The Carver (2/8)
Title: The Carver
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror
Characters: Dean, Sam
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: I do not own or lay claim to anything related to Supernatural.
Summary: Something is carving people up like jack-o-lanterns. When the boys take a case on Halloween, Dean revisits high school from a new perspective, Sam explores his hatred of the holiday, and they both learn that the past is haunting everyone. Takes place Halloween of S3, after Bedtime Stories.
The Carver
By Spectral Scribe
----------------------------
The uniform was tossed over a wicker chair by the table, the ring of keys sitting next to a Styrofoam cup filled with steaming black coffee. Dean picked up the cup and took a sip, wincing at the assault on his taste buds when the liquid practically scalded him on the way down.
“Three years of Stanford education, and all along my baby brother was aspiring to be a janitor. I’m so proud,” he announced with a grin.
“Custodian is more politically correct, actually,” Sam murmured absentmindedly, still going through the notes Dean had taken the afternoon before as his vanilla latte cooled on the table. “And do you have a better plan? This will get me into the school. I can check for EMF, look into the bathroom the kid was found in-”
“Okay, thank you, I get it, Sam,” Dean cut him off, cautiously testing his coffee again and finding it still piping hot against his tongue, which was now stinging and tingly. “And you can also sthcrub the toilets, mop up sthpilled lunch, and wash the blackboardsth,” Dean lisped around his burnt tongue.
Sam scrunched up his nose. “Why are you talking like that?”
“The ladiesth find if theckthee.” He waggled his tongue at Sam before pulling it back into his mouth. “So what am I supposed to do? Sit here and twiddle my thumbs?”
“You should keep researching,” Sam replied with an eye-roll. “I can’t believe this is all you found,” he added with a glance at the notes, frowning over the scribbled phrases. “This town’s records suck. So it was the teacher that did it?”
Dean nodded as he pulled the chair away from the table, turned it around, and sat down with his knees on either side of the back, arms draped across the top and chin resting on his forearms. “Yup. In 1889 Miss Carver-no real name-just showed up to school one day with a knife, went to town on the entire class, and then mysteriously vanished.”
“Then how do they know it was her?”
Dean snatched his notes out of Sam’s hand, scanned the meager contents, and dropped them back on the table. “I didn’t write it down, but some farmer who lived by the schoolhouse said he saw her go in and then, couple of hours later, come out and disappear around the corner. No one else went in, came out, or was found dead except the kids. Which begs the question,” Dean continued, eyebrows furrowing, eyes troubled. “Why does Sam hate Halloween?”
Not dignifying the out-of-the-blue question with an answer, Sam picked up his latte and took a sip. Dean took this opportunity to continue.
“I mean, for all it’s a pain in the ass for our job, it does have its perks. It’s the one day a year when girls can shamelessly dress up like slutty cats, slutty witches, and slutty nurses without-what?” He cut himself off when Sam’s knee jerked and hit the bottom of the table, nearly upending Dean’s coffee, which he caught just before it could topple over.
“What? Nothing,” Sam snapped hastily, taking an extra long sip from his drink.
“For nothing it sure seemed like a whole lotta something. You got somethin’ against nurses?” Dean asked.
A wistful, nostalgic smile ghosted over Sam’s face like a whisper. “No. It’s stupid. It’s just… Jess… dressed up like a nurse that Halloween. The night you came to Stanford.”
Dean wasn’t sure what to say. Sam hadn’t brought Jess up in a while; he seemed to have moved on from her death. But occasionally something would remind him of her. Dean could tell by the way it jarred him at first and then sent him into a quiet, contemplative mood.
Sam chuckled and shook his head, taking another sip of his latte. “So how are we going to find out Miss Carver’s real name if none of the records even seem to know what it was?”
“Better question,” Dean cut in. “How are we going to find her body?”
“Brian McDermott’s funeral is tomorrow,” Sam piped up, rising from his seat and striding over to the motel window. Pulling back the curtain, he gazed out, eyes locked on their stunning view of the parking lot. “One of us can go scope out his friends and family, the other can check out the old graves.”
Dean silently watched Sam as he looked out the window, one hand still wrapped around the curtain, the other drumming lightly on the wall next to the glass. He looked as though he was expecting something to happen out there. Dean had seen that look before. When Sam was ten years old.
----------------------------
Even though Dean was fourteen, he knew better than to think that there was nothing to fear on a dark, moonless night. The fact that his dad had left the day before, gun over his shoulder and machete clutched in his fist, as well as the fact that it was currently October 31, both factored into Dean’s anxiety as dusk settled thickly over the world outside their little house.
Sam had been standing at the window for fifteen minutes, one hand tightly clutching the ratty brown curtain hanging limply on the side, the other tapping the wall as he lightly rolled his fingers against the wood. His face was blank; his eyes were cast on the darkening street outside.
Dean kept glancing over at his brother’s back, finding himself distracted from the fuzzy picture on the old TV. At long last, unnerved and irritated by Sam’s incessant tapping, he snapped, “What’s wrong?”
Sam didn’t turn around. “There’s monsters outside.”
A jolt went through Dean’s body, daring him to flinch, but he held still-not that Sam would have seen it anyway, as the boy was still facing the big window. Dean’s instinctive reaction to hearing those words was to grab the sawed-off he kept in the drawer by his bed, shove Sam away from the window, and shoot. But rationality got the better of him, and he realized that Sam wasn’t seeing monsters at all.
“Those are kids, dumbass. It’s Halloween.”
“What if they’re not all kids? What if there’s a monster pretending to be a trick-or-treater? What if they’re not all costumes?” Sam asked worriedly, though his face, as Dean leaned around to see it, gave nothing away.
“Trust me, they’re kids. Monsters don’t wander around outside with bags of candy.”
“How do you know?”
Dean opened his mouth, shut it, thought, and opened it again. “Because I’m smart.”
“So are monsters. They know how to get in people’s houses.”
Giving an exasperated, and not altogether untroubled sigh, Dean stood up and walked over to the low window where Sam stood. He bent down a little so that his head was even with his little brother’s and squinted out the window into the burgeoning dark.
Lifting a finger, he tapped against the glass, pointing out one of the costumed children in a small cluster that was passing by. “See that?”
Sam was hesitant. “Yeah.”
“Vampire, right?” Dean said innocently, eyeing the boy’s black cape.
Sam nodded, watching the kid. “Yeah.”
“Well, vampires don’t exist.”
“They don’t?” Sam asked, sounding surprised, but still not tearing his eyes away from the window.
“Nope,” Dean replied, pointing out another kid. “And that one? Frankenstein? You of all people should know that Frankenstein’s just a book. And a movie. All fake.”
Sam’s eyes widened as he watched the Frankenstein lookalike scamper past with a pillow-case full of sweets. “Really?”
“And look, there’s a mummy,” Dean nodded to a kid wrapped loosely in toilet paper. “Mummies only live in Egypt. There aren’t any here.”
At last Sam looked away from the window, gazing up at Dean with wide, hopeful brown eyes. “No monsters?”
One corner of Dean’s lips curled up in a grin. “No monsters.”
With that reassurance, Sam hopped over to the couch and flopped down, now paying attention to the old movie that was playing. Dean shook his head and turned back to the window, peering through the night as a gaggle of teenagers stalked past, laughing, clad in rubber masks and carrying bags of free candy. Trick-or-treating was a stupid tradition that normal kids did, and Dean hated normal kids. They were all idiots. Dean was glad he wasn’t just some stupid kid partaking in the stupid tradition of dressing up and begging strangers for candy. He wanted no part of it.
The teenagers were laughing and shoving one another playfully. They would probably sit around later watching scary movies and trading candy. Dean wasn’t interested in any of it. But they sure looked like they were having fun.
With a sigh, Dean turned away from the window.
----------------------------
Once again Sam found himself in front of a row of headstones, but this time at least they had respectful messages inscribed on the stone rather than cheap jokes painted on cardboard. Clad in the suit they kept around for just such occasions, he hung at the back of a large group, mostly unnoticed. But he did have to bend his knees a little to keep blending in, considering everyone around him was at least three inches shorter. Sometimes being tall really had its drawbacks.
As they lowered the casket into the grave, Sam glanced around at the teenagers standing together on the other side, wiping their faces and looking generally devastated. There was a pretty even amount of boys and girls, and they all looked like typical high school kids.
While he had on his sympathetic face, inside Sam was bored and annoyed; nobody was talking about how Brian had died, or anything that could be helpful to the case. It was a waste of time. He resented that this had happened so close to Halloween, and by proxy, he resented everything and everyone involved.
A brown-haired girl pulled out a tissue and violently blew her nose. A short blond boy was sniffing and looking for all the world that he was desperate to hold back his tears. A girl with dark red hair and prominent freckles was staring at the casket as it was lowered, eyes distant and unfocused, face blank. Sam didn’t know who any of these people were, and frankly-though he called himself a people-person and thought he was certainly more social than Dean-he didn’t care.
What he did care about was that his brother was going to Hell in six months and acted as though he couldn’t care less. Because here they were, on a regular case. Wasting time.
Speaking of his brother… Sam swept his eyes across the section of cemetery that he could see. He wondered how Dean was doing.
----------------------------
Dean felt like a blind kid trying to pick his favorite color. He didn’t know what he was looking for. They didn’t have a real name to go off of. They didn’t even know if Miss Carver was buried or cremated. Likely buried, if it really was the old teacher haunting the school. But maybe not even here, in this graveyard.
Sweeping the EMF meter in a half-circle through the air, Dean listened carefully for any crackling, any sound, anything at all; he’d already gone past about thirty graves with it, dating back to the early 1800’s, and had found jack squat.
The sky was gray, like the headstones. Everything was dull and colorless; fog would probably start rolling in soon, settling over the graves eerily. It was the perfect atmosphere for Halloween.
Dean dropped the EMF in his backpack and sighed. Nothing.
As soon as he rounded back to the other side of the cemetery and caught Sam’s eye, they started back for the car, leaving the crowd of mourners behind.
“Anything?”
“Nothing.”
They got in the car. Dean shook his head.
“I don’t know, man. No EMF in this whole freakin’ place. Either our murderous teacher isn’t buried here, or it isn’t her.”
“What do you suggest it is?” Sam asked petulantly. “Know any monsters that like to carve up people’s faces? Besides, it fits. Logistically, this is an easy case. Teacher kills students. Teacher’s ghost comes back and kills more students in the exact same manner.”
Pulling onto the street, Dean kept his eyes on the road, not needing to watch Sam’s face or even listen to him, really, to know what he was thinking. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it isa copycat killer.”
Sam was tugging on his suit collar, loosening his tie. “Then it’s not our job. If I don’t find anything at the school tomorrow… then we’ll leave it up to the cops.”
“I hate cops,” Dean spat instinctively.
“The only people who hate cops are criminals, Dean.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “And the only people who hate Halloween are-”
“-Hunters,” Sam cut him off. He snorted humorlessly and shook his head. “Maybe it is a copycat killer. I mean, people do kill each other. That’s not our job. Plus, it’s Halloween. Maybe we’re jumping at shadows.”
Dean puffed up his cheeks and then blew the air out in a slow whoosh. “It fits so perfectly, though. I mean, man, if we had this bitch’s name and burial location, this case would be a snap.” He chuckled. “Just once I’d like an easy case.” They drove for a few minutes in silence. Dean wondered briefly what cassette was in the tape deck. “Anyway, tomorrow you get to play dress-up and see what’s what at school. And don’t forget to leave those toilets clean and shiny, Mr. Janitor.”
“Custodian,” Sam mumbled.
----------------------------
There was an “Out of Order” sign on the closed bathroom door in the main hallway. This was it.
Throwing a cautionary look around him to see if anyone was in the hall, Sam pushed open the door and stepped inside, pulling the EMF meter out of his deep pocket where it had previously been bulging under the dark gray fabric. The outfit was not a good fit-the stomach sagged where the swell of a beer belly usually was, and the pants were about two inches too short-but it wasn’t so noticeable that anyone would wonder if he really worked there. It had actually been fairly simple to get into the school undetected, considering there had recently been a murder within the building’s walls.
The bathroom looked… well, like a bathroom. There was nothing special about the row of dirty sinks, the urinals, the big mirror, or the stalls behind.
Walking further into the room, Sam swept the meter slowly through the air, catching an angry whine from the device as he swung it closer to the stalls. Following the electric sound, Sam moved closer, coming up to the open door of the first stall. The EMF meter screeched at him. Inside the stall was exactly what one would expect to find: toilet, toilet paper dispenser, graffiti on the wall. But, edging in closer, Sam noticed that the bowl of the toilet was stained with a hint of red.
Bingo.
His mind produced the image of Brian bleeding into the toilet, the blood mixing with the water, Brian’s eyes and nose gouged out and his mouth torn up into a jack-o-lantern grin.
The EMF continued to crackle tellingly. He flicked off the device and tucked it back into his overlarge pocket that also held the ring of keys. At the same time, the sound of rushing water blasted into the air, and Sam looked up to see that all four sinks had switched themselves on, shooting water into the drain, hissing with the force of it coming out. At once, in sync with the sinks, the toilets and urinals flushed, adding to the raucous rushing of water, which echoed off the tile walls, and Sam clapped his hands over his ears as the sound surrounded him. The stall doors started swinging on their hinges, slamming shut and popping back open as if caught in a fierce wind, and an invisible black marker started scribbling on the wall across from Sam in the same messy scrawl that made up the profane graffiti on the swinging stall doors.
I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS
I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS
I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS
Over and over the words were etched onto the tile wall, in large script, in small script, at the same time, too fast for one hand to be doing it all. Then, when most of the wall space was taken, the message changed and was written once in huge letters at Sam’s eye-level so he would be sure to catch it.
ONLY BAD ONES
The toilets stopped flushing; the stall doors lost their momentum, screeching to an abrupt halt at various angles; the sinks shut themselves off, leaving the room in silence. Sam took a breath, trying to slow the hammering in his chest. It didn’t matter how many times he dealt with this crap; if he was alone and unarmed when a ghost stopped by to make its presence known, his blood pressure went up a little. But this was just a warning. Effectively, Sam was being told to get out. Before he ended up like Brian.
Sam, however, would not give up that easily. And now that the ghost had apparently left to let him mull this over, it was just him and the mess all over the bathroom walls. And the stain on the toilet too; if Sam knew anything about cleaning, it was how to get bloodstains out of just about anything, from clothes to car upholstery. Turning around, he went to retrieve the cleaning supplies from his closet.
He hoped the marker on the walls was washable.
Continue...
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror
Characters: Dean, Sam
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: I do not own or lay claim to anything related to Supernatural.
Summary: Something is carving people up like jack-o-lanterns. When the boys take a case on Halloween, Dean revisits high school from a new perspective, Sam explores his hatred of the holiday, and they both learn that the past is haunting everyone. Takes place Halloween of S3, after Bedtime Stories.
The Carver
By Spectral Scribe
----------------------------
The uniform was tossed over a wicker chair by the table, the ring of keys sitting next to a Styrofoam cup filled with steaming black coffee. Dean picked up the cup and took a sip, wincing at the assault on his taste buds when the liquid practically scalded him on the way down.
“Three years of Stanford education, and all along my baby brother was aspiring to be a janitor. I’m so proud,” he announced with a grin.
“Custodian is more politically correct, actually,” Sam murmured absentmindedly, still going through the notes Dean had taken the afternoon before as his vanilla latte cooled on the table. “And do you have a better plan? This will get me into the school. I can check for EMF, look into the bathroom the kid was found in-”
“Okay, thank you, I get it, Sam,” Dean cut him off, cautiously testing his coffee again and finding it still piping hot against his tongue, which was now stinging and tingly. “And you can also sthcrub the toilets, mop up sthpilled lunch, and wash the blackboardsth,” Dean lisped around his burnt tongue.
Sam scrunched up his nose. “Why are you talking like that?”
“The ladiesth find if theckthee.” He waggled his tongue at Sam before pulling it back into his mouth. “So what am I supposed to do? Sit here and twiddle my thumbs?”
“You should keep researching,” Sam replied with an eye-roll. “I can’t believe this is all you found,” he added with a glance at the notes, frowning over the scribbled phrases. “This town’s records suck. So it was the teacher that did it?”
Dean nodded as he pulled the chair away from the table, turned it around, and sat down with his knees on either side of the back, arms draped across the top and chin resting on his forearms. “Yup. In 1889 Miss Carver-no real name-just showed up to school one day with a knife, went to town on the entire class, and then mysteriously vanished.”
“Then how do they know it was her?”
Dean snatched his notes out of Sam’s hand, scanned the meager contents, and dropped them back on the table. “I didn’t write it down, but some farmer who lived by the schoolhouse said he saw her go in and then, couple of hours later, come out and disappear around the corner. No one else went in, came out, or was found dead except the kids. Which begs the question,” Dean continued, eyebrows furrowing, eyes troubled. “Why does Sam hate Halloween?”
Not dignifying the out-of-the-blue question with an answer, Sam picked up his latte and took a sip. Dean took this opportunity to continue.
“I mean, for all it’s a pain in the ass for our job, it does have its perks. It’s the one day a year when girls can shamelessly dress up like slutty cats, slutty witches, and slutty nurses without-what?” He cut himself off when Sam’s knee jerked and hit the bottom of the table, nearly upending Dean’s coffee, which he caught just before it could topple over.
“What? Nothing,” Sam snapped hastily, taking an extra long sip from his drink.
“For nothing it sure seemed like a whole lotta something. You got somethin’ against nurses?” Dean asked.
A wistful, nostalgic smile ghosted over Sam’s face like a whisper. “No. It’s stupid. It’s just… Jess… dressed up like a nurse that Halloween. The night you came to Stanford.”
Dean wasn’t sure what to say. Sam hadn’t brought Jess up in a while; he seemed to have moved on from her death. But occasionally something would remind him of her. Dean could tell by the way it jarred him at first and then sent him into a quiet, contemplative mood.
Sam chuckled and shook his head, taking another sip of his latte. “So how are we going to find out Miss Carver’s real name if none of the records even seem to know what it was?”
“Better question,” Dean cut in. “How are we going to find her body?”
“Brian McDermott’s funeral is tomorrow,” Sam piped up, rising from his seat and striding over to the motel window. Pulling back the curtain, he gazed out, eyes locked on their stunning view of the parking lot. “One of us can go scope out his friends and family, the other can check out the old graves.”
Dean silently watched Sam as he looked out the window, one hand still wrapped around the curtain, the other drumming lightly on the wall next to the glass. He looked as though he was expecting something to happen out there. Dean had seen that look before. When Sam was ten years old.
----------------------------
Even though Dean was fourteen, he knew better than to think that there was nothing to fear on a dark, moonless night. The fact that his dad had left the day before, gun over his shoulder and machete clutched in his fist, as well as the fact that it was currently October 31, both factored into Dean’s anxiety as dusk settled thickly over the world outside their little house.
Sam had been standing at the window for fifteen minutes, one hand tightly clutching the ratty brown curtain hanging limply on the side, the other tapping the wall as he lightly rolled his fingers against the wood. His face was blank; his eyes were cast on the darkening street outside.
Dean kept glancing over at his brother’s back, finding himself distracted from the fuzzy picture on the old TV. At long last, unnerved and irritated by Sam’s incessant tapping, he snapped, “What’s wrong?”
Sam didn’t turn around. “There’s monsters outside.”
A jolt went through Dean’s body, daring him to flinch, but he held still-not that Sam would have seen it anyway, as the boy was still facing the big window. Dean’s instinctive reaction to hearing those words was to grab the sawed-off he kept in the drawer by his bed, shove Sam away from the window, and shoot. But rationality got the better of him, and he realized that Sam wasn’t seeing monsters at all.
“Those are kids, dumbass. It’s Halloween.”
“What if they’re not all kids? What if there’s a monster pretending to be a trick-or-treater? What if they’re not all costumes?” Sam asked worriedly, though his face, as Dean leaned around to see it, gave nothing away.
“Trust me, they’re kids. Monsters don’t wander around outside with bags of candy.”
“How do you know?”
Dean opened his mouth, shut it, thought, and opened it again. “Because I’m smart.”
“So are monsters. They know how to get in people’s houses.”
Giving an exasperated, and not altogether untroubled sigh, Dean stood up and walked over to the low window where Sam stood. He bent down a little so that his head was even with his little brother’s and squinted out the window into the burgeoning dark.
Lifting a finger, he tapped against the glass, pointing out one of the costumed children in a small cluster that was passing by. “See that?”
Sam was hesitant. “Yeah.”
“Vampire, right?” Dean said innocently, eyeing the boy’s black cape.
Sam nodded, watching the kid. “Yeah.”
“Well, vampires don’t exist.”
“They don’t?” Sam asked, sounding surprised, but still not tearing his eyes away from the window.
“Nope,” Dean replied, pointing out another kid. “And that one? Frankenstein? You of all people should know that Frankenstein’s just a book. And a movie. All fake.”
Sam’s eyes widened as he watched the Frankenstein lookalike scamper past with a pillow-case full of sweets. “Really?”
“And look, there’s a mummy,” Dean nodded to a kid wrapped loosely in toilet paper. “Mummies only live in Egypt. There aren’t any here.”
At last Sam looked away from the window, gazing up at Dean with wide, hopeful brown eyes. “No monsters?”
One corner of Dean’s lips curled up in a grin. “No monsters.”
With that reassurance, Sam hopped over to the couch and flopped down, now paying attention to the old movie that was playing. Dean shook his head and turned back to the window, peering through the night as a gaggle of teenagers stalked past, laughing, clad in rubber masks and carrying bags of free candy. Trick-or-treating was a stupid tradition that normal kids did, and Dean hated normal kids. They were all idiots. Dean was glad he wasn’t just some stupid kid partaking in the stupid tradition of dressing up and begging strangers for candy. He wanted no part of it.
The teenagers were laughing and shoving one another playfully. They would probably sit around later watching scary movies and trading candy. Dean wasn’t interested in any of it. But they sure looked like they were having fun.
With a sigh, Dean turned away from the window.
----------------------------
Once again Sam found himself in front of a row of headstones, but this time at least they had respectful messages inscribed on the stone rather than cheap jokes painted on cardboard. Clad in the suit they kept around for just such occasions, he hung at the back of a large group, mostly unnoticed. But he did have to bend his knees a little to keep blending in, considering everyone around him was at least three inches shorter. Sometimes being tall really had its drawbacks.
As they lowered the casket into the grave, Sam glanced around at the teenagers standing together on the other side, wiping their faces and looking generally devastated. There was a pretty even amount of boys and girls, and they all looked like typical high school kids.
While he had on his sympathetic face, inside Sam was bored and annoyed; nobody was talking about how Brian had died, or anything that could be helpful to the case. It was a waste of time. He resented that this had happened so close to Halloween, and by proxy, he resented everything and everyone involved.
A brown-haired girl pulled out a tissue and violently blew her nose. A short blond boy was sniffing and looking for all the world that he was desperate to hold back his tears. A girl with dark red hair and prominent freckles was staring at the casket as it was lowered, eyes distant and unfocused, face blank. Sam didn’t know who any of these people were, and frankly-though he called himself a people-person and thought he was certainly more social than Dean-he didn’t care.
What he did care about was that his brother was going to Hell in six months and acted as though he couldn’t care less. Because here they were, on a regular case. Wasting time.
Speaking of his brother… Sam swept his eyes across the section of cemetery that he could see. He wondered how Dean was doing.
----------------------------
Dean felt like a blind kid trying to pick his favorite color. He didn’t know what he was looking for. They didn’t have a real name to go off of. They didn’t even know if Miss Carver was buried or cremated. Likely buried, if it really was the old teacher haunting the school. But maybe not even here, in this graveyard.
Sweeping the EMF meter in a half-circle through the air, Dean listened carefully for any crackling, any sound, anything at all; he’d already gone past about thirty graves with it, dating back to the early 1800’s, and had found jack squat.
The sky was gray, like the headstones. Everything was dull and colorless; fog would probably start rolling in soon, settling over the graves eerily. It was the perfect atmosphere for Halloween.
Dean dropped the EMF in his backpack and sighed. Nothing.
As soon as he rounded back to the other side of the cemetery and caught Sam’s eye, they started back for the car, leaving the crowd of mourners behind.
“Anything?”
“Nothing.”
They got in the car. Dean shook his head.
“I don’t know, man. No EMF in this whole freakin’ place. Either our murderous teacher isn’t buried here, or it isn’t her.”
“What do you suggest it is?” Sam asked petulantly. “Know any monsters that like to carve up people’s faces? Besides, it fits. Logistically, this is an easy case. Teacher kills students. Teacher’s ghost comes back and kills more students in the exact same manner.”
Pulling onto the street, Dean kept his eyes on the road, not needing to watch Sam’s face or even listen to him, really, to know what he was thinking. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it isa copycat killer.”
Sam was tugging on his suit collar, loosening his tie. “Then it’s not our job. If I don’t find anything at the school tomorrow… then we’ll leave it up to the cops.”
“I hate cops,” Dean spat instinctively.
“The only people who hate cops are criminals, Dean.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “And the only people who hate Halloween are-”
“-Hunters,” Sam cut him off. He snorted humorlessly and shook his head. “Maybe it is a copycat killer. I mean, people do kill each other. That’s not our job. Plus, it’s Halloween. Maybe we’re jumping at shadows.”
Dean puffed up his cheeks and then blew the air out in a slow whoosh. “It fits so perfectly, though. I mean, man, if we had this bitch’s name and burial location, this case would be a snap.” He chuckled. “Just once I’d like an easy case.” They drove for a few minutes in silence. Dean wondered briefly what cassette was in the tape deck. “Anyway, tomorrow you get to play dress-up and see what’s what at school. And don’t forget to leave those toilets clean and shiny, Mr. Janitor.”
“Custodian,” Sam mumbled.
----------------------------
There was an “Out of Order” sign on the closed bathroom door in the main hallway. This was it.
Throwing a cautionary look around him to see if anyone was in the hall, Sam pushed open the door and stepped inside, pulling the EMF meter out of his deep pocket where it had previously been bulging under the dark gray fabric. The outfit was not a good fit-the stomach sagged where the swell of a beer belly usually was, and the pants were about two inches too short-but it wasn’t so noticeable that anyone would wonder if he really worked there. It had actually been fairly simple to get into the school undetected, considering there had recently been a murder within the building’s walls.
The bathroom looked… well, like a bathroom. There was nothing special about the row of dirty sinks, the urinals, the big mirror, or the stalls behind.
Walking further into the room, Sam swept the meter slowly through the air, catching an angry whine from the device as he swung it closer to the stalls. Following the electric sound, Sam moved closer, coming up to the open door of the first stall. The EMF meter screeched at him. Inside the stall was exactly what one would expect to find: toilet, toilet paper dispenser, graffiti on the wall. But, edging in closer, Sam noticed that the bowl of the toilet was stained with a hint of red.
Bingo.
His mind produced the image of Brian bleeding into the toilet, the blood mixing with the water, Brian’s eyes and nose gouged out and his mouth torn up into a jack-o-lantern grin.
The EMF continued to crackle tellingly. He flicked off the device and tucked it back into his overlarge pocket that also held the ring of keys. At the same time, the sound of rushing water blasted into the air, and Sam looked up to see that all four sinks had switched themselves on, shooting water into the drain, hissing with the force of it coming out. At once, in sync with the sinks, the toilets and urinals flushed, adding to the raucous rushing of water, which echoed off the tile walls, and Sam clapped his hands over his ears as the sound surrounded him. The stall doors started swinging on their hinges, slamming shut and popping back open as if caught in a fierce wind, and an invisible black marker started scribbling on the wall across from Sam in the same messy scrawl that made up the profane graffiti on the swinging stall doors.
I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS
I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS
I WILL NOT KILL GOOD STUDENTS
Over and over the words were etched onto the tile wall, in large script, in small script, at the same time, too fast for one hand to be doing it all. Then, when most of the wall space was taken, the message changed and was written once in huge letters at Sam’s eye-level so he would be sure to catch it.
ONLY BAD ONES
The toilets stopped flushing; the stall doors lost their momentum, screeching to an abrupt halt at various angles; the sinks shut themselves off, leaving the room in silence. Sam took a breath, trying to slow the hammering in his chest. It didn’t matter how many times he dealt with this crap; if he was alone and unarmed when a ghost stopped by to make its presence known, his blood pressure went up a little. But this was just a warning. Effectively, Sam was being told to get out. Before he ended up like Brian.
Sam, however, would not give up that easily. And now that the ghost had apparently left to let him mull this over, it was just him and the mess all over the bathroom walls. And the stain on the toilet too; if Sam knew anything about cleaning, it was how to get bloodstains out of just about anything, from clothes to car upholstery. Turning around, he went to retrieve the cleaning supplies from his closet.
He hoped the marker on the walls was washable.
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