DIVINE HOPE - Featuring the Winchester Boys
NB: You're about to meet Charity - who is anything but charitable!
(XIII)
Charity is a new breed of terror. Having dabbled with witchcraft before her death, Charity had already gained powers that no mortal had the right to possess. She took those powers to her grave with her, only to ascend to wreak her havoc upon the earth again. Standing now with Mickey, who was her boyfriend in life, Charity is one step ahead of the Winchester brothers. “These brothers, The Winchesters, desecrate our graves in their quest to eradicate our kind. Simple solution,” she shrugs. “Just change the corpses.” She speaks for all the evil dead now. There are wandering spirits which are humane, but she has no regard for those who she considers not her brethren.
All humankind should brace themselves for the wanton savagery Charity can inflict upon the world.
Mickey grimaces.
She unearths her coffin and looks upon her grotesque remains lying therein.
She laughs. “By the way, Mickey. I’m immune to rock salt and fire, and do you think I will stay still long enough to be shot? I only manifest when I choose to, I can stay invisible forever if I so choose.”
“Then why swap corpses?”
“Because I think it funny that some other poor fucker gets roasted instead of me,” she cackles nastily.
She has lots of very nasty tricks up her sleeve and this is one witch who won’t go down without a fight.
She interns the remains of another crash victim in what was once her grave and wonders what to do with her own remains.
“Before tomorrow is done, you need to make a solemn oath to me, Mickey,” Charity says. “You failed me miserably in life, don’t fail me in death. We drink Hope’s blood tomorrow night and you will be united for ever with me in Our Father’s Kingdom.”
She speaks of the Devil and Mickey knows he’s in too deep. Her black art casts upon him the shadow so that he too is invisible; but she is draining him and killing him slowly anyway. Maggots are already feeding on his living flesh, she tells him that only Hope’s blood can ease his pain now.
“You won’t get a fresher virgin than she, dear,” Charity says. “And, if you’re a real good boy, I might even let you fuck her before we kill her.”
“Why didn’t she die from the fall, Charity?” Mickey asks. “You yanked her out of the window by her hair.”
Charity laughs. “I did not! Your eyes are playing tricks on you…well what’s left of them anyway….” She adds noting how the maggots wriggle in his eyes, feasting frenziedly. “I pulled her out of the window by her arm. I dislocated her arm surely,” Charity shrugs. “Come here….unless I remove these grubs from your eyes now…you’ll be blinder than Hope!”
She plucks the maggots from his eyes and looks mischievously down upon them. He flinches as her nails scrape at his eyeballs. He yearns for death now, and all his harrowing pleas to her have been in vain.
With her there is no mercy. In life she lacked all goodness within her heart and in death she remains as heartless as stone.
“I was thinking…” Mickey begins.
“Careful you don’t think too hard,” Charity mocks.
“If you hadn’t died in that car crash…what would you have done?”
Charity folds her arms. “Let me see now. If I knew beforehand death was going to be this good, I would’ve been dying to get here sooner.”
(XIV)
The brothers arrive at High Trees Cemetery shortly after Charity and Mickey have made their exit. They find Charity Cowan’s grave easily with the aid of the map which Faith drew up, but Sam detects that someone has been here already.
“The earth is disturbed,” he tells Dean.
Charity who might’ve been one step ahead in removing her remains from the coffin, hadn’t quite tidied up properly after her.
In order to confirm what Sam believes they unearth the coffin and note the lid is loose. Inside lies the broken remains of another female crash victim, but she’s been dead longer and the brothers know immediately that it is not Charity.
“She’s been here,” Dean says.
“Yeah, not long ago either,” Sam comments. “We just missed her.”
They look around the immediate vicinity but rightly assume that Charity has taken her remains with her.
“If she cares enough to remove her remains,” Dean says. “She must fear their discovery. She’s very strong, Sam, but not invincible.”
Just as the brothers felt the enormity of the benevolence within Hope, they understand the gravity of Charity’s evil. Other than Satan himself, it’s possible that Charity is the most foreboding phantom they’ve ever dealt with to date.
As such her movements are unpredictable and the brothers sense that she is watching them from afar right now and thinking up her next tactic. There’s reassurance in the fact that she’s chosen to move her remains, but the sense of menace is still there.
They swiftly return to the Cowan house. Inside all is calm. Faith and Bobby are in the living room. Wisely they’ve chosen to keep Hope in the same room as them. She’s on the sofa, having been carried there by Bobby, and now lies in a trance. Her pulse and breathing are normal, and her sightless eyes stare upwards towards the ceiling.
Bobby hears the Impala drawing up the driveway and is always relieved when he discovers that the boys are safe. This time however, his relief is premature as Charity has conjured up her favourite familiars. The birds.
The sound of Chuckles wakes Hope up from her trance and she sits up alert now.
“Chuckles is dead!” Faith reminds them both.
Bobby seizes his gun and commands Faith to keep a hold upon her daughter who is unable to come to terms with the fact that the parrot is dead particularly as she can hear him distinctly in the bedroom.
Outside the brothers are under attack by ravens and Dean is mighty pissed off about this since the Impala is also coming under attack with them inside! He’s as mortified about the condition of his beautiful car as what is happening! The birds will rip them to shreds if they get at them.
The attack is a mere decoy however, the energy Charity has to employ in order to create two attacks at once is draining and she can maintain this energy for mere minutes.
With Bobby having to investigate the commotion within Hope’s bedroom and tackle a decapitated bird, both head and body mean to inflict terrible injuries, it means that Hope is only under the protection of Faith.
And, Charity thinks gleefully, that’s no protection at all. She bursts into the house, admitting with her some of her feathered friends and seizes her sister easily. Faith’s screaming annoys her and she punches her mother who falls crashing to the ground.
Bobby’s gun explodes and destroys what was once Chuckles once and for all. But it’s too late. In the living room, Faith is unconscious and Hope is gone. He manages to shoot a couple of the birds before they descend upon Faith, the rest of them squawk and scatter as they take flight.
Faith is left shaken, her face grazed. She was lucky, they were all lucky.
Outside the night is calm now and daylight is breaking. It has been a long day.