SPN-Cinema Fic: Sesqui-wha??
Title: Sesqui-wha??
Author: Sylvia_Locust
Movie Prompt: Two Thousand Maniacs!
Pairing: None/Gen
Rating: R for language
Word Count: ~4,900
Notes: Effusive thanks to daniomalley22 for helping me fix various plot holes! This was written for the 2013 spn-cinema challenge, and I’m so sorry I missed my posting date because I hate missing deadlines and I adore this challenge... But, as it turns out, when you rip off create an homage to an awesomely bad film with a sucky ending, you then have to actually come up with an ending.
Summary: Sam and Dean find themselves in the middle of a ridiculous hunt straight out of some exploitation flick from the ’60s, where a Southern town re-appears like clockwork every 25 years to exact vengeance on any Yankees who travel too close...
There are very few highways, state roads, back roads-hell, even gravel roads-that Dean and his baby haven’t cruised down. He’s pretty sure he knows more about America’s highway system than any of the boneheads running the Department of Transportation.
So the hand-painted Warning! Detur!! sign, complete with misspelled words and drippy paint-yeah, it's a little eye-catching.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean says. He thumbs up the volume on the radio for good measure. In the passenger seat, Sam jerks awake.
“Huzzit?” Sam asks, looking around. “Where?”
“’Bout 50 miles east of Jacksonville.” Dean eases over onto the shoulder, glancing in the rearview mirror. “We just passed a sign warning that the bridge is out ahead.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah."
"And that's important because...?"
"Because there's no bridge on this stretch of 121."
“Huh. You sure?”
Dean gives him a look.
“Yeah, okay. Guess that means we found our missing town.”
Dean snorts. He’d found the missing town, while Sam had been snoring away next to him.
He makes a careful three-point-turn on the narrow road and heads back north, turning left at the fake detour. As they enter the town limits they pass a faded sign that reads:
Now Entering Historic Pleasant Valley
Population 2,000
Come to Visit, Stay For a Lifetime!
"Yeah, that's not ominous or anything," Sam mutters.
“Eh,” Dean says. “It’s a little on the nose.”
* * *
It was Sam who found the case while idly flipping through one of Bobby’s older journals.
“Hey, Dean, have you heard of a ghost town called Pleasant Valley?”
Dean wandered out of his bedroom wrapped in his appropriated robe. Sam could laugh all he wanted, Dean felt like Hef himself when he slipped it on. So what if its owner had been dead for 50 years?
“We talking ghost town like the Old West or ghost town like-”
“-like a town full of ghosts.”
“Nope.”
"Bobby has some theory in here about a whole town that only shows up every 25 years,” Sam said. “You know, like in Brigadoon.”
"Brigahoo?"
"Briga-goddammit, Dean, will you quit playing like you’ve never seen a musical? I’ve heard you humming "Gary Indiana," like, a million times."
Dean scoffed. "A million?"
"Pretty much every time we cross the state, so yeah."
"So what? Marian the Librarian was hot, man."
"Can we stay focused here?"
“You’re the one started talking about musicals for some reason,” Dean said, banging a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Sam.
While they ate Sam told him about a town that had supposedly been decimated during the Civil War that seemed to appear once every 25 years, and the handful of people who went missing each time it happened. Travelers, usually, on their way to Florida for some fun in the sun. Or on their way back north after they'd crisped their skin and had their fill of tequila slammers and Jimmy Buffet cover bands.
“Bobby thought this year’s appearance might be particularly bad because it’s the 150th anniversary of the burning, by his calculations,” Sam says.
"Should we try to dig them up preemptively?" Dean wondered.
"Dude, that's like, two thousand graves."
"Backhoe?"
Sam considered the idea with a shrug.
“We’ll need reinforcements,” Dean said thoughtfully. Sam did not like that gleam in his eyes.
“There’s something I’ve been dying to try out,” Dean said, mostly to himself, as he pushed away from the table.
“Dean!” Sam called after him. “Try what out?”
But Dean had disappeared into his workroom without answering. For the rest of the afternoon Sam heard strange drilling and sawing sounds coming from the room Dean had taken over for his various projects. Sam would have stuck his head in to watch and tease his brother, but then his stupid nose started bleeding and he decided maybe he’d better just lay low after all.
* * *
Once every 25 years since 1863 had not given them a lot of data to go on. They hadn’t even been convinced this was a hunt until Dean spotted the shady sign.
They cruise into town, right down the middle of Davis Street, to see hundreds of locals dressed in clothes 150 years out of fashion. They’re cheering at Sam and Dean and waving confederate flags.
“Awesome,” Dean says, plastering on his biggest, fakest smile.
The crowd surges around them until driving becomes impossible.
“You think if I just run them over-”
“No.”
They get out of the car and pretend to have no idea what’s going on, or what the town is celebrating, or why a couple of Yankee strangers have any place in the town party.
“Why, you’re our guests of honor,” says the mayor, one Raleigh T. Buckman, as he claps Sam on the back. He’s dressed like Boss Hog and talks like Foghorn Leghorn, and Sam can see that Dean’s about to lose his shit. Sam knows from vast experience how pissed he gets when Dean laughs in his face; antagonizing the locals like that is probably not a great idea.
But Dean keeps it together as the crowd begins to steer them towards one of the nearby buildings, which turns out to be a rooming house.
"Wait, I really need to move the car," Dean tries, casting a frantic look over his shoulder at the Chevy, still idling in the middle of the street. They're surrounded by so many Gone with the Wind extras that it's hopeless, and he and Sam are swept along with the crowd.
Sam stands about a head taller than anyone else in the throng of people, but he can only watch as Dean is pulled in one direction while he is pushed in another.
“Where’re they taking my brother?” Sam asks the guy holding his elbow as he’s led into a parlor off of the lobby.
“Brother? We thought you was one of them new couples we been hearing about.”
“Um, no,” Sam says, still searching the crowd for Dean. Their scant research had led them to believe they’d have a little bit of time to investigate before they were flambéed or quartered or whatever it was vengeful Confederate ghosts did to their victims.
“So what’s this Celebration all about, anyways?” Sam asks, figuring he might as well try to get some intel until he can shake his new best friends and compare notes with Dean.
“It’s our Centennial!” says a little towheaded boy.
“Actually, centennial means a hundred,” Sam says absently as he scans the crowd for signs of Dean or imminent danger or both. “This would be your sesquicentennial.”
“Sesqui-wha?” The boy wrinkles up his nose.
“Sesqui-nevermind.”
* * *
“Let me show you to your room, sugar,” says a pretty brunette woman, tugging Dean along by the hand. As he follows her up the stairs, he can’t help but wonder what she’s concealing under all those miles of fabric flouncing around with each step she takes. Considering she’s been dead since Lincoln was alive, she's looking pretty damn good.
“How much is the room, sweetheart?” he asks.
She looks over her shoulder and winks. “No charge for you, sugar, you’re part of the Celebration!”
“Ah, right. So what do we do at this Celebration shindig thing, anyway?”
“Well, we had a barbeque last night but don't you worry none, there’s another one tonight!" she says as she unlocks the door and then hands him the key.
“Great, yeah, great.” He looks around the room-two tiny twin beds, a small round breakfast table, and more lace than Dean’s ever seen outside a Victoria's Secret catalog.
He turns to find the woman-Betty, or maybe Bessie, it was hard to hear in that crush in the lobby-standing in the doorway and smiling at him.
“Thanks, Betty.” Dean says.
“Betsy.”
“Right, Betsy.” She keeps standing there expectantly and he wonders if he’s supposed to tip her, until she crosses the room and plants one on him.
“Uh!” he says, jumping back and away, not quite fast enough. She's frighteningly strong, but when he shoves at her she stops.
“What’s wrong?” she pouts. “Is it that other guy? He doesn’t have to know.”
“It’s not…he’s not…” Dean purses his lips. “Yes. Yes, it’s that other guy, and he will be very unhappy if you try to kiss me again so, you know. Don’t.”
She looks sulky. He supposes if he only had the chance to score four times a century, he might feel the same way.
Still. Kissing monsters is Sam's thing, not his.
* * *
Downstairs in the parlor, Sam leans up against the wall, watching the townspeople mill around. They look so happy compared to the usual restless spirits he encounters. If they weren't hurting people he'd think about leaving them to their Celebration, but people had disappeared, probably been killed, probably bloody.
Someone hands Sam a mason jar full of liquor that smells like turpentine and he smiles politely. Then he notices the two women, standing in the corner watching him warily. They’re as much sore thumbs as he is with their shorts and tank tops and flip-flops, and he curses silently. Dean and Sam had hoped to be the first and last tourists to stumble into Pleasant Valley during the Celebration.
He ditches the glass of paint thinner and sidles over to introduce himself, wondering how to break the news that they're surrounded by ghosts.
"Hi. I’m Sam," he says.
"Hey," says one of the woman. "I’m Kiara, this is Joy."
“So, ahh, how long have you guys been here?” Sam asks.
“We drove in last night,” Joy says.
“And now they won’t let us leave,” Kiara whispers.
She breaks off when the banjo player stops his plucking and several pairs of eyes turn their way.
“Maybe we should go upstairs,” Sam says. "Talk privately?"
Kiara gives him an assessing look but must decide he seems safer than the maniacally happy townsfolk who look to be organizing an impromptu square dance. They begin threading their way through the crowd, trying not to call too much attention to themselves.
In the upstairs hallway, a door flies open and a woman with smeary red lips, dressed in what looks like several hundred yards of pink fabric, stumbles into the hall. “Pardon,” she says with a giggle as she sashays towards the stairs.
“Seriously, Dean?” Sam asks as soon as he’s across the threshold. “Tell me you did not just make out with a dead girl.”
“I didn’t!” Dean protests. Sam narrows his eyes and Dean looks away. “She might have made out with me a little,” he mutters.
“Wait, they’re dead?” Joy asks.
“I knew it!” Kiara says with a triumphant grin and turns to punch Joy in the shoulder. Then her smile falters.
"Oh, crap," Kiara says. "They're really dead?"
* * *
The story that comes spilling out of Kiara and Joy is rife with digressions, accusations, non sequiters, tangents, and enough curse words to almost make Dean blush.
What it boiled down to was Joy had talked Kiara into spending part of their spring break in Panama City-
"Even though we're teachers now, not stupid binge-drinking undergrads-"
-During which, teachers or not, impressive amounts of tequila were consumed by both women. Meanwhile, Kiara caught up on her reading while Joy-
"-had to blow off steam after a rough break-up, you know?"
"Hah! And probably contracted nine kinds of STD!"
Then Kiara had this-
“brilliant fucking idea to try to find one of the places listed in her travel guide for nerds-”
"-there’s nothing nerdy about haunted houses, Joy!"
“Wait, you found this place in a guide book?” Sam interrupts, surprised. He generally tries to keep tabs on the pop-culture books about hauntings that keep springing up in bookstores and libraries, in case there’s any truth to the legends, but the books are usually full of nonsense.
“Not exactly…” Kiara says. “My dad told me about this place, he studies African American folklore, folktales about the Civil War, stuff like that.”
“I bet he didn’t tell her she should try to find this shitty backwoods fucking ghost-infested-”
“Shut up, Joy. I wanted to spend the week in wine country like an actual grown-up. If we’d gone to Napa-”
“I told you I can’t-”
“Girls,” Dean tries to interrupt.
They both turn to glare at him. “Er…women?”
“What?” Kiara snaps.
“We still have to figure out how to get you two out of here safely.”
“Four,” Joy says as she crosses the room to look down on the throng of people in the street.
“Four what?” Dean asks.
“Four people. There was another couple here last night, the Spencers,” Kiara says.
“They haven’t been around today though. We haven’t seen them since that crazy-ass barbecue last night.”
"I thought we were early, what the fuck?" Dean says to Sam. "This whole damn hunt has gone tits up."
"Hunt?" asks Kiara.
"Guess Bobby had his dates a little off."
"So now we need to get those two out of town, find the others, get them out too, figure out how to salt and burn an entire town, and, oh yeah, all our gear is in the car. Which is who knows where."
"That sounds about right," Sam says.
"Awesome."
"We're thinking revenants, yeah?"
"Well, Miss Betty-Betsy-Bessie felt pretty fucking solid when she was trying to suck my tongue out of my mouth."
"Y'know, a simple yes or no-"
"Hey!" Joy interrupts. They both turn to look at her. “I’m not sure what the fuck you're talking about, or how much I even want to know, but I'm pretty sure I know where the cars are stashed."
* * *
Dean is grumbling about scissors and rocks as he makes his way to the site of last night's barbecue. Of course Sam gets to escort the pretty schoolteachers out of town while Dean's stuck poking around the charred remains of last night's bonfire, looking for what, he doesn't even know. Even if the ghosts are cannibals, as Bobby thought, it's not very likely they're just going to just leave a human arm lying around in the ashes.
He curses under his breath as he uncovers a blackened and charred human arm lying around in the ashes.
"Ewww," Dean says under his breath, though really, he's not sure why he expected anything different. He gets to his feet and turns to see Mayor Buckman and several of his good ol' boys, smiling big as life and blocking his retreat.
"Howdy, partner," Dean says, aiming for John Wayne but landing closer to Tom Hanks in Toy Story. "Just checkin' your pit. Can't wait for tonight's barbecue."
"Well, now, why didn't you say?" Buckman asks. "We'd be glad to give you a little preview of tonight's events."
"Oh, really, I don't want to trouble you..."
"Nonsense. It'll be our pleasure."
"Don't you have more important stuff to take care of?"
"Can't say as I do, Mr. Winchester. Come along, lots to show you before the party starts."
Dean pulls out his special silver-coated knife and starts slashing madly. Where metal touches dead flesh the skin bubbles and the revenants hiss at him.
“Back off, you fucking freaks!” Dean shouts, before turning and sprinting back down the middle of Davis Street as fast as his work boots can carry him.
* * *
Joy is cursing a blue streak as Sam leads the women through the overgrown forest surrounding Pleasant Valley.
"Joy," he warns. "We're trying to sneak out of town here. Not sound the alarm."
She narrows her eyes, already rather small like the rest of her pointy facial features. Sam kind of thinks she looks like a fox, in the literal sense.
"Mother fucking son-of-a-pecker!" she answers. "Goddamn burrs." She stops to pry a small prickly seed off the nylon strap of her sandal. "If we make it out of this godforsaken forest alive, I'm never speaking to you again," she tells Kiara. Or maybe Sam, he's not looking over his shoulder to check. He just wants to put them back in their Escape and send them north as fast as they can go.
"So, where did you say the cars are?" Sam has next to no experience negotiating girl-fights, and he's happy to keep it that way.
"There's an empty lot on the east side of town," Kiara says. "I think this path will take us around to it without anybody spotting us."
"What did your dad tell you about this place?" Sam asks.
"I thought it was just stories," she says quietly. “It wasn’t supposed to be real.”
“Hey!” Joy snaps. “Focus. You can panic and cry about it when we’re 300 miles away from this shithole.”
“Sorry,” Kiara says in a small, miserable voice. She clears her throat. “According to my dad, there was this town called Pleasant Valley that was burned to the ground by Union soldiers. Or maybe not, you know? Most buildings were made of wood, it wasn’t too hard for a whole town to just go up in flames.”
Joy snorts. “Great. So these idiots probably fried their own stupid town with their own stupid barbecue.”
“And the town reappears to extract vengeance,” Sam finishes, ignoring Joy. That much of the story they’d been able to deduce from a couple of chatty employees at the Florida Historical Society.
"Next year we can go to Napa," Joy says. Sam doesn't point out that Napa probably has its own spirit infestations. One nightmare at a time.
"There!" Kiara says as they leave the shelter of trees and find themselves in a deserted gravel lot. "Cars!"
Relief tugs at Sam. He doesn't have the keys but picking the trunk lock was one of the first things Dean taught him when they were kids, hanging outside some dive or another while their dad met with a sketchy contact.
Hot-wiring was a close second.
"Well now, kids, what are you doing this far from the party?"
Sam turns around fast as falling to see the mayor and a half dozen other townsfolk, among them the girl in pink that was all over Dean a couple of hours ago.
"We were just..." Kiara begins and then falters.
"Luggage," Sam says. "Can't go to the big party tonight in our travelling clothes, right?"
Foreheads smooth and mouths turn up into smiles at that statement.
"Well, why didn't you say, son? We would have been glad to 'scort you to your carriages. Though I'm fair to certain your belongings were delivered to your rooms."
"Right, well, ah," Sam scratches his forehead, tucks a tickly stray hair back behind his ear. "The girls-women-were hoping to, ah, hop on over to the next town, buy something, umm…"
"We don't have a thing to wear," Kiara says quickly. "Not to anything as important as your Sesca…centennial."
Sesquicentennial, Sam thinks.
"Nonsense!" Mayor Buckman says. "Y'all are fine just as you are. And if you want to spruce up, I'm sure some of our lovely ladies will be glad to lend you a frock."
"Time to be getting back," says another man, Lester, the same guy who was picking at the banjo earlier. "Sun's gonna be down soon, almost time to light the bonfire."
"Time for the barbecue!" Betsy shouts, throwing her hands in the air, and everybody cheers.
"Wouldn't miss it," Sam says. "Why don't we all head back and let the ladies stay here for a minute, freshen up?"
"What kind of Southern gentleman would I be if I let two young ladies wander through the woods unchaperoned?" The mayor laughs, turning to his companions for confirmation.
"What kind?" Kiara agrees weakly, while Joy scowls at the back of his head.
Sam grabs the only thing within reach in the trunk, a shotgun that he hopes is loaded with iron rounds, and whirls to face the revenants.
“Son, just what do you expect that to do?” Mayor Buckman says with an indulgent smile. Sam pulls the trigger and aims between the eyes.
Of course, it's the only gun in the trunk that's loaded with ordinary bullets.
Lester clocks Sam on the head with the butt of his own rifle, and Sam goes down like a lead balloon.
* * *
"Now that I know ghosts are real," Joy hisses, "I'm going to haunt both your asses so hard if I get eaten tonight."
"I can haunt you just as easily," Kiara snaps, clearly at her breaking point with Joy.
"Nobody's haunting anybody, nobody's getting eaten," Dean says. "We're all getting out of here tonight. Alive."
He’s pacing up and down the old horse corral, trying to figure out how they’re going to get out of here. The aged split rail fence is only a couple of feet off the ground, but it’s being patrolled by several angry spirits wielding rusty farm implements. Dean’s willing to make a break for it, but he’s less willing to allow one of the teachers under his charge to end up with a belly full of pitchfork in the process.
“The fuck is this, Children of the Corn?” Joy asks.
Dean thinks the ridiculous situation he’s landed himself in is more Herschell Gordon Lewis than Stephen King, but he keeps that thought to himself.
“Why didn’t they just lock us in the jail?” Kiara wonders.
“Iron,” Dean says, running a hand through the stubble of his beard. “They can’t touch it, can’t tolerate it.”
Dean had already been under guard and plotting his escape when Kiara and Joy were carried kicking and screaming into the paddock he was sharing with some unhappy-and possibly dead-mares. The news that Sam had been bludgeoned and left for dead was bad, yes, but then nobody knew better than Dean how that kid’s head seemed to be made of concrete and steel.
If Sam could get to their secret weapon, shut this crap down long enough for their two days in the sun to wear off...
“I think I found the Spencers,” he had mentioned during his pacing. “You ladies didn’t happen to eat the barbecue last night, did you?”
In hindsight he kind of wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Now he’s stuck in a horse corral with three fuming horses, two terrified schoolteachers, and the stench of vomit from where Joy and Kiara had both begun to simultaneously retch at his comment.
The sun is sinking, and Dean has serious doubts that he can keep them all alive until the spell wears off at dawn. He’s just starting to wonder if this hunt could suck any worse when Mayor Buckman starts launching into a speech across the clearing.
“Friends, neighbors, fellow victims of the War of Northern Aggression!” he addresses the crowd to loud cheers and exuberant flag waving. “We are here to commemorate the terrible evening when those villainous Yank-”
Dean tunes him out. If he’s heard one evil monologue, he’s heard them all.
C’mon, Sammy, he thinks. Where the fuck are you?
* * *
Sam wakes up next to the Chevy’s rear passenger tire, feeling like his brains have been turned into spaghetti squash while he was out.
He opens his eyes slowly and watches the surrounding river birches telescope, stretching high into the sky, 40, 50, 60 feet up.
“Wow,” he says, before realizing that the trees aren’t actually moving. He runs through the mental exercises he usually does when he’s probably concussed, mainly trying to remember who he was and what he was doing. Usually this involved walking his brain through the five Ws that he learned during his two month stint on a high-school newspaper during his freshman year.
After at least 30 seconds of blinking stupidly at the sky, he sits up slowly, feeling heavy and dull but at least remembering who what, where, when, and why he was.
“Fuck,” he mutters, climbing to his feet. The trunk is still ajar, and he pulls out Dean’s super-special weapon of mass destruction, a pipe that had been soldered onto an electrical box.
Sam shakes his head and then winces at the brain-rattling that produces. Another life, another time, Dean would have made an awesome mechanical engineer. Still, this new gadget hasn’t exactly been field tested. He really hopes it works.
He grabs whatever weapons he can stuff into his pockets, plus the small paper bag of flash paper, and runs through the woods back towards Pleasant Valley.
* * *
“You have a plan, right?” Joy asks as the mayor winds down his speech.
“Of course,” Dean says.
“And that plan would be…”
He spots Sam running towards the clearing and nods his head. “That’s my plan.”
Mayor Buckman is still droning, “And on this terrible and wonderful anniversary, this sesame... centennial-”
Sam stands at the edge of the crowd and raises his shotgun at Buckman’s head.
“It’s sesqui-freaking-centennial!” Sam yells. “Don’t celebrate it if you can’t freaking say it!”
“That’s about enough out of you, you smart-mouthed Yank!” Buckman hollers back.
“Let them go, Buckman,” Sam says. “You’re already dead, there’s no point to this. Your war ended 150 years ago.”
“Not for us, boy! We relive that last night over and over!” He draws closer to Sam, face shifting from his bland, pleasant smile into something monstrous. “Do you know what it’s like to smell your family roasting alive?”
Sam narrows his eyes. “Last chance,” he says as he pulls out Dean’s homemade bomb.
“What in tarnation?” Buckman asks, and Sam hears Dean snicker behind him. Only Dean, he thinks, as he presses the button and hopes like hell this works.
* * *
“Cover your eyes,” Dean tells the women as he watches Sam aim the pipe ‘bomb’ into the crowd. Kiara and Joy grab hands and duck their heads, probably expecting some kind of sonic boom.
The subdued crack that follows is little more than the sound of a champagne cork popping, and Dean hears Joy mutter, “What the fucking fuck?” before the long-dead citizens of Pleasant Valley begin shrieking in pain.
Dean looks up and smiles as he watches the combination of rock salt and iron filings gently sift down from the sky.
“What is that?” Kiara breathes.
“Confetti cannon,” Dean says, not trying to keep the pride out of his voice.
“Conf...seriously?” Joy asks, but Dean is already vaulting the horse corral and plunging into the chaos beyond. He swipes a blessed silver knife from Sam’s back pocket and plunges into the fray, slashing wildly and feeling the thrum of adrenaline that courses through his veins in any good fight. He covers while Sam re-loads the paper and ammo into the pipe and sends a fresh volley of ghost-repellant into the sky.
* * *
It’s a long night of waiting to see if the spell will break at dawn.
They’d herded everybody into the center of the clearing next to the barbeque pit, and Dean had reluctantly sent Joy off with his keys to bring the car back for reinforcements. A hundred pounds of rock salt later, the dead and dejected citizens of Pleasant Valley milled about in their circle of salt, muttering and scowling, guarded by Sam and Dean, a reluctant Kiara, and a nerve-wrackingly gun-happy Joy.
Every so often one of the spirits makes a break for it but they’re repelled by the circle iron and salt, like some otherworldly game of Red Rover. Every so often Joy shoots one of the revenants, “Just for the fuck of it,” until Dean almost takes an arm full of rock salt and grabs her gun, trading it for a piece of iron rebar he’d dug out of the trunk.
At one point Sam wonders aloud if the town will actually vanish if they don’t get their usual six sacrifices, and Dean kind of wants to punch him for even bringing it up. But, with the first rays of dawn, the revenants began winking out of existence, the illusion of the town around them falling away.
“We’ll be back, Yank,” says Mayor Buckman. “I didn’t get this whole town to dodge an army of reapers just to be-”
“Save it,” Dean says, shooting him one last time for the hell of it, and then Buckman’s gone too. Dean hopes Benny kills that crazy fuck at least once a day for the next several years.
“So it’s over?” Joy asks.
“Kind of anticlimactic, huh?” Sam asks.
“Yeah,” Joy snaps. “The only thing this night needed was some fucking excitement.” She stomps off to the car.
“Will they come back again?” Kiara wonders.
“Don’t care!” Joy calls over her shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“We can put them down for good now, it should be okay,” Dean says.
“Still don’t care! Bye boys.”
“She means ‘thank you,’” Kiara says. “For, y’know, saving us.”
They watch the two women climb into the kiwi-green Ford and drive out of a town that no longer exists on a suddenly overgrown path through the woods.
That’s not gonna be good for Baby’s undercarriage, Dean thinks.
“We’re not really going to dig up 2,000 bodies are we?” Sam asks, the lack of sleep taking more of a toll on him then he’d like to admit.
“Nah. That’s why we have interns.”
“We have…interns?”
“I called Garth, told him to bring the pipsqueak hunters down here. Let them see how glamorous this job actually is,” Dean says.
“That’s…actually a really good idea.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
Sam laughs softly. “All right, fine, the confetti cannon was a good idea too.”
“And the EMF meter?”
“Don’t push it, Dean,” Sam says, though secretly he agrees.
Author: Sylvia_Locust
Movie Prompt: Two Thousand Maniacs!
Pairing: None/Gen
Rating: R for language
Word Count: ~4,900
Notes: Effusive thanks to daniomalley22 for helping me fix various plot holes! This was written for the 2013 spn-cinema challenge, and I’m so sorry I missed my posting date because I hate missing deadlines and I adore this challenge... But, as it turns out, when you rip off create an homage to an awesomely bad film with a sucky ending, you then have to actually come up with an ending.
Summary: Sam and Dean find themselves in the middle of a ridiculous hunt straight out of some exploitation flick from the ’60s, where a Southern town re-appears like clockwork every 25 years to exact vengeance on any Yankees who travel too close...
There are very few highways, state roads, back roads-hell, even gravel roads-that Dean and his baby haven’t cruised down. He’s pretty sure he knows more about America’s highway system than any of the boneheads running the Department of Transportation.
So the hand-painted Warning! Detur!! sign, complete with misspelled words and drippy paint-yeah, it's a little eye-catching.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean says. He thumbs up the volume on the radio for good measure. In the passenger seat, Sam jerks awake.
“Huzzit?” Sam asks, looking around. “Where?”
“’Bout 50 miles east of Jacksonville.” Dean eases over onto the shoulder, glancing in the rearview mirror. “We just passed a sign warning that the bridge is out ahead.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah."
"And that's important because...?"
"Because there's no bridge on this stretch of 121."
“Huh. You sure?”
Dean gives him a look.
“Yeah, okay. Guess that means we found our missing town.”
Dean snorts. He’d found the missing town, while Sam had been snoring away next to him.
He makes a careful three-point-turn on the narrow road and heads back north, turning left at the fake detour. As they enter the town limits they pass a faded sign that reads:
Now Entering Historic Pleasant Valley
Population 2,000
Come to Visit, Stay For a Lifetime!
"Yeah, that's not ominous or anything," Sam mutters.
“Eh,” Dean says. “It’s a little on the nose.”
* * *
It was Sam who found the case while idly flipping through one of Bobby’s older journals.
“Hey, Dean, have you heard of a ghost town called Pleasant Valley?”
Dean wandered out of his bedroom wrapped in his appropriated robe. Sam could laugh all he wanted, Dean felt like Hef himself when he slipped it on. So what if its owner had been dead for 50 years?
“We talking ghost town like the Old West or ghost town like-”
“-like a town full of ghosts.”
“Nope.”
"Bobby has some theory in here about a whole town that only shows up every 25 years,” Sam said. “You know, like in Brigadoon.”
"Brigahoo?"
"Briga-goddammit, Dean, will you quit playing like you’ve never seen a musical? I’ve heard you humming "Gary Indiana," like, a million times."
Dean scoffed. "A million?"
"Pretty much every time we cross the state, so yeah."
"So what? Marian the Librarian was hot, man."
"Can we stay focused here?"
“You’re the one started talking about musicals for some reason,” Dean said, banging a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Sam.
While they ate Sam told him about a town that had supposedly been decimated during the Civil War that seemed to appear once every 25 years, and the handful of people who went missing each time it happened. Travelers, usually, on their way to Florida for some fun in the sun. Or on their way back north after they'd crisped their skin and had their fill of tequila slammers and Jimmy Buffet cover bands.
“Bobby thought this year’s appearance might be particularly bad because it’s the 150th anniversary of the burning, by his calculations,” Sam says.
"Should we try to dig them up preemptively?" Dean wondered.
"Dude, that's like, two thousand graves."
"Backhoe?"
Sam considered the idea with a shrug.
“We’ll need reinforcements,” Dean said thoughtfully. Sam did not like that gleam in his eyes.
“There’s something I’ve been dying to try out,” Dean said, mostly to himself, as he pushed away from the table.
“Dean!” Sam called after him. “Try what out?”
But Dean had disappeared into his workroom without answering. For the rest of the afternoon Sam heard strange drilling and sawing sounds coming from the room Dean had taken over for his various projects. Sam would have stuck his head in to watch and tease his brother, but then his stupid nose started bleeding and he decided maybe he’d better just lay low after all.
* * *
Once every 25 years since 1863 had not given them a lot of data to go on. They hadn’t even been convinced this was a hunt until Dean spotted the shady sign.
They cruise into town, right down the middle of Davis Street, to see hundreds of locals dressed in clothes 150 years out of fashion. They’re cheering at Sam and Dean and waving confederate flags.
“Awesome,” Dean says, plastering on his biggest, fakest smile.
The crowd surges around them until driving becomes impossible.
“You think if I just run them over-”
“No.”
They get out of the car and pretend to have no idea what’s going on, or what the town is celebrating, or why a couple of Yankee strangers have any place in the town party.
“Why, you’re our guests of honor,” says the mayor, one Raleigh T. Buckman, as he claps Sam on the back. He’s dressed like Boss Hog and talks like Foghorn Leghorn, and Sam can see that Dean’s about to lose his shit. Sam knows from vast experience how pissed he gets when Dean laughs in his face; antagonizing the locals like that is probably not a great idea.
But Dean keeps it together as the crowd begins to steer them towards one of the nearby buildings, which turns out to be a rooming house.
"Wait, I really need to move the car," Dean tries, casting a frantic look over his shoulder at the Chevy, still idling in the middle of the street. They're surrounded by so many Gone with the Wind extras that it's hopeless, and he and Sam are swept along with the crowd.
Sam stands about a head taller than anyone else in the throng of people, but he can only watch as Dean is pulled in one direction while he is pushed in another.
“Where’re they taking my brother?” Sam asks the guy holding his elbow as he’s led into a parlor off of the lobby.
“Brother? We thought you was one of them new couples we been hearing about.”
“Um, no,” Sam says, still searching the crowd for Dean. Their scant research had led them to believe they’d have a little bit of time to investigate before they were flambéed or quartered or whatever it was vengeful Confederate ghosts did to their victims.
“So what’s this Celebration all about, anyways?” Sam asks, figuring he might as well try to get some intel until he can shake his new best friends and compare notes with Dean.
“It’s our Centennial!” says a little towheaded boy.
“Actually, centennial means a hundred,” Sam says absently as he scans the crowd for signs of Dean or imminent danger or both. “This would be your sesquicentennial.”
“Sesqui-wha?” The boy wrinkles up his nose.
“Sesqui-nevermind.”
* * *
“Let me show you to your room, sugar,” says a pretty brunette woman, tugging Dean along by the hand. As he follows her up the stairs, he can’t help but wonder what she’s concealing under all those miles of fabric flouncing around with each step she takes. Considering she’s been dead since Lincoln was alive, she's looking pretty damn good.
“How much is the room, sweetheart?” he asks.
She looks over her shoulder and winks. “No charge for you, sugar, you’re part of the Celebration!”
“Ah, right. So what do we do at this Celebration shindig thing, anyway?”
“Well, we had a barbeque last night but don't you worry none, there’s another one tonight!" she says as she unlocks the door and then hands him the key.
“Great, yeah, great.” He looks around the room-two tiny twin beds, a small round breakfast table, and more lace than Dean’s ever seen outside a Victoria's Secret catalog.
He turns to find the woman-Betty, or maybe Bessie, it was hard to hear in that crush in the lobby-standing in the doorway and smiling at him.
“Thanks, Betty.” Dean says.
“Betsy.”
“Right, Betsy.” She keeps standing there expectantly and he wonders if he’s supposed to tip her, until she crosses the room and plants one on him.
“Uh!” he says, jumping back and away, not quite fast enough. She's frighteningly strong, but when he shoves at her she stops.
“What’s wrong?” she pouts. “Is it that other guy? He doesn’t have to know.”
“It’s not…he’s not…” Dean purses his lips. “Yes. Yes, it’s that other guy, and he will be very unhappy if you try to kiss me again so, you know. Don’t.”
She looks sulky. He supposes if he only had the chance to score four times a century, he might feel the same way.
Still. Kissing monsters is Sam's thing, not his.
* * *
Downstairs in the parlor, Sam leans up against the wall, watching the townspeople mill around. They look so happy compared to the usual restless spirits he encounters. If they weren't hurting people he'd think about leaving them to their Celebration, but people had disappeared, probably been killed, probably bloody.
Someone hands Sam a mason jar full of liquor that smells like turpentine and he smiles politely. Then he notices the two women, standing in the corner watching him warily. They’re as much sore thumbs as he is with their shorts and tank tops and flip-flops, and he curses silently. Dean and Sam had hoped to be the first and last tourists to stumble into Pleasant Valley during the Celebration.
He ditches the glass of paint thinner and sidles over to introduce himself, wondering how to break the news that they're surrounded by ghosts.
"Hi. I’m Sam," he says.
"Hey," says one of the woman. "I’m Kiara, this is Joy."
“So, ahh, how long have you guys been here?” Sam asks.
“We drove in last night,” Joy says.
“And now they won’t let us leave,” Kiara whispers.
She breaks off when the banjo player stops his plucking and several pairs of eyes turn their way.
“Maybe we should go upstairs,” Sam says. "Talk privately?"
Kiara gives him an assessing look but must decide he seems safer than the maniacally happy townsfolk who look to be organizing an impromptu square dance. They begin threading their way through the crowd, trying not to call too much attention to themselves.
In the upstairs hallway, a door flies open and a woman with smeary red lips, dressed in what looks like several hundred yards of pink fabric, stumbles into the hall. “Pardon,” she says with a giggle as she sashays towards the stairs.
“Seriously, Dean?” Sam asks as soon as he’s across the threshold. “Tell me you did not just make out with a dead girl.”
“I didn’t!” Dean protests. Sam narrows his eyes and Dean looks away. “She might have made out with me a little,” he mutters.
“Wait, they’re dead?” Joy asks.
“I knew it!” Kiara says with a triumphant grin and turns to punch Joy in the shoulder. Then her smile falters.
"Oh, crap," Kiara says. "They're really dead?"
* * *
The story that comes spilling out of Kiara and Joy is rife with digressions, accusations, non sequiters, tangents, and enough curse words to almost make Dean blush.
What it boiled down to was Joy had talked Kiara into spending part of their spring break in Panama City-
"Even though we're teachers now, not stupid binge-drinking undergrads-"
-During which, teachers or not, impressive amounts of tequila were consumed by both women. Meanwhile, Kiara caught up on her reading while Joy-
"-had to blow off steam after a rough break-up, you know?"
"Hah! And probably contracted nine kinds of STD!"
Then Kiara had this-
“brilliant fucking idea to try to find one of the places listed in her travel guide for nerds-”
"-there’s nothing nerdy about haunted houses, Joy!"
“Wait, you found this place in a guide book?” Sam interrupts, surprised. He generally tries to keep tabs on the pop-culture books about hauntings that keep springing up in bookstores and libraries, in case there’s any truth to the legends, but the books are usually full of nonsense.
“Not exactly…” Kiara says. “My dad told me about this place, he studies African American folklore, folktales about the Civil War, stuff like that.”
“I bet he didn’t tell her she should try to find this shitty backwoods fucking ghost-infested-”
“Shut up, Joy. I wanted to spend the week in wine country like an actual grown-up. If we’d gone to Napa-”
“I told you I can’t-”
“Girls,” Dean tries to interrupt.
They both turn to glare at him. “Er…women?”
“What?” Kiara snaps.
“We still have to figure out how to get you two out of here safely.”
“Four,” Joy says as she crosses the room to look down on the throng of people in the street.
“Four what?” Dean asks.
“Four people. There was another couple here last night, the Spencers,” Kiara says.
“They haven’t been around today though. We haven’t seen them since that crazy-ass barbecue last night.”
"I thought we were early, what the fuck?" Dean says to Sam. "This whole damn hunt has gone tits up."
"Hunt?" asks Kiara.
"Guess Bobby had his dates a little off."
"So now we need to get those two out of town, find the others, get them out too, figure out how to salt and burn an entire town, and, oh yeah, all our gear is in the car. Which is who knows where."
"That sounds about right," Sam says.
"Awesome."
"We're thinking revenants, yeah?"
"Well, Miss Betty-Betsy-Bessie felt pretty fucking solid when she was trying to suck my tongue out of my mouth."
"Y'know, a simple yes or no-"
"Hey!" Joy interrupts. They both turn to look at her. “I’m not sure what the fuck you're talking about, or how much I even want to know, but I'm pretty sure I know where the cars are stashed."
* * *
Dean is grumbling about scissors and rocks as he makes his way to the site of last night's barbecue. Of course Sam gets to escort the pretty schoolteachers out of town while Dean's stuck poking around the charred remains of last night's bonfire, looking for what, he doesn't even know. Even if the ghosts are cannibals, as Bobby thought, it's not very likely they're just going to just leave a human arm lying around in the ashes.
He curses under his breath as he uncovers a blackened and charred human arm lying around in the ashes.
"Ewww," Dean says under his breath, though really, he's not sure why he expected anything different. He gets to his feet and turns to see Mayor Buckman and several of his good ol' boys, smiling big as life and blocking his retreat.
"Howdy, partner," Dean says, aiming for John Wayne but landing closer to Tom Hanks in Toy Story. "Just checkin' your pit. Can't wait for tonight's barbecue."
"Well, now, why didn't you say?" Buckman asks. "We'd be glad to give you a little preview of tonight's events."
"Oh, really, I don't want to trouble you..."
"Nonsense. It'll be our pleasure."
"Don't you have more important stuff to take care of?"
"Can't say as I do, Mr. Winchester. Come along, lots to show you before the party starts."
Dean pulls out his special silver-coated knife and starts slashing madly. Where metal touches dead flesh the skin bubbles and the revenants hiss at him.
“Back off, you fucking freaks!” Dean shouts, before turning and sprinting back down the middle of Davis Street as fast as his work boots can carry him.
* * *
Joy is cursing a blue streak as Sam leads the women through the overgrown forest surrounding Pleasant Valley.
"Joy," he warns. "We're trying to sneak out of town here. Not sound the alarm."
She narrows her eyes, already rather small like the rest of her pointy facial features. Sam kind of thinks she looks like a fox, in the literal sense.
"Mother fucking son-of-a-pecker!" she answers. "Goddamn burrs." She stops to pry a small prickly seed off the nylon strap of her sandal. "If we make it out of this godforsaken forest alive, I'm never speaking to you again," she tells Kiara. Or maybe Sam, he's not looking over his shoulder to check. He just wants to put them back in their Escape and send them north as fast as they can go.
"So, where did you say the cars are?" Sam has next to no experience negotiating girl-fights, and he's happy to keep it that way.
"There's an empty lot on the east side of town," Kiara says. "I think this path will take us around to it without anybody spotting us."
"What did your dad tell you about this place?" Sam asks.
"I thought it was just stories," she says quietly. “It wasn’t supposed to be real.”
“Hey!” Joy snaps. “Focus. You can panic and cry about it when we’re 300 miles away from this shithole.”
“Sorry,” Kiara says in a small, miserable voice. She clears her throat. “According to my dad, there was this town called Pleasant Valley that was burned to the ground by Union soldiers. Or maybe not, you know? Most buildings were made of wood, it wasn’t too hard for a whole town to just go up in flames.”
Joy snorts. “Great. So these idiots probably fried their own stupid town with their own stupid barbecue.”
“And the town reappears to extract vengeance,” Sam finishes, ignoring Joy. That much of the story they’d been able to deduce from a couple of chatty employees at the Florida Historical Society.
"Next year we can go to Napa," Joy says. Sam doesn't point out that Napa probably has its own spirit infestations. One nightmare at a time.
"There!" Kiara says as they leave the shelter of trees and find themselves in a deserted gravel lot. "Cars!"
Relief tugs at Sam. He doesn't have the keys but picking the trunk lock was one of the first things Dean taught him when they were kids, hanging outside some dive or another while their dad met with a sketchy contact.
Hot-wiring was a close second.
"Well now, kids, what are you doing this far from the party?"
Sam turns around fast as falling to see the mayor and a half dozen other townsfolk, among them the girl in pink that was all over Dean a couple of hours ago.
"We were just..." Kiara begins and then falters.
"Luggage," Sam says. "Can't go to the big party tonight in our travelling clothes, right?"
Foreheads smooth and mouths turn up into smiles at that statement.
"Well, why didn't you say, son? We would have been glad to 'scort you to your carriages. Though I'm fair to certain your belongings were delivered to your rooms."
"Right, well, ah," Sam scratches his forehead, tucks a tickly stray hair back behind his ear. "The girls-women-were hoping to, ah, hop on over to the next town, buy something, umm…"
"We don't have a thing to wear," Kiara says quickly. "Not to anything as important as your Sesca…centennial."
Sesquicentennial, Sam thinks.
"Nonsense!" Mayor Buckman says. "Y'all are fine just as you are. And if you want to spruce up, I'm sure some of our lovely ladies will be glad to lend you a frock."
"Time to be getting back," says another man, Lester, the same guy who was picking at the banjo earlier. "Sun's gonna be down soon, almost time to light the bonfire."
"Time for the barbecue!" Betsy shouts, throwing her hands in the air, and everybody cheers.
"Wouldn't miss it," Sam says. "Why don't we all head back and let the ladies stay here for a minute, freshen up?"
"What kind of Southern gentleman would I be if I let two young ladies wander through the woods unchaperoned?" The mayor laughs, turning to his companions for confirmation.
"What kind?" Kiara agrees weakly, while Joy scowls at the back of his head.
Sam grabs the only thing within reach in the trunk, a shotgun that he hopes is loaded with iron rounds, and whirls to face the revenants.
“Son, just what do you expect that to do?” Mayor Buckman says with an indulgent smile. Sam pulls the trigger and aims between the eyes.
Of course, it's the only gun in the trunk that's loaded with ordinary bullets.
Lester clocks Sam on the head with the butt of his own rifle, and Sam goes down like a lead balloon.
* * *
"Now that I know ghosts are real," Joy hisses, "I'm going to haunt both your asses so hard if I get eaten tonight."
"I can haunt you just as easily," Kiara snaps, clearly at her breaking point with Joy.
"Nobody's haunting anybody, nobody's getting eaten," Dean says. "We're all getting out of here tonight. Alive."
He’s pacing up and down the old horse corral, trying to figure out how they’re going to get out of here. The aged split rail fence is only a couple of feet off the ground, but it’s being patrolled by several angry spirits wielding rusty farm implements. Dean’s willing to make a break for it, but he’s less willing to allow one of the teachers under his charge to end up with a belly full of pitchfork in the process.
“The fuck is this, Children of the Corn?” Joy asks.
Dean thinks the ridiculous situation he’s landed himself in is more Herschell Gordon Lewis than Stephen King, but he keeps that thought to himself.
“Why didn’t they just lock us in the jail?” Kiara wonders.
“Iron,” Dean says, running a hand through the stubble of his beard. “They can’t touch it, can’t tolerate it.”
Dean had already been under guard and plotting his escape when Kiara and Joy were carried kicking and screaming into the paddock he was sharing with some unhappy-and possibly dead-mares. The news that Sam had been bludgeoned and left for dead was bad, yes, but then nobody knew better than Dean how that kid’s head seemed to be made of concrete and steel.
If Sam could get to their secret weapon, shut this crap down long enough for their two days in the sun to wear off...
“I think I found the Spencers,” he had mentioned during his pacing. “You ladies didn’t happen to eat the barbecue last night, did you?”
In hindsight he kind of wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Now he’s stuck in a horse corral with three fuming horses, two terrified schoolteachers, and the stench of vomit from where Joy and Kiara had both begun to simultaneously retch at his comment.
The sun is sinking, and Dean has serious doubts that he can keep them all alive until the spell wears off at dawn. He’s just starting to wonder if this hunt could suck any worse when Mayor Buckman starts launching into a speech across the clearing.
“Friends, neighbors, fellow victims of the War of Northern Aggression!” he addresses the crowd to loud cheers and exuberant flag waving. “We are here to commemorate the terrible evening when those villainous Yank-”
Dean tunes him out. If he’s heard one evil monologue, he’s heard them all.
C’mon, Sammy, he thinks. Where the fuck are you?
* * *
Sam wakes up next to the Chevy’s rear passenger tire, feeling like his brains have been turned into spaghetti squash while he was out.
He opens his eyes slowly and watches the surrounding river birches telescope, stretching high into the sky, 40, 50, 60 feet up.
“Wow,” he says, before realizing that the trees aren’t actually moving. He runs through the mental exercises he usually does when he’s probably concussed, mainly trying to remember who he was and what he was doing. Usually this involved walking his brain through the five Ws that he learned during his two month stint on a high-school newspaper during his freshman year.
After at least 30 seconds of blinking stupidly at the sky, he sits up slowly, feeling heavy and dull but at least remembering who what, where, when, and why he was.
“Fuck,” he mutters, climbing to his feet. The trunk is still ajar, and he pulls out Dean’s super-special weapon of mass destruction, a pipe that had been soldered onto an electrical box.
Sam shakes his head and then winces at the brain-rattling that produces. Another life, another time, Dean would have made an awesome mechanical engineer. Still, this new gadget hasn’t exactly been field tested. He really hopes it works.
He grabs whatever weapons he can stuff into his pockets, plus the small paper bag of flash paper, and runs through the woods back towards Pleasant Valley.
* * *
“You have a plan, right?” Joy asks as the mayor winds down his speech.
“Of course,” Dean says.
“And that plan would be…”
He spots Sam running towards the clearing and nods his head. “That’s my plan.”
Mayor Buckman is still droning, “And on this terrible and wonderful anniversary, this sesame... centennial-”
Sam stands at the edge of the crowd and raises his shotgun at Buckman’s head.
“It’s sesqui-freaking-centennial!” Sam yells. “Don’t celebrate it if you can’t freaking say it!”
“That’s about enough out of you, you smart-mouthed Yank!” Buckman hollers back.
“Let them go, Buckman,” Sam says. “You’re already dead, there’s no point to this. Your war ended 150 years ago.”
“Not for us, boy! We relive that last night over and over!” He draws closer to Sam, face shifting from his bland, pleasant smile into something monstrous. “Do you know what it’s like to smell your family roasting alive?”
Sam narrows his eyes. “Last chance,” he says as he pulls out Dean’s homemade bomb.
“What in tarnation?” Buckman asks, and Sam hears Dean snicker behind him. Only Dean, he thinks, as he presses the button and hopes like hell this works.
* * *
“Cover your eyes,” Dean tells the women as he watches Sam aim the pipe ‘bomb’ into the crowd. Kiara and Joy grab hands and duck their heads, probably expecting some kind of sonic boom.
The subdued crack that follows is little more than the sound of a champagne cork popping, and Dean hears Joy mutter, “What the fucking fuck?” before the long-dead citizens of Pleasant Valley begin shrieking in pain.
Dean looks up and smiles as he watches the combination of rock salt and iron filings gently sift down from the sky.
“What is that?” Kiara breathes.
“Confetti cannon,” Dean says, not trying to keep the pride out of his voice.
“Conf...seriously?” Joy asks, but Dean is already vaulting the horse corral and plunging into the chaos beyond. He swipes a blessed silver knife from Sam’s back pocket and plunges into the fray, slashing wildly and feeling the thrum of adrenaline that courses through his veins in any good fight. He covers while Sam re-loads the paper and ammo into the pipe and sends a fresh volley of ghost-repellant into the sky.
* * *
It’s a long night of waiting to see if the spell will break at dawn.
They’d herded everybody into the center of the clearing next to the barbeque pit, and Dean had reluctantly sent Joy off with his keys to bring the car back for reinforcements. A hundred pounds of rock salt later, the dead and dejected citizens of Pleasant Valley milled about in their circle of salt, muttering and scowling, guarded by Sam and Dean, a reluctant Kiara, and a nerve-wrackingly gun-happy Joy.
Every so often one of the spirits makes a break for it but they’re repelled by the circle iron and salt, like some otherworldly game of Red Rover. Every so often Joy shoots one of the revenants, “Just for the fuck of it,” until Dean almost takes an arm full of rock salt and grabs her gun, trading it for a piece of iron rebar he’d dug out of the trunk.
At one point Sam wonders aloud if the town will actually vanish if they don’t get their usual six sacrifices, and Dean kind of wants to punch him for even bringing it up. But, with the first rays of dawn, the revenants began winking out of existence, the illusion of the town around them falling away.
“We’ll be back, Yank,” says Mayor Buckman. “I didn’t get this whole town to dodge an army of reapers just to be-”
“Save it,” Dean says, shooting him one last time for the hell of it, and then Buckman’s gone too. Dean hopes Benny kills that crazy fuck at least once a day for the next several years.
“So it’s over?” Joy asks.
“Kind of anticlimactic, huh?” Sam asks.
“Yeah,” Joy snaps. “The only thing this night needed was some fucking excitement.” She stomps off to the car.
“Will they come back again?” Kiara wonders.
“Don’t care!” Joy calls over her shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“We can put them down for good now, it should be okay,” Dean says.
“Still don’t care! Bye boys.”
“She means ‘thank you,’” Kiara says. “For, y’know, saving us.”
They watch the two women climb into the kiwi-green Ford and drive out of a town that no longer exists on a suddenly overgrown path through the woods.
That’s not gonna be good for Baby’s undercarriage, Dean thinks.
“We’re not really going to dig up 2,000 bodies are we?” Sam asks, the lack of sleep taking more of a toll on him then he’d like to admit.
“Nah. That’s why we have interns.”
“We have…interns?”
“I called Garth, told him to bring the pipsqueak hunters down here. Let them see how glamorous this job actually is,” Dean says.
“That’s…actually a really good idea.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
Sam laughs softly. “All right, fine, the confetti cannon was a good idea too.”
“And the EMF meter?”
“Don’t push it, Dean,” Sam says, though secretly he agrees.