Fic - Cross Creek - 2/6
Like the boys they are, they end up milling about the kitchen waiting for dinner to be served. Oliver’s easy enough to chat with and he keeps the conversation light as they wait for Farrah.
Dean tells himself he just hasn’t had the chance to tell Sam about what happened upstairs outside room 43, but in his heart, he knows that’s not entirely true.
He’ll tell Sam tonight and they can go back and check it out. Together.
By six-twenty Oliver proclaims that dinner is served whether Farrah shows or not. He scoops up three healthy servings of stew and accepts gratefully when Sam offers to carry it to the table for him.
“Uh, should we go find Farrah?” Sam asks.
Oliver shakes his head, blowing on a mouthful of stew on a spoon. “Nah, she’s lost in what she’s doing right now. She’ll figure out she’s late soon enough.”
“You can tell? From here I mean?”
Oliver nods at Sam’s question, carefully chewing his hot mouthful of stew and swallowing before speaking. “With Fay? Yeah, unless she doesn’t want me to know where she is and what she’s doing, I know. Of course, turnabout’s fair play and it’s the same for her. But we’re pretty good at shutting each other out of we want privacy or sometimes you just want to be left the fuck alone.” His tone is good natured and it really does seem like he’s okay with the weird situation that is his life.
“So, I hope you guys enjoy the stew. It’s an old family recipe. Been used for generations.”
Sam blushes a little at Oliver’s tone. He’s clearly trying to get a rise out of Dean. Dean grunts in a partial acknowledgement and keeps eating.
Like Sam, he can’t remember the last time he didn’t eat something that didn’t come from a menu. There’s something nice about sitting down at a table that wasn’t set before he got there and doesn’t have a bucket holding ketchup and mustard, salt, pepper and horseradish. And when Oliver had directed them to the fridge to get their own drinks… well that was damn near domestic for the Winchesters.
“We can’t bring in fresh over the winter, so all of our goods are frozen. But the meat is local,” continues Oliver. He lowers his voice. “Home grown.”
His tone makes Dean look up and lock gazes with Sam, spoon halfway to his mouth. Oliver shovels in another mouthful of hot stew. “Nothing like it. Keep the freezer well stocked so we don’t have to worry about running out. Of course, with you here now, there may be a shortage.”
Dean is giving Sam a ‘What the fuck?’ look and is starting to eyeball his stew warily. Sam doesn’t even bother trying to hide his grin.
“What are you yammering about?” Farrah interrupts as she comes into the kitchen. She makes quick work washing her hands at the sink and is then doling out her own helping of stew.
“No dumplings?” she questions.
“I don’t know the recipe since you won’t write it down,” Oliver replies.
“Jesus, that’s lazy, it’s only got four ingredients and you could just pluck it from my head!”
Again, she doesn’t sit with them but instead leans against the counter as she eats. “So what were you yakking about? The meat? Are we running low? Ollie, you’re supposed to keep an eye on the supplies.”
Oliver is chuckling at her fishwife nagging. “Fay, we’re fine, I was only giving Dean a hard time. He thinks we’re Hannibal-Lecterizing guests.” Oliver waggles his eyebrows at Dean who immediately gives Sam the hairy eyeball.
“I didn’t tell him! He read it from my head,” protests Sam at the same time Farrah says, “Jesus, that’s gross, what kind of sick idea is that?”
That’s when Dean realizes everyone’s looking at him. He shrugs. “You don’t even wanna know half the shit we’ve seen. And humans are always the worst.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” says Farrah around a mouthful of stew. “I made sure your radiator’s on so you won’t freeze tonight. I’ll bring up some towels before bed. And I put the room key on the bed, but keep in mind it won’t keep the deadites out. And they’ll snoop.”
“Yeah, pretty much the only person the lock is good against is me,” says Oliver and he holds up his glass. Without being asked, Farrah goes and gets the soda from the fridge and fills it.
“I suppose you have a master key?” Dean asks.
“Farrah is the master key,” replies Oliver. “None of the doors in Cross Creek are locked for her.”
“That thing you did,” says Sam. “When you touched the number of our door before you turned the handle, that was you unlocking it.”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t elaborate.
“Have you always been able to do that?”
Farrah considers Sam’s question for a moment. “For as long as I can remember, yeah. My dad could do it too.”
“Even room 43?” Dean asks.
She doesn't flinch when she flicks her eyes to him. “Even room 43.” She huffs. “Especially room 43.” Her tone is dry, rueful.
“I walked by it today,” he continues.
“I know. In addition to being snoops, the dead are gossips.” She thinks for a second. “Tattlers might be a better word. You took a chance going there by yourself.”
“Maybe.” He decides to push that luck a little farther. “I saw something, under the bed?”
Oliver puts his spoon down and the way he’s clearly trying not to look at Farrah is just as obvious as if he turned around and stared at her.
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “My toy. I dropped it there.”
“You’ve been in there?” questions Sam and even Dean is sometimes surprised at how sympathetic he can look. “I thought no one went in.”
“It told you, the room… it can lure you in. I went in once. A long time ago.” She puts her dinner down on the counter, unfinished.
“What did you see? What happened?” asks Sam.
She shakes her head and they’re not sure if the gesture means she doesn’t remember, she can’t talk about it, or she won’t. She rubs her hands down her jeans, a nervous gesture which looks odd on her. “Uh, I gotta finish putting the air filtration unit for the north side back together.”
“It’ll keep,” says Oliver. “Stay. Finish your dinner.”
“Nah. If I leave it, Charlie’s libel to filch some piece I need.”
Oliver nods, his expression indicating he’ll concede this one. “I’ll toss the leftovers in the fridge and you can have some later if you’re hungry.”
She tosses a half-hearted ‘thanks’ over her shoulder as she leaves through the back exit. There’s an uncomfortable silence after she’s gone until Dean speaks.
“Something I said?” he jokes awkwardly and Sam gives him a look.
Sam decides to start off with a safe question. “So, Charlie? One of the deadites?”
“Yeah. He’s young. Seven or eight I think. He loves to follow Farrah and poke around in stuff and he tends to hoard things. The dead can’t usually pick up large things, but little things they’re good with. And Charlie just loves to tinker. Little boys. You know,” Oliver finishes with a shrug. “But you really want to ask about room 43. It’s better if you ask me and not Fay. As you can see, she doesn’t like to talk about it.”
Dean and Sam exchange a look and then a shrug before Dean says, “Tell us what happened.”
Oliver carefully spins his glass in a slow circle on the table as he gathers his words. “Earlier, when you said you’ve sometimes been able to put ghosts to rest, that’s the tip of your iceberg, isn’t it? You… hunt things. You kill things, don’t you?” Oliver won’t look up at them as he speaks, as if he’s afraid they’ll contradict him.
“We do,” affirms Dean.
Oliver weighs Dean’s assured answer and then he speaks. “I only know what I saw, what I heard. As far as I know, she’s never told anyone what happened once she was inside. Not even me.”
“And you can’t…” Dean begins and then makes a weird twirling motion with his fingers around his brain. Sam guesses it’s supposed to indicate Oliver reading Farrah’s thoughts but mostly, it’s just a crazy Dean gesture. Oliver seems to get it and shakes his head.
“No. I mentioned before that we can… keep stuff from each other. She keeps that part of her memories deep. Very deep.” He pauses for a moment. “Once, when we were younger and I was at that age … you know that age that teenage boys think they know everything, think we can solve anything and you’re just so full of … self importance that you’re just sure that if everyone would get the hell out of your way, you could fix it all?”
Dean’s expression doesn’t change but Sam is nodding knowingly, a sheepish smile playing on his lips.
“I tried to take a peek, in her thoughts,” Oliver continued. “It’s hard to explain, but to me, Farrah’s mind is like… it’s like the maze out back, only I know all the twists and turns and dead ends. And I know where she keeps those memories and I thought if I could just see them, I could fix it. Find out what’s in that room and fix it.”
It’s quiet. Oliver continues to spin his glass slowly. It makes a weird scratching sound against the table top, but it’s strangely soothing. Dean’s eyes flick over to Sam and Sam shrugs in return. Dean tips his head slightly, trying to push Sam to push Oliver and Sam shakes his head once. Dean rolls his eyes.
Oliver finally continues on his own. “That part of her memories was… very well guarded. I would guess that she doesn’t even think of it herself. Or at least, if she does, she only thinks of half parts, vague impressions like remembering a visit to a museum. You remember getting there, seeing one or two things, maybe something blue and red, and then leaving but you don’t go through the whole trip in your mind. I only brushed up against it, the slightest touch…” He rubbed his fingers against the table top lightly. “It was dark. And cold. Very cold. In here.” He taps his forehead. “She was three floors down and she started screaming at me, pushing at me. And then it was like she slammed the door against my head. She came barreling through the hotel and when she found me, she punched me in the face.” He rubs his jaw in remembrance. “Told me if I ever did that again she’d never speak to me, cut me out forever. I think she meant it.”
“What do you remember?”
“We were six. I remember watching tv and then feeling her disappear. We always knew where each other were, we hadn’t learn to block anything at that age. Of course, there wasn’t anything to block, we were six and our lives consisted of eating and playing, reading with our mom, making snowmen…” he shrugged. “I was just sitting there and she was gone. And it made me feel sick so I went to my room and lay down on my bed. I must have fallen asleep because my mother came in later and asked if I wasn’t feeling well and then she asked where Fay was and I told her she was gone.”
Oliver frowned, dark eyebrows coming together sharp against his forehead. Sam found himself leaning in slightly to listen to him speak. His had one of those soothing voices like narrators for The Discovery Channel: low, precise, smooth.
“I think it took a while for her to understand what I meant and by the time my father came back from his trip to town, it had been hours. My mother had been searching the hotel for Fay and couldn’t find her. My father came into my room and I remember him kneeling next to the bed and asking me where she was and I kept telling him I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know. He just kept saying the same thing over and over again, very low, very calmly. ‘where’s your sister, where’s your sister, you know where she is, tell me where she is.’ I don’t know if it was a form of hypnotism or if he was using his own gift to see into mine, but I remember getting really sleepy while he was doing it.”
You know where she is, Oliver. You know where she is.
I don’t know.
You know where she is, you know where she is. Where is she?
Daddy, I don’t know.
Tell me where your sister is.
“I don’t know where it came from but I ended up blurting out, ‘room 43.’ And it was like… Looking back on it, I think he knew she was in there but he wasn’t going to go in, he couldn’t go in. Unless he was absolutely sure she was in there.”
“So he went in and found her there?” Dean asked.
“Not right away. There were… preparations that had to be made.”
Dean was all ears. “What kind of preparations?” Any details may help them figure out what they were dealing with.
“Symbols on his body and a special drink he had to take. And it had to sit overnight. I remember my mother was yelling. She wanted him to go in immediately and he kept trying to explain it didn't work that way. I have his journal with the writings. I can show you if you like.”
“Yeah,” Sam nods. “That’d be great.”
“Don’t tell Fay. She doesn’t know I have it. My dad gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“In case she ever has to go in there,” says Oliver lowly. “It’d be the very last thing on earth she’d ever want to do, but my dad said that I had to know how to keep her safe if she went in there. He said the room was too good at luring people in and… that maybe someday it would be able to take someone and if that happened either he or Fay would have to go in to get them. And if he was gone or dead, it would have to be her.”
“What about you?” Sam’s always been the curious one.
“I asked that too. He took a long time to answer. He said that if Fay couldn’t do it, if she wasn’t here and there was someone in there… he said that without someone like me on the outside, an anchor, he called me, I would likely not come back out. But he said it was different for him and Fay, and especially with someone like me on the outside. I think that there has to be someone to tether them and the way my dad talked about it, I make a very good tether.”
“So, your dad,” encourages Sam. “After all the… preparations, he went in and found her?”
“Yeah. He was in there a long time. A long time,” Oliver repeats. “I was waiting outside with my mom. She expected him back right away and she was just standing there, holding my hand. I remember telling her she was holding it too tight.” He smiles sadly. “And so she sat down and put me in her lap and we waited. I fell asleep, it took so long. When they came out… I was scared. I’d never seen anyone look like that, especially my dad. He was sick-pale, chalky white and he had Fay, holding her so tight against his chest. He was sweating and shaking and my mother asked him what it was, what he saw and he just shook his head. As far as I know, he never told her.”
“And Farrah?”
“My dad put her to bed and she just lay there. I thought she was dead at first, I still couldn’t hear her thoughts, it was like she was… just not there. She just lay there, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, barely breathing. And cold, real cold. I remember getting into bed with her and I tugged her hair to get her to look at me and my mother yelled at me. But my father told me to stay with her and not leave. He said, ‘stay here and pull her the rest of the way back.’ They left and I could hear them arguing. I fell asleep and when I woke up later, I had blood on me, Farrah’s blood. She had this… claw mark on her shoulder. She still has it. It’s never healed. It gets better over the tourist season, but on the off season, it flares up and bleeds. One time we tried to stitch it up, but… After that night, it took a couple days for her to eat and sleep. It took longer for her to start talking again. I know my mother asked her once what happened in the room, and I don’t know if it was too soon after it happened, or what, but she kind of regressed for a couple of days, not eating or sleeping again, staring off into nothing. I don’t think my mother ever asked again.”
Oliver takes a swallow of his drink. “So that’s room 43. Have you ever dealt with anything like it before?”
His tone is slightly hopeful, but cautious and Sam wants to lie to him and tell him that, yes, they’ve dealt with exactly the same situation before and it all turned out fine. But he can’t force the lie past his lips.
“No.”
Oliver nods like he expected the answer and to some extent, Sam thinks if he can read thoughts, then he probably did.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it,” Sam adds.
“Get us the book tomorrow and we’ll see what we find,” says Dean. “We’ve put down a lot of things we’d never heard of before. But it might be best for you and your sister to leave the hotel for a few days while we do it.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It won’t let Farrah leave. The last time she did… I ended up with these crutches.”
***
“What do you think it is?”
They’re back in their room, checking weapons and taking inventory of their supplies. Sam’s trying to type out everything that Oliver told them while it’s fresh in his mind. He plans on searching the internet later, pleasantly surprised that while the hotel’s internet is slow, it’s functional.
“Damned if I know,” replies Dean. “It’s a little too ‘Shining’ for me and I swear to god, Sammy if you try coming after me with an axe, or tell me you see two little girls who want to play, I will slap you. But,” he shrugs, “everything can be killed.” He smiles wryly thinking about vampires. “Sometimes you just gotta kill ‘em twice, but eventually, it sticks. I’m curious though to find out what happened in that room.”
“I don’t think we can ask her, Dean. Whatever it was, it sounds like it messed her up bad.”
“Yeah, but she was six. Anything is gonna scare the living crap out of you at that age. It could have been just a spirit messing with her or a poltergeist or revenant.” Dean smirks. “Hell, even a clown.”
“That Rakshasa chose to look like a clown because they are scary as fuck, Dean and I’m not the only one who thinks so,” Sam says defensively. His tone is a little too self-justifying for his own liking, but he can’t help it.
Dean just won’t let the clown thing go. Ever. Two weeks ago Sam woke up in the middle of the night to Dean looming over him with a puffy red ball affixed to his nose. Sam bet it took ten years off his life. He’d rather face a nest of vampires then a clown ever again.
“Clowns are fun. It chose a clown so little kids would trust it, Samantha.”
“And look how well that turned out. I’m just saying if you look back at lore and superstitions and mythology, anything that covers up its face or wears a mask? Creepy as hell and it always ends up killing somebody.”
Satisfied his point is made, he goes back to fiddling with his computer. Dean is still smirking as he takes apart the EMF reader.
“Is it broken?” asks Sam.
“I don’t think so, but when I was at room 43, it didn’t go off at first. And then when it did… it was just weird.” Dean shrugs as he starts checking all the tiny connections. Sam’s still not quite sure how he managed to build the EMF reader out of an old walkman, but there’s no denying it works. After a few minutes in silence, Dean’s satisfied and he puts it back together.
As he turns it on, it starts squealing madly and there’s a knock at the door.
“It’s Farrah, I have your towels,” she calls through the closed door.
Dean looks down at the EMF and then back at the door. Sam’s already there, swinging it open.
“What is that sound?” she asks with a frown.
“That’s the, uh, EMF reader,” Sam hedges.
She nods knowingly. “Oh. Yours sounds different.” At Sam’s look she continues. “We’ve had ghost chasers before. Everyone seems to have one of those. Don’t let it get too close to me or it’ll fry.”
She may as well waved a red flag in front of Dean’s face because he immediately gets up and starts waving it over her, like a security wand at an airport. Sure enough, it starts squealing louder, giving off a shrill shriek of electronic fury.
She eyeballs it as he moves it up and down. “Mostly it’s because I’ve usually got a few deadites hanging around.” Dean gets in closer to her, completely focused on the meter and annoyance crosses over her face. She takes a step back, clutching the towels close to her chest and Dean moves to follow her with the EMF but Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” Sam apologizes.
She’s still eyeing the EMF reader warily as she holds the towels out to Sam and he takes them with a word of thanks. “Um, no worries. Ollie and I are heading to our quarters for the evening. They’re behind the kitchen, through the service entrance in the back. If you need something you can dial extension 9697, it goes to our living room. If you go wandering again, you should try to stay inside. It gets cold up in the mountains at night. Like I said, breakfast is whatever you want to grab in the kitchen. Just help yourselves.”
“Thanks. We appreciate it.”
She bobs her head at Sam’s words. “‘Night.” As soon as she turns and starts walking away, the EMF reader quiets; its lights going lower and lower until she rounds the corner to the staircase and is gone.
Dean tosses the EMF down, stretches across his bed and flicks on the TV. “Anyway, my money’s on poltergeist. Maybe more than one.”
“Yeah,” Sam replies as he sits back down at his computer. “Hopefully Farrah can give us a listing of all ghosts and we can cross check it against the list of people we know died here, but I gotta say, Dean, that’s a short list. I’ve only found 5 deaths at the hotel over the last eighty years and Farrah said there were at least 35 ghosts.”
“Five’s not so bad. We can salt and burn five,” Dean answers, although his back is already grimacing at digging up five graves and then filling the holes back in.
“I don’t think any of them are buried here.”
“Gotta be,” Dean says with a shrug as he starts flipping through the channels.
“What do you think about what Oliver said, about his accident?”
Dean pauses as he recalls the rest of the young man’s story. Oliver told them that as he and Farrah got older, the hotel became increasingly reluctant to let Farrah leave. It started with little things; Farrah would leave for the day, drive down the mountain with one of her parents and breakers would burn out, water mains would burst, doors would open and slam. It only happened over winter. During the tourist season, things seemed fine and Farrah could come and go as she pleased. Then one winter, Farrah went to leave with her mother to go to town and all of the doors to the outside were locked. Of course, it didn’t do much good as Farrah was able to unlock the front door quickly, but the intent was clear. Farrah started to avoid leaving the hotel after winter set in, telling Oliver about a dream she had where everyone in the hotel was a marionette and when she left, they all fell down, their strings cut.
One winter, when they were fifteen, Farrah got sick. Her tonsils were so badly inflamed she couldn’t make a sound except for a horribly squeak. Oliver teased her mercilessly, calling her Minnie Mouse, until her tonsils swelled up so far she was having a hard time breathing.
Her father took her down the mountain to the clinic.
They returned the next morning to find Oliver unconscious at the foot of the main staircase, his right leg broken and badly twisted underneath him.
The words were written on the wall behind him, above the small picture window.
You left.
Oliver said he never remembered why he left his bed that night. He had no memory of making his way to the staircase and certainly no memory of falling down it. He remembered going to sleep that night, worried about his sister’s health, and waking up three days later in the hospital being told his pelvis, hip-joint, patella and fibula were broken badly and he’d likely either need a wheelchair or crutches for the rest of his life.
Farrah hasn’t left the hotel since.
“If there’s a ghost or poltergeist fixated on her, I buy it coulda done that to her brother,” says Dean finally. “We’ve seen what pissed off ghosts will do. And I know she claims that ‘her’ ghosts are friendly but I’m not buying what she’s selling. The only good ghost is a dead ghost.” He pauses as he considers his words and realizes they make no sense. “Whatever. I say we salt and burn anything we find and make those bags Missouri taught us and put them all over the hotel. Clean this fucker out.”
The tv goes on the fritz as soon as he finishes his tirade. Static, black screen, static, black screen, static, weird squiggly static, static… He tosses the remote down with disgust. The lights start to flicker and there’s a crash as the water glasses in the bathroom slide off the counter and smash on the floor.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean grumbles. “I got it, pissy little deadites. You’re mad. Well, tough shit. Time to cross over, motherfuckers.”
“Dean.”
“What?” He flicks off the tv and when it won’t turn off he yanks the plug out of the wall. “Any shit you stir up, I’ll leave for your freaky Farrah to clean up,” he shouts.
The lights come back on and when Dean pokes his head in the bathroom the broken glass is already in the garbage can.
“Just, don’t antagonize them,” says Sam.
Dean plugs the tv back in and now it won’t turn on. “They’re antagonizing me.”
“Dude, they’re dead. Take the high ground.”
“Fucking high ground doesn’t have tv!”
“Read a book,” Sam says absently, going over his notes.
“A book.”
“Yeah, Dean, they have pages with words written on them and when you read them all together, they make a story.”
“Shut up, I read.”
“Then do it and stop bothering me. There’s a games room in the basement and they had tons of books there. Go grab one and shut up.”
“Well, maybe I will,” Dean says, his tone implying that Sam has dared him to do something horrible that he wouldn’t possibly, couldn’t possibly, consider.
“Fine.”
“Fine,” Dean intones. He pauses for a second at the door before adding, “Bitch.”
“Jerk.”
***
Dean’s trip down to the games room and back is uneventful and he returns with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
He takes a few quick minutes to salt the door and the windows, pausing to wonder if he’s trapping anything in with them instead of out. Sam sees him hesitate and looks around the room carefully. He thoughtfully shakes his head ‘no.’
Dean’s not sure if he’s glad Sam can tell they’re alone or not.
He settles down to read and becomes so engrossed he doesn’t notice when Sam flicks of his light at midnight and goes to sleep. When the words start swimming on the page in front of him, he’s surprised when he glances over and sees that it’s three in the morning.
He can’t remember the last time he stayed up late reading.
He leans over to turn out his lamp and takes one last, quick look to make sure his brother’s asleep.
Sam’s eyelids flicker slightly as his eyes move back and forth in REM sleep, fingers twitching slightly, forehead creased in a frown. Dean pauses. It doesn’t look like a nightmare, doesn’t seem aggressive, but it’s definitely a restless dream.
They deal with this kind of supernatural crap every damn day of their lives and nothing comes for free. Nothing comes without some kind of price or trade in lieu and if Sam’s got some kind of ‘shine’ to him, then Dean wants to know what the price for it is up front.
***
Sam wakes. It’s cold. He slides his feet out of bed and when they sink into snow he doesn't flinch. He knows he is dreaming.
He’s outside the hotel. His footsteps are silent on the ground and the absence of a crunching sound is jarring and disconcerting. It’s sunny out and the light bouncing off the white snow is blinding and he squints, barely able to see out of his eyes but unable to open them wider. He can hardly make out where he’s going but he presses on.
He sees Dean ahead of him. In his leather jacket and gloves. Standing on a dock, a small rowboat in the water.
The only sound is the low ka-thud-ka-thud-ka-thud of his own heart in his ears. Even that rhythmic noise is strangely dulled, as though he’s at a swimming pool with his head under water.
Behind Dean stands Farrah and her brother, Oliver. Farrah’s in a long winter-white wool coat, her satin gloves a brilliant red. As Sam watches she carefully tugs the finger of each one and pulls them off. Long, dark red satin streams out of the sleeves and she tosses one carelessly on the wet dock. Sam has the sudden thought it’ll be ruined.
Oliver has his back to Farrah and she wraps her remaining glove carefully around his eyes and ties it securely, blindfolding him. She spins him three times and steps away and he immediately starts swinging his crutches out in a wide arc, trying to find her.
She bows her head in sorrow.
She steps close to the edge of the dock and stares down at the small row boat.
“I can’t get there from here.”
Her voice is quiet and muted. Flat, as though the sound waves are traveling through thick sludge to make their way to Sam’s ears. Dean shakes his head and then holds his hand out to her.
He’s holding something. A wheel. An old wheel; it looks worn and well used, made of iron with a white band across the top and strange symbols carved along the curve.
She hesitates. Turns to look at Oliver who has stopped wandering and is standing stock still.
She takes the wheel.
Smiles.
Drops the wheel on the dock with a crack.
Sam jerks at the sound. Oliver finally pulls his blindfold off and stares at Farrah, but her back is to him as she turns away and climbs into the small boat. It rocks dangerously as she settles herself. With a graceful flourish, she sweeps her coat behind her, leaves it hanging over the edge of the boat, soaking up water and turning from white to a pale shade of blue.
The boat frees itself from the moor and starts to drift away.
Oliver reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gold coin and tosses it high in the hair. Without looking, Farrah reaches up and plucks it from the sky.
And eats it.
***
Sam wakes and unlike other nightmares he’s had, there’s no cold sweat, or jittering limbs, or harsh gasps of air.
Just a lingering sense of dread.
It curls around his stomach like heavy smoke, settling into all the cracks in his body, finding it’s way into all the places he thought were sealed. He rubs his belly absently at the sick feeling. He looks over at Dean and winces at the loud snoring noises emanating from the back of his brother’s throat.
Honestly, if the hotel wasn’t already haunted, Dean’s snoring would wake the dead.
But it’s apparently not loud enough to wake Dean who’s sleeping open mouthed, arms thrown over his head, like a baby.
It’s kinda nice to see Dean sleep like that. Sam can’t recall the last time he saw it. He regrets having to get out of bed since the slightest sound generally wakes Dean, but it’s past 8 and his bladder will not be denied.
Dean sleeps on and Sam smiles as he hitches his jeans up and tosses a pullover on over his tee and leaves the room quietly.
He’s not only surprised Dean is sleeping so late, he’s surprised he slept so late himself. Despite the fact they’re here for a hunt and the place is haunted, it has a sort of homey feel to it, lived in and comfortable.
He likes it.
He finds his way easily enough to the kitchen, straight down the large, looming staircase and down the hallway. There’s already a pot of coffee brewed and half gone and he cranes his neck around but doesn’t see anyone. He helps himself to coffee and scouts out some frozen waffles and berries in the cooler and settles down to breakfast.
He’s just finishing up when he hears shouting coming from the hallway behind the door that leads to Farrah and Oliver’s room. It sounds like they’re fighting, but over what he can’t tell. He rinses his plate and sets them in the sink and takes his coffee mug down the hallway to explore.
“Stop jumping on my head, Ollie! Honestly!”
“That’s you! I told you, I’m Luigi, you’re Mario.”
“No, I’m Luigi, you’reMario.”
“No, I’m… oh, what? Oh, fuck. Sorry.”
Their door is open, leading into a small living room area where Farrah and Oliver are crunched together on chair a that’s really too small for two grownups. Farrah’s seated on the chair and Oliver’s bad leg is spread out over her lap and hanging over the side. Sam clears his throat and Oliver, facing him, looks up.
“Good morning,” Oliver says cheerfully, eyes flickering back to the screen. Sam peers in and can finally see the TV screen which is lit up with bright colors as the siblings play Super Mario Bros on their Wii.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I heard yelling,” offers Sam.
Farrah snorts and it’s damn near the most ungraceful thing Sam’s heard outside of Dean’s snoring. “Ya, that’s ‘cause Ollie sucks at Nintendo.” Her face screws up comically as her Luigi character falls right off a cliff and dies.
“You were saying?” asks Oliver.
She laughs and carefully, so carefully, lifts his bad leg out of her way and gets up, smoothing out her jeans and baggy sweatshirt as she stands.
“Oh, I, uh, you don’t have to get up,” Sam stammers.
“You any good at this?” she asks jerking her thumb toward the screen.
“Uh, I dunno. It’s been a while.”
“Well, you can keep Ollie company. A storm moved in last night and it’s fucked his leg up bad. Um, if you could help him stay off it, I’d appreciate it.” She’s nervous and hesitant. She clearly doesn’t have much opportunity to ask for help, but she’s not going to turn it down if it’s around.
“Yeah, for sure,” answers Sam and then turns to Oliver. “And if you don’t mind, maybe we could go over some more stuff? For the hotel?” he adds meaningfully, hoping that Oliver will show him their father’s journal.
“Sure,” Oliver concedes.
“Thanks,” says Farrah. “I’ll be back in the basement if you need me.” She waves once and is gone.
Sam and Oliver wait until they hear her make her way down the hallway and into the kitchen. Sam’s about to speak but Oliver holds his hand up for Sam to wait, listening hard for a moment.
“And… now she’s gone,” he says with a firm nod. “Sorry. I’m just… I don’t want her to hear us.”
“No, it’s fine. Um, so you said you had your dad’s journal?”
Oliver nods and makes a motion to get up and then grimaces in pain. He slides back down into the chair. “Would you mind? It’s in my bedroom,” he points to a door to the left. “Bookshelf, third shelf from the bottom, third book from the left.”
“You don’t hide it?” Sam asks as he makes his way to Oliver’s bedroom.
Oliver shakes his head. “Bedrooms are off limits to each other. If we didn’t have a place where the other wasn’t allowed, we’d kill each other over the winter.”
Sam laughs to himself. He’s thought the same thing about himself and Dean, only there’s no space to claim as their own. The Impala, motel room after motel room… hell even at Bobby’s, they share a room. Although, they are able to go out and grab a bite alone, go get drunk alone, go find someone else to ‘not be alone with’, if they want. He can’t imagine what it’s like for Oliver and Farrah, trapped up in hotel, with no way to leave for months on end.
He finds the journal where Oliver indicated, a simple, hardcover book, the kind you can get in any stationary store. He’s hard pressed to not peak and leave it shut as he exits Oliver’s bed room and comes back out to the living room, handing the book to Oliver and taking a seat in one of the other chairs.
Oliver flips through the pages quickly until he finds what he’s looking for and hands it back to Sam.
“I’m not sure where he got it from,” Oliver says as Sam starts reading over the symbols and ingredients for the drink. “I think maybe his father taught him, but he never said for sure, and I never really asked. It was like… it was almost like a taboo in our family. What happened to Farrah in that room, and what they both might have seen or experienced. They didn’t discuss it with each other and certainly not with my mother or me. The only time he brought it up was when he gave me that book.”
Sam traces his fingertips over some of the symbols on the page, somewhat familiar to him, though he can’t quite place them. They are not so much symbols he thinks, as glyphs. The drink is nothing grotesque or horrific, like some of the things the brothers have come across. It’s just a mixing of herbs and spices except for the last ingredient that calls for ‘the weight of an anchor.’ Sam’s fingers run over the words as well and he looks up at Oliver.
“This was you? You were the anchor for your father?”
Oliver nods. “Yes. He took a snippet of my hair and boiled it in with the ingredients. I think I’m the part of it that kept them here. Kept my father from getting lost and would keep Farrah from going in too deep.” He thinks for a moment and his eyes drift away from Sam. “I get the impression that it’s very far. Or… in between is maybe a better way of thinking of it.”
“Do you mind if I take this up to my room?” Sam asks, holding up the book.
“Please, if you think it will help. And I know I keep harping on it, but if you could keep it out of sight. Maybe put it in your bag or in a drawer. Farrah’s all over the hotel doing repairs and maintenance and she’ll be the one dropping off towels and fresh linens since I don’t get around much and I don’t want her to find it.”
“Yeah, of course.” He’s itching to take the book upstairs right now and start reading it, reviewing it, making notes, running searches, but he’s very conscious of the promise he made to Farrah to keep Oliver company for a while. “I’ll take a look at it this afternoon.”
“Mario time?” questions Oliver, waving a Nintendo control at Sam.
Sam laughs and takes the control.
***
Dean wakes and to say that he’s surprised it’s past ten in the morning is an understatement. He couldn’t tell you the last time he slept so long and uninterrupted. The first place he looks, the first place he always looks upon waking, is Sam’s bed.
Empty.
He doesn’t like waking up and not finding Sam.
He dresses and makes his way downstairs, unknowingly following the same route Sam took in the morning. The kitchen is empty but he finds enough dishes in the sink for three people and that strangely calms him.
The coffee is too old and he can tell by the smell that it will taste burnt and smokey from being on the burner too long. He’s had worse, though and coffee in the morning is not so much a choice as a necessity. He eschews food, opting to track Sam down instead.
He finds him after only ten minutes of wandering, pushing through the doors to the service hallway and ambling down to where Farrah and Oliver’s quarters must be. The door has been left open and he can hear high pitched music and the tell-tale sounds of video game playing. He spots Sam and Oliver on the couch engrossed in Nintendo.
“Working hard, princess?” he asks dryly.
Sam’s eyes flick over to him briefly before settling back on the screen. “Harder than you, sleeping beauty. I’ve been up for a couple hours now.”
“And putting them to good use, I see.” Dean leans against the door jamb with his coffee mug.
“Is that this morning’s coffee?” asks Oliver with a shudder when Dean nods. He makes a gagging motion. “I’ll make you a fresh pot.” He pauses the game and pushes to his feet, grabbing for his crutches.
“No, I can do it,” says Sam as Oliver grimaces his way through a few steps.
“It’s fine, I need to get my leg moving or it will stiffen up.”
“Farrah said you were supposed to stay off it,” questions Sam.
“Yes, the joys of having an older sibling, as I’m sure you can attest, is their ever-smothering concern,” Oliver says with wry humor to Sam. Dean can’t help but bristle slightly.
“I thought you guys were twins,” Dean accuses.
“We are,” states Oliver. “But Farrah was a whopping twelve minutes ahead of me and if you ask her that makes her the older sibling.” Oliver turns back to Sam and says in a conspiratorial tone, “I think it gets hardwired in them the second they realize they’re older you.”
“Yeah, probably at the same time that Sammy discovered his bitchface.”
The irony is that as soon as Dean mentions it, Sam makes it; eyebrows and nose scrunching up and forming wrinkles on his smooth skin, lips pursed.
Oliver makes his way slowly back to the kitchen with the brothers following at an awkward pace behind him, unsure if they should pass him and wait for him in the kitchen, or follow at the painfully slow pace.
“Where is your sister?” asks Dean as they enter the kitchen and Oliver starts a new pot of coffee. Dean pours his old cup down the drain. He’ll drink swill if he has to, but there’s no sense in it if better’s on the way.
“Basement. Boiler room. And I’m afraid she guilted Sam into staying with me for a few hours.”
“What? I had fun.”
“But now you want to spend some quality time with the journal. And you should.” Oliver pauses, and stammers slightly. “It’s not the ghosts, you know. It was never the ghosts. They love Fay and she loves them all like cherished friends. It’s that room. Whatever’s in that room, controlling that room, using that room. That’s what caused my accident, that’s what wants to keep Fay here. The ghosts are just… incidental, I guess.”
Sam’s nodding, sympathy at full throttle. Eyes slightly narrowed, irises liquid and warm.
Dean’s still not convinced. “I’m not saying it’s not possible, but in our experience, and it’s extensive, ghosts are never a good thing.”
A wet sponge comes flying from the sink and hits him square in the face landing on the floor with a watery ‘thwock.’
“Is there any place in this joint that doesn’t have ghosts?”
Oliver and Sam are trying not to laugh as Dean snatches up a dishtowel and wipes his face off.
“Very few.”
***
After shoveling down some breakfast, Dean wanders downstairs to find Farrah. Past the games room he was in last night, through the pool hall with it’s freakish echos and chlorinated smell, down the hall to the double doors that Oliver directed him to. There’s another staircase here, taking him deeper into the hotel where the guests don’t go. The air isn’t quite stale, but it is unused and slightly uncirculated, punctuated with the scent of dust and machinery.
This is not the darkened, creaking staircase of a thousand horror flicks. It’s well lit and well-maintained. He can hear music and it’s not creepy piano keys or gothic organs.
It is wretched however. Some kind of pop-dance-techno hybrid that makes him wince.
He finds himself in the sub-basement and the light bright and industrial. He can hear Farrah talking.
“I don’t know,” she’s saying. “But I won’t let anything happen to you guys, you know that.”
There’s a pause and either the girl is seriously messed up or she’s talking to ghosts. Again. He wonders what that does to a person, talking to the dead on a regular basis. Spending more time with them, it seems, than with the living.
“I don’t think they can help.”
Another pause and Dean’s past the point now where he can pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping.
“I know. It’s been getting harder every year. I don’t know if tomorrow’s a good idea.”
Silence from Farrah again as the music drones on in the background. Dean thinks if the ghosts didn’t drive you crazy, the music would.
“I know and I don’t want to cancel it either, but… what? Oh.” Farrah pokes her head from around the corner of a boiler and her eyes find Dean immediately.
“Did you need something?” she asks.
“Ghost rat me out?”
“Yeah,” she says nonchalantly and her head disappears around the corner again as she goes back to work.
“You spend all day talking to them?”
She comes back around the corner long enough to rifle through her tool box, grab a screwdriver and glare at him.
“What are you working on?”
“Water heater.”
“Need some help?”
She’s back, dropping her screwdriver carefully in her box and shutting it. “Nope. All done.” She looks up at him expectantly. “So, did you need something?” she repeats.
“I wanted to ask you about the ghosts.”
She wipes her hands across the belly of her sweatshirt. “What about them?”
“Uh, maybe we could go someplace and sit down? Have a talk?”
“I told you, the ghosts aren’t a problem.”
“Anytime the dead hang around, it’s a problem.”
“Not for me. They aren’t violent and the tourists love them. They’re actually pretty good for business.”
“How long do you think that will last?”
She brushes by him on her way out of the machinery room and he follows her. “What do you mean, how long will it last? That’s the way it is.”
She’s flicking off lights as she goes, leaving the darkness behind him.
“Look, I’m sure you think you have a handle on this here, but I’ve seen ghosts go bad and they always do.”
“Yeah? And what do you do about it?”
“Salt and burn the bones.”
Her face twists up in disgust or horror, he can’t tell which. “That’s horrible.”
“That’s death. What do you think it’s like for them? Always here but never a part of the world?”
“It isn’t like that. They’re with us. With me. They’re part of the hotel.”
Dean is undaunted. “Separated from things they know, things they wanted in life?”
“They’re fine. They just want some place to be, somewhere to call home.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know, but it’s been working out for some of them for over a hundred years,” snaps Farrah, stopping to turn around and face him. They’re by the pool area and her voices bounces back at them, hollow and sharp. “They had my grandfather and then my father and now they have me.”
“And who will they have after you?” Dean asks. “Are you or your brother gonna have a kid and bring them into this?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” she grouses. But she knows she won’t. She knows she can’t put this burden on someone else. Even if she could, it’s not like she gets many opportunities trapped in the hotel.
“What if they’re not like you?”
“Jesus, why are you doing this? What do you want from me? I don’t know, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I don’t know.”
“This is what Sam and I do. We help people. We can help you, but you gotta tell me everything you know.”
He’s getting to her, he can tell. A speculative glint in her eye, her lip stuck between her teeth as she thinks.
But then she shivers, and he feels the temperature drop slightly around them. She’s got a point, they are a pretty well-behaved group of ghosts. They haven’t tried to harm him or Sam despite the fact that he’s made it clear they’re there to clean out the house. Dean can tell by Farrah’s body language that the dead are clustering around her. He can see it in the way she shrinks back from him and starts to pull herself closer together, as though she’s crowded. She scrunches her shoulders and tilts her head as though she’s trying not to listen but can’t help it.
He can tell the second that he loses the fight. Her shoulders drop and it’s like she surrenders to them.
“They don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“They can go where the rest of the dead go,” he counters, but he knows she’s not buying it.
“They’re scared.”
“They shouldn’t be here.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I won’t help you get rid of them.” Her eye catches on something and without another word she moves past Dean and peers into the pool.
“What?” he asks at her silence.
“There’s water in the pool,” she says lowly.
The deep end has about three inches of water in it. Not much, hardly any at all when you consider the total volume of the pool, in fact.
“There shouldn’t be water in the pool.” Her arms are crossed over her chest as she stares hard at the liquid.
“Maybe you have a leak or something?” he suggests.
She shakes her head adamantly. “No, I checked. When I shut it down for the season, I checked.”
She looks up and around, her eyes darting everywhere around the hollow, empty space. Dean feels the hair on the back of his neck rise.
“What is it?” he says fiercely.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I think…”
“What?”
The ghosts start whispering to her, all at once, closing in, folding in on her, like an inverse wagon circle that seeks protection from the center. She can’t think when they’re this close, when they press against her with cold fingers and frigid energy. She stumbles back a step away from the edge of the pool. “I think it’s trying to come through.”
He can barely hear her voice. “What is?”
She shakes her head and starts to rub her shoulder through her shirt. “I don’t know its name. I don't even know if it has a name.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” She’s grinding her fingertips into the back of her shoulder as if trying to work out an ache or a knot. She stops and slowly pulls her fingers away from her shoulder.
Her fingertips are bright with blood.
She doesn’t look surprised to see them stained crimson, her lips forming a grim line. As if she was waiting for bad news and she just received it. She closes her fingers in a fist.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“We should go upstairs. You and your brother shouldn’t come down here again.” She doesn’t look at him as she speaks, her eyes still focused on the small puddle of water in the deep end of the pool.
“We’re gonna have to come down here again if we’re gonna stop it.”
She finally flicks her eyes to him. “I don’t know that you can. But maybe…”
“What?”
She turns from him and now that he’s facing her back, he can see the stain of blood on her shoulder. Her shirt is sticky with it. “You can’t stay down here, come on.”
“Maybe what?” he repeats, starting to trail after her and hating that it feels like she’s a harsh librarian or a mean teacher that just gave him an order.
“I have to check on Oliver.”
***
Oliver’s waiting for her at the top of the stairs, braced heavily on his crutches. Sam’s right behind him.
“Are you okay?” asks Farrah as she bounds up the last few steps.
“Of course I’m okay,” says Oliver and his tone reminds Dean of countless arguments with Sam. “I came here to check on you.”
“I’m fine,” says Farrah dismissively.
“Your shoulder is bleeding again. I can tell,” says Oliver firmly. Her eyes dart over to him quickly and then away again. “Come on then, let’s patch it up.” He starts his painfully slow hobble back to the kitchen and she falls into step beside him.
Dean places a hand on Sam’s shoulder to stop him.
“Hold up. You get anything from him yet?” asks Dean.
“I got his father’s book, but I haven’t had a chance to look it over in detail yet. Why? What happened down there?”
“I don’t know. Nothing really. She was yakking with a ghost and then she saw water in the pool and freaked out. She says she thinks it’s trying to come through.”
Sam frowns. “What is?”
“Fuck if I know. She knows more but she’s not talking.”
“What, and your famous Winchester charm can’t get it out of her?” Sam asks sarcastically.
Dean scowls. “Just see what you can figure out from the book. I’m still trying to get some ghost details out of her but she’s like a mother hen about them.”
“I know it sounds crazy but I think she’s right, I really don’t think they’re the problem here.”
“I don’t care if they’re the fucking Brady Bunch of ghosts. The dead should stay dead. Whatever this other thing is, whatever it wants, I guarantee if we clear out the ghosts, we’re making progress with it. It can’t be a coincidence that this place is like some kind of ghost Club Med and something freaky is trying to bust in.”
“Yeah, as much as I hate saying these words, you’re probably right.”
Dean slaps him lightly on the shoulder “Sammy, I’m always right. Hey, you haven’t had anymore… you know, with the woo-woo?”
Sam’s eyebrows screw together and he stares at Dean. “Is that your sensitive way of asking if I’ve heard anything else?”
“Well… yeah.”
He thinks about his dream last night and while it wasn’t like the other visions he’s had, there was still something definitively strange about it. He’s not quite sure how to qualify and quantify it though and Dean won’t be satisfied with any answer Sam gives until he’s done both.
He shakes his head. “Nope. Nothing.”
“Good.”
Continue on to Part 3