the inexhaustible silence of houses; part two. [2/2]
When Dean's cell phone rang from downstairs, he left the flashlight he'd been holding on the floor of the attic, rolling slightly on its precarious perch across the slats. “Be back in a minute,” he said.
Cas nodded. They'd been going through the last two boxes, one full of newspaper clippings, most of little interest. A few crumbled to paper ash in Castiel's hands and the wood was littered with them. Dean had made a quiet point of asking to help out with the attic, as if apologising for the fight days before, but Cas was wary, unsure if anything had been forgiven.
He reached over to move the flashlight closer, angle it up in the crook of his crossed legs the better to squint at the tiny newsprint. Besides the dim yellow light, the attic was pitch-black. They'd been talking about knocking a skylight in the roof near the front of the house, to light up the corridor and make it easier to navigate.
He could hear Dean murmuring downstairs in the kitchen. Probably to Sam. Cas set his jaw and resolved not to sign anything snide should he come back up with news of a hunt.
The flashlight flickered and Cas tapped it with the heel of his hand to jar the batteries back into place. Then he sighed, put it down, ran his hands over his face and massaged at his eyes with his fingertips. He'd been up here for hours looking through old things and he'd found nothing of interest, only cobwebs and last decade's advice columns.
He sighed and reached into the box to rifle out another article, picked up the flashlight to read it. The print was faded but he could still make out the headline: 'Fact or-'
There was a soft electric fizz and the flashlight went out.
Clicking his tongue, Cas put the article down and thumped at the bulb, but the light didn't come back.
He tucked it under his arm and uncrossed his legs, sore from keeping one position for so long; he felt for the wall in the semi-dark. The slats with the thin ceiling between them were hard to distinguish but he was sure there were batteries in the drawer where they kept the Colt-
He felt something snag: a nail had caught the trailing end of his jeans leg.
Cas bent down to undo it.
The attic door swung shut.
He stopped cold, frozen, uncertain about moving when he couldn't see the floor, and straightened slowly.
Cas swallowed. Maybe Dean had come up and forgotten he was there, closed the door? He'd open it again any second now with a laugh and a flush on his face.
Acutely, he felt himself blink in the dark. It was dead silent with the door shut-he could hear himself breathing but even that was muffled, as if he were breathing into wool, and Dean didn't open the door.
Very carefully Cas felt out with his foot for the slats and made his way toward the thin strip of light beneath the door, found the cold knob and twisted it.
He could feel the bolt grinding in the jamb. It was locked.
Cas paused, ran a hand through his hair to think. Did he have the key? Or had Dean taken it downstairs with him? But how had it locked, anyway? It wasn't automatic, and Dean wouldn't have locked him in, not even by accident.
He knocked loudly on the door on the slim chance that Dean actually had locked him in, knocked three times, but there was no answer, and when he pressed his ear to the door he could hear only silence from their bedroom. Dean was probably still downstairs.
Had the floor been sloped? A draft? But the door had never shut on its own before.
Cas tried the knob again, but it wouldn't open. He pulled it back and forth, more violently each time, but it wouldn't give; the dark and the quiet were oppressively heavy on his shoulders.
Then he felt, like a vibration through his bones, something-else.
He froze, hand still wrapped around the knob.
There'd been no sound, no indication of anything like a voice or a breath or a footstep, but he'd felt it all the same, and he remembered this feeling from days when he'd had words in his mouth, the sensory awareness of something other-knowing without knowing that someone was just around this corner or behind that wall, feeling the nudge of another body in the space his mind inhabited. Just like that.
He turned, clicked the flashlight on and off a few times in hopes it would come back to life, but it didn't work. It was like a low growl only heard by his spine or his forearms, emanating from somewhere around the attic corner-something here with him, somehow.
Old instincts said stand and fight, but with what weapons, and with what light?
He turned round again and wrenched at the doorknob, pulling with all his weight on it, but it wouldn't move, and the lock squealed under the force. He slammed his hand into the wood three times and more, calling Dean up from downstairs, all the while the creeping sensation on his shoulders that whatever it was was moving closer, the distinct feeling that maybe it wasn't a whom or a what at all but the corner of the attic itself, or the darkness of the attic, or the silence made manifest, somehow-
Footsteps, then, on the stairs, and he heard Dean's muffled voice in the bedroom but couldn't make out the words. He jiggled the knob to say that he was locked in and faintly heard “Hold on, let me find the key,” a voice too calm, Cas thought, but then how could Dean know that there was something definitely behind him, definitely-definitely shifting closer, he could feel it simply slicing through his bones like a blow to the knee?
He heard the key scraping in the lock and pressed himself against the door as far away as possible from whatever was making adrenaline spike through his arms, and when the door opened he stumbled totally ungracefully into Dean, nearly knocking them both backwards onto the bedroom floor.
“Jeez,” Dean said, regaining their footing, with something of a smile on his face. “How'd you manage that?”
I didn't manage anything, Cas signed, turning to face the yawning dark doorway perhaps too quickly. It locked on its own.
“Maybe you knocked the bolt? It's not an automatic lock.” Dean moved forward as if to examine the knob and Cas made a half-hearted grab at his shoulder as if to hold him back.
Dean turned. “What? What's the matter?”
He saw the look of unease on Castiel's face and frowned.
“Aw, come on, babe, don't tell me you're afraid of the dark.” He grinned, that everything's-fine grin, and Cas looked away.
I thought there was-
But how could there have been? He knew there weren't any ghosts in this house-they'd burned sage in every corner the day they'd moved in, and there were protections and sigils in every single room. He thought of the guest room, the low and soundless growl, and felt shivers raise gooseflesh on his arms.
“What?”
Never mind. Cas shook his head. Foolish. He took the flashlight from under his arm and set it on the bureau. Light's out of batteries.
“I think there's some downstairs in the cupboard with the kerosene.”
Cas left Dean peering at the lock of the attic door, sliding the bolt back and forth, in and out, easy as one pleased.
No way it could have stuck. No way Cas could have locked it accidentally.
Dean chalked it up to a fluke and called it a day, but Cas wasn't so sure.
He went back into the attic only once more that afternoon, newly replenished flashlight in his hand, to drag out the box of newspaper clippings to examine in the natural light of the windows. It wasn't until after he'd gone through the whole thing, late that night, that he realised the column he'd been reading when the light went out was nowhere to be found.
By the time Dean left on a four-day hunt later that week, the Change had almost eaten him up entirely.
Castiel was certain of it. It was in everything now, every angle and joint and word, and though sometimes his Dean shone through it was only briefly, only rarely. He found himself recoiling at his touch, once or twice, because the fingers were unfamiliar; he found himself shying away from kisses because the mouth and the tongue and the voice were not the same anymore.
No matter how many times Cas signed something about the smell of charcoal and ash that clung to Dean like a plague, no matter how many times Dean scrubbed himself raw on Castiel's request, it was almost constant now.
Cas sat on the window-seat and watched Dean step out onto the porch, turned his face away to hear the Impala roar off onto the drive. It was near-summer now.
As he curled there, a book open against the corner of the sill and his feet pulled up off the floor, he leaned his head back and his eyes drifted to the Devil's Trap above the window.
Castiel frowned.
It wasn't broken. Not at all. The lines were still as strong as the day Dean had painted them in, and he could still feel the vibration of power it gave off, somewhere deep in his bones.
In all his confusion about the Change, he had never paused to wonder if perhaps there wasn't another explanation.
Perhaps this Dean wasn't his Dean at all.
Uncurling, feeling warm floorboards under his bare feet, Cas left his book open on its cracking spine and moved through the house, lifting up the rugs on the thresholds, examining each Trap for the slightest crack-in the foyer, by the living room windows, by the back door, beneath their bed-found nothing amiss but checked them all three times anyway, looking for any sliver that might have allowed something supernatural entrance into the house. The silver and salt and bullets remained where they'd always been, the guns hidden in the drawers or cupboards or beneath furniture had not been moved or emptied-but these were the most basic of protections and there were hundreds, thousands of horrors in the dark outside, any of which could have slipped into Dean's skin, crept their way inside, shapeshifter or changeling or vengeful spirit...
Paranoia, his mind said, in Dean's voice. You need to stop jumping to conclusions, Castiel. But conclusions were all he had, conclusions were all he could cling to anymore, and the Change had been so great and so sudden-surely Dean wouldn't have simply shifted like that, surely Dean Winchester would have known enough of himself to remain himself-frustrated and angry and restless, yes, but still the same, still the soul and body Castiel had fallen in love with all that time ago.
He opened the drawer in their bedside table, pushed open the false bottom of the drawer-the Colt lay there gathering dust, and gently he picked it up, brushed it off, stared at its barrel and trigger.
The window above their bed was open and through it came the scent of ashes. He climbed onto the mattress and pulled it shut and shot the lock home.
That night he tried to distract himself with inane television, tried to bore himself to sleep on the couch, but the silence of the house was pounding and pushing around the soap opera he had tuned to and he could feel it like oil creeping beneath the sofa; he tried to call Dean's cell and received no answer, heard only an incessant beeping that he couldn't understand.
In the days until Dean came home there were sounds-creaks like feet upon the stairs, groans like the walls settling, and Cas locked himself in the study where the noises were quietest. Several times he swore that someone was in the house with him, but he searched every niche and crevice and found nothing and no one. But even more than the tiny unsettling sounds there was the hollowness of the quiet, so deep that sometimes he startled himself by simply moving, because even the gentlest scrape of his skin against the fabric of the couch seemed to echo for ages into the halls.
It terrified him, being so unsure of this building, of brushing against walls he didn't perfectly remember, of reaching down to push open a door and jumping back because the knob had once been pewter and now was brass, of wondering why the living room was so dark and losing himself in counting the windows over and over, because hadn't there been three before where now only two gave light?
More and more the thought entered his mind that this house-this house was the problem; this house was alive in some way. This house changed people.
This house let the monsters in. Had opened its doors for the thing that wasn't Dean. The more he sat in the empty rooms the more he was certain that he'd been sharing the halls with some trickster creature. How else to explain it? How else?
He slept with the Colt beneath his pillow and he rarely slept at all.
“Cas, I'm home.”
He heard the front door close, the heavy thud of Dean's boots as he pried them off, placed them next to the coat-rack, the sound of his keys and the jangling of the knives in his bag as he hefted it on his shoulder.
He knocked three times on the table to say, I'm in the kitchen.
“I wanted to come back earlier but we blew a tire and had to stop the night in some shit town-”
Dean rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped dead.
Cas was sitting at the table with the Colt in front of him, hands loose on the wood, looking down at it with an expressionless face.
“...what's that doing out?” Dean asked, setting his bag down on the floor.
Cas paused for a long time, brow knitting and unknitting.
He signed, without looking up, You're not Dean, are you?
“...what?” Dean stared at him, the Change ebbing through every minute motion of his body. Cas could feel it like a stench in the room. “What are you talking about? Of course I'm Dean.”
Cas shook his head. His fingers picked at the grip of the gun and then he signed, You haven't been Dean since that hunt. The vampires. With Sam.
“I don't know what the hell you're talking about-”
I don't know how you managed to get into the house, Cas signed. He felt like he was in a trance, a bad dream, but he'd been dwelling in these thoughts for days and they felt harder and surer and stronger the longer he held them in his mind, and he had to know, had to know for sure what was happening here in the house he hated and loved. But this gun can kill most anything, so I don't think it's a problem.
“Cas, stop it. This isn't you.”
So what are you? Cas signed, still avoiding his gaze. Shapeshifter? Changeling?
“I'm Dean, Cas, I'm-”
You're not my Dean.
“That's exactly what I am,” Dean snarled, and for the barest instant Cas heard it-the rip and the curl of the voice that was Dean, was the Dean he remembered, and it broke his concentration enough that he looked up and Dean leaned forward and snatched at the gun.
Cas stood up, nearly knocking over his chair to scrabble for it, grabbed at it, caught the hilt and yanked back.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Dean snarled, elbowing Cas' arm, trying to pull it out of Cas' grip but Cas braced and fought and didn't let go. “Are you out of your mind?! This thing is loaded-”
And Cas wrestled with him, turned both their wrists at awkward angles and tugged, had to get it back, had to steady himself and shoot, he was so certain-and nearly had it until Dean had the presence of mind to shove him, so hard that he stumbled backwards into the counter. Dean threw the Colt into the next room where it clattered on the floorboards and Cas made as if to scramble after it but Dean caught him mid-rush, grabbed his arms, and Cas, overcome, made fists to batter against his chest, didn't want to be held by this thing that wasn't his, would not be beaten-
“Hey,” Dean said, harsh, and then shouted-“Hey!” He grabbed Castiel's hands and held them tight and though Cas pulled and fought he didn't let go, moved to pin Cas against the edge of the table with his body, trapped him there.
“Listen to me. Okay? Listen to me, Cas,” he said, and it was his voice if only for an instant, if only right now, and Cas stopped fighting. He sagged against the table, clenching his jaw, and Dean pressed their foreheads together and caught his eyes and pinned them down, too.
“This is ridiculous,” Dean said, and Cas jerked, and was pressed down again. “Goddamn, will you hold still?”
Cas curled his lip, wrists still trapped, didn't want to be touched or held down by this thing that wasn't Dean, or that might have been Dean, didn't want to be confused and vulnerable; he didn't hold still but writhed and pulled and managed to shove Dean off, pull his arms free, was about to go for the gun again until Dean pushed him back with more force than necessary. He stumbled, tripped, landed hard on the floor and stared up at him, shocked, a sudden burst of pain in his tailbone.
There was a pause in which they locked eyes, and Castiel saw the anger drain from Dean's face like blood, as if he'd realised what he'd done. Dean licked his lips and hesitated, and then took a step, leaned down to offer Cas his hand.
Cas took it and hauled himself up. His head was spinning. He moved to the side, slowly, and Dean caught his wrist and said, suddenly weary, “Don't, Cas. Don't. God. Forget the fucking gun.”
Cas pulled his wrist hard from Dean's grip and smacked him across the face.
The sound of it echoed through the kitchen and the house like a signal for silence. Too much anger and fear still under his skin for any kind of forgiveness. Too tired to go for the Colt. Too goddamn tired of everything.
He left Dean in the kitchen holding a hand to the red imprint on his face and mounted the stairs one by one, counting them in his head, obsessively, almost expecting them to warp and drop under his feet just to prove a point.
In their bedroom he sat on the foot of the bed, in the quiet dark, glancing slowly from window to door to door to door, finding them all closed every time, but unable to be certain. Unsure whether or not the number of stairs dancing numbly in his head was even the correct number anymore.
Dean did not come up to him. The hours passed and night fell and the doors stayed closed and Dean did not come to bed.
Dean put the Colt somewhere Cas couldn't find.
The guns in the drawers, tucked away, vanished, too.
When Castiel asked, Where did the guns go?, Dean said, “I don't want you hurting yourself. You're scaring me with the way you've been acting. I just want to keep you safe.”
It took ages for Dean to wake up, that night, to the press and push of Castiel's hand on his shoulder.
“What?” he mumbled as he blinked awake, and Cas, half-kneeling upright, waited for his eyes to open completely so that he could see his hands.
Something's happening downstairs.
“What do you mean something's happening?” Dean said, sounding weary but alert, sitting up. “I don't hear anything.”
Cas gnawed at his lip. He'd woken to the shifting silence again, and it was harsher now, like tectonic plates scraping against each other below his hearing. His heart was pounding so loudly he was shocked Dean couldn't hear it, hadn't been woken by it. His nerves were leaping and he let one hand clutch at the sheets, glancing anxiously toward the closed bedroom door.
He didn't wait for Dean to get up. He let his feet drop onto the floor and moved for the door.
“Cas, what are you doing?” he heard Dean say, but he was already on the landing and peering down the stairs.
He wished to God he had a name for it, the intense unshakeable sensation that everything was moving. Half of him wanted to just go back to bed, ignore it as if that would make it go away, but the dark at the bottom of the stairs was wide and yawning and the other half of him had to know.
Dean came onto the landing behind him and reached for his wrist. “Come back to bed,” he whispered, but Castiel's hand drifted away from him as he gently stepped down onto the stairs.
He held up one finger to signal quiet and I just need to look, and he heard Dean sigh, irritated and tired.
The hall-the moving hall that just never seemed quite right-seemed endless from where he stood, but Cas kept one hand on the wall, ready to slam his fist into it if he needed to. Thank God for Dean, here, Changed or not-on any other empty night Cas would have been locked in the bedroom wishing the walls away.
“Cas,” he heard Dean hiss from up the stairs, but he didn't turn to go back up.
He might have heard something groan, far off at the end of the corridor, but he couldn't be certain.
Before he could lose his nerve Cas stepped into the hall, fingers trailing on the partitions, squinting to see through the dark; there was the kitchen doorway on his left and a little further on the guest bedroom door on his right, locked tight.
He let his hands drift across the knob. It was cold under his touch.
A little ways past the guest room he paused.
He should have hit the mudroom by now, felt the wainscoting of the side wall against his bare feet, but the floorboards stretched on into the dark on to where he couldn't see-
A few more steps and he could hear Dean descending the stairs, behind him, and surely the mudroom was right here, the warped screen door was just ahead-he reached out a hand to feel for the metal latch but his hands met only air and then-
-then the kitchen doorway was on his left.
And the guest room was on his right.
Cas turned, whipping his head round so fast it hurt, to see the hallway stretching off long behind him, to see Dean at the edge of the stairs much, much too far away, and then the mudroom door was right in front of him, yes-just as it should have been but when he turned again it was the wrong way round and the kitchen doorway was on his left and the guest room was on his right-
Panic snatched at his throat with sharp claws and he stumbled, his shoulder met the wall and he turned to flee back to the stairs but there was the mudroom door and behind him he could feel the huge wide yawning expanse of the hallway-
-and the mudroom was behind him and the stairs seemed to be falling away like an accordion being pulled loose and a step forward spun the whole hall around again and he was between the doors again and-
-no matter which way he turned there were only doors and halls and far-off stairs and he could feel adrenaline and horror sparking behind his eyes so he did the only thing he could do and slammed his fist three times into the wall-
-and then he was slumped against the kitchen doorjamb and the hall was exactly the right size and Dean was holding his shoulders, half-shaking him, hissing “What the hell are you doing?”
The hallway, Cas signed, frantically, after his mind leapt back to the fact that he was safe again. The hallway was getting longer-
“The hallway isn't doing anything,” Dean said, lifting him up off his crouch on the floor. “Look, Cas, it's fine-”
But he refused to look, was terrified to look lest the whole corridor leap forward and devour them, and Cas pulled his arms away from Dean and nearly tripped getting up the stairs.
He felt motion-sick. Vertigo.
Cas stumbled to the bathroom door and held onto the jamb, waiting to see if bile rose in his throat. And Dean came back up the stairs and stood in the doorway waiting as well, and after a while when nothing happened he came to him and touched his shaking shoulders.
“Come on back to bed, babe,” Dean said softly. “Everything's okay.”
Cas shook his head. Behind his throbbing eyelids the hall was still spinning and throwing him this way and that and he couldn't shake the dizziness in his ears until Dean took his hand and led him back to the bed, crawled in beside him.
He didn't hold him. Just kept their hands laced together, and Cas could feel his green eyes tracing his face in confusion in the dark, and that even more than the moving of the house made it near-impossible for him to fall asleep.