Haunted Chapter 4/5
Title: Haunted 4/5
Author: tyranusfan
Characters: Dean, Sam, Adam, Bobby, OCs
Genre: Horror, hurt/comfort
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4,731
Spoilers: Up through Season 5 finale Swan Song, AU for season 6 and later
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All characters property of Warner Bros.
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Chapter 4
It was close to two in the morning when they returned to the house. Nicolas Shandor had tried to cover up his father’s misdeeds, so it was likely that he had left his father’s body in the house. Finding it quickly was the only issue-and they had yet to agree on where to start.
Adam was constantly surprised at how often his brothers argued. The tiniest thing could set them off. It wasn’t spiteful-not always, anyway-but it was often loud and occasionally frightening. Sometimes, all it took was a choice between two places.
The ride from the library to the house had been interminable.
“Study,” Dean said with an obstinate shake of his head.
“I think he’ll be in the basement,” Sam stated with conviction.
Dean was still shaking his head.
“Dean…that seems logical,” Adam added somewhat meekly. He didn’t like getting between his brothers when they argued. It was a dangerous place to be. “Nicolas killed him there, and I can’t really see him dragging his dead father through the house.”
“Yeah, because that’d be weird, especially after murdering him with your own two hands,” Dean scoffed. “The spirit attacked Alex and Ted in the study!” He threw the Impala into Park in front of the house, and jumped out.
Sam followed, bit firmly in his teeth. “Dean, just because it attacked in the study doesn’t mean its remains are in the study.”
“But they could be,” Dean insisted, opening the trunk.
Sam blew out a frustrated breath. “Yes. They could be a lot of places.”
“Which only supports my original point,” Dean seethed. “We should split up!”
Sam rolled his eyes as he grabbed one of their duffels out of the trunk and yanked it open. “Yeah, because that’s a plan that we’ve never regretted!”
“If we hit the study and the basement at the same time, we have a better chance of stopping this thing before it catches on to what we’re doing.” Dean loaded salt rounds into his shotgun and snapped the chamber closed angrily.
“And we have a much better chance of getting cut off from each other when this thing gets mad!”
“Damn it, Sam!”
“Dean!”
God, it’s like they’re children! “Hey! Guys!” Adam stepped in, holding his hands up to silence them. “Can we save the energy for the bad guy? Let’s just step back and talk about this like rational people.”
Dean and Sam looked at each other, then went back to packing their gear.
“Geez, it was a simple difference of opinion…”
“Who died and made him boss?” Dean groused.
Adam sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I need a drink.”
“Not until we’re off work, kiddo,” Dean retorted teasingly. He hefted one of the three bags toward Adam. “Here, make yourself useful.”
Sam frowned as he loaded his shotgun. “We still need to work out a plan of attack here.”
Dean grimaced, looking as though he’d swallowed some of the salt he was packing into the bags. “I…agree that the basement is the most likely place to start.”
“Thank you.” Sam nodded respectfully.
“But-”
“Of course….”
Dean ignored the remark. “Even if you’re right-and you might be-I’d still like to dismantle those levers in the study. We don’t want this trap opening up on us while we’re tied up downstairs. Shandor obviously gets around. If we hit both rooms at once, one of us can keep him occupied while the other trashes the levers, or burns the bones, whichever.”
Sam stewed over Dean’s words for a few moments, then deflated a little. Obviously, he agreed with the logic. “So, who goes to the study while the others dig?”
“Me,” Dean said, as if it were a foregone conclusion.
“Why you?”
“’Cause I’m the oldest.”
Sam snorted. “That’s not good enough.”
“Okay, because I’m the fastest. I can bust the levers then run down to the basement.”
“You are not the fastest.”
“I am so.”
“No, you’re not!”
Dean sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Sam.”
Something in his voice made Sam relent. He stared for a moment, then spoke quietly. “What?”
“Look,” Dean said with a pained expression. Whatever was coming was likely to be harsh. “I’m not blind, Sammy. I’ve seen it. You’ve been going in and out. I get it. I’m no stranger to flashbacks, believe me.”
Sam shrank back a little. Adam couldn’t see all of his face, but he didn’t need to in order to know that Sam was likely hurt.
Dean saw it, too. “Sammy, I trust you.” He glanced at Adam. “Both of you. But if you zone out and Shandor comes after you… It’s too dangerous. And Adam’s still got on training wheels-”
“Hey!”
“No offense, dude.”
Adam scowled, but held his tongue. His pride wasn’t the issue at the moment.
Sam glanced at him, eyes looking a bit haunted, but then he looked back to Dean and nodded. “Okay. Adam and I’ll cover the basement. You check the study and break the gears, but then you come right down!”
Dean smiled faintly. “You’re the boss.”
They each slung one of the heavy bags over their shoulders and moved to the house. After double-checking to make sure no one was watching them, Dean produced Annette’s keys from his pocket and unlocked the front door. Adam heard him laugh softly as the lock clicked open.
“What’s so funny?” Sam asked grumpily.
Dean glanced over his shoulder at them, mirth in his eyes. “I was just thinking. We tried so hard to avoid anything involving angels, demons, and Hell…and look what we walked into….”
Sam’s grim façade cracked a bit, a smile pulling at his mouth. “Yeah.”
“This your usual amount of luck?” Adam asked, shifting the cumbersome leather duffel on his shoulder.
Sam looked at him, shrugging. “You get used to it.”
Dean pushed the heavy door open and ushered them through. They’d left the lights on, so the interior was navigable, yet still encumbered with inky shadows. Sam led the way down the main hall, shotgun at the ready.
They reached the stairwell unchallenged, but Adam still felt uneasy. If Shandor’s spirit was as powerful as Dean and Sam thought it was, they might have a fight on their hands. He tried to push such thoughts aside. His brothers had made it out of worse situations, after all. Just focus on the job.
Dean stepped away as they hit the stairs. Sam hesitated, and looked like he wanted to argue, but Dean spoke before he could. “I’ll be down as soon as I can. If it takes longer than five minutes, I’ll call you.”
Sam stared at him a moment, and Adam watched him visibly fighting the urge to argue again. Instead, Sam nodded once. “Don’t take too long. I don’t want to do all the shoveling.”
He headed down the stairs. Adam moved to follow, but Dean caught his elbow, face deadly serious. “Watch his back.”
Adam glanced after Sam, then met Dean’s gaze unflinchingly. He didn’t need the instruction for that. “You watch yours.”
Dean flashed his most roguish grin. “Hey, it’s me.”
He jogged up the steps without another word. Adam turned and started the descent, catching up to Sam.
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The basement hadn’t been among Adam’s assigned rooms to scan earlier, so its appearance surprised him. Centered directly below the house, the area spanned more than half the length of the floors above. With a few half-walls knocked out, a full hockey rink wouldn’t have been out of the question.
Beams and piping along the ceiling ran in several directions, following gaps in the ceiling panels rather than the walls. The result was a crisscrossing mass of wood and metal that would have given any renovator nightmares. Knowing what they did about the devil’s trap, it made some sense. If Dean and Sam were right, and the house did somehow move, then the ceiling design would fit.
The floor was mostly concrete, except for a narrow stretch of timbers along each wall. To Adam, it looked like a low viewing gallery, built up a few inches from the expanse of concrete. Along the south side, several of the old wood planks had been pried up-probably when Alex Fleming had started working down there.
It was that area that Sam pointed his flashlight toward. “Over there. Shandor’s body should be nearby if this is where Alex disturbed him.”
Adam smirked. “Unless Dean’s right about where the remains are.”
Sam looked at him for a moment, then started moving toward the pile of displaced boards. “I’m thinking about switching to a longer run. Eight miles. Think it might be good for us.”
“Hey,” Adam held out his hands in surrender, “no need to wave a stick, Sam. Of course, you’re right and Dean’s wrong.”
“Just so we’re on the same page.”
Adam wisely kept his chuckle silent and followed Sam across the room.
Sam dropped his duffel first and reached inside for a carton of salt. “Lay out a ring, big. I don’t want Shandor coming at us from behind when we start digging.”
Grabbing his own carton of salt, Adam went to work. Laying out a salt line large enough to encompass them-but still allow them to work-meant thin lines, but it was better than nothing. After a few moments, they had a wide semi-circle around them, with salt along the wall to close them inside it.
“The bones should be close-by, if Alex managed to disturbed them,” Sam muttered, scanning the floor with his flashlight.
“What about the EMF? Would the bones set it off? We could use it like a metal detector.”
Sam shook his head. “We could try, but I doubt it. Dean’s right, that transformer outside screws with all the readings.”
They searched quietly for a few minutes. The concrete wasn’t disturbed, so both men focused on the area around and below the wood planks.
After several minutes of searching, Sam called out, “Here. I think this is it.”
Adam stepped over, having to get down on all fours to see what Sam was illuminating with his light. Underneath a section of planks right at the edge of their salt line was a distinct patch of gravel and small stones that didn’t match the dirt nearby. “Looks like Nicolas covered up his work.”
“Get the crowbars,” Sam instructed, pocketing his flashlight and retrieving a small work lantern from his duffel.
Adam complied, returning with the tools. They got to work ripping up the flooring.
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Dean lined the door and windows of the study with salt before dropping his duffel on the sawhorse. Don’t want any old demon worshippers sneaking up on me.
He popped off the wood panel that concealed the brass levers, noticing with some trepidation that streams of gooey ectoplasm were still dripping down the walls inside the compartment. Shandor’s ghost was still active somewhere in the house.
“Here’s hoping Sammy wasn’t right about splitting up…” Dean murmured to himself, grabbing a hammer from the nearby workbench. With any luck, he’d be done in no time.
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Sam grunted as he attempted to pry another board loose. Despite their apparent age, the flooring was well-built, and the wood was still fairly resilient. Adam groaned as he popped another free, and he carefully lifted it and tossed it into the existing debris pile. They were careful not to break the salt line as they worked.
They broke through after several minutes, and Sam traded the crowbar for a shovel. Despite the difference in appearance, the patch of gravel and dirt was packed just as tightly as the rest of the ground. Adam grabbed his shovel.
Once they broke ground, the digging went quickly. They soon found themselves in a matching rhythm. With any luck, Dean would be joining them soon.
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“Yeah, working on it, Sam,” Dean said into the phone, prying at the brass fixtures one-handed. “You find the remains yet?”
“Maybe. We’re digging now. Hurry up and get down here.”
Dean snorted. “I’d work faster with two hands, Sammy.”
Sam grumbled, but ended the call and let him get back to work.
The levers were much sturdier than they looked. Dean had tried prying the handles off, breaking the piping around them, even attacking the hinges, but he couldn’t make a dent.
The sudden drop in temperature wasn’t helping. His fingers were growing numb and fast becoming useless.
It was hard for Dean not to compare the predicament to his own life. He’d tried so hard to keep Sammy out of trouble, fought for so many years, and yet in the end, his little brother had had a promising life ripped from his grasp, the love of his life murdered, and had been set on course to free the Devil himself.
Falling into the deepest depths of Hell with Lucifer and an angry archangel was just icing on the hellish cake.
Then there was his other little brother. Poor kid had been a well-adjusted pre-med student, whose only fault was having John Winchester as a father. Adam hadn’t had anything to do with hunting-hadn’t even known about John’s real job or how his parents had met-but that didn’t save him when that pair of vengeful ghouls found him.
Being eaten alive was bad enough, but then to be resurrected by angels and forced to be Michael’s vessel, all because Dean had said no… Dean knew he was directly responsible for Adam’s situation, for that kid falling into Hell with Sam.
My fault. My failure.
Dean stopped trying to break the levers, stepping back from the wood panels. What was the point anyway? He was failing that very second. He was supposed to be making sure his brothers were safe and he couldn’t even accomplish that…
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“I think we hit pay dirt.”
“You and Dean should have made a bet,” Adam remarked.
Sam had been right; the remains were there. Even shoveling together, it took time to uncover some of the bones, and a few ribs. Adam was just happy the hard part was almost over. Shandor was right where his son had buried him. A while longer and they were home free.
They continued moving dirt out of the way, careful not to move any of the remains. Fortunately, Shandor’s clothing was intact, so it was relatively easy to keep the bones together.
A little too easy. Adam glanced around the otherwise empty basement. They were uncovering the remains of a powerful spirit that had killed twice in that very house…and they hadn’t seen or heard anything.
“How long’s it been since Dean checked in?” Sam asked. From the look on his face, perhaps he was feeling the same way as Adam.
Adam checked his watch. “About five minutes, I think. Maybe ten.”
Not acknowledging, Sam went back to work, frown lines creasing his forehead.
“I guess Shandor found the perfect targets with the Flemings. Alex lost his shirt with the housing bubble, Ted lost his brother….” Adam mentioned, returning to the previous conversation in the hopes of distracting both of them from worry.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, I gue-”
When he broke off, Adam glanced up at him. “What?”
Pulling out his cell phone, Sam looked at Adam grimly while he dialed. “I’ve got a bad feeling…”
When the call wasn’t answered, Sam’s worry lines deepened.
“This is Dean, leave a message.”
Sam tried the call again, but got no answer. He shook his head, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. “I don’t like this.”
Adam paused and turned to him. He almost suggested calling again, but Sam was right. Dean wouldn’t be ignoring his phone, not in a situation like the one they were in. He watched Sam grab one of the shotguns and head for the stairs.
“Keep digging, I’ll be right back.” Sam was already taking the steps two at a time, but called over his shoulder. “Stay inside that salt circle!”
Adam couldn’t help but roll his eyes, pausing long enough to give a mock-salute. His brothers could be insufferably bossy sometimes, though he knew they meant well. He went back to digging, casting a wary glance around the room. The sooner the hunt was over, the better he would feel.
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The more Dean thought about it, the more he realized how badly he’d ruined his relationship with Lisa.
However difficult the months after Sam’s second death had been, Dean knew he was building something with her. He had looked at raising her son Ben as his own, maybe even fixing some of the mistakes he’d made when Sam was that age. It would have been different. He wasn’t standing in for John the way he’d been with Sammy.
He’d had a job, a permanent address, a life…ironically the one Sam had chased for so long.
Looking back, Dean realized he should have known it was a pipe dream. As soon as Sam and Adam reappeared on his doorstep-Lisa’s doorstep-he should have seen the split coming. His brothers, intentionally or not, had brought the hunting world with them, right back to Dean. Two lives that were incompatible.
Lisa’s final words were right. Dean was bad news, and he should never have pretended otherwise.
Turning slowly in place, Dean cast a morose gaze around the study. He was a total failure. At life. At fatherhood. At brotherhood. Maybe it would be better if…
Dean’s eyes landed on the sawhorse Sam had climbed on earlier. Alex and Ted had the right idea. The world had no mercy for losers. That’s what I am. A loser.
Well, that was one problem Dean could fix. He walked to the sawhorse and dragged it over in front of the hidden panel. Some of the rope Ted had used to kill himself was still on the floor, more than enough to make another noose. Dean tied it quickly and tossed it up over the exposed rafters, tying the loose end around one of the wall beams.
Stepping up onto the sawhorse, Dean reached for the noose. One step and his miserable existence could finally be over.
The sound of shouting and a shotgun blast startled him, and he tipped forward as he lost his balance.
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Sam jogged down the hallway on the second floor and came around the corner just in time to see Dean pulling the noose toward his head.
“Dean!”
A shimmering, translucent mist was wrapped around his brother, flowing out from the hidden compartment in the wall. It became more opaque at the sound of Sam’s voice, and he saw a grotesque face forming behind Dean’s head.
Sam shot forward, bringing his sawed-off up and firing into the space between Dean and the wall. The salt pellets blasted through the wispy tendrils and a high-pitched wail filled the room.
Dean flinched as the tentacle-like mist suddenly dissipated, glazed eyes shifting in Sam’s direction, but the motion pitched him off balance on the narrow sawhorse, and he fell forward, head moving toward the rope noose. Sam kept running, tackling Dean and reversing his momentum. The sawhorse was caught by one of their feet, and flipped over, sending both men crashing into the workbench against the wall.
Their combined weight splintered the table, and Sam landed on top of Dean in a mass of dry wood and a cloud of dust. Dazed, Sam retained enough self-awareness to know they were still in danger and struggled to push himself up. Dean’s duffel was just a few feet away. Coughing on sawdust, Sam scrambled the distance and snagged a carton of salt from the bag. He slung a haphazard, uneven half-ring around them.
Sloppy as it may have been, Sam finished with seconds to spare. The spirit reformed after his shotgun attack and lunged at him. It stopped in midair when it reached the line of salt, flattening out like an otherworldly mime hitting an invisible wall. Another deafening wail shattered the stillness of the room, the spirit more enraged than before.
The spirit pulled back and coalesced into a more recognizable human shape. Sam saw a distended, skeletal face form in the wispy smoke, with deeply inset eyes glowing yellow as it glared at them. The incoherent wailing slowed and transformed as well.
“Fools!” it raged, arms and legs becoming more distinct. It reached out and wrapped a bony hand around the levers in the exposed wall panel. “The master will wait no longer!”
With that, Shandor’s spirit wrenched the levers down. Metal screeched as corroded gears and joints moved for the first time in decades.
For a moment, everything was still, but then a deep, ominous shudder vibrated through the floor, and dust spilled as the ceiling began to crack.
Shandor’s form seemed to implode on itself, and it poured back into the wall panel before Sam could bring the shotgun back up. Sam panted, lowering the gun to his lap.
Dean coughed behind him, and his thigh shifted against Sam’s hip. “Sammy?”
Sam pivoted, shifting to his knees as he reached back and lifted Dean’s head out of the rubble of the workbench. “Dean? Are you okay?”
His brother blinked up at him for a moment, then nodded slightly. “It’s okay…the table broke my fall.”
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The first warning Adam had that something had changed in the room was when his lantern flickered out. Then the walls began to shake, and even a rookie like him knew something was wrong. He dropped the shovel beside the mostly excavated body, and grabbed the shotgun he had propped against the wall to his right. He turned, swinging the weapon up in case he needed to defend himself.
A shimmering cloud of…something poured out from an overhead vent, and the musty air of the basement suddenly plummeted to freezing temperatures. The glowing cloud took on shape as it barreled across the room, the features of a shriveled man developing as it got closer. Adam lifted the shotgun and fired, dissipating the gaseous intruder just a dozen feet away. An ethereal cry of pain and rage assaulted Adam’s ears.
His lantern came back to life, but almost immediately dimmed again as the mist reappeared, reforming into a more human shape just a few feet from the edge of Adam’s protective salt line. A subhuman growl permeated the air as the humanoid form reached toward him, but stopped as though hitting an invisible wall.
Adam cocked the shotgun again and took aim, but he was too close to the line himself, and when the muzzle of his weapon crossed outside the line, the spirit instantly wrapped its bony, gnarled hands around it, ripping it from Adam’s grasp and tossing it against the adjoining wall.
The young hunter was far from disarmed, though. Adam reached behind him under his layered shirts and withdrew the .45 and the solid silver blade his brothers had given him for his birthday months before. The handgun was loaded with iron rounds that, if he remembered correctly, would work almost as well as salt rounds, but Adam wasn’t sanguine on wasting all his bullets on a ghost that moved as fast as this one.
He was going to need help.
“Nonbeliever!” the spirit howled, pacing back and forth like a hungry lion. It lunged at Adam every few moments, but slammed ineffectively against the salt line each time.
Adam disregarded his earlier concern and popped an iron round into the spirit’s face, exploding its glowing, wispy head, but it reformed quickly.
“Insolent whelp!”
Standoff, Adam thought grimly. Around him the walls were shaking and a loud rumble was coming from above. Dust and debris fell as the ceiling above him began to quake and shift.
Adam sheathed the silver blade and turned to the mostly uncovered bones. Shandor’s spirit might be stalking him, but he had the advantage. The salt carton and matches were on his side of the salt line. Keeping an eye on the furious spirit, Adam began dumping salt over the remains.
“No!” Shandor screeched, slamming himself against the barrier between them.
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The second floor shifted, causing Sam and Dean to stumble as they moved for the stairwell. The old house was trembling as though it was going to collapse any second. Wood panels and oak trim splintered and blew away from the wall as the supports beneath lifted and moved. Entire walls slid to and fro, casting off antique wood detailing like a dog shaking water from its coat.
“Glad to know the engine still works,” Dean muttered darkly, grabbing one stable doorframe for support as another wall shifted unexpectedly. “Why’s he opening the trap? He’s still one soul short of releasing that thing.”
“Maybe not,” Sam shouted back, keeping pace at Dean’s left shoulder as they pushed ahead. Dean’s blood ran cold when he realized what Sam meant.
The floor in front of them began to rotate, dragging an entire wall with it, and effectively cutting them off from the stairs. And their brother.
Dean cursed under his breath. “We’re gonna have to find another way around.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Shandor tried to penetrate the salt line again and again as Adam finished salting his corpse and went for the accelerant.
“No! No!”
Adam tried to keep an eye on the violently thrashing spirit as he worked. Once the bones were gone, the threat should be over. Gigantic devil’s trap open or not, with no one to sacrifice the last soul, the demon likely wouldn’t appear.
“You mustn’t!”
He coated the remains in as much accelerant as he dared, given that he’d be in close proximity when it was lit, and was careful to avoid getting any on himself or on the floor near him.
As he proceeded, he realized that the commotion behind him had suddenly ceased. Turning, Adam saw that Shandor’s ghost had retreated, and was standing-or floating-near the center of the concrete floor area. Its arms reached out, stretching into a crucifixion-like pose as Shandor’s voice boomed.
“I conjure thee, Baphomet! Per sedem Baldarey et per gratiam et diligentiam tuam babuisti ab eo banc nalatimanamilam!”
A quiet part of Adam’s mind urged him to finish burning the remains, but he was transfixed for a moment as Shandor’s ghost began to grow, spreading out in all directions as he shouted in the ancient language. It occurred to Adam that he had heard some of the words in Hell, echoing seemingly at random all around as he and Sam had been tortured by Lucifer’s most ruthless minions.
Adam couldn’t move.
“I command thee, usor, dilapidatore, tentatore, seminatore, soignatore, devoratore, concitore, et seductore! Reward my sacrifice!”
Something snapped Adam’s brain back to attention, and he spun around, snatching the box of matches from his duffel and striking one as he faced Shandor’s remains. The match burst to life, and Adam flung it down onto the bones.
It was too late.
Even as the match fell, out of the corner of his eye, Adam saw Shandor’s spirit radiate outward into a cloud of glowing particles, expanding like an explosion in slow motion. The radiant cloud coalesced into a madly swirly vortex. Dark red lines and sigils bubbled up from cracks in the floor, drawn in blood.
The remains at Adam’s feet caught fire as the whirlwind of particles was sucked downward, disappearing into the concrete floor. All was silent, even the distant groaning of the house above muting as everything in the basement seemed to abruptly stop.
The center of the concrete floor exploded. A ball of fire and dirt blasted up, erupting into the basement. The shock wave reached Adam as he covered his eyes against the flash of light, and seconds before the deafening sound of the Earth cracking open. He was catapulted backward off his feet, and his head collided with something unyielding. As Adam slid away from consciousness, he was vaguely aware of the air filling with a sulfuric stench, and waves of heat replaced the former chill.
TBC