None But Some Falling Rain, for crazylittleme (John/Mary, PG-13)
Title: None But Some Falling Rain
Author: hossgal
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: John/Mary
Summary: “Mary Winchester,” he says, and every time he repeats the name, it's like another sliver of glass ground into his skin.
Author's Notes: For crazylittleme, for spn_summerlove, who wanted John/Mary: burning down the disco. Hon, I hope this is something like what you wanted. Title from "My Lady's House", by Iron and Wine. 4800 words.
***
The air inside the room is still and musty, underlain with a decade-old taint of ash. Clear light outlines the door and flecks the boarded over-windows, bare slivers of light scattered in irregular rows. Here and there, a scrap of linoleum shines pale through the gloom, the curled squares seeming to float above the remains of the dance floor.
Despite John's flannel shirt, the room is cool. He shivers - cold or tension, impossible to tell - and resists the urge to tug the shirt closer.
Pay attention.
He squirms, once, seat of his jeans rasping against the grit on the floor. Just out of arm's reach, Dean's light breathing catches, stills.
Call it to you. He blinks, focuses on the wooden board where lies on the floor before him as he sits with his knees folded up Indian-style. Round wooden board, dusted with salt. Tiny bowl holding a palmful of water, a bit of green and a sliver of mirror. To his left, a curved dome of glass as wide as his spread fingers. To his right, under his hand, the fully-loaded .45.
Quit stalling. He fills his lungs with the spring-chill air, exhales. Takes another, and this time, he speaks.
“Mary Winchester.” John lets the syllables fall into the silence, Mare-ree Win-chess-tur. Five beats to the chant, four breaks to the sound, not enough to wrap up everything about the woman John had loved and married and lost.
“Mary Winchester.” Her name, his name, but she had taken his name, had walked down the aisle with her head up and her back straight, walked like a woman who knew where she was going, and she had held out her hand and let him slide the ring on. And when he had looked up - his hands had been shaking so badly, he almost dropped the little gold band - her face had been solemn except for the hint of a smile around her mouth, and she had looked so beautiful, so wise, as if she could see the years ahead of them and still she wanted him, wanted his name.
“M-Mary Winchester.” His voice cracks this time. Mary, sitting at the breakfast table, sun not yet risen, cup of coffee cooling on the table. He had stood in the doorway, watching her, the way her hair fell down over the corner of her jaw. When he cleared his throat, she was going to turn around and tell him that she thought she was pregnant.
“Mary Winchester.” Steadier. He has to be. Four down.
“Mary Winchester.” Five. John makes a mark on the floor in front of him and keeps going.
***
When Dean said, “Mama?” low and quiet, the awed wonder in his voice jerked John around so fast he almost fell. The flashlight swept over blackened walls, a jagged slash of amber against the peeling paper, before settling on the back of Dean's head. The beam picked out pale locks, curling at the back of Dean's neck - time for another haircut, John thought, inanely - and the pink curve of one ear. Dean ignored the flashlight and stared at the darkness in the corner, his sneakers shuffling back and forth, a minute dance in the old ash that covered the floor.
John flicked the flashlight into the corner that had caught his son's attention - black wall, cracked wallpaper - and then into the other one, equally empty, before returning the beam to Dean. John stepped closer, almost within arm's reach, suddenly wishing he had brought more than a handful of salt and a silver blade.
“Dean, did you say something?” As John watched, Dean's arms came up and crossed over his chest, hugging himself. “Dean.”
Dean's whole body suddenly shivered, and John took the two strides to reach him, dropping the flashlight and gripping Dean's shoulder, hard, as the other hand dug in his pocket for the knife and his eyes scanned the empty room.
Never should have brought him, never should - “Dean.”
And as fast as that, Dean shook loose of whatever it had been, and the narrow bones on his hand relaxed, Dean's hair brushing over John's hand as he craned his head up to look at John. “Dad. Ow, Dad, that hurts.”
“Sorry, dude.” He relaxed his grip, but didn't let go. “C'mon. Time to go. We need to pick up your brother.”
It should have been comforting, that Dean let himself be pulled away so easily. But Dean kept looking back, all the way down the corridor and out into the sharp sunlight.
***
“Mary Winchester.” John says the name slowly, letting the sound fill his ears. Mary meant bitterness, she had told him, once, when the first tests made them think Sam was going to be a girl, and they were paging through a book of baby names. Bitter, or salt water. He had looked up from the page in surprise. Did you know that? She had smiled and shrugged, said, It was my great-aunt's name.
“Mary Winchester.” Bitter, and that's wrong, all wrong, because she hadn't always been sweetness and light, but Mary had never been sour, hadn't ever let worry or life or John turn her harsh. She'd always been -- always? Are you so sure? Do you really think you know? -- she'd always been good.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, to the darkness, and thinks how salt had been right, how she had tasted, sweat standing on her breasts, how her skin had gleamed, how she had looked, laid back on their bed, bare and reaching for him. Wanting him.
He makes another mark on the floor. Twenty.
***
An hour later, he was back in the phone-booth sized apartment, Dean seeming no worse for wear and actively tearing around the room. John sat in the open doorway for half an hour, studying his son as he wrestled with his brother.
Mr Winchester, we know that it's normal for children to have some conflicts when they first enter a new school. The principal had looked over her glasses at John, but her voice had been kindly. However, we can not tolerate fighting. Both your son and the other boy will be suspended for one day.
There had been no room for arguing, not that John had been inclined to protest. Dean had refused to tell him what the fight had been about.
John had spent a week and a half sorting out the history on the burned out disco-hall, and reconning the best time to do a quiet look-around. It was either take Dean with him, while it was still light enough out that John wouldn't look like a vagrant trying to cop a squat, or leave the boy alone in the apartment, wide awake and bored.
The choice had seemed simple at the time. Time enough later to change his mind, if Dean got into the habit of starting fights so he could skip school and hang out with Dad.
Watching him now, careful to not smother his brother, or twist Sam's ear too hard, it was hard to believe Dean would start a fight.
When both of the boys lay gasping on the bed, covers completely stripped away and wadded on the floor, he cleared his throat. Dean, who had been lying on his belly with Sam's heels playing a tattoo on his backside, shoved his brother aside and rolled over.
“Dean,” John said, “You're going back to school tomorrow. I don't want to hear any more about you fighting with the other boys. You understand?”
Sam scooted up to sit next to Dean. Dean dropped his eyes to focus on something around the level of his toes, nodded.
John sighed. “Okay. I've got some papers to work on. You boys play quiet.”
Sam piped up. “Can I have juice?”
John nodded. “Get him some, Dean, and the two of you go outside. Stay where I can see you from the door.”
The last of the light was fading when he finally shut the journal and sat staring at the wall, turning the pen over and over in his hands. Reported that the children said their mother called them.
This wasn't the thing that had killed Mary. There was the fire, and the missing children, but nothing else matched. He caught at the details, turning them over and over, a scattering of thin shards, nothing so solid as the hexagonal cylinder in his hands.
Dancehall dating from the 1950's, smoldering cigarette blamed for fire guts building in 1978 while dance hall is in latest renovation as disco-tech.
Only deaths a 23 year old single mother and her daughter, three. Woman was part of cleaning staff, living illegally over the dancehall.
Over next ten years, five different neighbors and visitors to adjoining buildings report that their children have wandered off for extended periods, once for eight hours. Ages range from eighteen months to five years. Two oldest children insist their mother called them into the burned-out building.
He put the journal aside, stood up and went to the door. Took a deep breath, ready to bellow out the boy's names.
Outside, the twilight sky had gone grey-green and violet. Traffic, on the other side of the high wooden fence, chattered past. Through a break in the vehicle noise, a single syllable, unintelligible, except that it was in Sam's delighted squeal, rang out. John made his fingers relax off the door frame, checked his pockets for the apartment key, and went to find the boys.
***
His throat is starting to burn.
“Mary Winchester.” The first time he kissed her, a brush of his mouth against her cheek, she had grinned back at him and told him he could do better than that. When he had cupped his hands around her face, she had curled her fingers over his scalp and pulled him closer to her.
“Mary Winchester.” The first time they'd made love had been fast and clumsy and wonderful and awkward as hell. He never understood why she'd given him a do-over then, either.
“Mary Winchester.” Two years after Dean, Mary lost two pregnancies, one after the other, five months apart. After the second, he had held her as she wept, beating against his chest with her fist, apologizing over and over again. He never understood what he was saying sorry for.
His breath is pale mist. He makes another mark. Two hundred sixty.
***
Dean woke in the middle of the night, screaming.
John was up and reaching for the gun in the bedside table when he realized the door was still locked and the apartment empty except for the three of them.
Dean had stopped screaming by the time John sat back down again. Still sobbing for breath, the boy folded into John's arms like a wet towel. Sam, disoriented and sniffling, climbed after.
John lay back down against the pillow and held them close, willing his heart to quit racing.
Dean's cry had been more sheer noise than real words. But John heard his son's scream echoing still in his head, and was the sound of Dean calling for his mother.
***
“Mary Winchester.” She had loved walking around the house in bare feet.
“Mary Winchester.” She planted four or five pots of basil and dill, every year, and never used in a single pot of anything.
“Mary Winchester.” She had worked for the pharmacist, filing prescriptions, and she could read eighteen different scribbles upside down and backwards.
Four hundred.
***
It was just a dream, John told himself the next morning. Just a dream, like Sam's nightmares about clowns or any of the other things kids dreamed about.
Dean ate breakfast, he got himself dressed, helped John sort Sam's clothes until Sam had the shirt and socks he wanted, and climbed in the Impala without complaining.
“No fighting,” John warned, at the drop-off. “You hear me, buddy?”
“Yes, sir.”
John watched the two figures until they disappeared into the press around the gate. Dean kept a hand on Sam's collar all the way.
Just a dream. He put the car in drive and drove away. Library. Then county records. He still didn't know ho had owned the land before the street had been improved. Didn't know why he thought that mattered. Their mother called them.
Five hours later, the principal was again apologetic but firm, Dean was holding a bag of ice to his nose, and John was doing a slow boil.
Not his fault, the principal said, this time sitting on the other side of her desk. His teacher clearly saw the other boy start the confrontation, teasing Dean about his mother. Clearly not his fault. The principal's arm tightened around Dean.
John met Dean's eyes around the bag of ice. Finally he growled, “One day suspension?”
One day it was. To be fair.
Out in the Impala, Dean asked, “Are you mad?”
“No, I'm not m - I'm not mad at you, dude. But you have to stop hitting people.”
Dean's jaw tightened. He shifted the ice pack from hand to hand. “Are you going back to that place, the place with the fire?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse. No sense in encouraging Dean to skip school, for starters.
But it would be another two hours before Sam's class was released. Not right to jerk him out of class, too.
Just one more look. There might be something, something you missed. It's daylight. No danger.
It had been daylight before.
“Are we going back there?”
John sighed. “Sure. But you'll stay in the car.”
Dean's forehead crinkled, but he didn't fuss. John put the car into gear.
Two buildings down from the dancehall, John left the Impala in the shade. Early, still - the construction warehouse that was the street's only daylight establishment hadn't hit their lunch hour yet. John walked straight up to the back door, spare clipboard in hand, lockpicks in his pocket in case someone had found the padlocks he had switched the day before.
Inside, the hall was the same as it had been - chill, echoing, empty. John swept the flashlight over the walls, across the ceiling, along the bare beams that had held the concealed loft before the fire. Nothing.
He pocketed the flashlight and made his way out of the building, pulling the door carefully shut behind him. Across the street, two pickups, pipeframes loaded with lengths of PVC, sat idling in the driveway.
The Impala was empty.
“Dean!” He was going to skin that boy. Not in the backseat. Not hiding under the car. No damage to the car.
He was running back to the burned-out hall before he understood where his feet were taking him.
The door stuck. He took a step back, hit it again. It slammed open, bounced against the wall and came back at him. He caught it with one hand and kept going.
“Dean? Dean!”
His son stood in the center of the room, staring around him, his breath fogging the air around them into midst.
***
“Mary Winchester.” It was barely a whisper, not loud enough to wake the woman in his memory, sleeping on his arm. They were driving, on the way back from the capital, full of good steak and nice wine. He had his eyes on the road and the Impala was running fast and smooth, while Mary went to sleep against him.
“Mary Winchester.” She had been sitting up late, sorting bills, the ones he had promised to get to, three days before, biting her lip, one hand knotted into her hair in frustration.
“Mary Winchester.” Walking out of the house, Dean on her hip, going to visit her best friend in Topeka. The way the house had been so damn empty for those thirty hours.
Another mark. Six hundred ninety.
***
Dean conked out on the bed with the sheet pulled up over him. Sam sat in the corner with his crayons and kept cutting glances between his father and his brother, having been taken out of the car and put down with the instruction to play quiet and leave Dean alone.
The fretful pestering that Sam had laid on Dean since the Impala had pulled up in front of the elementary school had turned off like a faucet, but John could tell the dam was going to break, sooner or later.
At the other end of the too-small room, John paced back and forth, phone pressed to his ear, trying to keep his voice down.
“-- kids keep going missing around there. Goes back ten, twelve years, ever since the fire. I went in the daylight, just to get the lay of land, and I swear, Missouri, there's something there.”
On the other end of the line, Missouri's voice was even, considering. “And you say Dean talked to it? Saw it?
“Twice. I never should have - There's no body to burn. I don't - it's not even real - it's not Mary.” It's not.
Missouri's voice was patient. “Did I ever say it was? It's just a poor lost thing, calling after what it can't have back. It wants its baby.”
“I'm not letting it have Dean.” The phone receiver creaked in his grip. He forced his hand to relax, waited as Missouri didn't say, of course you're not, and then finally asked, “You know anything that can kill it?”
She didn't say anything. John let the crackle of the line stretch on and on, watching Dean's hands clench and relax on the bedsheets. Finally, Missouri said, “Wait. Let me get a number. There's someone in Paulst county you can call.”
He had the number written down and the phone turned back off before he thought to wonder why she hadn't told him the name right off.
***
“Mary Winchester.” The day they moved the last of the boxes into the house, John had locked the front door and carried Mary up the stairs. He'd meant to take them to the bed, the new bed, fresh made with pale blue sheets. But they had stopped on the landing, hands tangled in each other's clothing, and he had pressed her back up against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, the one picture she'd managed to hang rattling as he groaned against her collarbone.
“Mary Winchester.” Dean's teeth had come in early, but Mary had gritted hers and kept on nursing, and John had to laugh at the face she made when his son latched on. She had thrown a pillow at him.
“Mary Winchester.” Later, carefully, he lapped at the bite marks his son had made, washed them away, until she sighed in pleasure, half-drifting into sleep.
“Mary Winchester.” She hadn't been one for wild parties, or huge crowds. She hadn't liked to dance. She loved to walk - loved the neighborhood in Lawrence for the quiet streets and wide-spreading trees.
“Mary Winchester.” She had wanted to try for one more, time for a little girl.
Eight hundred twenty.
***
Soon as he saw Majean DeFranco, he knew why Missouri hadn't sent him there in the beginning.
“This the boy thinks he sees his mammy?” She swayed close to Dean, dark dreds following the motion of her body. John kept one hand on Dean's shoulder, resisted the impulse to shove the woman away from Dean.
“Yeah,” he said. “Missouri told me you knew what was in that old dancehall, the burned out one over in Wickerton.”
“'Course I do. Everybody knows.” Her dark eyes flickered to John's face, then away again. “You know.” She turned back to Dean, smiled a smile full of nearly rotten teeth. “Pretty little boy, 'most a haunt heself. Why you take this boy there, hmmm? Pretty little boy likes fires?” She reached out a hand as if to cup Dean's face.
No. John clamped his jaw shut around the word, Missouri's words - she can help, but don't you trust this woman - echoing in his ears. DeFranco's hand jerked to a stop, four inches of air between her skin and Dean's. Slowly, she straightened, took a step back.
“Pretty little boys shouldn't be out in the shadows, shouldn't come see Mizz Majean. Little boys might catch the crazy from Mizz Majean.”
John made his hands relax, patted Dean's shoulders. “Sorry,” he said, nearly choking on the word. “Missouri said, maybe you knew how to get rid of the thing in that building.”
DeFranco shrugged, awkward motion of bony shoulders. “Know how to get rid of lots of things - haunts, mice, roaches. Run them off, they come right back.”
“I need to get rid of that thing.” He kept his voice patient, kept it even. Don't trust her.
“You want it out of this little boy's head, what you want.” Turning away, she knelt before the cupboard, began rummaging through the stacks of wadded up plastic bags on a lower shelf. “Catching's easy. Calling's harder.” Grunting, she sat back on her heels, an old style cheeseboard in her hands - thick wooden base, dusty glass dome with a thick knob of a handle on the top. Rising, she went to the countertop and set the cheeseboard down. A grimy rag hung over the sink. She picked it up and began wiping at the dust on the glass dome.
“Known what was there for eight, nine years, since the first babies went wandering. Nasty little haunt, not a killer, just a nasty little thing. Known for years. But knowing's not doing, and there's no babies for Mizz Majean to fret over.”
John waited, breathing in the thick air of unwashed dishes, spoiled food, and let her prattle on.
“Tried to call the haunt - called her by her true name, by the name her mammy called her, by the name she'd been blessed and given to Jesus with. But that haunt don't want that name no more. You got to call that haunt by a different name now.”
“What name?”
DeFranco turned around, set both hands on the countertop. “Name the haunt'll answer to. You call that name a thousand times, haunt'll come straight to you, and you can catch it.” She pulled open a drawer, rummaged through it to produce a thick marker. Pulling the cap off, she proceeded to write on the glass cover in a wide green script. “Just like that, snip-snap.”
John sighed. “What name?”
Another flash of tartar-coated teeth over her shoulder. DeFranco recapped the marker and stepped away from the cheeseboard, bent until she was eye-level with Dean. “You saw your mammy in that building, didn't you?”
Dean nodded.
“Looked just like her, didn't it?”
Another nod. Defranco straightened with a smug grin. “There's your name.”
“No.” No.
Defranco cocked her head at him, turned on her heel and collected up the cheeseboard. Held it out to him. “Yes. Set your circles, break the one around you, leave right the one around the boy. Put out a catch bowl - water and elderbloom and a bit of mirror, looking up. Call her name - call it true, call it right. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times, and then just once more. That thing'll come to you.”
She put the the cheeseboard in John's hands and pushed. He folded his hand around the board. “Go on now. 'Less you want Miz Majean watch this little boy, while you go chase the haunt.”
“Dean. We're going.”
Dean all but treaded on John's feet, all the way back to the car.
***
Eighteen hours later, he sits on his butt in a broken circle of salt. Dean hugs his knees inside his own circle, big enough that he can lay down, and he has John's jacket to pillow his head if need be. But right now, he's sitting up, staring at the darkness, jacket draped over his skinny ten-year-old shoulders, and trying, god, he's trying so hard to just sit there and listen to the crickets singing in the corners.
John can't see what Dean sees. He can't hear what calls the boy.
He has a salt-dusted piece of oak and a glass dome marked with green wards before him, and he calls to the thing out in the darkness.
Calls to it with a name the thing doesn't own.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, and sees Mary as he last saw her, belly cut open, blood pouring out, the stink of cut bowel and wet iron taking him back twelve years and half the world away.
“Mary,” he says, and swallows. “Mary Winchester.” He thinks of her hands, the way her grip was always firmer, always stronger than he expected, of how she could hold things he hadn't thought she could lift.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, and every time he repeats the name, it's like another sliver of glass ground into his skin.
***
You call it true - make it answer you, DeFranco had said, and John does. Dean drops off to sleep, rouses himself, dozes again. John starts to feel the press of his bladder, the ache in his hips, ignores them.
Keeps saying her name, keeps count.
And then he is done.
The air around him is frigid. The glass dome is icy under his hand, and if he could see, he's sure the water in the catch bowl is frozen solid. Dean is huddled into the jacket, scrunched down until only the crown of his head shows.
John runs one finger along the row of marks before him, forcing his brain to reckon the numbers one more time. Nine hundred, eighty, ninety, ninety-eight, ninety-nine.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, and finally, finally, the catch bowl comes alight, a flicker of phosphorescence standing in over the little pool of water. He closes his eyes, closes his stiff fingers over the glass dome's handle, and lifts it, blind.
Sets it down again.
There is no sound, no frantic firefly dance inside the trap, no psychic scream. Just a slow, steady fade of the eerie light, as it dies away into nothingness.
***
By the look of the light around the door, it was still daylight, not even noon.
He gathered Dean up against him, one handed, his right hand still holding the .45. The boy jerking fretfully, still clinging to sleep. Exhausted, John thought, feeling the weariness in his own body, the ache in his knees as he rose. Gravity dragged at him, the added weight of cold iron and his son pulling John down.
He stood anyway, boots scrapping on the tattered floor. Dean ground his face into John's collar and muttered something that sounded like mama.
“Shushhh,” John said. “Shush.” The words felt like gravel.
Carefully, he made his way across the dance floor, stopping at the door to check the safety on the semiautomatic before tucking it between his body and Dean's. Before he pushed the door open, he looked back, one last time, at the two circles of salt, and the curve of the glass dome.
The open door let light fall over the glass prison, and for all the world it looked as through there was nothing there at all.
Come back, this evening, box up the trap. Secure it.
John looked around at the soot-stained walls - the ones that had heard the recital of Mary's names - and felt the ache in his knees, the sand in his throat, the weight of his son in his arms. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to walk out the door, climb in the car, and drive - get Sammy, get their bags, go.
Never stop in some godforsaken little nowhere town again. Never go crawling on the edges of reality, never risk his boy again, never stop. Never.
Later, he told himself, firmly. After you sleep. Still holding Dean, John stepped off the threshold and let the door slowly swing closed.
Author: hossgal
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: John/Mary
Summary: “Mary Winchester,” he says, and every time he repeats the name, it's like another sliver of glass ground into his skin.
Author's Notes: For crazylittleme, for spn_summerlove, who wanted John/Mary: burning down the disco. Hon, I hope this is something like what you wanted. Title from "My Lady's House", by Iron and Wine. 4800 words.
***
The air inside the room is still and musty, underlain with a decade-old taint of ash. Clear light outlines the door and flecks the boarded over-windows, bare slivers of light scattered in irregular rows. Here and there, a scrap of linoleum shines pale through the gloom, the curled squares seeming to float above the remains of the dance floor.
Despite John's flannel shirt, the room is cool. He shivers - cold or tension, impossible to tell - and resists the urge to tug the shirt closer.
Pay attention.
He squirms, once, seat of his jeans rasping against the grit on the floor. Just out of arm's reach, Dean's light breathing catches, stills.
Call it to you. He blinks, focuses on the wooden board where lies on the floor before him as he sits with his knees folded up Indian-style. Round wooden board, dusted with salt. Tiny bowl holding a palmful of water, a bit of green and a sliver of mirror. To his left, a curved dome of glass as wide as his spread fingers. To his right, under his hand, the fully-loaded .45.
Quit stalling. He fills his lungs with the spring-chill air, exhales. Takes another, and this time, he speaks.
“Mary Winchester.” John lets the syllables fall into the silence, Mare-ree Win-chess-tur. Five beats to the chant, four breaks to the sound, not enough to wrap up everything about the woman John had loved and married and lost.
“Mary Winchester.” Her name, his name, but she had taken his name, had walked down the aisle with her head up and her back straight, walked like a woman who knew where she was going, and she had held out her hand and let him slide the ring on. And when he had looked up - his hands had been shaking so badly, he almost dropped the little gold band - her face had been solemn except for the hint of a smile around her mouth, and she had looked so beautiful, so wise, as if she could see the years ahead of them and still she wanted him, wanted his name.
“M-Mary Winchester.” His voice cracks this time. Mary, sitting at the breakfast table, sun not yet risen, cup of coffee cooling on the table. He had stood in the doorway, watching her, the way her hair fell down over the corner of her jaw. When he cleared his throat, she was going to turn around and tell him that she thought she was pregnant.
“Mary Winchester.” Steadier. He has to be. Four down.
“Mary Winchester.” Five. John makes a mark on the floor in front of him and keeps going.
***
When Dean said, “Mama?” low and quiet, the awed wonder in his voice jerked John around so fast he almost fell. The flashlight swept over blackened walls, a jagged slash of amber against the peeling paper, before settling on the back of Dean's head. The beam picked out pale locks, curling at the back of Dean's neck - time for another haircut, John thought, inanely - and the pink curve of one ear. Dean ignored the flashlight and stared at the darkness in the corner, his sneakers shuffling back and forth, a minute dance in the old ash that covered the floor.
John flicked the flashlight into the corner that had caught his son's attention - black wall, cracked wallpaper - and then into the other one, equally empty, before returning the beam to Dean. John stepped closer, almost within arm's reach, suddenly wishing he had brought more than a handful of salt and a silver blade.
“Dean, did you say something?” As John watched, Dean's arms came up and crossed over his chest, hugging himself. “Dean.”
Dean's whole body suddenly shivered, and John took the two strides to reach him, dropping the flashlight and gripping Dean's shoulder, hard, as the other hand dug in his pocket for the knife and his eyes scanned the empty room.
Never should have brought him, never should - “Dean.”
And as fast as that, Dean shook loose of whatever it had been, and the narrow bones on his hand relaxed, Dean's hair brushing over John's hand as he craned his head up to look at John. “Dad. Ow, Dad, that hurts.”
“Sorry, dude.” He relaxed his grip, but didn't let go. “C'mon. Time to go. We need to pick up your brother.”
It should have been comforting, that Dean let himself be pulled away so easily. But Dean kept looking back, all the way down the corridor and out into the sharp sunlight.
***
“Mary Winchester.” John says the name slowly, letting the sound fill his ears. Mary meant bitterness, she had told him, once, when the first tests made them think Sam was going to be a girl, and they were paging through a book of baby names. Bitter, or salt water. He had looked up from the page in surprise. Did you know that? She had smiled and shrugged, said, It was my great-aunt's name.
“Mary Winchester.” Bitter, and that's wrong, all wrong, because she hadn't always been sweetness and light, but Mary had never been sour, hadn't ever let worry or life or John turn her harsh. She'd always been -- always? Are you so sure? Do you really think you know? -- she'd always been good.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, to the darkness, and thinks how salt had been right, how she had tasted, sweat standing on her breasts, how her skin had gleamed, how she had looked, laid back on their bed, bare and reaching for him. Wanting him.
He makes another mark on the floor. Twenty.
***
An hour later, he was back in the phone-booth sized apartment, Dean seeming no worse for wear and actively tearing around the room. John sat in the open doorway for half an hour, studying his son as he wrestled with his brother.
Mr Winchester, we know that it's normal for children to have some conflicts when they first enter a new school. The principal had looked over her glasses at John, but her voice had been kindly. However, we can not tolerate fighting. Both your son and the other boy will be suspended for one day.
There had been no room for arguing, not that John had been inclined to protest. Dean had refused to tell him what the fight had been about.
John had spent a week and a half sorting out the history on the burned out disco-hall, and reconning the best time to do a quiet look-around. It was either take Dean with him, while it was still light enough out that John wouldn't look like a vagrant trying to cop a squat, or leave the boy alone in the apartment, wide awake and bored.
The choice had seemed simple at the time. Time enough later to change his mind, if Dean got into the habit of starting fights so he could skip school and hang out with Dad.
Watching him now, careful to not smother his brother, or twist Sam's ear too hard, it was hard to believe Dean would start a fight.
When both of the boys lay gasping on the bed, covers completely stripped away and wadded on the floor, he cleared his throat. Dean, who had been lying on his belly with Sam's heels playing a tattoo on his backside, shoved his brother aside and rolled over.
“Dean,” John said, “You're going back to school tomorrow. I don't want to hear any more about you fighting with the other boys. You understand?”
Sam scooted up to sit next to Dean. Dean dropped his eyes to focus on something around the level of his toes, nodded.
John sighed. “Okay. I've got some papers to work on. You boys play quiet.”
Sam piped up. “Can I have juice?”
John nodded. “Get him some, Dean, and the two of you go outside. Stay where I can see you from the door.”
The last of the light was fading when he finally shut the journal and sat staring at the wall, turning the pen over and over in his hands. Reported that the children said their mother called them.
This wasn't the thing that had killed Mary. There was the fire, and the missing children, but nothing else matched. He caught at the details, turning them over and over, a scattering of thin shards, nothing so solid as the hexagonal cylinder in his hands.
Dancehall dating from the 1950's, smoldering cigarette blamed for fire guts building in 1978 while dance hall is in latest renovation as disco-tech.
Only deaths a 23 year old single mother and her daughter, three. Woman was part of cleaning staff, living illegally over the dancehall.
Over next ten years, five different neighbors and visitors to adjoining buildings report that their children have wandered off for extended periods, once for eight hours. Ages range from eighteen months to five years. Two oldest children insist their mother called them into the burned-out building.
He put the journal aside, stood up and went to the door. Took a deep breath, ready to bellow out the boy's names.
Outside, the twilight sky had gone grey-green and violet. Traffic, on the other side of the high wooden fence, chattered past. Through a break in the vehicle noise, a single syllable, unintelligible, except that it was in Sam's delighted squeal, rang out. John made his fingers relax off the door frame, checked his pockets for the apartment key, and went to find the boys.
***
His throat is starting to burn.
“Mary Winchester.” The first time he kissed her, a brush of his mouth against her cheek, she had grinned back at him and told him he could do better than that. When he had cupped his hands around her face, she had curled her fingers over his scalp and pulled him closer to her.
“Mary Winchester.” The first time they'd made love had been fast and clumsy and wonderful and awkward as hell. He never understood why she'd given him a do-over then, either.
“Mary Winchester.” Two years after Dean, Mary lost two pregnancies, one after the other, five months apart. After the second, he had held her as she wept, beating against his chest with her fist, apologizing over and over again. He never understood what he was saying sorry for.
His breath is pale mist. He makes another mark. Two hundred sixty.
***
Dean woke in the middle of the night, screaming.
John was up and reaching for the gun in the bedside table when he realized the door was still locked and the apartment empty except for the three of them.
Dean had stopped screaming by the time John sat back down again. Still sobbing for breath, the boy folded into John's arms like a wet towel. Sam, disoriented and sniffling, climbed after.
John lay back down against the pillow and held them close, willing his heart to quit racing.
Dean's cry had been more sheer noise than real words. But John heard his son's scream echoing still in his head, and was the sound of Dean calling for his mother.
***
“Mary Winchester.” She had loved walking around the house in bare feet.
“Mary Winchester.” She planted four or five pots of basil and dill, every year, and never used in a single pot of anything.
“Mary Winchester.” She had worked for the pharmacist, filing prescriptions, and she could read eighteen different scribbles upside down and backwards.
Four hundred.
***
It was just a dream, John told himself the next morning. Just a dream, like Sam's nightmares about clowns or any of the other things kids dreamed about.
Dean ate breakfast, he got himself dressed, helped John sort Sam's clothes until Sam had the shirt and socks he wanted, and climbed in the Impala without complaining.
“No fighting,” John warned, at the drop-off. “You hear me, buddy?”
“Yes, sir.”
John watched the two figures until they disappeared into the press around the gate. Dean kept a hand on Sam's collar all the way.
Just a dream. He put the car in drive and drove away. Library. Then county records. He still didn't know ho had owned the land before the street had been improved. Didn't know why he thought that mattered. Their mother called them.
Five hours later, the principal was again apologetic but firm, Dean was holding a bag of ice to his nose, and John was doing a slow boil.
Not his fault, the principal said, this time sitting on the other side of her desk. His teacher clearly saw the other boy start the confrontation, teasing Dean about his mother. Clearly not his fault. The principal's arm tightened around Dean.
John met Dean's eyes around the bag of ice. Finally he growled, “One day suspension?”
One day it was. To be fair.
Out in the Impala, Dean asked, “Are you mad?”
“No, I'm not m - I'm not mad at you, dude. But you have to stop hitting people.”
Dean's jaw tightened. He shifted the ice pack from hand to hand. “Are you going back to that place, the place with the fire?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse. No sense in encouraging Dean to skip school, for starters.
But it would be another two hours before Sam's class was released. Not right to jerk him out of class, too.
Just one more look. There might be something, something you missed. It's daylight. No danger.
It had been daylight before.
“Are we going back there?”
John sighed. “Sure. But you'll stay in the car.”
Dean's forehead crinkled, but he didn't fuss. John put the car into gear.
Two buildings down from the dancehall, John left the Impala in the shade. Early, still - the construction warehouse that was the street's only daylight establishment hadn't hit their lunch hour yet. John walked straight up to the back door, spare clipboard in hand, lockpicks in his pocket in case someone had found the padlocks he had switched the day before.
Inside, the hall was the same as it had been - chill, echoing, empty. John swept the flashlight over the walls, across the ceiling, along the bare beams that had held the concealed loft before the fire. Nothing.
He pocketed the flashlight and made his way out of the building, pulling the door carefully shut behind him. Across the street, two pickups, pipeframes loaded with lengths of PVC, sat idling in the driveway.
The Impala was empty.
“Dean!” He was going to skin that boy. Not in the backseat. Not hiding under the car. No damage to the car.
He was running back to the burned-out hall before he understood where his feet were taking him.
The door stuck. He took a step back, hit it again. It slammed open, bounced against the wall and came back at him. He caught it with one hand and kept going.
“Dean? Dean!”
His son stood in the center of the room, staring around him, his breath fogging the air around them into midst.
***
“Mary Winchester.” It was barely a whisper, not loud enough to wake the woman in his memory, sleeping on his arm. They were driving, on the way back from the capital, full of good steak and nice wine. He had his eyes on the road and the Impala was running fast and smooth, while Mary went to sleep against him.
“Mary Winchester.” She had been sitting up late, sorting bills, the ones he had promised to get to, three days before, biting her lip, one hand knotted into her hair in frustration.
“Mary Winchester.” Walking out of the house, Dean on her hip, going to visit her best friend in Topeka. The way the house had been so damn empty for those thirty hours.
Another mark. Six hundred ninety.
***
Dean conked out on the bed with the sheet pulled up over him. Sam sat in the corner with his crayons and kept cutting glances between his father and his brother, having been taken out of the car and put down with the instruction to play quiet and leave Dean alone.
The fretful pestering that Sam had laid on Dean since the Impala had pulled up in front of the elementary school had turned off like a faucet, but John could tell the dam was going to break, sooner or later.
At the other end of the too-small room, John paced back and forth, phone pressed to his ear, trying to keep his voice down.
“-- kids keep going missing around there. Goes back ten, twelve years, ever since the fire. I went in the daylight, just to get the lay of land, and I swear, Missouri, there's something there.”
On the other end of the line, Missouri's voice was even, considering. “And you say Dean talked to it? Saw it?
“Twice. I never should have - There's no body to burn. I don't - it's not even real - it's not Mary.” It's not.
Missouri's voice was patient. “Did I ever say it was? It's just a poor lost thing, calling after what it can't have back. It wants its baby.”
“I'm not letting it have Dean.” The phone receiver creaked in his grip. He forced his hand to relax, waited as Missouri didn't say, of course you're not, and then finally asked, “You know anything that can kill it?”
She didn't say anything. John let the crackle of the line stretch on and on, watching Dean's hands clench and relax on the bedsheets. Finally, Missouri said, “Wait. Let me get a number. There's someone in Paulst county you can call.”
He had the number written down and the phone turned back off before he thought to wonder why she hadn't told him the name right off.
***
“Mary Winchester.” The day they moved the last of the boxes into the house, John had locked the front door and carried Mary up the stairs. He'd meant to take them to the bed, the new bed, fresh made with pale blue sheets. But they had stopped on the landing, hands tangled in each other's clothing, and he had pressed her back up against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, the one picture she'd managed to hang rattling as he groaned against her collarbone.
“Mary Winchester.” Dean's teeth had come in early, but Mary had gritted hers and kept on nursing, and John had to laugh at the face she made when his son latched on. She had thrown a pillow at him.
“Mary Winchester.” Later, carefully, he lapped at the bite marks his son had made, washed them away, until she sighed in pleasure, half-drifting into sleep.
“Mary Winchester.” She hadn't been one for wild parties, or huge crowds. She hadn't liked to dance. She loved to walk - loved the neighborhood in Lawrence for the quiet streets and wide-spreading trees.
“Mary Winchester.” She had wanted to try for one more, time for a little girl.
Eight hundred twenty.
***
Soon as he saw Majean DeFranco, he knew why Missouri hadn't sent him there in the beginning.
“This the boy thinks he sees his mammy?” She swayed close to Dean, dark dreds following the motion of her body. John kept one hand on Dean's shoulder, resisted the impulse to shove the woman away from Dean.
“Yeah,” he said. “Missouri told me you knew what was in that old dancehall, the burned out one over in Wickerton.”
“'Course I do. Everybody knows.” Her dark eyes flickered to John's face, then away again. “You know.” She turned back to Dean, smiled a smile full of nearly rotten teeth. “Pretty little boy, 'most a haunt heself. Why you take this boy there, hmmm? Pretty little boy likes fires?” She reached out a hand as if to cup Dean's face.
No. John clamped his jaw shut around the word, Missouri's words - she can help, but don't you trust this woman - echoing in his ears. DeFranco's hand jerked to a stop, four inches of air between her skin and Dean's. Slowly, she straightened, took a step back.
“Pretty little boys shouldn't be out in the shadows, shouldn't come see Mizz Majean. Little boys might catch the crazy from Mizz Majean.”
John made his hands relax, patted Dean's shoulders. “Sorry,” he said, nearly choking on the word. “Missouri said, maybe you knew how to get rid of the thing in that building.”
DeFranco shrugged, awkward motion of bony shoulders. “Know how to get rid of lots of things - haunts, mice, roaches. Run them off, they come right back.”
“I need to get rid of that thing.” He kept his voice patient, kept it even. Don't trust her.
“You want it out of this little boy's head, what you want.” Turning away, she knelt before the cupboard, began rummaging through the stacks of wadded up plastic bags on a lower shelf. “Catching's easy. Calling's harder.” Grunting, she sat back on her heels, an old style cheeseboard in her hands - thick wooden base, dusty glass dome with a thick knob of a handle on the top. Rising, she went to the countertop and set the cheeseboard down. A grimy rag hung over the sink. She picked it up and began wiping at the dust on the glass dome.
“Known what was there for eight, nine years, since the first babies went wandering. Nasty little haunt, not a killer, just a nasty little thing. Known for years. But knowing's not doing, and there's no babies for Mizz Majean to fret over.”
John waited, breathing in the thick air of unwashed dishes, spoiled food, and let her prattle on.
“Tried to call the haunt - called her by her true name, by the name her mammy called her, by the name she'd been blessed and given to Jesus with. But that haunt don't want that name no more. You got to call that haunt by a different name now.”
“What name?”
DeFranco turned around, set both hands on the countertop. “Name the haunt'll answer to. You call that name a thousand times, haunt'll come straight to you, and you can catch it.” She pulled open a drawer, rummaged through it to produce a thick marker. Pulling the cap off, she proceeded to write on the glass cover in a wide green script. “Just like that, snip-snap.”
John sighed. “What name?”
Another flash of tartar-coated teeth over her shoulder. DeFranco recapped the marker and stepped away from the cheeseboard, bent until she was eye-level with Dean. “You saw your mammy in that building, didn't you?”
Dean nodded.
“Looked just like her, didn't it?”
Another nod. Defranco straightened with a smug grin. “There's your name.”
“No.” No.
Defranco cocked her head at him, turned on her heel and collected up the cheeseboard. Held it out to him. “Yes. Set your circles, break the one around you, leave right the one around the boy. Put out a catch bowl - water and elderbloom and a bit of mirror, looking up. Call her name - call it true, call it right. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times, and then just once more. That thing'll come to you.”
She put the the cheeseboard in John's hands and pushed. He folded his hand around the board. “Go on now. 'Less you want Miz Majean watch this little boy, while you go chase the haunt.”
“Dean. We're going.”
Dean all but treaded on John's feet, all the way back to the car.
***
Eighteen hours later, he sits on his butt in a broken circle of salt. Dean hugs his knees inside his own circle, big enough that he can lay down, and he has John's jacket to pillow his head if need be. But right now, he's sitting up, staring at the darkness, jacket draped over his skinny ten-year-old shoulders, and trying, god, he's trying so hard to just sit there and listen to the crickets singing in the corners.
John can't see what Dean sees. He can't hear what calls the boy.
He has a salt-dusted piece of oak and a glass dome marked with green wards before him, and he calls to the thing out in the darkness.
Calls to it with a name the thing doesn't own.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, and sees Mary as he last saw her, belly cut open, blood pouring out, the stink of cut bowel and wet iron taking him back twelve years and half the world away.
“Mary,” he says, and swallows. “Mary Winchester.” He thinks of her hands, the way her grip was always firmer, always stronger than he expected, of how she could hold things he hadn't thought she could lift.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, and every time he repeats the name, it's like another sliver of glass ground into his skin.
***
You call it true - make it answer you, DeFranco had said, and John does. Dean drops off to sleep, rouses himself, dozes again. John starts to feel the press of his bladder, the ache in his hips, ignores them.
Keeps saying her name, keeps count.
And then he is done.
The air around him is frigid. The glass dome is icy under his hand, and if he could see, he's sure the water in the catch bowl is frozen solid. Dean is huddled into the jacket, scrunched down until only the crown of his head shows.
John runs one finger along the row of marks before him, forcing his brain to reckon the numbers one more time. Nine hundred, eighty, ninety, ninety-eight, ninety-nine.
“Mary Winchester,” he says, and finally, finally, the catch bowl comes alight, a flicker of phosphorescence standing in over the little pool of water. He closes his eyes, closes his stiff fingers over the glass dome's handle, and lifts it, blind.
Sets it down again.
There is no sound, no frantic firefly dance inside the trap, no psychic scream. Just a slow, steady fade of the eerie light, as it dies away into nothingness.
***
By the look of the light around the door, it was still daylight, not even noon.
He gathered Dean up against him, one handed, his right hand still holding the .45. The boy jerking fretfully, still clinging to sleep. Exhausted, John thought, feeling the weariness in his own body, the ache in his knees as he rose. Gravity dragged at him, the added weight of cold iron and his son pulling John down.
He stood anyway, boots scrapping on the tattered floor. Dean ground his face into John's collar and muttered something that sounded like mama.
“Shushhh,” John said. “Shush.” The words felt like gravel.
Carefully, he made his way across the dance floor, stopping at the door to check the safety on the semiautomatic before tucking it between his body and Dean's. Before he pushed the door open, he looked back, one last time, at the two circles of salt, and the curve of the glass dome.
The open door let light fall over the glass prison, and for all the world it looked as through there was nothing there at all.
Come back, this evening, box up the trap. Secure it.
John looked around at the soot-stained walls - the ones that had heard the recital of Mary's names - and felt the ache in his knees, the sand in his throat, the weight of his son in his arms. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to walk out the door, climb in the car, and drive - get Sammy, get their bags, go.
Never stop in some godforsaken little nowhere town again. Never go crawling on the edges of reality, never risk his boy again, never stop. Never.
Later, he told himself, firmly. After you sleep. Still holding Dean, John stepped off the threshold and let the door slowly swing closed.