The Killing Moon
20. The Beast in the Cellar
It's still and quiet, and whatever is cradling him in its arms now is warm and wearing a shirt, but the memory of moist, gluey, icy flesh sticking to his cheek as the landscape flew by so fast it made him feel dizzy and sick has Dean giving an involuntary shiver and swallowing hard. He wonders if he dreamed it, seizes on some distant recent? memory of being held close like this, and feels his way up the shirt, patting gently at chest level, even chancing a squeeze.
"I won't ask what you're looking for, boy," Bobby rumbles.
Dean's hand freezes for a second and then it clutches even tighter at its handful of fabric, and he can feel the breath of life on his face, hear the beat of life in his ear. He turns his face into the warmth as Bobby's arms close tighter around him, and he cries out into the old man's chest, soundless shuddering cries of what he doesn't know any more - pain, rage, anguish, distress, grief, desperation, joy? It's like everything he feels got left out in the rain and it all bled together like one of his kid brother's paintings, red, orange, yellow and green daubed on so thick and wet they never had the chance to dry before the bright colors ran together into a tie-dyed, mottled, rainbow mess that Uncle Bobby said was abstract expressionism, like de Kooning, boys, as he taped it to the garage wall.
"I got you," Bobby murmurs. "I got you."
Dean he can feel the old man's hand at the back of his head, stroking his hair there, and he breathes easier, swallows thickly, mutters into Bobby's chest. "Where are we?"
"Root cellar, behind the cabin."
It must be a good sign that Bobby can joke, and Dean shifts his head around stiffly, wondering if Lee maybe grabbed him round the neck or something, because it still hurts there and the ache extends across his shoulders and down into his chest.
"No, really," he whispers tiredly. "Where are we?"
"Root cellar, son," Bobby says again. "Behind the cabin. Sam's here, Kathleen too. And your pet wendigo. It brought you here."
"But she got out," Dean mutters. "She got out. Didn't she?" He twists around, sees Hudak slumped against his brother, asleep. "Damn," He groans, but then he brightens as much as he can when he feels like someone had at him with a tire iron in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, before driving Killdozer over him for good measure. "Gun. In her pack. Silver bullets in it."
He feels Bobby's chin brush the top of his head as the old man nods. "Yep. Just not down here. Topside. She took the pack off to get the rope."
"Rope," Dean echoes. "So we can-"
"Rope, nope. Too far up."
Dean manages a glance up above him, sees the frayed end of the rope. He sags back against Bobby's shoulder then, and despite everything, with the monster he can see crouched in the opposite corner, with no gun, no rope, here he feels safe, even though he's way too hot one minute and chilled to the bone the next, and he can feel sweat sheeting down his back.
"Whassit doing?" he croaks, feeling himself start to shiver.
"It's just laying there," Bobby says. "It hasn't hurt me or them… it even brought me food. It just comes and goes. Lies over there in between. I guess it isn't ready to-"
Bobby stops abruptly, just leans over, reaches for something, and Dean feels a bottle being pressed to his lips. He sips gratefully, but as parched as he is he has to force it down, let it trickle down there really, as he stares up at the moon, glowing pinkish now through the half-open cellar door. He knows, knows why Bobby ground to a halt. "It's finished with the others," he whispers. "You're next." His stomach curls, wretched and desperate, and he feels sick at the thought. "Bobby…"
Bobby sniffs, and when he replies his voice is light, and it's a forced, faked lightness. "The hell I am," he says. "Soon as you're up on your feet, we're out of here."
For a minute Dean lets himself believe the lie, and he thinks maybe Bobby does too before the old man breaks the silence.
"You're pretty banged up, kid," he says. "What the hell happened up there?"
"Bender," Dean mutters, breathing deep through the shudder that wracks him at the name. "Bender happened. And then it. It saved me from him. Can you fuckin' believe that?" He screws up his eyes as a bolt of pain streaks up his leg, thinks he might even whimper, and he feels a gentle rocking sensation. "You're rocking me," he sighs out, and inside his head everything is swirling bubbles, like the last few inches of bathwater circling the plughole. "Fuck, Bobby. Next. You. You have to go… you, Sam, her. Leave me. Go. Please"
"No can do kid," Bobby says gently. "Can't reach the rope, remember? And yeah. I'm rocking you."
Sam Winchester is nothing if not comfortable. The kid is built, and that's a fact, Hudak feels like she's leaning up against one of those overstuffed leather couches that bulge out in between the buttons. He's rock solid. Four feet wide, maybe, she sure wouldn't want to run into him in a thin alley, and she wonders why they haven't just thought of using his chest as a springboard. She can see it in her mind: she runs, leaps, hits, just like those guys doing the vaulting horse at the Olympic Games, and he flexes his pecs and bounces her up to the rope.
"Bounce from the pecs," she sniggers.
"From the what?"
Well she might have known, but instead of answering him she watches the thing in slumber, curled up in a fetal position, which creeps her out intensely because it's such an unsettling reminder that this thing was birthed, red-faced and squalling, just like her, just like all of them, and it had its ass slapped and was wrapped up and handed to its mother, who held it close and rained kisses on its bald head while it gripped her pinky and gazed up at her.
"It was like us," she whispers. "It was a baby. It smiled and it cried, it grew teeth, it crawled and it toddled, it said its first words… it had a brother." For a second, she remembers what Dean told her, the snapshot memories filed in his brain, and she forces them back down because his words were so pure and this thing is corrupt, depraved, can't possibly compare, even if it was someone's brother. Can it?
And then Sam is poking her in the ribs. "It's not like us now," he's saying, and his voice is urgent. "Kathleen. It doesn't matter if it communicates. It isn't one of us now. And if you get the chance, you have to take it. Do you understand me? Don't look at it and see even a shred of humanity, because it's long gone. The second you stop to do that is the second when it'll rip out your throat."
She nods, slowly, because the dull ache in her skull is still there in the background of every thought. "I'll be ready," she murmurs, keeps staring over at it. "Sam… why do you suppose it hangs onto that one body?"
"Does it?" Sam squints into the darkness and frowns. "Well… maybe it's like what you were saying," he says. "It was a kid once. Maybe it had a teddy bear?"
Hudak snorts discreetly, can't help it. "Who's seeing humanity now?" she snarks. "You're saying that rotting bag of bones is this thing's lovey?"
He shrugs, throws up his hands. "Stranger things have happened."
"Yeah," she says feelingly. "Who knows, it could even be Bender."
Sam is yawning, but he freezes, mouth half open, dawning comprehension in his eyes, and he looks over at it, back at her.
She reads his expression like a book. "You don't really think it could be?"
Her eye is caught by movement then, Bobby laying Dean down on the ground, easing himself out from behind, crawling over.
"He came round for a few minutes," the old man whispers. "He was pretty confused… said Bender was up there, said that thing saved him, and then he drifted off again."
"At least he's Dean," Hudak points out. "That's something."
Sam leans forward, motions over to the sleeping beast. "Bobby, has it always hung onto that one body when it sleeps?" he says, his voice sharp with excitement.
Bobby eases himself onto his butt, follows Sam's stare over to the corner, scratches at his scruff of beard. "It's been hanging onto one of them," he muses wearily. "Can't say for sure it's been the same one, though. Why?"
"We think it might be Bender," Hudak says at his puzzled look.
"It makes sense," Sam chips in. "That thing was holed up in the mines before it woke up. It was watching them, stalking them. It knew where they were camped, it could have found Bender afterwards."
Bobby nods slowly. "And Bender couldn't be with it in the mine because of the iron."
Sam pushes up abruptly. "Enough resting. We need to try for the rope again," he whispers down at them. "Dean will die in here if we don't get him out. You fired the gun, Kathleen, we heard it. If you dropped it when that thing tackled you, it must be up there. And they're both here… we shoot this thing, we get out, and then all we need is matches and something to light this place up with, and Bender's history."
"Assuming it's his body," Hudak says, and he scowls as she takes his outstretched hand, follows him up.
Bobby's knees crack as he rises beside them. "There must be something in the cabin we can use as an accelerant," the old man whispers down at Hudak, suddenly alert, hope in his voice. "If that is his body, we can get both of these things if you can grab that rope and get out of here."
It's like the three fuckin' stooges as Dean eyes them through slitted lids, Bobby giving umpteen leg-ups, and he thinks the old bastard might be goosing Hudak a tad too enthusiastically as he plants his hand on her butt and hoists her up, hands off, old man. He idly watches her stretch her fingertips up, up, for the rope, always two feet too high, and he wonders if he might get to see her do that leg-behind-the-ear trick if she ever does manage to grab hold of it, because there's no fuckin' way she's swinging her leg up and over without some tree-hugger-hand-knitted-yogurt yoga pose being in the equation somewhere.
You ain't goin' nowhere, purty boy…
It seeps into Dean's consciousness, and he grits his teeth. I'm ignoring you, Lee, he thinks. Fuck the fuck off.
He focuses back on the escape efforts, and she's falling again, landing on top of Sam in a tangle of limbs and stifled cursing, nervous glances aimed over at the corner. They're doing it all in whispers, in frantic gestures, raised eyebrows, and pointed looks of irritation, but even so Dean is amazed they haven't woken it. He wonders for a second if it is awake, if it's lying there watching them through slitted lids just like he is, and thinking three fuckin' stooges. And then he wonders with a hollow dread if it really is dead to the world, if it slumbers on because it's tired, because it wants to sleep for a hundred years, because the moon says it's the right time. And that means it will need to feed.
"Again…"
Up Hudak climbs for another action replay, and it's getting boring now. And even they must realize it because after they collapse in a heap again they pause for a pow-wow. Hudak leans over and rests a cool hand on Dean's brow, and he turns into the touch but keeps his eyes shut tight, and closes his ears to Lee's continuous rant too. Not listening. Nope.
He can feel hands on his leg, turning it, lifting it slightly, and he can't help the sound he makes, can't help shifting with the discomfort. He listens as they talk about his fever and his foot in whispers, the hushed tones people use when they're talking about fatal diseases, deciding to switch off life support, considering organ donation, debating burial or cremation, and he can just hear them above Lee yammering in his ear. S' fuckin' boring now, Lee, boring like date night with a fuckin' nun. I'm over it. Moved on.
Dean tenses his muscles, moans softly, but they don't hear him even though they're whispering. He hurts everywhere… except for the tip of his pinkie, maybe. Easier to pick out the bits that don't ache, smart, sting, throb, that don't send little screeching electric shocks shooting up to his brain, that don't sink vicious, needle-sharp fangs into his flesh, and he forces himself to breathe through it, I'm the best fuckin' Dean Winchester I can be, hell yeah.
"All I'm saying is that we need a contingency plan in case it isn't there. This thing was human once, it might remember what guns are, might have thrown it into the trees. So what if it isn't there? What then?"
Oh Kathleen, Dean thinks. So fuckin' practical, so right to the point, so cut to the chase, so enough of the crap, so tell it like it is, so many shades of awesome, so out of his fuckin' league. Can it, Lee. You can't hurt me now.
"Can we just keep a shred of fuckin' optimism going here? Look on the bright side, for Christ's sake…"
The voice is irritated, crackles like it's tiptoeing across broken glass, and Dean's jaded heart gives a little hop, skip and a jump, Bobby-Bobby-Bobby, steady as a brick shithouse in a light breeze, dependable, reliable, never say die, never, never, never say die.
"Fire will kill it. There were lamps in the cabin, kerosene lamps. If you can't see the gun, get inside, get the lamps. And matches. Is my pack still in the cabin? It'll have matches, and my lighter, outside pocket… and check the pantry - there must be liquor in there somewhere, we can use it as a Molotov."
Sam, excited, nervous, hissing out the words high and impatient, and then Kathleen cuts in.
Keep it down, Lee, trying to keep up here, quit your fuckin' noise.
"Sam, you can't set that thing alight with all of you still down here, it'll smoke like crazy, you'll-"
"No it won't," Sam insists. "The one Dean burned in Colorado burned cold, there was no smoke, it just sort of - combusted into thin air."
"That's been my experience too, Sam, but look around you - that thing won't be all that burns," Bobby says, and he sounds doubtful now, looking on the dark side even, and Christ, Dean thinks, the old sod can sure keep a shred of fuckin' pessimism going when he wants to.
"Kathleen is right," the old man continues. "Shooting a silver bullet straight at it is one thing, but if the gun isn't up there it isn't going to just let us climb out of here without a fight. And if we spray kerosene around down here, we might get both of them - but if all these bodies go up, we risk flamegrilling us too."
There's a brief silence, even Lee's keeping schtum for a minute, and it's so easy for Dean to sneak a hand in his hip pocket, pinch one of his little helpers between his thumb and forefinger, creep it up to his lips and push it in to sit on his tongue where it dissolves slowly. It's chalky, downright fuckin' skeevy when dry-swallowed, and he makes a mental note, never again.
"It's scared of fire," Sam offers. "Bobby, if you go first I can hold it off with one of the lamps while we get Dean out of here, then I can tie the rope around me and you can haul me up after I throw the lamp."
"And Bender's just going sit by and watch while you do this?"
"We can lay a salt line, I'll make sure to stay inside it… fuck it, we have to do something." Sam pushes up. "Kathleen, come on. I'm going to try throwing you. Or maybe grip you by the ankles and lift you up off my shoulders. Come on, while it's still sleeping."
"Lift me by the ankles?"
Dean rolls his eyes, muses silently that the thing is going to be sucking the marrow from her bones no matter what if she doesn't get her ass out of this pit, that up a crispy critter is the least of her worries. Just get on top of my brother, he thinks. Now. And that didn't come out right.
"We have to do this now. It's going to wake at some point and then… then… who knows what it could do?"
Dean hears Sam flounder for a second on the words, thinks, he knows it's the least of her worries too.
"It's not human anymore, Kathleen," Sam goes on then. "Just because it hasn't hurt us up to now doesn't mean it won't, it could maybe separate us, get even more aggressive, it could, it could…" He huffs, frustrated, and Dean can decode it as easy as if Sam yelled it through a megaphone. Bobby's next.
"Surrender…" he slurs, because his voice is suddenly working again. "It could surrender to us, maybe. But I'm not counting on it…"
Sam's face looms up to fill Dean's vision, eyes all big and bright and shiny, and his voice shaky. "Dean. Thank God. How do you feel?"
Dean squints up. "You looking for a slap to the head, Sammy?" he whispers. "How the fuck do you think I feel?" He forces his face into a grin, sees his brother ditto the gesture, just barely. "Next time I say I need to face up to things, let's go someplace else, huh?" He shifts uncomfortably. "Help me sit up."
"Do you think that's a good idea?" Hudak interjects from next to his brother, and Bobby is right there on Sam's other side, big smile, face all lit up like the sunrise, glad to see Dean that's why, and Jesus, Dean knows that feeling. Real glad.
"I think it's a fuckin' excellent idea, Kathleen," he rasps, reaching his arm up to her shoulder. "Up. Sit me up. Feel better. God… God." He can't help a low cry as Bobby helps her pull him upright, bites down on it, grits his teeth. "Tylenol. Pocket. Fuck."
Sam squeezes a couple of fingers in, and Jesus, sudden panic, hands too big, too close. "Wait," Dean gasps out, batting the hand away. "I got it."
"What's that hard thing in your pants?" Sam hisses, and then he realizes what he said and backpedals furiously. "I mean. What is that? In there?"
Dean smirks, dips his fingers down there, unhooks the end of the chain and pulls it out over the waistband. "You know what they say, Sammy. If you holster your gun, shooting's more fun."
Sam's eyes widen still further, warm with understanding and compassion. Kindness that Dean wants to drown in, and he chuckles harshly, closes his eyes, covers them, covers his face, starts to shake, hears his teeth chatter.
An arm maneuvers around him, pulls him close. "It's okay, boy. It's okay," Bobby says to the top of Dean's head. "You did good."
Dean can hear his brother whispering up there.
"Did he hurt you? Dean? Did he get past the chain, did he-"
"No. It worked. It worked." And the relief, it's like balm to Dean's soul. "Said my piece, told the scum where to get off. Not my brother. Felt… good." The buzz is zipping in his veins now, loosening his tongue. "Should've been there. Smackdown. Like Fight Club. Kapow. Bamm. Like fuckin' Batman." He flaps a hand at the corner. "Then Skeletor over there shows up and fuck… like Godzilla versus Mothra. The original, not that crap remake. King Kong versus T-Rex. Good times. Christ." He bites down hard on his lip at the pain. "Leg hurts. Tylenol. Pocket. Not you, Sam. Her. Lee, fuck off."
Sam looks all around him, alert, appalled. "Here? Is he here now?"
Dean manages a grin. "Ole Lee's just laying low," he drawls. "Stay frosty."
"We have salt, we have a perimeter around us," Sam says, low and reassuring, and Dean wants to say, don't worry about it man, Lee can't hurt me now, but somehow he doesn't think it'll make Sam feel better, thinks maybe the acknowledgment that soon he'll be past hurting will maybe suck the fight right out of his brother.
Bobby shakes the bottle of water in front of Dean. "Not much fresh water left. Drink it up boy, no sense carrying it with us when we leave."
Hudak is squirreling her fingers down into Dean's pocket and he leers as she frowns, wiggles them deeper, life in the old dog yet. "Left a bit. There. Right… there."
It's soft, breathy, not so soft it can't be heard though.
There-right-there-like-that-more-Jesus-Kathleen-please-God-yes-
"Shut up!" She turns and hollers the words at earsplitting volume, glances back at Dean, and even in the dim light he can see her face glows as red as the thing's eyes.
It stops, stares balefully from its corner, all cozy with its skeleton teddy bear hugged close, red eyes glowing, snaps it out, shut-up-there-like-that-more-God…
Dean can hear Bobby clearing his throat diplomatically to the left of him, as he stares at Sam and Sam stares at him, and he can see it dawn in his brother's eyes. Sam raises a critical eyebrow, and laughter bubbles up in Dean, cracked, desperate laughter, and he must be going mad, must be, as he warbles over at his pet where it sits in its corner, and cackles up at his brother, who's staring down at him like he grew another head as the thing picks up the tune.
It snarls out the words, we're-off-to-see-the-wizard-the-wonderful-wizard-of-Oz, and Dean laughs up at Sam, because it's so damn funny that he has this fuckin' abomination singing Judy Garland. Sam's hands come up to grip each side of Dean's face, and wouldn't it be a fuckin' riot if I taught it to pray, and Dean husks it out, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. It's bouncing the words back at them as soon as they leave Dean's mouth, and it's just as hilarious as he thought it would be, just as wrong, wrong, wrong, just as sick and warped, and-
"Dean. Stop. Now."
Dean stops, chokes back his madness. "You need to leave," he whispers. " Get out."
Sam's reply is firm. "Together, Dean. We go together."
"This is going to Hell in a handbasket," Sam says to Bobby, low so his brother can't hear him. "We need to get out now."
Bobby looks up at the rope, his face set grim and maybe hopeless, and Sam makes a decision, pushes up, heaving his brother along with him despite his weak sounds of protest. He holds Dean slumped upright and tries to keep the weight off his feet. "We do this now," he announces, and he doesn't give a flying fuck about anything at all anymore, because this is his brother. His brother, dying in his arms. "Kathleen."
"But what about the-"
"Bobby, hold him upright," Sam barks, wrestling Dean over to flop him into Bobby's embrace. "He's the shield. You have a knife, look like you mean business."
"You mean-"
"Yeah, I mean. If it thinks we're going to hurt him, it might keep its distance."
The old man's face creases in concern. "Kid, I don't think-"
"We're leaving," Sam reiterates in a growl. "Where's the knife?"
The thing is surging up now and it towers above them, agitated, restless, snarling. It's starting now, happening now, Sam knows, and he looks Bobby right in the eye. The old man stares back, doesn't falter because he knows too, reads what Sam is saying to him in that look, loud and clear. He nods, looks away, pulls his knife from his belt and holds it a few inches from Dean's face, and Dean is so dazed he isn't even aware of it.
Sam motions Hudak closer and she curses softly under her breath as he pushes her up. She clambers onto Sam's shoulders and he reels slightly, reaching out to steady himself with one hand on the dirt wall, while he grips her ankle with the other. Her boot soles grind unforgivingly into his shoulders but still Sam wants to scream at her to grab the fucking rope, jump, anything, because it's a matter of split seconds before this all explodes into the shitstorm of the century, something they just aren't ever coming back from.
"Don't spend too much time looking for the gun, Kathleen," Bobby' is saying, his voice strained. "If it isn't there, go for the lamps and the matches."
Sam can see Bobby tracking the beast with his eyes as it paces. It seems to be holding a conversation with itself, seems to be working out a plan of its own, a frustrated back and forth, and Bobby shuffles back as it jumps a few feet closer, half-dragging his stumbling, confused hostage with him, having to hold Dean up fully now as his knees buckle underneath him.
All the time Sam is bouncing from the fucking knees, and he calls urgently up. "Can you reach it?"
"No, it's too-"
"Try harder!"
"It's too-"
"Try fucking harder," Sam hisses. "Reach for it! Jump if you have to, because we need the fucking gun now."
He digs his fingernails into the bare skin above Hudak's sock in emphasis, feels the weight of her lift off him completely, and it's all a blur then, because something is crashing into him, and it feels like a full body tackle from one of those six-foot-nine inch NFL quarterbacks. He find himself being hurled into the wall, his head bouncing off the hardpacked dirt, and he's sagging, thinking, no, no, no, please God no, and now his only plan is to get to his brother and bury his face in his shoulder so Dean doesn't see what's about to go down. In the same instant, he hears Hudak flop to earth and cry out, sees a fuzzy image of her rolling, recovering, pushing up into a crouch and she's scrabbling at the ground, flinging a mixture of salt and dirt right at Sam. He closes his eyes just before it rains down, realizes what it means, Bender, not the wendigo. Bender will never leave his bones, they should have expected him to drop in again, and Christ, the bastard has perfect timing and how is it that he does that?
Sam can hear Bobby calling his name as he shakes his head hard, tries to shake out the cotton fuzz. He sees a bleary image of the old man over Hudak's shoulder, and shouts, reaches out even though it feels like his hand isn't connected to his arm, because he's doing all of this reflexively; as far as he knows, not one working part of his body is getting through to his brain at all right now.
Hudak registers Sam's message finally, turns as Bobby is cuffed down to the ground, the thing roaring its triumph and hunger as the knife drops harmlessly to the soil. Dean crumples down into an untidy heap, and Hudak twists, starts to throw herself at the knife, to fight the thing off. Sam knows it, and still he grabs her arm, stops her momentum. She turns back, face white and shocked as Bobby's shouts resound around the pit, and Sam yells at her, yells to be heard above the sound of his family being laid to waste in front of him.
"We go again. I'll get Dean."
Her expression is appalled, horrified as it passes from his eyes to hers just as it had to Bobby's: This is a sacrifice I am prepared to make. Don't stand in my way.
"No, Sam, we have to-"
"No!" he shouts. "We need the gun, the bullets. I'll get Dean."
Sam pushes her aside, and as he crawls towards his brother he can see Bobby in his peripheral vision, where the thing is playing with him like a cat with a mouse. It picks him up, drops him, tosses him this way and that, and Sam can hear Bobby's shouts of anger, sees him pummel back, thinks maybe this is Bobby doing his damned best to play this out for as long as he can to distract it, to give them a chance to get out of there before it ends, and Sam doesn't know what he'll do if those shouts become cries for help. But really he does know, knows he'll still grab his brother, knows he'll still bully Hudak into getting back up there, knows that if a ladder suddenly appeared from nowhere, he would still use this as the diversion it is to get Dean out of here while the thing feeds.
He grabs Dean's hand, hauls him over, prays his brother can't see, can't hear, all to no avail because Dean's eyes are wide open and there is a look of growing realization on his face. He starts wriggling like a fish on a hook, shaking his head, turning it to look over to where the noise is coming from, and Sam leaps to his feet, plants his boot firmly on his brother's ragged tee, pins him there as he barks instructions at Hudak.
"Climb up. Now."
Sam chances a look, can see Bobby's hand is gripping a knife now and it's rising and falling, the old man is giving it all he he's got, sinking the blade into the thing's chest. It's squealing at the sting, just a sting because it isn't a silver blade, Sam thinks, it needs to be silver, it'll hardly slow the damn thing down, and time is running out. Sam piggy backs Hudak up, bending at the waist, and then he lets out an involuntary yelp of agony and looks down to see his brother sinking his teeth into his ankle, just above his sneaker.
"We're fucking leaving, Dean!" Sam screams down, but no they aren't, because they're tumbling in a heap again, and Sam flips backwards to avoid crushing his brother under his weight. He hears Hudak's cry as she hits the ground again, harder, and she doesn't get up this time.
The freezing cold blast of Bender erupts next to Sam, icy fingers grip him by the neck, pushing him back against the wall, lips curl gleefully away from brown-stained teeth as the apparition greedily looks him up and down. Its eyes are hungry, naked lust, and Sam thinks, Jesus, this is how he looked at Dean. This is how Bender frightened his brother into helplessness, this is how Bender made him feel like filth, like trash, like nothing, and Sam can feel it leaning closer, whispering in his ear, sick promises that have his balls racing back up into his abdomen and cowering somewhere behind his liver, savage threats that make his knees tremble, that disarm him, overwhelm him, just like they did Dean. And now he knows exactly how and why sheer terror had his brother taking refuge in childhood games of tag, because just for a second he's there too, racing through the dust, laughing because Dean's gaining, reaching out to tap him on the shoulder and take off in the opposite direction. He can even hear his brother's voice through all those years, hear Dean calling, and it's all phasing in and out now as Sam tries to suck oxygen past the hand squeezing his throat, and he thinks his brother might sound desperate, might even sound like he isn't calling Sam's name at all, might sound like he's calling Lee.
And suddenly Sam is sliding down the wall, hard onto his ass just like before, his legs splayed out, and he's just watching it all happen, like watching a movie. In the movie, some old guy is going at it with the monster, and it's pretty fuckin' special, Sammy, and it sure as hell is, because old guy is even fighting it off with a bone. The token woman out of your league, dude, is sitting there looking dazed and rubbing her head, and the bloodsoaked hero is pulling what looks like a chain out of his pants, throwing it to one side, hollering at some other guy angry spirit who just beamed in from nowhere. It must be the guy who created the monster, and maybe he locked some poor sap up years ago, some guy who came to read the meter, that's how these cheap B-movies always play, and he turned him into a monster by feeding busty blond college students to him.
And now cut to the woman, and she's a tough one Dean's right, you are Ripley, hell she's flinging herself on the monster, has her arm up around its throat. It flings the old guy to one side, rises up to its full height, howls in irritation as it reaches long arms back to grab at her, perched high on its back, and Sam can hear her screaming frantically, something about the soft skin and flesh of a woman tasting better than old guys. And it strikes him that the hero isn't exactly holding his own here do something, you fucking idiot, because the big guy it's Lee Bender, get with the program for Christ's sake is slobbering all over him, and the hero Dean, it's Dean, snap out of it is staring at him over the big guy's shoulder, wide-eyed with dismay and pain. Sam looks from Dean's face to the chain, lying discarded near his leg, and it's iron, iron, and fuck, it's Bender, and his brother pulled the chain out of his pants to lure Bender away from him, and Bender's trying to… he's trying to… and his hands are… and no, just no.
When Sam snaps back into himself he thinks it must be like astral projection or something, because it's violent, like someone grabbed him and pulled him out of his body, miles away, maybe up to the stars, and when it let him go he pinged back in there as if his consciousness was connected to his body with elastic. When he collides with himself, it's with the force of a jumper hitting the sidewalk, and he even wonders if he might have mentally splatted. In the next second he's up, has the chain, is flailing it wildly, and Bender vanishes.
"Leave it on!" Sam barks at his brother as he wraps the chain around Dean's arm. "I don't care what you see. Leave it the fuck on."
He spins, ignores Bobby's huddled body, yells at Hudak, who is still being buffeted by the thing. "Let go of it!"
He spies her tube sock discarded over by the wall. Salt circle, them in it, Hudak up top trying for the rope again. It sounds like a plan, and Sam dives on the salt-filled sock, turns back to see Hudak is still up there, hanging on tight. She's being whirled around now, with her legs trailing out behind her like Superman's cloak, and Sam can still hear her yelling at the thing, right into its long pointed ears.
And suddenly it stops spinning, stops trying to dislodge her, and it's looking down at Dean. Sam can see its eyes, its expression, the look that passes between it and his brother, and he gapes, because it's universal male for what the fuck do I do about this screaming harpy?, and it holds out its hands, and Christ, is it asking Dean for help?
Dean darts his eyes to Sam, back to the thing, and he swallows before croaking it out faint and uncertain into the silence.
"Dude, just throw her out if she won't shut up."
And blow them if it doesn't, if it doesn't reach above it, grab Hudak by the head, or so it looks, and send her rocketing up, out into the dark.
To freedom.
To the rope.
To the gun.
Next
It's still and quiet, and whatever is cradling him in its arms now is warm and wearing a shirt, but the memory of moist, gluey, icy flesh sticking to his cheek as the landscape flew by so fast it made him feel dizzy and sick has Dean giving an involuntary shiver and swallowing hard. He wonders if he dreamed it, seizes on some distant recent? memory of being held close like this, and feels his way up the shirt, patting gently at chest level, even chancing a squeeze.
"I won't ask what you're looking for, boy," Bobby rumbles.
Dean's hand freezes for a second and then it clutches even tighter at its handful of fabric, and he can feel the breath of life on his face, hear the beat of life in his ear. He turns his face into the warmth as Bobby's arms close tighter around him, and he cries out into the old man's chest, soundless shuddering cries of what he doesn't know any more - pain, rage, anguish, distress, grief, desperation, joy? It's like everything he feels got left out in the rain and it all bled together like one of his kid brother's paintings, red, orange, yellow and green daubed on so thick and wet they never had the chance to dry before the bright colors ran together into a tie-dyed, mottled, rainbow mess that Uncle Bobby said was abstract expressionism, like de Kooning, boys, as he taped it to the garage wall.
"I got you," Bobby murmurs. "I got you."
Dean he can feel the old man's hand at the back of his head, stroking his hair there, and he breathes easier, swallows thickly, mutters into Bobby's chest. "Where are we?"
"Root cellar, behind the cabin."
It must be a good sign that Bobby can joke, and Dean shifts his head around stiffly, wondering if Lee maybe grabbed him round the neck or something, because it still hurts there and the ache extends across his shoulders and down into his chest.
"No, really," he whispers tiredly. "Where are we?"
"Root cellar, son," Bobby says again. "Behind the cabin. Sam's here, Kathleen too. And your pet wendigo. It brought you here."
"But she got out," Dean mutters. "She got out. Didn't she?" He twists around, sees Hudak slumped against his brother, asleep. "Damn," He groans, but then he brightens as much as he can when he feels like someone had at him with a tire iron in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, before driving Killdozer over him for good measure. "Gun. In her pack. Silver bullets in it."
He feels Bobby's chin brush the top of his head as the old man nods. "Yep. Just not down here. Topside. She took the pack off to get the rope."
"Rope," Dean echoes. "So we can-"
"Rope, nope. Too far up."
Dean manages a glance up above him, sees the frayed end of the rope. He sags back against Bobby's shoulder then, and despite everything, with the monster he can see crouched in the opposite corner, with no gun, no rope, here he feels safe, even though he's way too hot one minute and chilled to the bone the next, and he can feel sweat sheeting down his back.
"Whassit doing?" he croaks, feeling himself start to shiver.
"It's just laying there," Bobby says. "It hasn't hurt me or them… it even brought me food. It just comes and goes. Lies over there in between. I guess it isn't ready to-"
Bobby stops abruptly, just leans over, reaches for something, and Dean feels a bottle being pressed to his lips. He sips gratefully, but as parched as he is he has to force it down, let it trickle down there really, as he stares up at the moon, glowing pinkish now through the half-open cellar door. He knows, knows why Bobby ground to a halt. "It's finished with the others," he whispers. "You're next." His stomach curls, wretched and desperate, and he feels sick at the thought. "Bobby…"
Bobby sniffs, and when he replies his voice is light, and it's a forced, faked lightness. "The hell I am," he says. "Soon as you're up on your feet, we're out of here."
For a minute Dean lets himself believe the lie, and he thinks maybe Bobby does too before the old man breaks the silence.
"You're pretty banged up, kid," he says. "What the hell happened up there?"
"Bender," Dean mutters, breathing deep through the shudder that wracks him at the name. "Bender happened. And then it. It saved me from him. Can you fuckin' believe that?" He screws up his eyes as a bolt of pain streaks up his leg, thinks he might even whimper, and he feels a gentle rocking sensation. "You're rocking me," he sighs out, and inside his head everything is swirling bubbles, like the last few inches of bathwater circling the plughole. "Fuck, Bobby. Next. You. You have to go… you, Sam, her. Leave me. Go. Please"
"No can do kid," Bobby says gently. "Can't reach the rope, remember? And yeah. I'm rocking you."
Sam Winchester is nothing if not comfortable. The kid is built, and that's a fact, Hudak feels like she's leaning up against one of those overstuffed leather couches that bulge out in between the buttons. He's rock solid. Four feet wide, maybe, she sure wouldn't want to run into him in a thin alley, and she wonders why they haven't just thought of using his chest as a springboard. She can see it in her mind: she runs, leaps, hits, just like those guys doing the vaulting horse at the Olympic Games, and he flexes his pecs and bounces her up to the rope.
"Bounce from the pecs," she sniggers.
"From the what?"
Well she might have known, but instead of answering him she watches the thing in slumber, curled up in a fetal position, which creeps her out intensely because it's such an unsettling reminder that this thing was birthed, red-faced and squalling, just like her, just like all of them, and it had its ass slapped and was wrapped up and handed to its mother, who held it close and rained kisses on its bald head while it gripped her pinky and gazed up at her.
"It was like us," she whispers. "It was a baby. It smiled and it cried, it grew teeth, it crawled and it toddled, it said its first words… it had a brother." For a second, she remembers what Dean told her, the snapshot memories filed in his brain, and she forces them back down because his words were so pure and this thing is corrupt, depraved, can't possibly compare, even if it was someone's brother. Can it?
And then Sam is poking her in the ribs. "It's not like us now," he's saying, and his voice is urgent. "Kathleen. It doesn't matter if it communicates. It isn't one of us now. And if you get the chance, you have to take it. Do you understand me? Don't look at it and see even a shred of humanity, because it's long gone. The second you stop to do that is the second when it'll rip out your throat."
She nods, slowly, because the dull ache in her skull is still there in the background of every thought. "I'll be ready," she murmurs, keeps staring over at it. "Sam… why do you suppose it hangs onto that one body?"
"Does it?" Sam squints into the darkness and frowns. "Well… maybe it's like what you were saying," he says. "It was a kid once. Maybe it had a teddy bear?"
Hudak snorts discreetly, can't help it. "Who's seeing humanity now?" she snarks. "You're saying that rotting bag of bones is this thing's lovey?"
He shrugs, throws up his hands. "Stranger things have happened."
"Yeah," she says feelingly. "Who knows, it could even be Bender."
Sam is yawning, but he freezes, mouth half open, dawning comprehension in his eyes, and he looks over at it, back at her.
She reads his expression like a book. "You don't really think it could be?"
Her eye is caught by movement then, Bobby laying Dean down on the ground, easing himself out from behind, crawling over.
"He came round for a few minutes," the old man whispers. "He was pretty confused… said Bender was up there, said that thing saved him, and then he drifted off again."
"At least he's Dean," Hudak points out. "That's something."
Sam leans forward, motions over to the sleeping beast. "Bobby, has it always hung onto that one body when it sleeps?" he says, his voice sharp with excitement.
Bobby eases himself onto his butt, follows Sam's stare over to the corner, scratches at his scruff of beard. "It's been hanging onto one of them," he muses wearily. "Can't say for sure it's been the same one, though. Why?"
"We think it might be Bender," Hudak says at his puzzled look.
"It makes sense," Sam chips in. "That thing was holed up in the mines before it woke up. It was watching them, stalking them. It knew where they were camped, it could have found Bender afterwards."
Bobby nods slowly. "And Bender couldn't be with it in the mine because of the iron."
Sam pushes up abruptly. "Enough resting. We need to try for the rope again," he whispers down at them. "Dean will die in here if we don't get him out. You fired the gun, Kathleen, we heard it. If you dropped it when that thing tackled you, it must be up there. And they're both here… we shoot this thing, we get out, and then all we need is matches and something to light this place up with, and Bender's history."
"Assuming it's his body," Hudak says, and he scowls as she takes his outstretched hand, follows him up.
Bobby's knees crack as he rises beside them. "There must be something in the cabin we can use as an accelerant," the old man whispers down at Hudak, suddenly alert, hope in his voice. "If that is his body, we can get both of these things if you can grab that rope and get out of here."
It's like the three fuckin' stooges as Dean eyes them through slitted lids, Bobby giving umpteen leg-ups, and he thinks the old bastard might be goosing Hudak a tad too enthusiastically as he plants his hand on her butt and hoists her up, hands off, old man. He idly watches her stretch her fingertips up, up, for the rope, always two feet too high, and he wonders if he might get to see her do that leg-behind-the-ear trick if she ever does manage to grab hold of it, because there's no fuckin' way she's swinging her leg up and over without some tree-hugger-hand-knitted-yogurt yoga pose being in the equation somewhere.
You ain't goin' nowhere, purty boy…
It seeps into Dean's consciousness, and he grits his teeth. I'm ignoring you, Lee, he thinks. Fuck the fuck off.
He focuses back on the escape efforts, and she's falling again, landing on top of Sam in a tangle of limbs and stifled cursing, nervous glances aimed over at the corner. They're doing it all in whispers, in frantic gestures, raised eyebrows, and pointed looks of irritation, but even so Dean is amazed they haven't woken it. He wonders for a second if it is awake, if it's lying there watching them through slitted lids just like he is, and thinking three fuckin' stooges. And then he wonders with a hollow dread if it really is dead to the world, if it slumbers on because it's tired, because it wants to sleep for a hundred years, because the moon says it's the right time. And that means it will need to feed.
"Again…"
Up Hudak climbs for another action replay, and it's getting boring now. And even they must realize it because after they collapse in a heap again they pause for a pow-wow. Hudak leans over and rests a cool hand on Dean's brow, and he turns into the touch but keeps his eyes shut tight, and closes his ears to Lee's continuous rant too. Not listening. Nope.
He can feel hands on his leg, turning it, lifting it slightly, and he can't help the sound he makes, can't help shifting with the discomfort. He listens as they talk about his fever and his foot in whispers, the hushed tones people use when they're talking about fatal diseases, deciding to switch off life support, considering organ donation, debating burial or cremation, and he can just hear them above Lee yammering in his ear. S' fuckin' boring now, Lee, boring like date night with a fuckin' nun. I'm over it. Moved on.
Dean tenses his muscles, moans softly, but they don't hear him even though they're whispering. He hurts everywhere… except for the tip of his pinkie, maybe. Easier to pick out the bits that don't ache, smart, sting, throb, that don't send little screeching electric shocks shooting up to his brain, that don't sink vicious, needle-sharp fangs into his flesh, and he forces himself to breathe through it, I'm the best fuckin' Dean Winchester I can be, hell yeah.
"All I'm saying is that we need a contingency plan in case it isn't there. This thing was human once, it might remember what guns are, might have thrown it into the trees. So what if it isn't there? What then?"
Oh Kathleen, Dean thinks. So fuckin' practical, so right to the point, so cut to the chase, so enough of the crap, so tell it like it is, so many shades of awesome, so out of his fuckin' league. Can it, Lee. You can't hurt me now.
"Can we just keep a shred of fuckin' optimism going here? Look on the bright side, for Christ's sake…"
The voice is irritated, crackles like it's tiptoeing across broken glass, and Dean's jaded heart gives a little hop, skip and a jump, Bobby-Bobby-Bobby, steady as a brick shithouse in a light breeze, dependable, reliable, never say die, never, never, never say die.
"Fire will kill it. There were lamps in the cabin, kerosene lamps. If you can't see the gun, get inside, get the lamps. And matches. Is my pack still in the cabin? It'll have matches, and my lighter, outside pocket… and check the pantry - there must be liquor in there somewhere, we can use it as a Molotov."
Sam, excited, nervous, hissing out the words high and impatient, and then Kathleen cuts in.
Keep it down, Lee, trying to keep up here, quit your fuckin' noise.
"Sam, you can't set that thing alight with all of you still down here, it'll smoke like crazy, you'll-"
"No it won't," Sam insists. "The one Dean burned in Colorado burned cold, there was no smoke, it just sort of - combusted into thin air."
"That's been my experience too, Sam, but look around you - that thing won't be all that burns," Bobby says, and he sounds doubtful now, looking on the dark side even, and Christ, Dean thinks, the old sod can sure keep a shred of fuckin' pessimism going when he wants to.
"Kathleen is right," the old man continues. "Shooting a silver bullet straight at it is one thing, but if the gun isn't up there it isn't going to just let us climb out of here without a fight. And if we spray kerosene around down here, we might get both of them - but if all these bodies go up, we risk flamegrilling us too."
There's a brief silence, even Lee's keeping schtum for a minute, and it's so easy for Dean to sneak a hand in his hip pocket, pinch one of his little helpers between his thumb and forefinger, creep it up to his lips and push it in to sit on his tongue where it dissolves slowly. It's chalky, downright fuckin' skeevy when dry-swallowed, and he makes a mental note, never again.
"It's scared of fire," Sam offers. "Bobby, if you go first I can hold it off with one of the lamps while we get Dean out of here, then I can tie the rope around me and you can haul me up after I throw the lamp."
"And Bender's just going sit by and watch while you do this?"
"We can lay a salt line, I'll make sure to stay inside it… fuck it, we have to do something." Sam pushes up. "Kathleen, come on. I'm going to try throwing you. Or maybe grip you by the ankles and lift you up off my shoulders. Come on, while it's still sleeping."
"Lift me by the ankles?"
Dean rolls his eyes, muses silently that the thing is going to be sucking the marrow from her bones no matter what if she doesn't get her ass out of this pit, that up a crispy critter is the least of her worries. Just get on top of my brother, he thinks. Now. And that didn't come out right.
"We have to do this now. It's going to wake at some point and then… then… who knows what it could do?"
Dean hears Sam flounder for a second on the words, thinks, he knows it's the least of her worries too.
"It's not human anymore, Kathleen," Sam goes on then. "Just because it hasn't hurt us up to now doesn't mean it won't, it could maybe separate us, get even more aggressive, it could, it could…" He huffs, frustrated, and Dean can decode it as easy as if Sam yelled it through a megaphone. Bobby's next.
"Surrender…" he slurs, because his voice is suddenly working again. "It could surrender to us, maybe. But I'm not counting on it…"
Sam's face looms up to fill Dean's vision, eyes all big and bright and shiny, and his voice shaky. "Dean. Thank God. How do you feel?"
Dean squints up. "You looking for a slap to the head, Sammy?" he whispers. "How the fuck do you think I feel?" He forces his face into a grin, sees his brother ditto the gesture, just barely. "Next time I say I need to face up to things, let's go someplace else, huh?" He shifts uncomfortably. "Help me sit up."
"Do you think that's a good idea?" Hudak interjects from next to his brother, and Bobby is right there on Sam's other side, big smile, face all lit up like the sunrise, glad to see Dean that's why, and Jesus, Dean knows that feeling. Real glad.
"I think it's a fuckin' excellent idea, Kathleen," he rasps, reaching his arm up to her shoulder. "Up. Sit me up. Feel better. God… God." He can't help a low cry as Bobby helps her pull him upright, bites down on it, grits his teeth. "Tylenol. Pocket. Fuck."
Sam squeezes a couple of fingers in, and Jesus, sudden panic, hands too big, too close. "Wait," Dean gasps out, batting the hand away. "I got it."
"What's that hard thing in your pants?" Sam hisses, and then he realizes what he said and backpedals furiously. "I mean. What is that? In there?"
Dean smirks, dips his fingers down there, unhooks the end of the chain and pulls it out over the waistband. "You know what they say, Sammy. If you holster your gun, shooting's more fun."
Sam's eyes widen still further, warm with understanding and compassion. Kindness that Dean wants to drown in, and he chuckles harshly, closes his eyes, covers them, covers his face, starts to shake, hears his teeth chatter.
An arm maneuvers around him, pulls him close. "It's okay, boy. It's okay," Bobby says to the top of Dean's head. "You did good."
Dean can hear his brother whispering up there.
"Did he hurt you? Dean? Did he get past the chain, did he-"
"No. It worked. It worked." And the relief, it's like balm to Dean's soul. "Said my piece, told the scum where to get off. Not my brother. Felt… good." The buzz is zipping in his veins now, loosening his tongue. "Should've been there. Smackdown. Like Fight Club. Kapow. Bamm. Like fuckin' Batman." He flaps a hand at the corner. "Then Skeletor over there shows up and fuck… like Godzilla versus Mothra. The original, not that crap remake. King Kong versus T-Rex. Good times. Christ." He bites down hard on his lip at the pain. "Leg hurts. Tylenol. Pocket. Not you, Sam. Her. Lee, fuck off."
Sam looks all around him, alert, appalled. "Here? Is he here now?"
Dean manages a grin. "Ole Lee's just laying low," he drawls. "Stay frosty."
"We have salt, we have a perimeter around us," Sam says, low and reassuring, and Dean wants to say, don't worry about it man, Lee can't hurt me now, but somehow he doesn't think it'll make Sam feel better, thinks maybe the acknowledgment that soon he'll be past hurting will maybe suck the fight right out of his brother.
Bobby shakes the bottle of water in front of Dean. "Not much fresh water left. Drink it up boy, no sense carrying it with us when we leave."
Hudak is squirreling her fingers down into Dean's pocket and he leers as she frowns, wiggles them deeper, life in the old dog yet. "Left a bit. There. Right… there."
It's soft, breathy, not so soft it can't be heard though.
There-right-there-like-that-more-Jesus-Kathleen-please-God-yes-
"Shut up!" She turns and hollers the words at earsplitting volume, glances back at Dean, and even in the dim light he can see her face glows as red as the thing's eyes.
It stops, stares balefully from its corner, all cozy with its skeleton teddy bear hugged close, red eyes glowing, snaps it out, shut-up-there-like-that-more-God…
Dean can hear Bobby clearing his throat diplomatically to the left of him, as he stares at Sam and Sam stares at him, and he can see it dawn in his brother's eyes. Sam raises a critical eyebrow, and laughter bubbles up in Dean, cracked, desperate laughter, and he must be going mad, must be, as he warbles over at his pet where it sits in its corner, and cackles up at his brother, who's staring down at him like he grew another head as the thing picks up the tune.
It snarls out the words, we're-off-to-see-the-wizard-the-wonderful-wizard-of-Oz, and Dean laughs up at Sam, because it's so damn funny that he has this fuckin' abomination singing Judy Garland. Sam's hands come up to grip each side of Dean's face, and wouldn't it be a fuckin' riot if I taught it to pray, and Dean husks it out, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. It's bouncing the words back at them as soon as they leave Dean's mouth, and it's just as hilarious as he thought it would be, just as wrong, wrong, wrong, just as sick and warped, and-
"Dean. Stop. Now."
Dean stops, chokes back his madness. "You need to leave," he whispers. " Get out."
Sam's reply is firm. "Together, Dean. We go together."
"This is going to Hell in a handbasket," Sam says to Bobby, low so his brother can't hear him. "We need to get out now."
Bobby looks up at the rope, his face set grim and maybe hopeless, and Sam makes a decision, pushes up, heaving his brother along with him despite his weak sounds of protest. He holds Dean slumped upright and tries to keep the weight off his feet. "We do this now," he announces, and he doesn't give a flying fuck about anything at all anymore, because this is his brother. His brother, dying in his arms. "Kathleen."
"But what about the-"
"Bobby, hold him upright," Sam barks, wrestling Dean over to flop him into Bobby's embrace. "He's the shield. You have a knife, look like you mean business."
"You mean-"
"Yeah, I mean. If it thinks we're going to hurt him, it might keep its distance."
The old man's face creases in concern. "Kid, I don't think-"
"We're leaving," Sam reiterates in a growl. "Where's the knife?"
The thing is surging up now and it towers above them, agitated, restless, snarling. It's starting now, happening now, Sam knows, and he looks Bobby right in the eye. The old man stares back, doesn't falter because he knows too, reads what Sam is saying to him in that look, loud and clear. He nods, looks away, pulls his knife from his belt and holds it a few inches from Dean's face, and Dean is so dazed he isn't even aware of it.
Sam motions Hudak closer and she curses softly under her breath as he pushes her up. She clambers onto Sam's shoulders and he reels slightly, reaching out to steady himself with one hand on the dirt wall, while he grips her ankle with the other. Her boot soles grind unforgivingly into his shoulders but still Sam wants to scream at her to grab the fucking rope, jump, anything, because it's a matter of split seconds before this all explodes into the shitstorm of the century, something they just aren't ever coming back from.
"Don't spend too much time looking for the gun, Kathleen," Bobby' is saying, his voice strained. "If it isn't there, go for the lamps and the matches."
Sam can see Bobby tracking the beast with his eyes as it paces. It seems to be holding a conversation with itself, seems to be working out a plan of its own, a frustrated back and forth, and Bobby shuffles back as it jumps a few feet closer, half-dragging his stumbling, confused hostage with him, having to hold Dean up fully now as his knees buckle underneath him.
All the time Sam is bouncing from the fucking knees, and he calls urgently up. "Can you reach it?"
"No, it's too-"
"Try harder!"
"It's too-"
"Try fucking harder," Sam hisses. "Reach for it! Jump if you have to, because we need the fucking gun now."
He digs his fingernails into the bare skin above Hudak's sock in emphasis, feels the weight of her lift off him completely, and it's all a blur then, because something is crashing into him, and it feels like a full body tackle from one of those six-foot-nine inch NFL quarterbacks. He find himself being hurled into the wall, his head bouncing off the hardpacked dirt, and he's sagging, thinking, no, no, no, please God no, and now his only plan is to get to his brother and bury his face in his shoulder so Dean doesn't see what's about to go down. In the same instant, he hears Hudak flop to earth and cry out, sees a fuzzy image of her rolling, recovering, pushing up into a crouch and she's scrabbling at the ground, flinging a mixture of salt and dirt right at Sam. He closes his eyes just before it rains down, realizes what it means, Bender, not the wendigo. Bender will never leave his bones, they should have expected him to drop in again, and Christ, the bastard has perfect timing and how is it that he does that?
Sam can hear Bobby calling his name as he shakes his head hard, tries to shake out the cotton fuzz. He sees a bleary image of the old man over Hudak's shoulder, and shouts, reaches out even though it feels like his hand isn't connected to his arm, because he's doing all of this reflexively; as far as he knows, not one working part of his body is getting through to his brain at all right now.
Hudak registers Sam's message finally, turns as Bobby is cuffed down to the ground, the thing roaring its triumph and hunger as the knife drops harmlessly to the soil. Dean crumples down into an untidy heap, and Hudak twists, starts to throw herself at the knife, to fight the thing off. Sam knows it, and still he grabs her arm, stops her momentum. She turns back, face white and shocked as Bobby's shouts resound around the pit, and Sam yells at her, yells to be heard above the sound of his family being laid to waste in front of him.
"We go again. I'll get Dean."
Her expression is appalled, horrified as it passes from his eyes to hers just as it had to Bobby's: This is a sacrifice I am prepared to make. Don't stand in my way.
"No, Sam, we have to-"
"No!" he shouts. "We need the gun, the bullets. I'll get Dean."
Sam pushes her aside, and as he crawls towards his brother he can see Bobby in his peripheral vision, where the thing is playing with him like a cat with a mouse. It picks him up, drops him, tosses him this way and that, and Sam can hear Bobby's shouts of anger, sees him pummel back, thinks maybe this is Bobby doing his damned best to play this out for as long as he can to distract it, to give them a chance to get out of there before it ends, and Sam doesn't know what he'll do if those shouts become cries for help. But really he does know, knows he'll still grab his brother, knows he'll still bully Hudak into getting back up there, knows that if a ladder suddenly appeared from nowhere, he would still use this as the diversion it is to get Dean out of here while the thing feeds.
He grabs Dean's hand, hauls him over, prays his brother can't see, can't hear, all to no avail because Dean's eyes are wide open and there is a look of growing realization on his face. He starts wriggling like a fish on a hook, shaking his head, turning it to look over to where the noise is coming from, and Sam leaps to his feet, plants his boot firmly on his brother's ragged tee, pins him there as he barks instructions at Hudak.
"Climb up. Now."
Sam chances a look, can see Bobby's hand is gripping a knife now and it's rising and falling, the old man is giving it all he he's got, sinking the blade into the thing's chest. It's squealing at the sting, just a sting because it isn't a silver blade, Sam thinks, it needs to be silver, it'll hardly slow the damn thing down, and time is running out. Sam piggy backs Hudak up, bending at the waist, and then he lets out an involuntary yelp of agony and looks down to see his brother sinking his teeth into his ankle, just above his sneaker.
"We're fucking leaving, Dean!" Sam screams down, but no they aren't, because they're tumbling in a heap again, and Sam flips backwards to avoid crushing his brother under his weight. He hears Hudak's cry as she hits the ground again, harder, and she doesn't get up this time.
The freezing cold blast of Bender erupts next to Sam, icy fingers grip him by the neck, pushing him back against the wall, lips curl gleefully away from brown-stained teeth as the apparition greedily looks him up and down. Its eyes are hungry, naked lust, and Sam thinks, Jesus, this is how he looked at Dean. This is how Bender frightened his brother into helplessness, this is how Bender made him feel like filth, like trash, like nothing, and Sam can feel it leaning closer, whispering in his ear, sick promises that have his balls racing back up into his abdomen and cowering somewhere behind his liver, savage threats that make his knees tremble, that disarm him, overwhelm him, just like they did Dean. And now he knows exactly how and why sheer terror had his brother taking refuge in childhood games of tag, because just for a second he's there too, racing through the dust, laughing because Dean's gaining, reaching out to tap him on the shoulder and take off in the opposite direction. He can even hear his brother's voice through all those years, hear Dean calling, and it's all phasing in and out now as Sam tries to suck oxygen past the hand squeezing his throat, and he thinks his brother might sound desperate, might even sound like he isn't calling Sam's name at all, might sound like he's calling Lee.
And suddenly Sam is sliding down the wall, hard onto his ass just like before, his legs splayed out, and he's just watching it all happen, like watching a movie. In the movie, some old guy is going at it with the monster, and it's pretty fuckin' special, Sammy, and it sure as hell is, because old guy is even fighting it off with a bone. The token woman out of your league, dude, is sitting there looking dazed and rubbing her head, and the bloodsoaked hero is pulling what looks like a chain out of his pants, throwing it to one side, hollering at some other guy angry spirit who just beamed in from nowhere. It must be the guy who created the monster, and maybe he locked some poor sap up years ago, some guy who came to read the meter, that's how these cheap B-movies always play, and he turned him into a monster by feeding busty blond college students to him.
And now cut to the woman, and she's a tough one Dean's right, you are Ripley, hell she's flinging herself on the monster, has her arm up around its throat. It flings the old guy to one side, rises up to its full height, howls in irritation as it reaches long arms back to grab at her, perched high on its back, and Sam can hear her screaming frantically, something about the soft skin and flesh of a woman tasting better than old guys. And it strikes him that the hero isn't exactly holding his own here do something, you fucking idiot, because the big guy it's Lee Bender, get with the program for Christ's sake is slobbering all over him, and the hero Dean, it's Dean, snap out of it is staring at him over the big guy's shoulder, wide-eyed with dismay and pain. Sam looks from Dean's face to the chain, lying discarded near his leg, and it's iron, iron, and fuck, it's Bender, and his brother pulled the chain out of his pants to lure Bender away from him, and Bender's trying to… he's trying to… and his hands are… and no, just no.
When Sam snaps back into himself he thinks it must be like astral projection or something, because it's violent, like someone grabbed him and pulled him out of his body, miles away, maybe up to the stars, and when it let him go he pinged back in there as if his consciousness was connected to his body with elastic. When he collides with himself, it's with the force of a jumper hitting the sidewalk, and he even wonders if he might have mentally splatted. In the next second he's up, has the chain, is flailing it wildly, and Bender vanishes.
"Leave it on!" Sam barks at his brother as he wraps the chain around Dean's arm. "I don't care what you see. Leave it the fuck on."
He spins, ignores Bobby's huddled body, yells at Hudak, who is still being buffeted by the thing. "Let go of it!"
He spies her tube sock discarded over by the wall. Salt circle, them in it, Hudak up top trying for the rope again. It sounds like a plan, and Sam dives on the salt-filled sock, turns back to see Hudak is still up there, hanging on tight. She's being whirled around now, with her legs trailing out behind her like Superman's cloak, and Sam can still hear her yelling at the thing, right into its long pointed ears.
And suddenly it stops spinning, stops trying to dislodge her, and it's looking down at Dean. Sam can see its eyes, its expression, the look that passes between it and his brother, and he gapes, because it's universal male for what the fuck do I do about this screaming harpy?, and it holds out its hands, and Christ, is it asking Dean for help?
Dean darts his eyes to Sam, back to the thing, and he swallows before croaking it out faint and uncertain into the silence.
"Dude, just throw her out if she won't shut up."
And blow them if it doesn't, if it doesn't reach above it, grab Hudak by the head, or so it looks, and send her rocketing up, out into the dark.
To freedom.
To the rope.
To the gun.
Next