Fic - Cross Creek - 4/6
By the time Sam is warm and awake, Dean has their bags packed and loaded in the Impala and he won’t hear a word of argument from Sam. They’re at the front door, Dean ready to take his leave and Sam’s being stubborn and won’t go.
“Dean, we don’t leave hunts in the middle. And we’ve dealt with this kind of stuff before.”
“Get in the car, Sam.”
“Dean -”
“Sam. Car.”
It doesn’t help Sam’s cause that both Farrah and Oliver are standing right behind Dean, Farrah with her arms crossed, fatigue written all over her face and Oliver resigned and just looking wrung out. Farrah’s fingers drift up to her temple and she presses them in hard, pain etching her face.
“You need to go Sam. It wants you to stay and if ever there was a reason to leave, that’s it,” she says tiredly.
“We can help. That little ghost, Charlie, he gave me a book and I think I can figure it out.”
“Do you remember what happened to you in the maze, Sam?” Farrah asks.
He doesn’t. She knows he doesn’t. By the time he woke up, he had no recollection past his first step into the maze. He doesn’t remember any of his ramblings to Dean, nor anything that occurred while he was lost inside. He purses his lips.
“No. But I -”
“Look at those words, Sam,” says Dean fiercely, pointing to the staircase behind Farrah and Oliver. The brown words are still stretched across the wall. “We can come back in the spring when it’s settled down.” Dean turns back to Farrah and she’s nodding.
“If you still want to. We’ll put you up.” She starts to sway slightly on her feet and Oliver shifts one of his crutches over to free up one of his hands to rub her neck. The episode in the maze exhausted her. “But you should go. Now.”
Sam sighs in stubbornness, eyeballing each of them before grinding his teeth. “Fine. But we’re coming back. We’ll get this figured out.”
“We’ll be here,” says Oliver and then his lips curl wryly. “Of course we’ll be here.”
Dean nods once firmly. “I’m… I thought we could help. I wish I’d been right.”
“Us too,” answers Oliver for both of them.
There’s nothing left to say after that and Sam and Dean exit the hotel without another word. As soon as the door shuts behind them Sam opens his mouth.
“Dean, I -”
“In the car, Sam.”
“You’re not even going to fucking listen to me, are you?”
“Nope.”
Sam gets in the car and slams the door shut hard, making Dean literally bite his tongue to keep his mouth shut. He slides into the driver’s seat easily, turning the key in the ignition.
And nothing happens.
He rotates it back and turns it again. The engine doesn’t turn over, doesn’t make so much as a ‘click.’
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dean mutters as he pops the hood and gets back out. The sun is already below the mountaintops and the light is dim, but he’s just barely got enough to take a look at the engine. He checks the usual suspects: spark-plugs, distributor, battery, alternator. Everything’s fine.
He gets back in the car and turns the ignition again.
Still nothing.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean curses as he hits the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.
“Looks like we’re staying.”
Dean shoots him the dirtiest, pissiest look he owns as they both get back out of the car, grab their bags and climb back up the steps to knock on the door.
Farrah opens it and she doesn’t look surprised to see them.
“It won’t let you leave, will it?”
She doesn’t need an answer and pushes the door open wider for them to come back inside.
***
Dinner is a somber affair. They eat leftovers from the night before in silence; Sam, Dean and Oliver seated at the table, Farrah once again eating standing up.
“Why do you do that? Why don’t you sit down?” Dean finally asks.
“When I eat, they crowd around. They miss food. If I’m sitting it’s very… claustrophobic.”
“Fucking creepy.”
She shrugs. After a few minutes she sets her plate down and clears her throat. “It’s very important to Charlie, Sam, that you know he wasn’t the one that led you into the maze.
“Oh, I, uh… okay.” Sam’s not quite sure how to answer that.
“How do you know for sure?” counters Dean. Being trapped in the hotel has turned his mood sour and he’s more than willing to spread the feeling around.
“Because the maze is unsafe for the dead, I blocked it off from them a long time ago. There’s an iron pipe buried underneath the entrance. They can’t cross it. If Sam saw something go through the front, it couldn’t have been one of them.”
Dean grudgingly has to accept her word for it.
“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well tonight. Do you guys need anything before I turn in?”
“I can take care of them, Fay,” says Oliver. “If they need something I can tell them where to find it.”
“Okay. Goodnight.” She doesn’t wait for a response before she leaves the kitchen, rubbing her eyes as she goes. Oliver watches her with worried eyes, his gaze not leaving her until she disappears down the hall.
“So, do you guys need anything?” asks Oliver.
“Other than a way down the mountain?” Dean says and at Oliver’s somewhat sheepish look, he shakes his head. “Naw. We’re cool.”
“I really am sorry I ever agreed to let you stay,” Oliver says, repeating his sentiment from earlier.
Sam waves his fork around in a gesture of dismissal. “Don’t be. We came here to help. We can still help.”
“I guess I’m just… I’m not convinced anymore that there is any help to be had,” replies Oliver, his tone melancholic and low. “If you change your mind about needing something, call. I’ll answer the phone and let Farrah rest. Don’t bother cleaning up, I’ll take care of it in the morning.” He pushes himself to his feet, getting his crutches underneath him and with a nod of his head, he shuffles off.
Once he’s gone, Dean jerks his head in Sam’s direction. “Seriously, you okay?”
“Yeah. I feel fine.”
“Uh-huh. ‘cause you didn’t look fine when we found you.”
“Dude, I’m not lying to you. I don’t remember anything that happened but I feel okay.”
They eat in silence, shoveling food into their mouths. Leftovers are a rare thing for them and the stew is surprisingly comforting. Oliver had some frozen rolls that he toasted up to go with the small meal and Dean’s tearing into one of them when Sam speaks again.
“So, uh, you gonna fill me in on what happened?”
“We went into the maze, we found you, we left.” Dean shrugs. “End of story.”
“Dean, we can’t figure this out if you won’t tell me what happened.”
Dean takes his time using his roll to sop up the stew gravy on his plate, chewing slower than Sam has ever seen him eat in his life. Sam raises his eyebrows, not buying the act.
“It was fucking weird, okay? And I gotta tell you, Sammy, I don’t know about Farrah.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know if she’s entirely human.”
“What? That’s… what about her brother?”
Dean shrugs. “Him… I get nothing too freaky off of. But her, out in that maze… She didn’t look right. Hell, the whole thing was like some bizarre Twilight Zone but she was especially creeptastic. She looked… off. Different. When we found you, you were covered in branches and roots, that same brown sludge on the wall out there. You don’t remember any of that?”
Sam shakes his head slowly. “I get a feeling like… like I was covered, but that’s it.”
Dean nods chewing his food. “And then Farrah, she grabs a bunch of it and starts spitting out this freaky-ass kid’s rhyme about a crooked man and a crooked house and that’s all she fucking says. Just keeps repeating it over and over again. And then she tells the crap covering you to leave and it fucking howls. But it left. So you tell me what she is that she can do that.”
Sam blows a breath of air out of pursed lips. “You think witch?”
“I dunno man.” He shoves another forkful into his mouth and chews for a second. “That kid ghost, Charlie, he said he gave you a book.”
Sam’s eyes light up. “Yeah, it’s another one of their dad’s journals only this one seems totally dedicated to what’s going on here. I think he might have already figured a lot of this out.”
“If that’s true, then why didn’t he do fuck all about it? Or tell his kids what was going on?”
“Got me.”
“Well, whatever it is, don’t go wandering off by yourself again.”
“Dean, c’mon…”
“I mean it, Sam. This place has got its creepy eye of Sauron on you and I don’t like it.”
“Eye of Sauron?”
“What? I read.”
“Geeky books apparently,” Sam says with a smile. “I’ll be careful.”
“Good. ‘Cause I’m tired of saving your princess ass.”
***
Dean’s surfing the net, trying to find out all he can about Cunieform script when Sam’s says he’s found something in Francis’ journal.
“I think I know what that was, in the maze,” Sam says, sitting up in bed and propping himself up against the headboard.
“Which part?”
“You said she was saying a rhyme? While she freed me from the branches?”
Dean nods. “Yeah, something about a crooked man and a crooked house.”
“Dude, this is some crazy shit, but it sounds like her dad made that into a kind of trigger for her.”
Dean finally looks up from the laptop. “What do you mean?”
Sam flips back through some of the pages and then forward again. “Well, I’ve been reading about everything that happened post Room 43, and her dad got more and more freaked out that she would get lured in there again, but at the same time, he started noticing that she could do these things that he couldn’t. Like how you told me earlier about her pushing at the ghosts.”
Dean nods and motions for Sam to continue.
“Her dad could do that too, but he says point blank he’s not nearly as strong as she is. And this is when she’s…” Sam flips through some pages. “Seven. I guess it’s not something he learned until he was in his twenties. His dad was the same before that. And then, according to this, she started pulling ghosts in.”
“What, like bringing them to her?”
Sam bobs his head enthusiastically. “That’s what her dad thought. Over one hundred and sixty ghosts showed up during the winter of 1987 and stirred some serious shit up. Sounds like that was the season that started giving this place its ‘no one visits during the winter’ vibe. Up until then they used to get regular deliveries of supplies, or visitors, or even some off season tourists, but that year two of the delivery men, on separate deliveries, left Cross Creek and committed suicide.”
“How?”
“One by gunshot, one by pills. And there was a family from town that came up to visit, their kids were around the same age as Farrah and Oliver and two weeks later the son had to be committed after he tried to slash up his sister. Said she had ‘the dead all over her’. Total psychotic break. So Francis started freaking out. I mean he’s got this kid on his hands who’s stronger than he is, and now she’s bringing ghosts in. It took him most of the spring and summer to clear out the excess hauntings and then he started looking into hypnotherapy for Farrah and I think that’s what he did to her.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Look he says here, I’ve got it under control now. She’s got it under control now. It’s a simple rhyme, one she can easily remember. She doesn’t know why, she doesn’t need to know why. I can’t help but think she has these gifts for a reason, and I don’t want to take them away from her, but we can’t have another season like the last. I think he figured out some kind of way to bury the bulk of her… power, I guess, in her subconscious, but the rhyme releases it. Like a post-hypnotic suggestion she can give to herself.”
“Well that’s just fucking great. And what happens when she decides to open Pandora’s freaktastic box all the way?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m starting to think we should have brought more guns.”
“I don’t think more guns is going to be the way out of this.”
“More guns is the way out of anything,” Dean argues back with raised eyebrows. He rubs his hand over his stubble. “So what the fuck is she.”
“Does she have to be something just because she’s got abilities?” Sam asks.
“Fuck yeah, she does.”
Sam’s quiet for a moment. “Is that what you think about me?”
Dean’s eyebrows come together. “What?” He’s honestly confused.
“Is that what you think about me?” Sam repeats, his voice a little louder this time.
“No.” Dean’s tone implies he thinks Sam’s an idiot.
“Isn’t it?”
“Sam…”
“I’m serious, Dean. If you think that about her, then you gotta think that about me too.”
“I don’t.”
Sam eyes him for a moment. “Maybe you should.”
“What? C’mon, don’t start this, man. It’s late, it’s been a shit day…”
“I’m just saying -” Sam huffs out a breath. “You can’t think that about Farrah and not about me. If she’s not human because of what she can do, than neither am I.”
“Of course you’re fucking human, Jesus. I think I would know by now if you weren’t.”
“Would you? ‘cause I gotta say, after today, and that message…”
“You’re not telling me some spook message has got you… spooked,” he finishes lamely.
“It picked me.”
“There’s only two of us! Fifty-fifty chance.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Dean. Right.”
It’s Dean’s turn to sigh this time as they staunchly avoid looking at each other.
“Fuck this, I’m gonna get a drink. You want a drink?”
“The Impala’s dry man, we didn’t get a chance to stop before we came up here.”
“Hello. Hotel. They gotta have liquor.”
“I don’t want anything.”
Dean stuffs his feet into his boots. “Salt line…” he starts.
“Jesus, what am I? Four?”
“Don’t leave the room.” Dean points a finger at him.
Sam points a decidedly different finger at Dean which Dean ignores.
***
In the dining room, he hits the jackpot.
Fully stocked bar.
He even finds an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label.
He feels bad for about 3.2 seconds before he slides a glass onto the shiny bar top and cracks the bottle open.
He sits at one of the tall stools and spins the glass idly in his hands.
“Gentlemen rarely drink alone.”
He looks up and rolls his eyes at the sight before him. The man is tall and slender, thinner in the shoulders than either Dean or Sam, older in the face and eyes.
It’s the eyes that always give away age and this spook has ‘ancient’ written across his dark orbs. Dean has to stifle a laugh at his outfit, baggy oxford pants with pleats and a wide bottom. His suit jacket is cut loose as well, all in shades of grey.
“Lucky for me, I’m not a gentleman. Nice outfit,” Dean says dryly.
The man pulls up a stool next to Dean. “Do you mind?”
“Actually, I kinda do. It’s a personal rule. I don’t socialize with the dead. I usually just salt and burn them.”
“Yes, I know. It’s horrible for business.”
“Lemme guess. You’re here to give me some sob story about how you’ve got no where else to go, and you just want to stay at the hotel forever and ever with all the other spooks, braiding each other’s hair and having tea parties.”
The man is silent as Dean shoots back the rest of his glass of whiskey.
“And I’ll tell you what, I don’t give a shit.” Dean slams his glass down forcefully on the bar, glaring at the man.
“I don’t imagine you do.” The man’s eyes travel up and over Dean carefully. “What is it that you think you can accomplish here?”
“Spring cleaning. Time to move on, old boy. Clear out.”
“Old boy,” the man repeats lowly, seemingly amused by Dean. “Tell me, Dean, how old do you think I am?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
“Of course not. How foolish of me.” He smiles and it’s all teeth and flashing white, not reaching his eyes. “I must say, people like you… You’re quite the thorn in my side, Dean Winchester.”
“Is that so?” Dean pours himself another inch of Johnny Walker.
“You and your brother Sam traipsing around the country, clearing out ghosts.”
“Dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.”
“What would it take, to get you to stop?”
Dean pauses, drink halfway to his lips, and he sets the glass down slowly. “What?”
“What would it take,” repeats the man slowly in his liquid mercury voice, “to get you to stop?”
“Nothing.”
The man smiles again, only this time, there’s no teeth and his eyes light up with glee. “Everyone has something they want, Dean. Everyone has a quiet wish, a dark, little secret, something, someone perhaps? Someone who’s maybe gone over to the other side already? Someone you’d like back?”
Dean’s blood curls cool and solid into a lump in his belly. “What are you?”
“Took you a while, didn’t it?”
Dean slides off the stool, feeling very naked with out a shotgun or iron poker or even his knife for crying out loud. He takes a step backward.
“You’re not just a ghost. You’re it. You’re the thing that’s here.”
“The thing that has no name?” he sighs. “Of course I have a name, it’s just that no one’s bothered to ask.” He slides off his barstool and takes a step closer to Dean. “So, tell me, is there someone on the other side you’d maybe want back? Someone dear enough to you that you’d consider giving up the ghost, shall we say?”
It’s too dark in the dining room suddenly and he wishes he’d bothered to turn some lights on. Not that it would matter, but even Dean Winchester, hunter, feels better in the light.
“No. No dice.”
“No one?” The man bobs his head. “Impressive. Usually people snatch that request right up.” He raises one hand to his mouth and places his forefinger against his lips. “Let’s come at this from the other side, so to speak.” He smiles at his own words. “I know there’s someone you’d do anything to keep on this side.”
“You stay the fuck away from Sam.”
“Bingo. C’mon, Dean. Bartering’s no fun if one party simply refuses to play. You stop hunting ghosts and I’ll leave Sam alone.”
“Why the fuck do you care about the ghosts anyway? It’s not like you can know all of them.”
“I’ll answer your question with a question: What’s the point of being king, if you have no subjects?”
“What the fuck are you?” Dean’s backing up step by step and the man, the thing just keeps coming closer.
“Do you have any idea, can your miniscule, finite brain comprehend how long it has taken to pull myself up out of the abyss? Do you know how long I had to wait for someone like her? Someone who could call to the dead, someone who could talk to the dead, someone who the dead listened to? And every time you salt and burn a set of bones, you steal from me.
“Your brother could be useful to me, he’s certainly got his own set of talents and when he realizes them all… he could be magnificent. But I would leave him to you if you agree to stop. You can kill the vampires, you can send the demons back to hell, you can burn anything else that comes across your path, but leave the dead to me. To us.”
“You don’t belong here.”
The both turn at the sound of Farrah’s voice. She’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, quiet and somber, staring intently at the man in the suit.
“Look who we woke up,” says the man playfully.
“You don’t belong here.”
The man’s smile fades slightly as Farrah takes a step toward him and he swallows carefully and starts to pull at his collar. She’s got the same discoloration to her skin that Dean remembers from the maze. The grey pallor to her complexion that’s set off by tiny silver slivers in her eyes. She’s in her bedclothes, a black tank-top and black yoga pants. The tank-top leaves her shoulders exposed and Dean can see the scar Oliver told them about, the one she got in room 43, glinting in the half-light. Slightly shiny and glossy in the darkened room.
“You can’t keep me away forever.”
“You don’t belong here,” she repeats and Dean’s suddenly a little grateful she’s not quite human.
Until she walks right through a table with a set of chairs on top of it. His eyes widen as she gets closer and he realizes, she’s not entirely there. She ghosts through several more stationary objects on her way forward until she stops right in front of Dean and the man. Dean can see the scar on her shoulder clearly now, like claw marks were someone or something tried to grab her. He turns with knowing eyes to look at the man.
“Come now, Fay. Let’s be friends, shall we? You don't want to go back to room 43, do you?”
“I’m not a child anymore. You can’t pull me in there.”
“Maybe not. But there are other ways.”
“Go away.” Her eyes flare slightly with silver, as does her scar tissue, sending out a quick pulse of light.
The man flinches. “Don’t be this way, Farrah.”
“I said go away. Go back.” Another shot of light from her eyes and her shoulder and the man stumbles back.
“Farrah,” he warns. “I’m tired of playing with you.”
“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile.”
He falls back another step and flickers once. “Little girl! I’m warning you.”
“He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.”
The man falls to the ground, flickering twice. “You do this Farrah, you send me back now and next time, I’ll punch a hole into this world. A big, gaping hole.”
“He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse.”
“And I’ll drag you back through it, kicking and screaming and I’ll enjoy every minute of it!” He’s shouting now, his voice taking on a strange tinny sound that’s reminiscent of nails jostling in an old coffee can. He is snapping in and out of reality madly, spending less and less time visible.
“And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
There’s a ‘pop’ sound and he’s gone. Dean’s leaning away, out of Farrah’s space as she stares at the ground where the man used to be. He takes a step backward and it catches her attention and she turns her eyes to his.
They’re black like coal, with silver, marbleized veins running through them. She tilts her head as though the sight of him confuses her.
“Christo,” he spits out, for lack of anything better to say.
She blinks twice at him; doe eyed flaps of her lashes.
“Farrah.”
Dean breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of Oliver, pushing through the swinging door from the kitchen. Farrah turns her freaky eyes to him, blinks twice more and they’re back to normal.
“You should go back now.” Oliver’s voice is steady and low.
“Is it getting late?”
“Yes, Farrah, it’s getting late.”
“Okay, Ollie.”
In the split-second it takes Dean to blink, she’s gone. Dean stares at the space where she was for a moment longer before flicking his gaze to Oliver.
Oliver’s hobbling over to the bar on his crutches. He grabs a glass from behind the shelf and pours himself a drink.
“I bet you could use another one of these,” he says easily, pouring whiskey in Dean’s glass.
Wordlessly, Dean makes his way back to the bar, hesitating at the chair.
“He won’t be back. Not tonight anyway.”
“And Farrah?”
“She’ll sleep like the dead after that.” He realizes what he just said and his eyes tighten at the corners before he takes a big swig of liquor. “Although I’ll probably have to bandage her shoulder. It always bleeds after.”
“What the fuck was that?”
Oliver swirls the liquid in its glass. “That was… that was it. That was the thing I was hoping you and your brother would know how to kill. But you don’t know what it is either.”
Dean finally takes a seat.
“And Farrah?”
“She’s not dangerous. Not to you or your brother.”
“Yeah, well, forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”
“You saw how she was. As soon as I tell her it’s late, she leaves.”
“I saw her walk through furniture. What the fuck is that all about?”
“I don’t know any term for it other than the ridiculous new age ones. I guess you’d call it astral projection. She… leaves her body behind. Like one of them.”
“One of who?”
“The dead.” He takes a large swallow of his whiskey, grimacing at the burn. “She’s been doing it since we were little. Since room 43.”
“So, what? She just checks out of her body and takes a stroll around the hotel?”
This time when Oliver grimaces, it’s at Dean’s words. “Yes.”
“And then what?”
“And then nothing,” replies Oliver with a shrug.
“What’s that mean to her? It’s getting late?”
“If she’s out of her body too long, it takes her a long time to recover. She’s tired, sick. Gets vertigo. Things like that.”
“Why does she do it?”
“You saw why,” says Oliver, gesturing to the space where the man had been. “She’s more powerful out of her body than in it. I don’t know why, but it’s like her… flesh limits her. But when she’s like that… when she’s out… it’s like she has no concept that she should be in a body. I have to remind her to return. She’s never gone back on her own. And she’s also… different. She knows me, or rather, she knows she trusts me. But I don’t think she knows exactly why. I’ve never been entirely sure she knows exactly who I am.”
“What happens when she wakes up?”
“She remembers everything. She can tell you exactly what happened and what she did or saw. But she’s removed from it while it’s happening. She told me once it’s like being in a dream world. She knows what’s she’s doing and why she’s doing it, but it’s like she’s cut off from everything else.”
Dean takes a stiff drink. “What the fuck is your sister?”
Oliver swirls his glass and lets out a wry huff. “I’d been hoping you could tell me.”
“Why in hell do you stay here?”
“If I could get her to leave, I would. I’d pack us up tonight, right now and if that thing won’t let us take a car, I’d walk down that fucking mountain, bum leg and all. But she won’t leave them.”
“Who? The ghosts?”
“Yes. The ghosts,” he says bitterly. “I know you’re listening,” he calls out to them, taking another drink. “She says she has to stay, to protect them from it. Him. That thing that was here tonight. And she’s right. It wants them as much as it wants her, just in a different way. Maybe they could leave. They could move on or hell, I don’t know, find another hotel to haunt,” he says mirthlessly. “But they won’t. Or can’t. I don’t even know anymore and frankly, I don’t care. I just want out.”
“She wants you to leave. She asked us, when we first came, to take you.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Would you leave your brother here? In this place?”
“No.”
“Well there you have it. And like I said, she won’t go. She just feels this goddamn responsibility to them. As if being able to talk to them, do things for them makes her responsible for them. Jesus. Sometimes I think she forgets she’s not one of them. Like I’m the only thing keeping her on this side.”
The temperature in the room is dropping and on his next exhale, Dean can see the fine grey puff of his breath.
“It’s getting cold in here.”
“I know. They’re pissed and trying to make me uncomfortable. For daring to talk about Farrah leaving, but she’s my sister.” His voice is rising, getting louder. “She was my sister before she was ever your anything,” he shouts at the dead air.
It scares Dean in that moment, how much he and Oliver have in common. It unnerves him that in this remote place, full of the dead and things he can’t explain, that he should find someone who said out loud the exact thing he feels about Sam. Sam was his brother before he was ever anybody else’s anything. Whatever Sam’s powers mean, whatever path is being set out before him, he was Dean’s first.
“They’d get rid of me too, if they could. Try to make me so miserable I would leave, but if there’s one lesson that thing taught them, is that I won’t go easily,” says Oliver, gesturing down at his bad leg. “And Farrah would never forgive them if they hurt me.” He finishes his drink. “It’s late. I’m maudlin and depressed.” He shuffles off the chair and starts to hobble away. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Dean watches him go and takes another big swig of whiskey before heading back to his room. Once there, Sam stares at him questioningly as he checks and rechecks the salt lines and locks.
“What happened to you?”
“I think we might be a little fucked.”
***
Contrary to what Dean expected, Sam gets really excited as Dean tells him what happened downstairs between the unknown man and Farrah.
Then again, Sam’s always been a little off.
“I think I’ve got this figured out, Dean,” he says a little breathlessly. He’s got the laptop, Francis’ journals and sheets of loose paper spread out before him on the bed and is flipping between all three.
“Thank god because the sooner we leave this freakshow behind, the happier I’ll be. So,” he claps his hands and rubs them together. “What is it and how do we make it dead?”
“I think it’s an ancient Sumerian god.”
“Oh good, and here I thought it was gonna be something hard.” Dean rolls his eyes. “Honestly, whatever happened to a good old fashioned salt and burn?”
Sam ignores Dean’s mutterings as he flips between Francis’ journal and the laptop. “It’s a little hard to decipher in some cases, but this symbol, the one with the three triangles,” he holds it up for Dean to see, “is the cuneiform symbol for mountain, or kur. Now, kur is one of those words that doesn’t translate well, or I guess it translates fine, it’s just that it can translate into a few different things. One of which as I said, is mountain.”
Sam’s in full on geek mode, flashing papers at Dean, showing him websites about stone tablets unearthed in god-forsaken places and painstakingly reconstructed and translated over vast spans of time.
“This mountain idea was sometimes used by the ancients to depict the underworld or the nether world. I mean to them it was used to depict any foreign land but when they started getting mythological, they used this idea of a foreign land as the ultimate way to describe the underworld. And then they also had this notion that Kur, with a capital K, was this monster that lived beneath the mountain and he was sometimes seen as a dragon or a large serpent.”
“It just gets better and better,” mutters Dean.
“The closest Greek or Roman god would be Hades or Pluto, and it’s a similar thing where their names end up becoming synonymous with the land of the Dead. There are also some parallel Persephone myths with Kur dragging down a consort for himself who then becomes trapped in the underworld for unspecified amounts of time.”
“Didn’t Persephone get stuck down there because she ate something? She could’ve left, but she ate or drank something.”
“Uh, yeah,” says Sam as he scans the website. “I think she had a pomegranate seed.”
“Stupid pomegranates,” Dean murmurs, recalling what Sam said when he came out of the maze. I didn’t eat them, she will. She eats them all on purpose.
“Pardon?” Sam asks, nose crinkling up in confusion.
Dean shakes his head. “Nothing. How do we kill this fucker?”
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“I thought you had this all figured out.”
“I’m pretty sure this is the what of what we’re dealing with, but I haven’t found exact details on how to kill it yet.”
“What’s it say in the mythology?”
Sam shrugs. “On most of the sites I’ve seen it just says ‘and then they slay the dragon,’ I mean, it’s not like they give out the detailed instructions, they were working with writing on tablets and I’m sure they had to leave out a lot of the details. Other sites are more focused on a poem or fable that deals with another mythological being, Inanna who descends down to the ‘land of no return,’ is killed, and then later revived. The problem is, when she comes back to the living world, the ghosts are of the underworld are still attached to her. Her sister, Ereshkigal is the queen of the underworld and the one that killed Inanna when she came down. Although there’s some speculation that they are just two sides of the same coin and are supposed to represent two halves of one person.”
“God save me from mythology. Seriously. If you want to teach people a lesson, just fucking write it down. But this bullshit smoke and mirrors and hiding details in myths and lore… Jesus, it makes our lives hell,” Dean says, rubbing his hand over his eyes. He’s so fucking tired he’s seeing double. “So this Ereshkigal, what’s her deal.”
“Well, I think she would be the one that’s most related to the Persephone myth. They say that she was stolen from the living and forced to be queen of the dead.”
“And the king? Kur?”
“He’s not always in all the mythology. In a lot of the references I’ve found only Ereshkigal’s is noted as the ruler of the dead, and there’s no reference to a king at all. Her alternate name, Irkalla, is also used as the name for the underworld. Some myths actually say that she became queen unwillingly and took over.”
“So… she gets kidnapped, taken to the underworld and stages a coup d’etat?” He laughs dryly. “Nice. Gives a whole new spin on ‘heaven doesn’t want me and hell’s afraid I might take over.’” He collapses down on the edge of the bed. “So what you’re telling me is we have to figure out a way to kill the Sumerian god of the underworld. Fantastic. Isn’t he technically already dead?”
“Technically.”
“Fuck I hate mythology. What about the Greeks? How did they kill gods?”
“Um, I think they only banished them. Pit of Tartarus, I think.”
“And I hear it’s lovely in the summer,” Dean deadpanned before frowning. “I thought Zeus killed his old man?”
Sam thinks for a second. “Uh, yeah, but he was a god too. Pretty sure we can’t pull that out of our bag of tricks.”
“So we’re fresh out of god killing ideas, is that it?”
Sam fidgets.
“What?” asks Dean warily.
“Dude, I don’t think we can do it.”
Dean nods. “Farrah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, I pretty much got that from the queen of the dead stories too.” He eyeballs Sam. “Think she can do it?”
“I think she’s gonna have to. You said she fought him off in the dining room,” Sam prompts hopefully.
“Yeah, but he seemed pretty pissed about that.”
“Well, I’ll keep researching. I mean, something might come up.” Sam shrugs.
“Yeah,” Dean says thoughtfully. “Yeah.”
Sam shuts the laptop. “Look, we can’t do anything else about it tonight. Let’s call it, and start fresh tomorrow.”
“Do not leave this room without me,” Dean warns.
Sam thinks about arguing and opens his mouth to do just that, but at the last moment, shuts it with a click of his teeth. “Okay.”
“Okay, like okay?” Dean’s stunned they aren’t having another fight about this.
“Dude, it’s nearly three in the morning. So yeah, okay.”
“Okay.”
***
Sam dreams of the maze.
In his dream, it’s not cold, and there’s no snow, but it’s still lifeless and barren. Like a winter where someone came in and snatched the temperature and weather away but left behind the desolate landscape.
Grey would be the best word to describe it all. Grey with patches of brown and black smeared carelessly around.
He comes to a gate. Large, white, curving spires reach up ending in sharp edged gold spikes and his eyes travel along the length of them until his neck hurts from the angle at which he’s tilted it. It’s the only way to break through this particular section of the maze and he knows he has to go through it.
The metal is neither cool nor soft when he touches it and it’s hard to tell if he’s exerting any pressure on it all. His fingertips are strangely immune to any feeling. The gate swings open silently, the only sound his heart thudding in his ears.
As he passes through the gate, he realizes he’s sockfoot. He looks back and sees his shoes still on the other side. He turns away from them.
The ground is shapeless beneath his feet. Neither soft nor hard. There’s a strange smoothness to it that makes him want to curl his toes deeper into his socks.
He finds a second gate. Knotted, twisted roots and branches make up this one, intertwined and tangled so that he can’t tell where one branch ends and another begins. He touches the wood and it writhes over itself, creating an opening. He steps through the hole, having to crouch down to make it through the opening.
Again he looks back.
This time he sees his hoodie left behind.
He continues walking, his eyes searching for something, anything to focus on. He has the impression that he’s traveling very far, yet not far at all and the sensation gives him vertigo and makes him shake his head a few times to clear it.
Another gate. Opaque glass that soundlessly cracks when he touches it and shrinks in on itself, closing up seamlessly behind him when he’s through. His socks on the other side.
He loses track of space and time again, until he’s at the fourth gate. Made of polished marble, it shines even in the absence of any direct source of light. It’s a solid monolith of dark grey, veined with white and black. When he places his fingertips against it, it yawns open without a sound, but he imagines he can feel the tremors the movement causes in his toes.
He leaves his watch on the ground.
She’s waiting for him at the fifth gate, her obsidian black eyes glaring silver sparks at him, reflecting the flames that comprise the portal. Blue and orange tendrils spit out from the gate, but there is no heat, no burn from the flame. Her face is expressionless as she holds a hand up.
“You do not have enough to pass,” she says simply.
He stupidly calculates he’s still got his shirt, his pants and his underwear and that should get him through the remaining gates.
He knows there are seven.
He was invited.
“He does not decide who passes. I decide who goes through the gates and who doesn’t. And you won’t.”
He has enough to pass.
She shakes her head, reading his mind in this dreamlike world. “I will not take anything from you in payment.”
He frowns. He wants to see what is on the other side.
She shakes her head again. “It is not for you. I will not let you pass.”
He looks past her at the blue flames again, and when he turns back to her, she is handing him back all his possessions.
He doesn’t want to take it. He wants to know what is on the other side.
“Come ask me again, before you leave forever, and I will tell you. But this is not for you. Not now. Not ever.”
He wants to ask why. Maybe he’s not worthy.
“It has nothing to do with worth. This path is not for you.”
He’s holding the bundle of his possessions, though he has no memory of taking it. He stares dumbly down at it. When he looks up again, she’s gone.
***
He wakes, sitting upright stiffly. As if he’s triggered some kind of ‘Sam-radar’ Dean pokes his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. He grunts at Sam, which Sam thinks is supposed to be some kind of a ‘good morning’ and then his head ducks back into the bathroom, like a groundhog back into its hole.
He’s back out a few seconds later, a trail of steam scented with soap, minty toothpaste and shaving cream in his wake. He jerks his head at Sam.
“What with the face?” Dean’s eyes narrow. “Nightmare?”
Sam shakes his head and has to clear his throat before he speaks. “No. Just tired.”
“Uh-huh.” Dean’s tones screams ‘I don’t believe you,’ but he doesn’t say anything else.
Sam scrunches up his face. “I need coffee.”
He showers quickly, grateful that there’s ample hot water even after Dean was done and minutes later they head down to the kitchen and find a fresh pot of coffee already made.
“Freaky Farrah and Odd Oliver must already be up,” says Dean.
“Dean, c’mon,” Sam replies as he pours two cups of coffee for them.
Dean dismisses his tone with a wave of his hand.
Oliver hobbles in seconds later, jerking his head in greeting.
“We were just helping ourselves to coffee,” says Sam.
Oliver nods and then hands Sam a piece of paper. Sam unfolds it and stares at the rosetta star that’s been crudely drawn.
“What’s this?”
“Sometimes, after nights like last night, when Farrah… when she… when she’s out, afterward, I sometimes dream of that symbol.”
Sam stares at it for a moment longer and then hands it over to Dean. Dean questions Sam with his eyes quickly and Sam gives him an affirmative gesture. Sam recognizes the symbol as vaguely reminiscent of the star of Inanna, an eight pointed rosette that’s known as her symbol.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” says Oliver, realization dawning on him.
Sam again remembers why it’s a bad idea to be in the room with a psychic. “I mean, we don’t know for sure, but we’ve got some ideas, yeah.”
Oliver scrutinizes Sam for a moment longer. “And you don't want to tell me,” he says lowly. “You’re… afraid to tell me.” Sam hedges away, as if the slight increase in distance will help keep Oliver out of his head.
“Okay, no fair using the freaky psychic shit,” interrupts Dean.
“She’s my sister.”
“Doesn’t mean you can poke around in his brain on a fishing expedition.”
Oliver’s jaw tightens. “But you know something.”
“Look,” says Sam. “All we have are a few loose theories and even if we’re right, we don’t know what to do about it yet.”
Oliver looks back and forth between the two of them. His sigh is full of resignation and he stares up at the ceiling briefly.
“Okay,” he says quietly and he repeats the word one more time, as though soothing his own mind with it.
“Where is your sister, anyway?” asks Dean.
“Downstairs. The pool is…” another sigh. “There’s water in it and she’s… she woke up this morning obsessed with it.”
“She say anything about last night?”
Oliver shakes his head. “No. I bandaged her shoulder last night, it was bleeding like a stuck pig and she woke up and didn’t even notice it. She was just fixated on the pool. She went down there an hour ago and…” he pauses and they can almost see his brain straining to reach out and then he sags back. “She’s turned off. Not letting anything out or in.”
Dean thinks back to when he was downstairs by the pool with Farrah and she had first seen the water collecting in the deep end of the pool.
I think it’s trying to come through.
He can hear the way her voice sounded when she said it. Scared. Frantic. Awed.
Dean studies Oliver and while Dean’s not psychic, he can read most people like a New York Times Bestseller, and Oliver doesn’t appear worried, just annoyed or exasperated.
Farrah hasn’t told him about what she thinks the water means.
“Well, Sam and I wanna ask her a few questions, so we’ll pop down there and see what’s what.”
Oliver nods. “All right. I’ll be in the solarium if you need me.” He step-shuffles out of the kitchen, the rubber soles of his crutches making squeaking noises against the linoleum. Sam waits until he’s sure Oliver’s gone before turning back to Dean.
“How much do you think we should tell Farrah?”
“We aren’t going to tell her anything. You are going to stay upstairs with Oliver and I will talk to Farrah.”
“What? Dean, why?”
“There’s something freaky about that pool, Sam. Yesterday when I was down there, Farrah seemed to think that thing was trying to get through and after last night, I’m betting that’s why she’s so freaked out by it.”
“You can’t keep doing this, Dean.”
“Doing what?”
“You can’t try to keep me from things, places, whatever just because you think it’s dangerous. Our jobs are dangerous. Our lives are dangerous.”
“You think I don’t know that? I just don’t see the point of waving the red flag in front of the bull.”
“It’s not like I take gratuitous risks, Dean. I’m just trying to get the job done.”
“Sammy…”
“I’m not having this argument with you again, Dean. I’m just not. Now let’s go downstairs and see what’s going on.”
He doesn’t give Dean time to respond and instead brushes past him out the other exit of the kitchen that leads through the dining room to the main hall and then the stairwell to the basement.
They don’t say anything to each other as they descend down the stairs but each of them can feel the chill sinking into the air. By the time they are in the pool room, their breath is coming out in silver puffs.
The pool is full.
By the temperature drop in the room, the water flooding the pool must be frigid. The liquid is pouring in, sending sluices of water overflowing into the banks and the spill-off drains. They hear Farrah cursing and then the clank of a pipe or a wrench hitting the ground. She comes out of the maintenance room and stops short at the sight of them.
“What are you doing down here?” Her voice is hard and flat, matching her eyes as they flick angrily over Dean and Sam standing at the edge. Her shoulder is bleeding through the bandage as well as the t-shirt she’s wearing, dark crimson staining the blue fabric and turning it brown.
“Sleeping beauty,” Dean cracks. “Go on any other late walks last night?”
She scowls at him. “No,” she says as she rubs her fingers into the bridge of her nose. “Look, I don’t think you should be down here right now. The pool…” she gestures to the water gurgling up and over edge.
“You got a shutoff valve?” Sam asks.
“Yes,” she answers easily. “And it’s shut off. All the drains are wide open too.”
The three of them stare at the water again.
“I know your car didn’t start yesterday, but I think… I think it might be distracted trying to get in and if you tried to leave now, I think… I think you could make it.”
Dean’s sorely tempted to clap his hands together and take her up on her offer but before he can, Sam’s opening his mouth and spouting off geek-style.
“We think we might know what it is,” he’s saying and Farrah’s staring up at him with wary eyes.
“I don’t care what it is. Can you stop it?”
Sam hesitates. “We’re working on that,” he begins. “But I don’t think that we’re going to be the ones that can stop it.”
She knows immediately what he means and her eyes drift back to the rough surface of the pool. “I… I can’t…”
Dean’s mouth opens slightly as the realization hits him. She knows.
“You know. You know how to stop it.”
She starts shaking her head furiously. “No. I…I don’t. I…can’t.” She’s still looking away from them, transfixed by the water surging up from the center of the pool.
“But you suspect something,” says Sam, his voice softer and kinder than Dean’s.
Her mouth opens and closes and she rubs a hand over her forehead. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just a thought, a feeling.”
Sam takes a step closer to her and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You can tell us. Maybe we can help. Whatever it is.”
Her entire posture screams her apprehension, her hand shaking as she wipes her bangs out of her eyes. She finally chances a look up at Sam and catches his earnest eyes with her own. Dean thinks they’re just about to get somewhere.
And that’s when Farrah and Sam get sucked into the pool.
One moment he’s standing there, staring at the two of them, and then next, before he can even twitch, they’re both snatched backward so forcefully that one of Farrah’s shoes is left on the tiled deck of the pool. He can see them, under the water, tangled in each other, arms and hands gripping at one another.
Something’s pulling Sam, pulling him toward the deep end and Farrah is trying to pull him back but she has no leverage underwater, nothing to pull toward, pull against.
Dean takes one short step backward and then jumps forward, into the pool.
He curses loudly when he hits a hard surface, the shock of his landing jolting up from his heels and settling with a painful crack in the base of his spine.
The surface of the pool is like glass and he’s trapped on top. He punches at the implacable surface, each blow sending a dull thud of pain up his arm that touches his elbow and then his shoulder as the shock-wave works its way up his skeletal system. He scrambles to his feet and slip-slides across the surface, his eye catching sight of Farrah’s toolbox by the door to the maintenance room.
He upends the entire thing, sending tools sprawling with clicks and clacks of metal on metal until he spies a large wrench and he grabs it. Rushing back to the pool, he slides across the hard surface, dropping to his knees as he reaches the middle of the pool. He can still see Farrah and Sam twisting and turning, Sam’s been sucked to the deep end, his legs disappearing down the drain at the center of the deepest part of the pool.
Dean beats against the crystalline surface with the wrench, and finally a star shape crack blossoms with a loud crunch and he pounds away at the weak center trying to punch through. The only thing he can hear is the smack of the wrench hitting the surface of the pool again and again. Sam’s past his waist now into the drain, Farrah bracing her legs against the bottom of the pool and keep her arms under Sam’s, pulling, trying to keep him.
There’s a horrible sucking sound and his eyes widen as Sam vanishes down the impossibly small drain.
Time seems to hang for a moment; the split second after Sam disappears strung out into an infinite loop of space-time; heavy, dense and impossible.
Then Dean’s falling, the surface beneath him transformed back into water and he’s pulled under, the wrench falling from his hands and sinking to the bottom. Christ it’s cold. The icy water claws a sharp exhale of the only air he had in his lungs. He kicks easily to the surface and breaks through just in time to see Farrah do the same. They both pull for the shallow end, Farrah’s strokes turning into an odd hop-run-jump once her feet touch the ground. They stagger out of the pool dripping, Farrah sputtering and coughing up black water and spitting it out with chunks of brown moss onto the ceramic surface.
Dean grabs her roughly, mindless to her choking and to the gush of brackish slag running down her chin.
“Where the fuck is my brother? Where did it take him?”
She’s a limp, shivering mess, unable to answer him and he shakes her roughly her head lolling backwards sharply.
“Where?” he shouts. “Where is he?”
When Oliver’s crutch collides with his shoulder roughly, it registers enough with Dean that he drops his hold on Farrah and she falls over, nearly breaking her teeth before she manages to get her hands under her. Oliver slides down next to her, pushing hair out of her face and thumping her soundly on the back. She clutches to him, fingers white-knuckled in their grip on his jeans and his shirt.
She coughs a few more times, staring up at Oliver with large eyes blinking, pulling at him and him at her, until she’s worked her way into his lap. They lock eyes and whatever they’re saying, they’re doing it inside their heads. She gags up one last mouthful of brown and green sludge and it dribbles over her chin before she turns to Dean.
“Room 43. He’s in room 43.”
Continue to Part 5