Best Laid Schemes (7/10)
Sam didn't move to put away the history books, and Dean looked at him expectantly. "Come on, man. We have to go."
"What did you find, Dean?" Sam had his hand on the newspapers, preventing Dean from putting them away. "I'm sure a few minutes won't make a difference. Just tell me what you found."Dean sighed heavily, sinking back into his seat. He slid an article over towards Sam. "This has happened before. Nineteen seventy three, to be exact. And again in '95." Sam looked down at the article Dean had given him while Dean continued to speak. "Four people died under suspicious circumstances within the span of one month."Sam looked up, deciding to forgo looking for the information Dean had obviously already found. "So what was the link between the deaths?"Dean cleared his throat, coughing slightly and kneading a hand across his forehead, unhappy that Sam was obviously not going to leave without knowing the details. "In 1973 the town held a harvest festival for the three hundredth anniversary of Chief Papequanaehen's death."
"That seems kind of morbid."Dean snorted. "Yeah. Here, look at this." He pushed one of the papers towards Sam. "Apparently there were a lot of townspeople who were unhappy about the festival in the first place."
"The Esopus descendants."Dean nodded. "Yeah, I assume so. After all, why would they be in favor of a festival celebrating the brutal death of their chief?"
"So the Esopus versus the Huguenots again. That's definitely a common theme in this town."
"It's stupid, that's what it is. You'd think three hundred years would be long enough to get over their feud. But anyway," Dean continued, "the festival hit a few snags along the way. The head of the planning committee died of some freak animal attack two weeks before the festival. And the second-in-command died just a few days after that. The town wanted to cancel the festival because they were certain that it was cursed, but the mayor refused to shut it down. Apparently too much money had been invested into it and canceling it would bankrupt the town."
"Let me guess. The mayor died."
"I wish."
"Dean," Sam chastised.
"What? Oh right, sorry. But it would have been preferable to what did happen. Here's the newspaper from the next day." Dean slid one more paper over to Sam.
"Oh, shit."Dean nodded knowingly. "Yeah. Complete disaster. The Ferris wheel that they had brought in specifically for the festival collapsed, killing two people and injuring about a dozen more."Sam didn't say anything for a minute, quickly scanning the article. "Were the people who were killed part of the planning committee?"
"They were just normal townspeople, I think. And four children were seriously injured."
"And what about the incident in '95?"
"Yeah, I didn't find that much on that, but I still think it was related. A few contractors had proposed a new housing development that would have required digging on sacred Esopus land. There weren't any deaths, but enough freak accidents happened during the planning that the whole project was just abandoned."
"And then nothing until now?"Dean waved his hand at the papers scattered across the table. "Feel free to look for yourself. But if there was anything like the festival, I think I would have seen it. Did you find anything in those books?"Sam looked at his own notes, slightly embarrassed by his lack of progress. "Not much more than we already knew. Although..." he trailed off, flipping through the pages of one of the books that focused on Chief Papequanaehen and Heka. "Here," Sam said, pointing to a passage in the book. "Read that."
"And so it shall be, from this day forth, that only he who is a child of this great tribe shall have the power to raise the glorious one,"Dean read. "I don't get it."
"They uttered this chant before burying Chief Papequanaehen with the wand."
"I thought they buried the wand so no one would be able to use it again."Sam nodded. "I guess they trusted themselves more than they did the Hugeunots. I think this was a kind of a safeguard against the wand getting into the wrong hands. With this spell, the only people who could use the wand to summon evil were descendants of the Esopus."
"Well that changes things," Dean mused. "Mark's whole theory that the wand was discovered when the bodies were dug up is kind of invalid now, no?"
"Yeah, especially since it seems like the wand must have been used on those other occasions too. And unless the construction workers and university faculty are descendants of the Esopus, they wouldn't have been able to use the wand. I don't know why they still took those bodies, but I think they may have sealed their fate by doing so," Sam concluded. "We should go talk to..." Sam broke off mid-sentence, feeling the vibrating of his cell phone in his jeans pocket. He pulled it out and checked the caller ID. "It's Mark," he told Dean, getting up from the table.
"Why the hell is he calling you?" Dean asked, annoyed. Sam held up a hand to shh him, then moved to an aisle to hide himself from the librarian.
"Mark? What's up?"
"Peter Burns died."
"Who?"
"The third guy from the construction site."
"Dammit. He didn't survive the accident?"Sam could almost hear Mark shaking his head no. "He did. Hell, they were going to let me see him, but there was some sort of malfunction with this breathing tube. He suffocated in his own damn hospital bed."
"Shit," Sam murmured, seeing Dean approach him. "Dean was right."
"What are you talking about?" Mark asked. "Right about what?"
"We'll explain when we see you. Let's head back to the Bed & Breakfast now, though. We've got a lot to discuss and I think we need a new game plan."
"Yeah, sounds good. How's Dean doing?"Sam glanced at his brother, trying to prevent him from hearing what they were discussing. "About the same," he said quietly. "See you in a bit."
"What'd he say?" Dean had the stack of newspapers in his hand, and Sam went over to the table to grab the books he'd been using.
"Peter Burns - the third construction worker - just died of some freak accident in the hospital. You were right, I think. We need to talk to Dean Holgrum and Bill Watkins, the head of the anthropology department, before they become victims four and five. And then we need to figure out who the hell is doing this and how we can make them stop."
Dean drove the car to the bed and breakfast, though Sam had put up a cursory fight. The truth was, Dean did seem slightly better after getting sick at the diner, and it was only about a two minute drive back to their room. Still, Sam kept a close eye on Dean while he drove, ready to pull rank if the need presented itself.
Mark was standing outside their door when Dean pulled the Impala into the parking lot. Sam quickly unlocked the door to their room and the three filed in.
"So what have you boys got for me?" Mark's attitude seemed more serious now. Sam supposed the gravity of the case was weighing on him. Three deaths in the the span of twelve hours would certainly do that to you.
"We think the person controlling the wand is an Esopus descendant," Dean explained quickly, slightly annoyed that he seemed to have been relegated to the sidelines for this case. "And the dean of the college and the head of the anthropology department will be the next two people to die unless we can stop whoever has the wand."
"Whoa, hold up. So you don't think the stealing of the bodies had anything to do with obtaining the wand?"Dean shrugged. "That may very well have been their intent. But Sam and I are almost positive they didn't find the wand when they excavated those bodies."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because this isn't the first time something like this has occurred," Sam spoke up, seeing that Dean was growing tired - the effort of retelling the story to Mark seemed to have sapped him of energy.
"We also found this," Dean was sitting on his bed now, his elbows on his knees, but he pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Mark.
"Dean," Sam groaned when he recognized the paper as the passage from the history book. "You can't just rip out pages from library books!"Dean glared at Sam. "Really? Who the hell is going to miss that? You're such a..."
"Boys!" Mark interrupted, stopping their argument. "What is this, Dean?"Dean shrugged slightly. "Ask Sam, he's the history nerd."Mark couldn't hold back a slight chuckle at that, even if it earned him a glare from Sam. "Okay, Sam. What exactly does this mean?"
"I'm pretty sure this ritual - or chant- was uttered by the Esopus before they put Chief Papequanaehen's body into the ground. They knew the power of the wand and the damage it could cause, so by burying it they tried to ensure that their people - and their ancestors - would never get their hands on it. But they knew this probably wasn't enough to keep the wand from falling into enemy hands, so they performed this ritual to make the wand impotent to non-Esopus."Dean laughed loudly. "Impotent," he repeated and laughed again. Sam shoved him lightly.
"Stop being such a child."
"If it was so dangerous, though, why not just make it powerless to everyone?" Mark asked, ignoring the brothers' mini-feud.
"It was still a great weapon to have. And at that point in time, the Esopus were firmly entrenched in a territorial battle with the new settlers. I believe they didn't want to sacrifice it as a weapon."
"Maybe the head of the anthropology department would know more," Mark suggested.
"You mean like why the hell they thought stealing the bodies was a good idea?" Dean croaked.
"Yeah, like that. We'll see if we can find the dean too. I have a feeling they'll be so freaked about the deaths, they'll tell us what we want to know," Sam added.
"Alright, sounds like a plan. Wanna split up again? I'll take the professor, you two take the dean," Mark asked.
"Uhh," Sam hesitated, looking back at his brother. Whether Dean gave in to his body's needs or not, Sam knew he'd be wiped pretty soon. Still, if they only warned one of the men and the other ended up dying, Sam knew he couldn't forgive himself. "Yeah, okay," he agreed. "But after this, we stick together. This is some pretty powerful black magic. We can't let our guards down at all."Mark agreed and they made plans to meet up at 6:30 at the local pizzeria.
"I just love it when you take charge like that, Sammy," Dean told his brother sarcastically after Mark had left.
"Good, then sit down," he pushed Dean down onto the bed, ignoring his brother's annoyed protests. "If you insist on not sitting this one out, then you're going to do what I say. Deal?"
"I don't think I like how that sounds."
"Dean. I'm serious. It's two against one here. Stop being such a stubborn jerk. You and I both know you're sick, so stop fighting and let me help you."Dean sighed heavily. "Fine, if it will get you off my back. What do you want me to do?"
"Here, drink this," Sam said, holding out a capful of the cough medicine. He pulled out a few more meds for Dean to take.
"Sam, I can't take all of these. I need to be awake."
"They're the non-drowsy kind. And anyway, what good is being awake if you can't concentrate because your head hurts too badly?"Dean eyed the meds distastefully, wondering how Sam could read him so well. "Fine," he grumbled, but eventually swallowed them down. "Let's go."
Dean Holgrum was larger than Sam had expected and he spoke with an authority that was intimidating even to Sam. It was obvious that he had a lot on his mind and wanted nothing to do with the two strangers who had shown up at his office. Sam could tell he was going to kick them out if they didn't make a compelling reason for him to listen, so he planned to get right to the point. Dean beat him to it.
"We think you're cursed," he croaked out, and Sam almost laughed at how non threatening Dean seemed. "We know you stole the bodies, and if you don't listen to us, you're going to die."But the dean seemed more annoyed than scared, and picked up his office phone, threatening to call campus police.
"Hear us out a minute," Sam pleaded, holding up his arms in a placating gesture. "We just want to help you. We know you took the bodies - we have an eye-witness. We just want to know why."The dean eyed them carefully, but he put down the phone after a moment or two. "Who are you?"Dean moved to pull out his FBI badge, but Sam stopped him. "I'm Sam and this is my brother Dean. We came here to after all the weird occurrences at the library. We know a thing or two about ancient curses and we just want to help."
Holgrum still eyed them warily, his hand hovering over the phone.
"Peter Burns is dead," Dean added tiredly, and Sam hoped the exhaustion in his voice would get through to Holgrum. "Anthony Spitz and Peter Rushmore, too. But I'm guessing you already knew that, didn't you?"Holgrum sighed loudly, the fight immediately leaving him. He no longer looked like the imposing figure he had when they'd first entered the office. Now he just looked like a tired, scared man who was in way over his head. "I didn't know about Peter, no. But I guess I'd been expecting it."
"Why did you move the bodies, Dean Holgrum?" Sam asked gently.
"Call me Richard," Holgrum requested. "It was stupid, I know. We were going to move them to the museum eventually. We just didn't want to risk any of the Esopus descendants taking them. It's happened before, you know. They think just because their great great great ancestors were Esopus, they can mess with historical artifacts. Those bones should be in a museum, not buried in some unmarked Indian graveyard."Sam was starting to get seriously annoyed with the guy, but he kept his comments to himself. "So you weren't looking for the wand?"Richard's eyes didn't register any recognition, and Sam guessed he didn't even know about the he had seemed so interested in Esopus history. Sam was shocked he didn't know about it. "What wand?" Richard asked, confirming Sam's suspicion. He was trying to think of a lie when Dean saved him, breaking out into a terrible coughing fit. Sam immediately went to his brother's side, hovering protectively as his brother coughed and sputtered.
"Is he okay?" Richard asked, obviously glanced up from his perch by Dean's side. "He's fine," Sam lied, for some reason unwilling to let Holgrum know how sick his brother really was. He waited for Dean to stop coughing, then whispered low into his brother's ear, "Areyou okay?"Dean shook his head minutely, "Need to sit down," he grunted, putting a considerable amount of weight on Sam's shoulders. Richard had been watching the two, and he pulled out a chair for Dean. Sam nodded his thanks, depositing his too-hot brother into the seat. "Do you need anything?" Sam asked anxiously. "Do you want me to get you water?"
"I'll get him some," Richard spoke up, and hurried from the room. Sam felt momentarily guilty about his initial impression of the man. He didn't seem so bad anymore, and he seemed genuinely concerned for Dean's well being.
"We need to get you back to the motel," Sam decided, taking in his brother's haggard appearance. The illness was certainly progressing way too quickly for his shook his head more forcefully this time. "No. We finish this first."
"Dean you're in no shape..."
"Sam. Please. If we stop...I don't think I'll be able to keep going."Sam wanted to shout that's the point, but Richard was already coming back into the room and he didn't want to start anything now. "Here you go," Richard said, handing Sam the cup. Dean looked up at him, taking it from Sam.
"Thanks," he grunted, taking a big sip of the ice cold water, relishing the coolness on his throat.
"So," Richard asked after a minute. "What about this wand you were talking about?"Sam had hoped that he'd forgotten, and he fumbled to come up with an adequate lie. "Just an artifact that one of our friends had mentioned when we told him we were coming up here. He's a major history buff, especially about Native American history. So he knows every tiny detail about the Esopus."Richard nodded, but still seemed a little skeptical. "So do you know what's causing this, then? And why are my friends dying?"
"How long have you lived here?" Sam asked. Surely if the dean had lived here for awhile, he would know about the harvest festival.
"I've only been at the college since 2004. Before that I was dean of admissions at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs."
"So then you don't really know much about this town's history? About the conflict between the Esopus and the Huguenots?"Holgrum seemed offended by that and defended himself vehemently. "I know the history," he said evenly, his voice bordering on angry. "Maybe not every aspect of it. But that's why I want to preserve it."
"He wasn't trying to insult you," Dean offered from his perch in the chair. "It just helps explain why you didn't know about the last time this happened."
"The last time?" Holgrum asked, his voice breaking slightly. "This has happened before?"
"At least twice," Sam confirmed. "We think it has something to do with the Esopus descendants trying to preserve their history from outsiders like you who try to interfere with it." Sam knew that last statement wouldn't earn him any favors from the dean, but at this point, that was the last thing on his looked predictably pissed, but chose not to address the dig by Sam. "Well how do we stop it?"Dean shrugged. "Your guess is as good as ours. I think the first step, though, would be to return the bodies to where they came from."Holgrum looked conflicted for a microsecond, until Sam reminded him it was either that or certain death. "How soon can we do it?"
"Tonight," Dean said firmly, looking hard at his brother and daring Sam to contradict did anyway. "No, not tonight. We're not prepared - we still don't know what we're dealing with."
"All we're going to do is move the bodies, Sam. It's not like we're trying to fight whomever's behind the deaths. What's the worst that could happen."Sam groaned. "Do you even need me to list how this could potentially go wrong?"
"No thanks. Look, Sam, stop being so uptight. There's three of us right here. With Mark and the anthropology professor we have five. I think it will be easier to protect everyone now rather than worry about when or where the next 'accident' may strike."Sam hesitated, not willing to admit Dean had a point.
"What about you guys?" Holgrum spoke up. "You're involved now, aren't you? How do you know you're not in danger too?"Dean heard Sam curse quietly behind him, but used this new point to his advantage. "Sam," he kept his voice low so only his brother could hear it. "We both know I'm getting worse. We might as well try to find the wand while I can still stand."
"Let's see what Mark says," Sam gave in, taking out his phone and stepping outside the office so he could talk in fidgeted nervously in his chair, knowing Holgrum was studying him closely. He really hoped Sam would relent and agree to go tonight. His body felt leaden - weighed down with exhaustion. Dean knew the second he lay down he wouldn't be able to get cleared his throat in an attempt to break the silence. "So I assume you guys deal with this sort of thing a lot?"Dean raised his eyes to look at Holgrum. "Yeah, you could say that." He coughed into his fist, lowering his eyes to look at the floor again and hoping Holgrum would get the hint and stop talking. If he did get the hint, though, he chose to ignore it.
"We didn't mean any harm by moving the bodies. We just thought it was important for to preserve the past."Dean didn't feel like answering, so he merely grunted his acknowledgment.
"Do you think I'm going to die?"Dean wanted to tell the guy to shut up, but knew he was just scared. He looked at Holgrum one more time. "Not on my watch."Holgrum seemed satisfied with that answer and remained quiet until Sam returned from his phone call. "Mark thinks we should go tonight." Dean smiled smugly. "Whatever you're going to say, don't." Sam told him. "Mark is just as unhappy about this as I am, but he thinks this is our best chance to protect Holgrum and Watkins."Dean nodded, having a hard time suppressing his grin. "Did he get anything from the anthropology professor?"Sam nodded. "Well, for one, he knew about the previous incidents and he even provided Mark with a few more that we didn't already know about."
"Well then why the hell would he advocate taking the bodies?" Dean whispered, sneaking a glance at Holgrum to see if he had heard them.
"Mark said he avoided that question, but to me it sounds like he was hoping to find other powerful relics similar to the wand."
"Bill lied?" Holgrum spoke up. He'd obviously heard what Sam and Dean had been discussing. "He said he just wanted to preserve the town's history. Like me."
"Sorry to break it to you, Rich, but sounds like your buddy is a real S.O.B." Dean told him. "And I'm sure your construction buddies weren't operating merely under altruistic measures, either."
"Dean," Sam nudged his brother. "Either way, the fact is that unless we return those bodies to where you found them, both of you are in grave danger. And you're right, we've probably put ourselves at risk too. We need to get into the library tonight. Can you call off the security officers who have been standing guard at the library?"Holgrum nodded, still visibly shaken by the turn of events. "I'll do so immediately." He went to his phone to make the call.
"So what's our plan?" Dean asked.
"Mark says he'll meet us at the library in fifteen minutes. He's picking some stuff up at his room just in case."
"And what do we do after we move the bodies?"Sam shook his head slightly. "No idea, but that can wait until tomorrow."
"Okay, they're leaving," Holgrum announced. "How the hell will I be able to explain this?"
"You should have thought about that before you stole the bodies in the first place," Sam pointed out, his tone slightly nodded. "You're right, son. And if I could take it back I would."
"Well you can't take it back, but maybe you can make it right," Dean told him, pushing up from his chair, wobbling on weak legs. "Let's roll."