’s complaints, and at the younger brother’s glare, Dean answers the initial question, “I salted the windows.”
“But not the door?!”
“I was about to when you came running in, dude!”
“They’re not spirits, why does it repel them?”
“It doesn’t.”
“What?”
“Well not really, they just get...pissy.”
“Pissy?!”
“Do you have to repeat everything I say? Damn it, Sam...Sam what the hell are you doing?!” he cries as Sam suddenly relinquishes his hold on the door, leaving Dean alone in fending them off with his own strength, while Sam dives for their bags, throwing clothes everywhere, searching for something.
“Sam!” Dean cries, his body jutting back and forth as the door is pushed and pulled and yanked against its hinges. Oh holy mother of god, we’re dead, we are so dead.
Sam appears finally. But instead of helping Dean, he opens the small knife he had retrieved from his pack and begins carving symbols into the doorframe; the dogs’ growling from outside, as well as Dean’s, is beginning to irritate him.
“Sam, a little help?!” The door is pushed harshly once more, and for the moment where Dean was not pressing himself hard against it, the hound knew and threw itself against the door. As soon as it begins to give way, Sam mutters something under his breath and helps Dean scramble away from the door’s trajectory as it falls, wood shattering slightly.
Dean rolls away from his brother’s hold, his hands taking hold of the first weapon-his trusty shotgun-and he spares no time in aiming, but just as the hound leaps into the air, as soon as he reaches the doorway, he’s thrown backwards with an unseen force. A barrier between himself and his prey.
“Why the hell are they after you?” Dean asks, now that the two hounds have settled for marching outside of the door.
“How the hell should I know, Dean?”
“Wait, what did you do to the door?”
“Protection symbols, from the book.”
“What book?” Dean presses, frowning.
“The red one.”
“What?” Dean mutters as he picks it up, scanning pages in a hurry, confused. “These don’t work with hellhounds,” And he turns back to the two dogs still circling the porch outside. “They’re just possessed, you ass!”
“What does it matter, Dean?”
“I told you not to go.” Dean ignores his brother, muttering about Sam’s insistence earlier to check out the abandoned house alone.
“Can we focus on the demon-dogs? Please?”
“Why possess a dog anyway?” Dean asks incredulously.
“Worked with Cujo,” Sam says in an attempt to answer.
“What the hell dude, Cujo wasn’t possessed.”
“Oh ‘cause all dogs are that evil.”
“Considering all the evil we’ve actually faced, I don’t think Cujo even comes close.”
“I’d take a Wendigo over a possessed demonic-killing-dog any day.”
“Nothing demonic about it, he had rabies!”
“...wait, from the bat?”
“Yes!”
“Then maybe the bat was possessed.”
“Grasping at straws.”
“Clutching.”
“What?”
“It’s clutching at straws,” Sam corrects.
“It’s grasping,” Dean insists.
“It’s clutching.”
“What do you know?”
“More than you,” Sam replies with a smirk, and Dean matches it perfectly.
“Sure you do Mr. Help me, the hellhounds are coming.”
“Speaking of which...” Sam turns back to the door.
“Oh nice, just change the subject, that’ll save you.”
“Can we just exorcise them already?”
“What do they even want?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters Sam, look, I doubt you-know-who sent them, I mean, they’re dogs, and if they can’t get in, that means the symbols are working so they can’t be that evil. Let’s look at the facts: they came after you at the Adams house right?”
“Right.”
“So, did you touch something, take something, do something?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He turns back to the demon dogs still prowling, and growling...and scowling, come to think of it.
“Oh wait, there was an amulet thing that I touched.”
“An amulet thing?”
“Yeah, on the door, felt kinda...tingly.”
“What are you, six?”
“Excuse me?”
“All tactile and oooh shiny I wanna touch, god Sammy, grow up.”
“Hey!”
“What? You touched it, not me, and now we have demon dogs outside of our motel room.”
“Just exorcise them.”
Dean pauses, almost amused at how their conversation has covered pretty much everything except a solution.
“If we send them back to Hell, and they had a reason for being here, it could blow up in our face, Sam,” he says, changing his tune from earlier, “God, they might not even be demonic; they’re probably just pissed you activated that damn amulet or something.”
“Not demonic? Dean, look at them.”
“Yeah, and you thought Cujo was possessed so forgive my lack of faith on this one.”
“If they’re not demonic, why can’t they get in?”
“I bet the symbols aren’t even the right ones. You’re such an idiot,” Dean berates his brother.
“So what are they?” Sam says, through gritted teeth.
“I don’t know, guards or-”
“Like hellhounds.”
“No, they guard hell, and I know the world sucks, but it isn’t that bad, Sammy.”
“It’s Sam.”
“Must you?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the amulet now?” Dean asks rolling his eyes at his brother’s hatred toward his old nickname.
“In my pocket.”
Dean stops, his head spinning around to stare at his brother. “What?”
“Oh come on, mystical amulet, I wasn’t just going to leave it there.”
Dean drags a hand down his face in exasperation. “Give it to me.”
“What? Why, what are you going to do?”
“Sam, need I remind you, that you’re the one who started all of this? Now give me the damn amulet.”
Sam grumbles, but otherwise complies in handing over the amulet. Dean takes in the engravings if only to lull Sam into a false sense of security before flinging it hard at the wall, smirking as it smashes into tiny pieces.
The mad barking turns to confused whimpering as the dogs stalk off, and Dean grins triumphantly.
“Now that’s what I’m talking ‘bout.”
*-*-*
The house wasn’t abandoned; its occupants just weren’t bipeds anymore.
Sam and Dean deliberate and research. They interview the locals and pass theories back and forth to each other while simultaneously ridding the room of any demon-dog evidence, before they finally learn the truth.
They find police reports going back nearly five years of neighbours’ complaints about the loud racket, and the growling of two Alsatians in the garden. Particularly from the woman next door, Emma Marks.
There are many clues pointing toward her less than normal life. The most obvious of which becomes apparent when the Winchesters interview her son, who had died three years prior.
Who catches his fingers in the door and didn’t even flinch, whose breath stinks of formaldehyde and soap.
“So the necromancer got revenge on her neighbours...” Dean mutters, aware of how strange it sounds.
“Yup,” Sam confirms as they stand over the now rotting zombie corpse of the Marks’ son at their feet. Emma screams from behind a locked door, and Dean destroys every altar in the basement that he can find.
*-*-*
When they get back to the motel in the early hours of the morning, they’re wired from the hunt. The victory makes the adrenaline pump, and they’re wide awake.
Dean switches on the TV and finds nothing but children’s programmes. Purple dinosaurs and men in bright clothing smiling and grinning, singing to a tune. Sheep dance across the screen and all Sam hears is, “Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb...”
Sam leaves the room as soon as the headache begins. He slams the door behind him and leaves a semi-shocked Dean on the bed.
The TV lies broken on the floor.
Neither one of them touched it.
TBC