True north- Sam
Everything they had on was soaking wet. And getting wetter the longer they remained on that stretch of sand, under the pouring rain.
On his knees next to Dean, Sam shoved wet hair from his eyes and looked around. He caught glimpses of their surroundings with each flash of lightening. “We need to find some shelter,” he shouted. Between the wind, the rain and the crashing tide, the world had turned into a deafening place.
“What?” Dean volleyed over the torrent. Elbows resting on his knees, he wiped water from his eyes but didn’t really look up.
The wind was cold and with each passing second, it continued to rob them of whatever body warmth they had left, leaving their predicament more and more tenable. Clearly, they had to get moving and soon.
Sam turned slightly to tell his brother as much but what he saw left him frowning in an odd mix of concern and annoyance. Dean seemed to be completely out of it and incapable of actually registering where they were and what they had to do next.
Standing up and turning his gaze inland, Sam squinted into the night. The island wasn’t all that big, from what he remembered of the map, but the harsh conditions and darkness made it seem formidable; nothing more than the outline of trees was visible against the stormy sky. One fleeting flash of light as thunder rolled by, allowed Sam to glimpse something that seemed more man-made than the rest.
“There’s some kind of structure up ahead,” he announced, already in motion to get Dean up and moving. “Come on, lets get out of this rain.”
The terrain was treacherous given the conditions and Dean’s wobbling. More than once, Sam found himself supporting Dean, steering him clear of bulging stumps, pushing through dense thickets, through deep rivulets that grew wider with ever step. But they’d made it, and just in time too. Dean looked ready to drop.
The structure, as it turned out, was more like crumbled walls than an actual roof over their heads. According to their research, the island had housed an asylum at some point of its history, and Sam guessed that the half collapsed building that he was looking at was part of the complex that remained from that time.
A dull ache settled in the pit of Sam’s stomach as they climbed the faulty steps to get inside. Crossing the threshold where a large door used to be, they stopped to take it all in. The debris inside was mostly medical; abandoned gurneys, ripped yellow curtains, steel basins filled with rust and holes. The rest was dirt and dead leaves. Over the years, the forest had reclaimed what had been taken from it before.
It looked too much like Ellicott’s old hospital to be comfortable.
The ghostly and otherworldly mood of the place was slightly diminished by the orange glow of Dean’s lighter as he suddenly flickered it on.
“How did you get that to work?” Sam couldn’t help but ask. He was soaked to his boxers. The lighter he usually kept in his coat’s pocket, was lost, somewhere at the bottom of the river.
Dean just shrugged, his own coat a dead weight on his frame, heavy and shapeless. “Superior intellect, I guess.” Somewhere in that coat, Sam was sure Dean had an insulated pocket. The bastard.
The place was a ruin, a very soggy ruin, with nothing in plain sight that Sam could deem dry enough to arrange a makeshift torch.
“That looks like a flight of stairs down, up ahead,” Dean pointed out, his arm extended towards the end of the hall. “Maybe it’s drier down there.”
‘If the roof doesn’t collapse over our heads’ they both thought, even if neither voiced it. As it was, the floor had enough gaps in it to make the idea of a dry place anywhere below them seem more wishful thinking than reality.
Dean was set to start climbing downstairs when Sam’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Lemme.”
It wasn’t really a request. Sam was going to go in front, whether Dean was happy with it or not. Given the state the rest of the building was in, it was more than likely that half the stairs were rotten or not even there.
Dean was still unsteady on his feet from their ‘colorful’ arrival at the island. There was no way Sam was going to let him take point on those steps and send them both crashing to their deaths.
Dean’s look of annoyance was his only real reaction and easily enough for Sam to ignore as he snatched the lighter from his brother’s cold fingers and walked ahead of Dean.
The lighter’s warm glow was more for comfort than illumination. All it seemed to achieve was to accentuate the fact that it was really dark in there. Sam ended up advancing more by touch, using his hands and feet to feel his way down the staircase, extending a cautious toe and tapping on each step in search of missing boards. It made for a slow and stressful descent.
Twice Sam’s foot disappeared down one of the steps and he’d had to quickly shift all of his weight back or risk falling down. “Rotten,” he called back, warning Dean about another tricky step.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Dean growled at the obvious.
The bottom step came as a surprising relief as Sam’s boot connected with stone rather than wood. There was a short dizzying moment, as Sam’s body expected to keep on moving down and his feet found themselves walking on the level.
Sam halted, trying to get his bearings, only to be shoved forward as Dean’s body collided with him from behind. “Watch it!”
Dean, apparently still annoyed with his little stunt upstairs, snatched his lighter back and turned around.
The whole area to the left of the stairs seemed to have completely collapsed under the weight of the upper levels and in the place where a reception area seemed to have existed at one point, there was nothing more than a large hole in the floor.
“Let’s see if we can get a fire started,” Sam offered. His wet clothes were clinging to his skin like drag weights and the river mud had, somehow, managed to coat half his exposed -and a portion of his unexposed- skin. Dean, he as sure, was no better off. “At least, get these clothes dry.”
Finding stuff to burn that wasn’t as wet as them was not an easy task, even in a floor less exposed to the elements. Sam went about searching for broken furniture and paper while Dean sat in more secluded corner and started going through what was left of their gear.
In the second room he tried, Sam hit the jackpot. “Hey, over here!”
The floor of the place was covered in ripped, old paper, most of it dry. Grabbing a couple of broken chair legs, Sam’s fire was well underway when Dean, feeling his way around in the dark, stumbled into the same room.
“Nice,” Dean whispered, watching as the fire caught and flared up to his knees.
Shrugging off their wet coats, shirts and jeans, the brothers sat near the fire, concentrating on little more than warming up.
“How’s the head?” Sam asked. The silence was getting too pressing and all Dean seemed to be doing for the past hour was checking whatever was left of their gear.
It was spread on top of Dean's drying shirt. Two guns, stripped to their components and waiting to be cleaned and reassembled; a flask of holy water, stained white from their dunk in the river’s water but miraculously still closed and filled; an EMF reader, stripped to its bare components like it was just another weapon; Ruby’s knife, Dean’s lighter, a box of drawing chalk and a soaked cell phone.
Dean looked up from their depressingly short list of supplies. “I’m fine. We’re screwed.”
Sam felt inclined to agree as he rubbed his arms for warmth. Two guns that might still work and a demon knife between the two of them wasn’t much, especially when they had no idea what they were dealing with.
And then, of course, there was the small problem of them being stranded on that island. It was certainly strange, when New York City’s sky-scrapers were the only things that they could see against the night sky, but without a boat or a phone to call for help, they might as well be on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Swimming in the tidal surges of the East River was possible but ill advised. “How the hell are we gonna get back?” Sam asked quietly, watching Dean fumbled with their remaining cell phone. “I guess calling is out of the question...”
Dean turned the cell phone in his hand. “For now, it is. Don’t think it’s broken, though. Just wet.” He seemed to think a moment. “I could try and fix it, give Bobby a call,” he said, his voice letting slip how much faith he was putting on that particular plan. “Or we could try and swim for it,” Dean suggested half-heartedly.
Before Sam could point out how utterly insane that was, he felt the change in the air. Dean must have felt it too, because he had picked up one more stack of files to throw in the fire.
Colder.
Despite being well on their way to becoming dry and with the fire burning right next to him, Sam could see his breath, smoking in front of his face. “Dean.”
He blew out a puff of hot air, just to make sure Dean was on the same page as he on what was going on in there.
Ghosts.
Dean looked longingly at the dismantled EMF reader. It was pointless to try and reassemble it before it was completely dry. It wouldn’t work either way.
“No salt?” Sam asked, hopeful that their large bag of rock salt had survived the trip.
“Salt. Water,” Dean supplied. “You know the math.”
Iron.
Somewhere in that ruin of a place there had to be something made of iron that they could use to protect themselves.
Sam exchange one look with Dean and suddenly they were both bolting from the room, searching for the same thing.
The ghost was waiting for them at the collapsed door. “dOn’T bUrN!”
“Shit!!” Dean skittered to a halt so fast that Sam bumped into him.
It was a woman. Or rather, it had been a woman when she wasn’t transparent and shimmering.
She was wearing a long dress with long sleeves, covered with a starched apron with shoulder straps. The white cap on top of her messed hair with a faded red cross in the middle made it easy to identify her as a nurse.
“dOn’T bUrN!” she repeated, louder this time, like she feared they hadn’t heard it the first time around.
“I hear ya sister,” Dean said, carefully making his way back towards the fire. “No burning for you.”
Sam realized what he was doing. If she was that hung up on not burning, maybe fire would make her go away.
Dean was almost in the fire’s reach when the ghost realized what he was doing.
“DON’T BURN!!!”
The screech was so loud and powerful that both brothers were forced to cover their ears. Sam felt like his brain was ready to leak out of his ears.
Wind started to rise inside, moving around them, faster and faster. In seconds, it felt like they were inside a twister. Pieces of paper flew all around, colliding with them, scraping their skin and moving along in their wild as fast ride.
As soon as it had started, it was over.
“Bitch!” Dean yelled at the empty air.
It was pointless. The ghost was gone.
As was their fire.
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