Burnt Offerings 4/5
4.
Daylight, alright/
I don't know, I don't know if it's real/
Been a long night and something ain't right/
You won't show, you won't show how you feel/
No time ever seems right/
To talk about the reasons why you and I fight/
It's high time to draw the line/
Put an end to this game before it's too late/
“Head Games”, Foreigner
“What do you remember?” Sam asked.
They were sitting in the dark on the rocks near the ornithological station: Sam, Lt. Dobek, and Dean. Dobek was in a white t-shirt and jeans. Sam was barefoot in the sand and had a bruise down the side of his face. A fire of driftwood burned.
“I remember the base,” Dean said.
“That’s more than you usually do,” Sam said.
“Did anybody get hurt?”
“Nobody stayed long enough,” Dobek said. “When we got back in there was a wall of debris around your brother. A kind of fort of bureaucratic mess.”
“What did you say to him,” Dean said, indicating Dobek.
“He said he could show me,” Dobek said.
“I’m sorry to use you that way, Dean,” Sam said. “I just needed to prove that…”
“That there are monsters,” Dean said, his voice gravelly. “It was brilliant, brain boy. No harm, no foul.”
“Reap the whirlwind,” Dobek said. “So this is what you do?”
“Incite my brother to violence, not so much. Get beat up?” Sam said. “More than I’d like to.”
“Kill monsters.”
“We’re hunters,” Dean said.
“And you’re…”
“Dead,” Dean said. “At the moment, yes.”
Sam looked away.
“At the moment?” Dobek said.
Dean shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Sam’s face was turned enough away from the fire to be mostly in shadow.
Dobek looked at the beer in his hand. “You think you can kill this thing?”
“I think we can,” Sam said. When he looked back at them he was calm. “It would help if you could tell us everything you know about it.”
“I’ve been stationed here about six months,” Dobek said. “They found the fisherman a couple of days after I got here.”
Dobek told the story. The base was leased from the Canadian government. The US was studying long range, deep sea sonar and this was a research post. Not much for the marines to do so they trained and patrolled and had sentry duty. A team of marines was patrolling.
They came across a boat that had been pulled ashore. Not that unusual. Fisherman came ashore to drink or whatever. The kind of guys who became fisherman tended to be outdoorsmen. They saw a mound and some stuff, debris maybe, around it. Some gulls were picking at the debris.
Then they realized that the large mound was moving. It was made up of those bird things. When the team got closer the birds flew off. Underneath was the naked body of a man. The fisherman.
“I saw the body,” Dobek said. “It was one big bruise. No pecks or cuts. He’d been battered to death. Stripped. Undressed. Some of his clothing was half folded.”
“Great. Bird origami,” Dean said.
“You think that’s what happened to the men in the lighthouse,” Sam said.
Dobek nodded. “I don’t want it to happen again. It’s not like I can send a message to my superiors saying supernatural birds are killing my men so if you can stop it, I’ll do what I can to give you a clear way in and anything you need.”
“What happened to the bodies?” Sam asked.
“I think, if they aren’t interrupted, they drag them to the sea,” Dobek said.
Dean glanced out at the dark water. There was a gleam of phosphorescence.
“What is that?” Sam asked.
“Jellyfish, probably,” Dobek said. “Or plankton.”
It was lovely and they watched it for a moment. Dobek took a pull on his beer. “I should get back,” he said.
Dean kept watching the sea.
A woman rose out of the water. She was silhouetted against the phosphorescence but her proportions were off; a little too thick. Not fat so much as like badly modeled clay or something.
There was the distant sound of ringing, tinkling silver.
Then she dissolved into things winging, swooping towards the shore.
“Get back to the station,” Dean said.
Sam was on his feet. He grabbed a branch sticking out of the fire and swung it into the air. An arc of orange sparks showed that the night was full of birds. Then Sam and Dobek were buffeted by bird bodies.
Dean tried to feel rage, but it was like there was nothing there. The well was empty.
Dean could hear the thumps, like clubs. Sam swept the branch around driving them back. Dobek stumbled backwards on the rocks, close to the water’s edge. It was slippery there with slime and wet and Dobek windmilled, went to one knee, and then went into the surf.
He struggled up and a wave caught him sideways and he disappeared under.
Sam was holding the birds off pretty well with his branch but he looked around just in time to see Dobek go under.
Dobek came up again, his upturned face white against the dark water and tried to stand, but birds slammed into him knocking him farther into deeper water and he went under again.
Dean felt his gut clench. He knew what Sam was going to do-he’d have done it too but Sam-in first, always saving, dropping the branch and heading across the rocks. The birds abandoning him and diving into the dark water.
No, Sam.
He followed even though it meant nothing. Sam hit the water full length like a racing dive although Dean wasn’t sure it was deep enough. For a ghost, swimming was meaningless. Air above, dark water below, it was all the same. Above he looked around, fear building until Sam came up, his hair slicked to his head. The bird things flew out of the water at Sam and dove. “I can’t find him!” Sam gasped and then he went under again where those things battered at him even there. But not so many of them because more of them were somewhere else. Beating at Dobek.
Saltwater smelled of dead and living things.
Dean ghosted through the water-he wouldn’t get Sam out of there until Sam either found Dobek or-so he had to find Dobek and he did, touch of fabric, wet jeans, a leg. He rose up like smoke. “Sam! Sam!”
Nothing. There was just the cold surface of the water and the surf grinding against the rocks. They were fifteen, twenty feet from shore.
Then Sam surfaced.
“Sam!”
Sam found him-amazing that someone could tune in on the sound of a ghost voice, another weird ghost fact. Sam hauled Dobek to the surface and pulled him to the shore. It seemed like Dobek had been under a long time. The fish-birds kept diving and pounding at Sam both above and below the surface. Dobek was limp when Sam pulled him to the shore.
Sam threw Dobek over his shoulder and stumbled as best he could to the station.
Les was sitting at the table working on his laptop. “Oh no,” he said.
“Get the door!” Sam gasped. A fish bird flashed in. Les raised a binder and smashed it in mid flight and it slapped to the floor, neck broken. Les pushed the door shut.
Sam laid Dobek down on the floor, tilted Dobek’s head back and started breathing. He laid his head against Dobek’s chest and listened, then started CPR. “Can you call for help on the radio,” he gasped out as he pushed. (To the speed and beat of “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees. Dean remembered that weird fact, shared by Sam.)
Les scrambled to the radio. “Coast Guard, this is Les Salenko at Waterloo University Research on Baccalieu Island, I’ve got a medical emergency.” While he raised the coast guard at St. John’s, Sam kept up compressions. Dobek’s face was inhumanly white where it wasn’t black with bruises. His lips were not the sort of purple of a kid who was too cold, they were pale blue.
Dean wondered if ghosts could see the dead. Then yeah, a reaper, one he’d never seen, was there. The reaper touched Dobek and Dobek rose up out of the body.
Dobek looked down, shocked.
The reaper touched Dobek’s arm. Dean waited for the ‘why,’ the recrimination. Dobek closed his eyes in a moment of resignation.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said. Sam didn’t even seem to notice.
Dobek looked at Dean. Just looked and then they were gone.
“Sam,” Dean said.
“Come on,” Sam whispered. “Come on.” One, two, three, four, stayin’ alive, stayin alive. The new CPR guidelines said don’t bother with breathing, just keep the heart going. Sam had explained it all to Dean. Sam kept up on that shit.
“Sam,” Dean said gently. “He’s already gone.”
Les turned around to look at them.
Sam stopped. His hair was wet and hanging in his face. He sat back on his heels and wiped his bangs back.
“Coast guard is coming,” Les said.
Sam swallowed. “I tried,” he said.
“I know. He knew.”
Sam shook his head. “Don’t say it,” he said huskily.
You can’t save them all.
# Les gave Sam a towel, and he toweled his hair and changed his shirt. His chest and back were marked with plate-sized bruises, one bisecting his protection tattoo.
Outside the coast guard cutter came in, lights flashing. The EMTs looked like fisherman, too; local guys with crew-cuts, no nonsense types. One of them was a guy almost as tall as Sam who looked like he might have had some First Nations blood. Sam explained that he’d met the lieutenant and they’d hit it off and that he’d come by to have a beer. He’d said he was going to finish his beer and hike back.
“I went back out to, you know, take a leak,” Sam said, “and I saw him in the water. He didn’t have a pulse so I did CPR but…”
Les agreed that was what happened.
“Funny how he’s all bruised up. Rocks maybe?” the big EMT said. “Usually they cut people up but the sea is funny. You did what you could do.”
Sam shook his head.
Dean stayed silent and as unobtrusive as possible. He wondered why the rage hadn’t risen in him. Why he couldn’t have ‘blown’ as Sam put it. If he had just…done whatever. Instead Sam was lying to the authorities (not so big a deal, they did that all the time) and feeling the weight of the world. Dobek had seemed like a good guy.
They watched the coast guard zip Dobek’s body in a body bag and put it onto a gurney and then wade out into the water and lift the gurney onto the boat.
“Now what?” Les said.
“Now we figure out how to kill it,” Sam said. “Once we figure out what it is.”
“I…I have an idea,” Les said. “You know, after you tethered the laptops to that phone this afternoon, I was thinking.”
“This afternoon?” Dean said.
“You gotta be visible, Dean. My head is killing me,” Sam said.
Len pulled open a cabinet and pulled out ibuprofen. He handed the bottle and a glass of water to Sam. Sam tossed back four.
To the now visible Dean he explained, “Sam wouldn’t go across the water to the hospital after he was knocked in the head. I know it’s not good science but I always heard a person with a head injury shouldn’t be allowed to fall asleep so we talked for awhile and I checked ever so often to make sure his pupils were dilating evenly.”
Sam broke in, “I’m fine, Dean. Really. Headache. No dizziness, no slurring, I can recite the presidents. Business as usual.”
“How many fingers, Sammy?” Dean asked. He held up two.
“How many fingers, Dean,” Sam held up his middle finger.
Dean smiled.
“So while he slept a couple of hours I went researching. I found something. I don’t know if it’s even remotely helpful.”
He turned his screen to them. On it was an illustrated page for an Irish goddess with the usual long curling red hair and diaphanous airy-fairy gown. Most of the goddesses that Dean had seen were not very Princess-like.
The goddess was called Fand.
Les made sandwiches while they read about her. When she wasn’t a beautiful human she was a seagull who flew around with her handmaidens, all of them connected by silver chains.
“A lot of the Celtic gods could create illusion,” Sam said. “They’re the original Fairy. Not the cute little cartoon kind. The six foot tall, dressed like kings, psychopathic kind. I think she’s using the lighthouse as a barrow.”
“Barrows are underground,” Les said. “Right? I mean, I’ve read Lord of the Rings. Tom Bombadill and all that.”
“Yeah, but I’m thinking that she used illusion on those marines there because that was home. Or at least close to home.”
“Great. So how do we kill her?” Dean asked.
“She’s Fey,” Sam said. “Cold iron.”
“Does steel count as cold iron?” Les asked.
“No,” Sam said. “I’ve got a knife of cold iron.”
“Getting close to her with just a knife isn’t going to be easy,” Dean said.
“We need to get in that lighthouse anyway,” Sam said. “Somewhere in there is a spell, remember?”
“You think it’s still there?” Dean asked.
“We’re here. Might as well check it out.”
“A spell? Like a magic spell?” Les asked.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Sam is a tenth level wizard.”
“Shut up,” Sam said.
# Two hours of sleep for Sam so they could wait for moonrise. Sam pointed out that the Marine Corps was probably not going to take Dobek’s death well so they should check the lighthouse that night.
Moonrise.
“I don’t hate camping,” Dean said. “But, no forget it. I hate camping.”
“You used to like to go deer hunting with Dad,” Sam said.
“No, I hated deer hunting with Dad,” Dean said. “It’s November, you’re freezing your ass off in a tree stand waiting for some deer to show up. Dad makes you climb down every time you have to pee and walk downwind. Plus deer are harder to hit than targets.”
“You acted like you liked it.”
“It was Dad. It was better being miserable with Dad than sitting in a hotel room without Dad.”
“It was better reading at Bobby’s,” Sam said. “Sleeping in a bed. Sometimes Bobby would pour a teaspoon of whiskey in my hot chocolate.”
“He did that for you, too? He said he only did it for me.”
“Dude, it made us fall asleep faster.”
“Ahhhhh, right,” Dean said. “Bobby had some special ideas about parenting.”
They climbed the last bit of the hill in silence. The lightkeeper’s house blazed, lit up like a hobbit house.
“I guess Fand is home,” Dean said.
“Notice how the lighthouse itself is dark?” Sam said. “I don’t think you could make a cellar in this island.”
“Not without dynamite. Solid rock.”
“Right,” Sam said. “So if you were a lighthouse keeper who for God knows what reason collected occult shit, and you didn’t keep it in your house…”
“Because you don’t want the kiddies coloring all over it or whatever…”
They looked up at the dark lighthouse.
“Sam, that’s totally fucked. It’s a ruin in there. You weigh what, 190?”
“Fuck you, Dean. 220.”
“Dude, since the trials you’ve been eating once a week, maybe. And you never work out.”
“If you weren’t ectoplasm, I’d kick your ass.”
No, Dean thought, you wouldn’t. “Sammy, why don’t you ever just haul off and punch me?”
“Because every time I put my hand through you it creeps me out. And it doesn’t do anything to you so what would be the point.”
“No, really. I mean, I punch you. I mean, only when you deserve it, like when you screw up the car. And you know the rules, don’t mess with the car-“
“I don’t know what you are talking about but do you think we could debate the rules of Dean some other time?” Sam looked up at the lighthouse.
“Right,” Dean said. “Right. Just,” he tried to think of what to say. Know that I get mad at you but it doesn’t mean anything? Forgive me? What the fuck, was he trying to jinx this whole thing? He should just send chocolate and flowers for God’s sake.
“Just what?”
“Just be careful,” Dean said.
He couldn’t see Sam’s face that well in the dark but he knew what it looked like. Knew Sam was trying to see him. “You okay?”
“This plan sucks.”
“You mean not really having one? Yeah.”
“Watch your head, you’ve already cracked it once in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Dude,” Sam said, “we’ve had more concussions than the entire NFL. We’re going to be drooling by the time we’re forty.”
“I figure every time Cas heals us, we start over.”
Sam laughed quietly. They were spiked with before-the-action-adrenaline. He took out the knife and moved slowly to the door. He called out, “Fand! Dia dhuit!” (Greetings.)
(“Fuck all,” he’d said earlier, “Gaelic is impossible.”)
Nothing.
He looked over his shoulder back at Dean, his face half-illuminated by the light from the window.
He called, “Cad é mar atá tú?” (How are you?)
Awesome. They’d announced themselves so they were going in without the element of surprise and with less chance that they’d meet a goddess and a lot more chance that they’d meet a bunch of carnivorous seagulls.
A woman called out, “Tráthnóna maith daoibh.” It was a ‘hello’ kind of tone of voice.
Sam put the hand with the knife in a pocket and pulled open the door.
It was like the video. A fire crackled in the fireplace. The table was set with wine and a ham, bread and pears.
The voice floated from the other room, “C'ainm atá oraibh?”
Sam shrugged. Memorizing Gaelic did not mean understanding much of it.
A woman came to the doorway. She looked strange to Dean. She shimmered between a woman and something ancient and not very pretty that had been shattered into pieces. As a woman she had dark hair, not red, and wore a long straight blue dress that didn’t do much for her figure. She was attractive, as best he could tell with the shimmering. She looked at Sam and then at him. “An bhfuil Gaeilge agat?”
Dean wondered what Sam was seeing. Sam took a step towards her.
“You’re not Irish?” she said. She didn’t have an Irish accent, but something thicker, more like Scottish only, Dean thought, even harder to understand.
Sam shook his head. He took another step towards her.
“I asked you who you were? And why is a dead man keeping the company of the living?”
“Tá áthas orm buaileadh libh, Fand,” Sam said. (We are pleased to meet you.) Another step. He was almost in arms length of her. She was interested and perplexed.
“Your pronunciation is terrible. But it is nice of you to take the trouble,” Fand said. “How do you know my name? And what do you have in your pocket?”
“Tá m'árthach foluaineach lán d'eascanna,” Sam said. It was the thing he had worked the hardest on pronouncing correctly. ‘My hovercraft is full of eels.’ [1]
It did have the effect of momentarily flummoxing her. Which was the point. The element of surprise.
Sam lunged, whipping the knife out of his pocket and she only managed to get out of the way at the last moment, the iron hissing across her shoulder.
She whipped her arm and threw him back against the wall.
“Watch it,” Dean said.
The inside of the lighthouse shifted and wavered, one moment brightly lit, the next moment a dusty ruin. Sam tried to get up, but couldn’t seem to get his legs underneath him right.
Fucking bitch had smacked his head against the wall again.
“DEAN, NO!”
The goddess whipped her head around. “What are you? You’re hunters! You’re the brothers!”
“So we’re famous even in Ireland,” Dean growled.
“But you’re dead,” she said. “I’ve never heard of a dead hunter. What can you even do?”
Sam used his hand to steady himself and got back to his feet. He had the knife.
“Why do you want to do that?” Fand asked him.
“Because you killed people,” Sam said.
“I’ve been scattered…for a long time. It took a long time to get enough birds together to be,” she said. “People used to bring me sacrifices but everyone has forgotten. Until people bring me sacrifices, I have to find my own.”
“This is not your time anymore,” Sam said. “You can’t just kill.”
She frowned. “You’re just a mortal. Why are you talking to me that way.”
Sam lunged and she lowered her hand in a smacking motion and flattened him easily against the ground. He was struggling against the weight to breath.
Dean swung at Fand.
She shattered into birds. That had been a mistake. The whole plan had been to stab her in her goddess form. No way was Sam going to be able to stab a flock of seagulls.
The room plunged into darkness, with the only light being a line of moonlight through a window. Dean heard Sam moving.
“SAM!”
“I can get up,” Sam said and then, “Uh-” as something thudded him. A flicker across the window. More impacts against Sam. Dean could feel them flying through him although he couldn’t have said what it felt like.
“Get out!” Dean yelled.
“Ye-AH-” A sound like Sam going down.
“SAM?”
“Trying…” from down at the ground. And then Sammy yelled as things thudded into him. In the moonlight Dean could make out a mass, moving, covering his brother.
“Sam!”
Nothing.
“Talk to me Sammy,” Dean growled.
This had been a stupid plan. Dean had been stupid to agree to it. Sam really couldn’t be trusted on his own. And some 3,000 year old bitch was fucking with his little brother.
He was dead. Sam seemed to think that Dean’s being dead was a sad fact for Sam but nobody, as usual, expected anything of Dean except that he would fuck up. That he would lose his temper and scare the bird scientist. And yes, he had just fucked up and shattered Fand into birds but he was tired of trying to control himself.
My hovercraft is full of eels? Jesus. They needed to have come in silent. They needed to have caught the bitch off guard. He couldn’t stop Sammy from doing whatever he wanted because Dean was a fucking ghost.
He couldn’t even drive his own car.
The hot wind came up. Birds started to be swept into walls.
They were in Canada. He wanted to be back in the States.
He was tired of all of them. Mostly, he was tired of himself. Tired of Dean fucking Winchester.
Fucking bitch didn’t know what she was dealing with.
# “Sammy!”
It was still dark. Was it the same night?
“SAMMY!”
Sam groaned.
“Come on, talk to me.”
“Dean? Where-”
“Talk to me Sammy. Talk to me or so help me-”
“K’ jus’ head hurs.”
“I don’t care if your head hurts. You gotta get up.”
“Yeah.”
The moonlight was constant. The room smelled strange; brine and blood and something old. What the fuck use was smell for a ghost?
“Sam. You’re concussed. You’ve gotta work with me here.”
“K’. Sorry. Dean, little help here?”
He meant, ‘help me up.’ Fuck the world. “I can’t, Sammy. Remember? I’m…not alive right now.” He wished there was some light because he could just imagine Sam hearing that, remembering all over again. “Sammy?”
He wasn’t going to answer. Goddamn it, Sam. Grow a backbone.
“SAM!”
Whispered, almost airless in the dark, “yeah.”
“Come on, little brother.”
Sam was moving, he could hear the shuffling sound.
“What are you doing?”
“Crawling,” Sam said. “Duffle. Flashlight. I stand up, I’ll hurl.”
Ragged breathing. It sounded like he might have stopped moving. Dean wished he had something more than just words. “Sam,” he said, using the only weapon he had, “You better not let me down.” He heard Sam’s sharp intake of breath.
“Talk to me, you non-communicative asshole,” Sam said. It sounded more exhausted than angry, but it was something. Sam trying in the darkness.
“How many fingers, Sammy.”
“Don’t make me laugh, you fucker. Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“I just put my hand on a dead bird. They’re all over the place. ‘Cept this one gushy and still moving.”
Sam must have been at the archway because Dean could hear him using the wall to stand up.
“Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Better than accidently groping slimy half-alive birds.”
“I’m gonna remind you of this the next time you order chicken salad.”
Sam didn’t throw up until he got outside and got a flashlight. Then he threw up and breathed for awhile. Dean waited him out. Sam was tough. You don’t do 180 years in Hell and get stopped by throwing up with a headache.
There were a couple of birds visible in the beam of the flashlight; injured, stupid and listless.
“What do you think she meant,” Sam asked. He sat. He opened a bottle of water.
“I don’t even know what you meant. Something about eels.”
Sam rinsed his mouth out and spat. “No, about getting enough birds together to be.”
“Not an expert on the lifecycle of bird fish. We’ve got a long hike, Sammy, and then you need an ER.”
“First,” Sam took a swig of water. “We go up there.” He looked up at the top of the lighthouse.
“Oh fuck a duck. No. You can’t see straight.”
“There’s a spell up there that will put a human soul back in a body,” Sam said.
“Might be,” Dean said.
“How about I climb until you can check.”
“You’re not climbing.”
“You’re dead, which means unless you want to get pissed and blow me off the stairs, you can’t stop me from trying.”
“Bitch.”
Sam didn’t even bother to respond. He just grinned.
Why was it that they were happiest with each other, most themselves, when they were hunting? Not saving the world, just hunting.
Sam used the wall of the lighthouse to help himself to his feet.
The inside of the lighthouse was in pretty good repair. Sam had to beat the padlock off the door, wincing every time he struck it. The wind and weather had not done the work on the tower that they had the inside of the lightkeeper’s house. But there wasn’t any light and there were places where the handrail was gone.
Sam leaned a shoulder against the wall to steady himself and that way he slowly climbed the spiraling stairs.
“So,” Sam said. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you’re alive again?”
“Kick your limp ass,” Dean said. “Then get drunk. Then get laid.”
“Then what? Which band you gonna listen to.” He sounded tired.
“Concentrate on climbing, Sam.”
Sam stopped and the light showed steel steps, rusting in places. “I need you to do this, Dean. Talk to me. Let me pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“That everything is pretty much Winchester normal. That we’re in the middle of just another hunt.”
“What do you think this is?”
Sam flicked the flashlight around, looking for him, and in doing so, disturbed his own precarious sense of balance. His foot slid on the steps and he went part way down, scraping against stairs. The water bottle fell through the stairs to the floor below. He hung on to the flashlight.
For a moment there was only Sam’s ragged breathing.
“Every time you do the rage thing,” Sam finally said.
The lighthouse sounded hollow. Sam breath was very loud. It made it obvious that there was only one person breathing.
“I told you,” Sam finally said. “You’re less…you. More ghost.”
“Once I get back it’ll all be okay,” Dean said.
Some vermin, mouse, something, was scrabbling in the bottom of the lighthouse. Dean checked it. Mice. Sam was still collecting himself.
Sam got back up and started climbing, careful to watch where he put each foot. The outer rail was gone once they got about two-thirds of the way up. “Sometimes I think I didn’t come back from Hell all me.”
“Come on, Hell changed us but you’re still you,” Dean said. You ever think what came back from Hell wasn’t entirely Sam? Yellow-Eyes had asked. “Watch what you’re doing. This isn’t the time.”
“So if I let you go to Hell not completely Dean, what will happen? If you come back less you… what if I’m fucking up again. What’s better, letting you go to Hell or keeping you as a ghost?”
“Climb, Sammy. Then we hike, then Les calls someone to get you to the ER.”
The one bit of luck was that the hatch at the top of the stairs was open.
The top of the lighthouse was pretty small, really. Space for where the big lighthouse light and lens used to go and a little area to walk around it. Not much space at all.
No cabinets. Nothing. No place for a spell. It was crazy to think that anyone would keep a spell or anything up here. Just the island and stars and far away, the street and city lights of St. Johns looking jewel like.
Sam looked around and it was clear the view was lost on him. Whatever he’d been holding onto collapsed and he sat, the emotional wind knocked out of him. “Sorry, Dean.”
“Let’s get you down and to an ER. We’ve struck out before. We’ll try again.”
Sam didn’t have room to stretch his legs out (when did he?) He draped his wrists over his knees. Didn’t answer. Dean knew. It was hard to give a rat’s ass about anything when you were concussed. Really, he was beginning to wonder if he gave a rat’s ass himself.
“Time for some sleep, Groot,” he said.
“Just let me sit,” Sam said.
“A minute, just a minute.”
Concussed and empty. Thousand yard stare.
“Okay Sam. Deep breath. New day, Snow White. Sun comes up in the morning.
Sam didn’t answer. It was like he didn’t hear. No. Not the subway platform again. “Cut it lose, Sammy. Salt the bones, burn ‘em. It’s okay. You did good.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Sam said.
That flat Sam/not Sam voice. Not possessed, but Sam so far into despair, holding on to the moment by so little it was as if he spoke English like a second language.
“You’re tired and you’re hurt. But we’ll deal with it.”
Sam struggled to get his legs underneath him and pushed himself up. “I’m gonna do it, Dean,” he said but he sounded hopeless. As he stood, the beam of the flashlight jumped around the tiny room.
“Wait,” Dean said. “Flashlight, up.” Up near the ceiling he’d seen something.
It took Sam a moment but he turned the light up. Up just two feet below the ceiling was a ledge that circled the entire room. It was lined completely with old books and manuscripts.
[1] The website Omniglot has this phrase translated into over 100 languages including Nauhatl, Greek, and Lakota Sioux. Just in case anyone ever needed it.
Part Three
Part Five
Daylight, alright/
I don't know, I don't know if it's real/
Been a long night and something ain't right/
You won't show, you won't show how you feel/
No time ever seems right/
To talk about the reasons why you and I fight/
It's high time to draw the line/
Put an end to this game before it's too late/
“Head Games”, Foreigner
“What do you remember?” Sam asked.
They were sitting in the dark on the rocks near the ornithological station: Sam, Lt. Dobek, and Dean. Dobek was in a white t-shirt and jeans. Sam was barefoot in the sand and had a bruise down the side of his face. A fire of driftwood burned.
“I remember the base,” Dean said.
“That’s more than you usually do,” Sam said.
“Did anybody get hurt?”
“Nobody stayed long enough,” Dobek said. “When we got back in there was a wall of debris around your brother. A kind of fort of bureaucratic mess.”
“What did you say to him,” Dean said, indicating Dobek.
“He said he could show me,” Dobek said.
“I’m sorry to use you that way, Dean,” Sam said. “I just needed to prove that…”
“That there are monsters,” Dean said, his voice gravelly. “It was brilliant, brain boy. No harm, no foul.”
“Reap the whirlwind,” Dobek said. “So this is what you do?”
“Incite my brother to violence, not so much. Get beat up?” Sam said. “More than I’d like to.”
“Kill monsters.”
“We’re hunters,” Dean said.
“And you’re…”
“Dead,” Dean said. “At the moment, yes.”
Sam looked away.
“At the moment?” Dobek said.
Dean shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Sam’s face was turned enough away from the fire to be mostly in shadow.
Dobek looked at the beer in his hand. “You think you can kill this thing?”
“I think we can,” Sam said. When he looked back at them he was calm. “It would help if you could tell us everything you know about it.”
“I’ve been stationed here about six months,” Dobek said. “They found the fisherman a couple of days after I got here.”
Dobek told the story. The base was leased from the Canadian government. The US was studying long range, deep sea sonar and this was a research post. Not much for the marines to do so they trained and patrolled and had sentry duty. A team of marines was patrolling.
They came across a boat that had been pulled ashore. Not that unusual. Fisherman came ashore to drink or whatever. The kind of guys who became fisherman tended to be outdoorsmen. They saw a mound and some stuff, debris maybe, around it. Some gulls were picking at the debris.
Then they realized that the large mound was moving. It was made up of those bird things. When the team got closer the birds flew off. Underneath was the naked body of a man. The fisherman.
“I saw the body,” Dobek said. “It was one big bruise. No pecks or cuts. He’d been battered to death. Stripped. Undressed. Some of his clothing was half folded.”
“Great. Bird origami,” Dean said.
“You think that’s what happened to the men in the lighthouse,” Sam said.
Dobek nodded. “I don’t want it to happen again. It’s not like I can send a message to my superiors saying supernatural birds are killing my men so if you can stop it, I’ll do what I can to give you a clear way in and anything you need.”
“What happened to the bodies?” Sam asked.
“I think, if they aren’t interrupted, they drag them to the sea,” Dobek said.
Dean glanced out at the dark water. There was a gleam of phosphorescence.
“What is that?” Sam asked.
“Jellyfish, probably,” Dobek said. “Or plankton.”
It was lovely and they watched it for a moment. Dobek took a pull on his beer. “I should get back,” he said.
Dean kept watching the sea.
A woman rose out of the water. She was silhouetted against the phosphorescence but her proportions were off; a little too thick. Not fat so much as like badly modeled clay or something.
There was the distant sound of ringing, tinkling silver.
Then she dissolved into things winging, swooping towards the shore.
“Get back to the station,” Dean said.
Sam was on his feet. He grabbed a branch sticking out of the fire and swung it into the air. An arc of orange sparks showed that the night was full of birds. Then Sam and Dobek were buffeted by bird bodies.
Dean tried to feel rage, but it was like there was nothing there. The well was empty.
Dean could hear the thumps, like clubs. Sam swept the branch around driving them back. Dobek stumbled backwards on the rocks, close to the water’s edge. It was slippery there with slime and wet and Dobek windmilled, went to one knee, and then went into the surf.
He struggled up and a wave caught him sideways and he disappeared under.
Sam was holding the birds off pretty well with his branch but he looked around just in time to see Dobek go under.
Dobek came up again, his upturned face white against the dark water and tried to stand, but birds slammed into him knocking him farther into deeper water and he went under again.
Dean felt his gut clench. He knew what Sam was going to do-he’d have done it too but Sam-in first, always saving, dropping the branch and heading across the rocks. The birds abandoning him and diving into the dark water.
No, Sam.
He followed even though it meant nothing. Sam hit the water full length like a racing dive although Dean wasn’t sure it was deep enough. For a ghost, swimming was meaningless. Air above, dark water below, it was all the same. Above he looked around, fear building until Sam came up, his hair slicked to his head. The bird things flew out of the water at Sam and dove. “I can’t find him!” Sam gasped and then he went under again where those things battered at him even there. But not so many of them because more of them were somewhere else. Beating at Dobek.
Saltwater smelled of dead and living things.
Dean ghosted through the water-he wouldn’t get Sam out of there until Sam either found Dobek or-so he had to find Dobek and he did, touch of fabric, wet jeans, a leg. He rose up like smoke. “Sam! Sam!”
Nothing. There was just the cold surface of the water and the surf grinding against the rocks. They were fifteen, twenty feet from shore.
Then Sam surfaced.
“Sam!”
Sam found him-amazing that someone could tune in on the sound of a ghost voice, another weird ghost fact. Sam hauled Dobek to the surface and pulled him to the shore. It seemed like Dobek had been under a long time. The fish-birds kept diving and pounding at Sam both above and below the surface. Dobek was limp when Sam pulled him to the shore.
Sam threw Dobek over his shoulder and stumbled as best he could to the station.
Les was sitting at the table working on his laptop. “Oh no,” he said.
“Get the door!” Sam gasped. A fish bird flashed in. Les raised a binder and smashed it in mid flight and it slapped to the floor, neck broken. Les pushed the door shut.
Sam laid Dobek down on the floor, tilted Dobek’s head back and started breathing. He laid his head against Dobek’s chest and listened, then started CPR. “Can you call for help on the radio,” he gasped out as he pushed. (To the speed and beat of “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees. Dean remembered that weird fact, shared by Sam.)
Les scrambled to the radio. “Coast Guard, this is Les Salenko at Waterloo University Research on Baccalieu Island, I’ve got a medical emergency.” While he raised the coast guard at St. John’s, Sam kept up compressions. Dobek’s face was inhumanly white where it wasn’t black with bruises. His lips were not the sort of purple of a kid who was too cold, they were pale blue.
Dean wondered if ghosts could see the dead. Then yeah, a reaper, one he’d never seen, was there. The reaper touched Dobek and Dobek rose up out of the body.
Dobek looked down, shocked.
The reaper touched Dobek’s arm. Dean waited for the ‘why,’ the recrimination. Dobek closed his eyes in a moment of resignation.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said. Sam didn’t even seem to notice.
Dobek looked at Dean. Just looked and then they were gone.
“Sam,” Dean said.
“Come on,” Sam whispered. “Come on.” One, two, three, four, stayin’ alive, stayin alive. The new CPR guidelines said don’t bother with breathing, just keep the heart going. Sam had explained it all to Dean. Sam kept up on that shit.
“Sam,” Dean said gently. “He’s already gone.”
Les turned around to look at them.
Sam stopped. His hair was wet and hanging in his face. He sat back on his heels and wiped his bangs back.
“Coast guard is coming,” Les said.
Sam swallowed. “I tried,” he said.
“I know. He knew.”
Sam shook his head. “Don’t say it,” he said huskily.
You can’t save them all.
# Les gave Sam a towel, and he toweled his hair and changed his shirt. His chest and back were marked with plate-sized bruises, one bisecting his protection tattoo.
Outside the coast guard cutter came in, lights flashing. The EMTs looked like fisherman, too; local guys with crew-cuts, no nonsense types. One of them was a guy almost as tall as Sam who looked like he might have had some First Nations blood. Sam explained that he’d met the lieutenant and they’d hit it off and that he’d come by to have a beer. He’d said he was going to finish his beer and hike back.
“I went back out to, you know, take a leak,” Sam said, “and I saw him in the water. He didn’t have a pulse so I did CPR but…”
Les agreed that was what happened.
“Funny how he’s all bruised up. Rocks maybe?” the big EMT said. “Usually they cut people up but the sea is funny. You did what you could do.”
Sam shook his head.
Dean stayed silent and as unobtrusive as possible. He wondered why the rage hadn’t risen in him. Why he couldn’t have ‘blown’ as Sam put it. If he had just…done whatever. Instead Sam was lying to the authorities (not so big a deal, they did that all the time) and feeling the weight of the world. Dobek had seemed like a good guy.
They watched the coast guard zip Dobek’s body in a body bag and put it onto a gurney and then wade out into the water and lift the gurney onto the boat.
“Now what?” Les said.
“Now we figure out how to kill it,” Sam said. “Once we figure out what it is.”
“I…I have an idea,” Les said. “You know, after you tethered the laptops to that phone this afternoon, I was thinking.”
“This afternoon?” Dean said.
“You gotta be visible, Dean. My head is killing me,” Sam said.
Len pulled open a cabinet and pulled out ibuprofen. He handed the bottle and a glass of water to Sam. Sam tossed back four.
To the now visible Dean he explained, “Sam wouldn’t go across the water to the hospital after he was knocked in the head. I know it’s not good science but I always heard a person with a head injury shouldn’t be allowed to fall asleep so we talked for awhile and I checked ever so often to make sure his pupils were dilating evenly.”
Sam broke in, “I’m fine, Dean. Really. Headache. No dizziness, no slurring, I can recite the presidents. Business as usual.”
“How many fingers, Sammy?” Dean asked. He held up two.
“How many fingers, Dean,” Sam held up his middle finger.
Dean smiled.
“So while he slept a couple of hours I went researching. I found something. I don’t know if it’s even remotely helpful.”
He turned his screen to them. On it was an illustrated page for an Irish goddess with the usual long curling red hair and diaphanous airy-fairy gown. Most of the goddesses that Dean had seen were not very Princess-like.
The goddess was called Fand.
Les made sandwiches while they read about her. When she wasn’t a beautiful human she was a seagull who flew around with her handmaidens, all of them connected by silver chains.
“A lot of the Celtic gods could create illusion,” Sam said. “They’re the original Fairy. Not the cute little cartoon kind. The six foot tall, dressed like kings, psychopathic kind. I think she’s using the lighthouse as a barrow.”
“Barrows are underground,” Les said. “Right? I mean, I’ve read Lord of the Rings. Tom Bombadill and all that.”
“Yeah, but I’m thinking that she used illusion on those marines there because that was home. Or at least close to home.”
“Great. So how do we kill her?” Dean asked.
“She’s Fey,” Sam said. “Cold iron.”
“Does steel count as cold iron?” Les asked.
“No,” Sam said. “I’ve got a knife of cold iron.”
“Getting close to her with just a knife isn’t going to be easy,” Dean said.
“We need to get in that lighthouse anyway,” Sam said. “Somewhere in there is a spell, remember?”
“You think it’s still there?” Dean asked.
“We’re here. Might as well check it out.”
“A spell? Like a magic spell?” Les asked.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Sam is a tenth level wizard.”
“Shut up,” Sam said.
# Two hours of sleep for Sam so they could wait for moonrise. Sam pointed out that the Marine Corps was probably not going to take Dobek’s death well so they should check the lighthouse that night.
Moonrise.
“I don’t hate camping,” Dean said. “But, no forget it. I hate camping.”
“You used to like to go deer hunting with Dad,” Sam said.
“No, I hated deer hunting with Dad,” Dean said. “It’s November, you’re freezing your ass off in a tree stand waiting for some deer to show up. Dad makes you climb down every time you have to pee and walk downwind. Plus deer are harder to hit than targets.”
“You acted like you liked it.”
“It was Dad. It was better being miserable with Dad than sitting in a hotel room without Dad.”
“It was better reading at Bobby’s,” Sam said. “Sleeping in a bed. Sometimes Bobby would pour a teaspoon of whiskey in my hot chocolate.”
“He did that for you, too? He said he only did it for me.”
“Dude, it made us fall asleep faster.”
“Ahhhhh, right,” Dean said. “Bobby had some special ideas about parenting.”
They climbed the last bit of the hill in silence. The lightkeeper’s house blazed, lit up like a hobbit house.
“I guess Fand is home,” Dean said.
“Notice how the lighthouse itself is dark?” Sam said. “I don’t think you could make a cellar in this island.”
“Not without dynamite. Solid rock.”
“Right,” Sam said. “So if you were a lighthouse keeper who for God knows what reason collected occult shit, and you didn’t keep it in your house…”
“Because you don’t want the kiddies coloring all over it or whatever…”
They looked up at the dark lighthouse.
“Sam, that’s totally fucked. It’s a ruin in there. You weigh what, 190?”
“Fuck you, Dean. 220.”
“Dude, since the trials you’ve been eating once a week, maybe. And you never work out.”
“If you weren’t ectoplasm, I’d kick your ass.”
No, Dean thought, you wouldn’t. “Sammy, why don’t you ever just haul off and punch me?”
“Because every time I put my hand through you it creeps me out. And it doesn’t do anything to you so what would be the point.”
“No, really. I mean, I punch you. I mean, only when you deserve it, like when you screw up the car. And you know the rules, don’t mess with the car-“
“I don’t know what you are talking about but do you think we could debate the rules of Dean some other time?” Sam looked up at the lighthouse.
“Right,” Dean said. “Right. Just,” he tried to think of what to say. Know that I get mad at you but it doesn’t mean anything? Forgive me? What the fuck, was he trying to jinx this whole thing? He should just send chocolate and flowers for God’s sake.
“Just what?”
“Just be careful,” Dean said.
He couldn’t see Sam’s face that well in the dark but he knew what it looked like. Knew Sam was trying to see him. “You okay?”
“This plan sucks.”
“You mean not really having one? Yeah.”
“Watch your head, you’ve already cracked it once in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Dude,” Sam said, “we’ve had more concussions than the entire NFL. We’re going to be drooling by the time we’re forty.”
“I figure every time Cas heals us, we start over.”
Sam laughed quietly. They were spiked with before-the-action-adrenaline. He took out the knife and moved slowly to the door. He called out, “Fand! Dia dhuit!” (Greetings.)
(“Fuck all,” he’d said earlier, “Gaelic is impossible.”)
Nothing.
He looked over his shoulder back at Dean, his face half-illuminated by the light from the window.
He called, “Cad é mar atá tú?” (How are you?)
Awesome. They’d announced themselves so they were going in without the element of surprise and with less chance that they’d meet a goddess and a lot more chance that they’d meet a bunch of carnivorous seagulls.
A woman called out, “Tráthnóna maith daoibh.” It was a ‘hello’ kind of tone of voice.
Sam put the hand with the knife in a pocket and pulled open the door.
It was like the video. A fire crackled in the fireplace. The table was set with wine and a ham, bread and pears.
The voice floated from the other room, “C'ainm atá oraibh?”
Sam shrugged. Memorizing Gaelic did not mean understanding much of it.
A woman came to the doorway. She looked strange to Dean. She shimmered between a woman and something ancient and not very pretty that had been shattered into pieces. As a woman she had dark hair, not red, and wore a long straight blue dress that didn’t do much for her figure. She was attractive, as best he could tell with the shimmering. She looked at Sam and then at him. “An bhfuil Gaeilge agat?”
Dean wondered what Sam was seeing. Sam took a step towards her.
“You’re not Irish?” she said. She didn’t have an Irish accent, but something thicker, more like Scottish only, Dean thought, even harder to understand.
Sam shook his head. He took another step towards her.
“I asked you who you were? And why is a dead man keeping the company of the living?”
“Tá áthas orm buaileadh libh, Fand,” Sam said. (We are pleased to meet you.) Another step. He was almost in arms length of her. She was interested and perplexed.
“Your pronunciation is terrible. But it is nice of you to take the trouble,” Fand said. “How do you know my name? And what do you have in your pocket?”
“Tá m'árthach foluaineach lán d'eascanna,” Sam said. It was the thing he had worked the hardest on pronouncing correctly. ‘My hovercraft is full of eels.’ [1]
It did have the effect of momentarily flummoxing her. Which was the point. The element of surprise.
Sam lunged, whipping the knife out of his pocket and she only managed to get out of the way at the last moment, the iron hissing across her shoulder.
She whipped her arm and threw him back against the wall.
“Watch it,” Dean said.
The inside of the lighthouse shifted and wavered, one moment brightly lit, the next moment a dusty ruin. Sam tried to get up, but couldn’t seem to get his legs underneath him right.
Fucking bitch had smacked his head against the wall again.
“DEAN, NO!”
The goddess whipped her head around. “What are you? You’re hunters! You’re the brothers!”
“So we’re famous even in Ireland,” Dean growled.
“But you’re dead,” she said. “I’ve never heard of a dead hunter. What can you even do?”
Sam used his hand to steady himself and got back to his feet. He had the knife.
“Why do you want to do that?” Fand asked him.
“Because you killed people,” Sam said.
“I’ve been scattered…for a long time. It took a long time to get enough birds together to be,” she said. “People used to bring me sacrifices but everyone has forgotten. Until people bring me sacrifices, I have to find my own.”
“This is not your time anymore,” Sam said. “You can’t just kill.”
She frowned. “You’re just a mortal. Why are you talking to me that way.”
Sam lunged and she lowered her hand in a smacking motion and flattened him easily against the ground. He was struggling against the weight to breath.
Dean swung at Fand.
She shattered into birds. That had been a mistake. The whole plan had been to stab her in her goddess form. No way was Sam going to be able to stab a flock of seagulls.
The room plunged into darkness, with the only light being a line of moonlight through a window. Dean heard Sam moving.
“SAM!”
“I can get up,” Sam said and then, “Uh-” as something thudded him. A flicker across the window. More impacts against Sam. Dean could feel them flying through him although he couldn’t have said what it felt like.
“Get out!” Dean yelled.
“Ye-AH-” A sound like Sam going down.
“SAM?”
“Trying…” from down at the ground. And then Sammy yelled as things thudded into him. In the moonlight Dean could make out a mass, moving, covering his brother.
“Sam!”
Nothing.
“Talk to me Sammy,” Dean growled.
This had been a stupid plan. Dean had been stupid to agree to it. Sam really couldn’t be trusted on his own. And some 3,000 year old bitch was fucking with his little brother.
He was dead. Sam seemed to think that Dean’s being dead was a sad fact for Sam but nobody, as usual, expected anything of Dean except that he would fuck up. That he would lose his temper and scare the bird scientist. And yes, he had just fucked up and shattered Fand into birds but he was tired of trying to control himself.
My hovercraft is full of eels? Jesus. They needed to have come in silent. They needed to have caught the bitch off guard. He couldn’t stop Sammy from doing whatever he wanted because Dean was a fucking ghost.
He couldn’t even drive his own car.
The hot wind came up. Birds started to be swept into walls.
They were in Canada. He wanted to be back in the States.
He was tired of all of them. Mostly, he was tired of himself. Tired of Dean fucking Winchester.
Fucking bitch didn’t know what she was dealing with.
# “Sammy!”
It was still dark. Was it the same night?
“SAMMY!”
Sam groaned.
“Come on, talk to me.”
“Dean? Where-”
“Talk to me Sammy. Talk to me or so help me-”
“K’ jus’ head hurs.”
“I don’t care if your head hurts. You gotta get up.”
“Yeah.”
The moonlight was constant. The room smelled strange; brine and blood and something old. What the fuck use was smell for a ghost?
“Sam. You’re concussed. You’ve gotta work with me here.”
“K’. Sorry. Dean, little help here?”
He meant, ‘help me up.’ Fuck the world. “I can’t, Sammy. Remember? I’m…not alive right now.” He wished there was some light because he could just imagine Sam hearing that, remembering all over again. “Sammy?”
He wasn’t going to answer. Goddamn it, Sam. Grow a backbone.
“SAM!”
Whispered, almost airless in the dark, “yeah.”
“Come on, little brother.”
Sam was moving, he could hear the shuffling sound.
“What are you doing?”
“Crawling,” Sam said. “Duffle. Flashlight. I stand up, I’ll hurl.”
Ragged breathing. It sounded like he might have stopped moving. Dean wished he had something more than just words. “Sam,” he said, using the only weapon he had, “You better not let me down.” He heard Sam’s sharp intake of breath.
“Talk to me, you non-communicative asshole,” Sam said. It sounded more exhausted than angry, but it was something. Sam trying in the darkness.
“How many fingers, Sammy.”
“Don’t make me laugh, you fucker. Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“I just put my hand on a dead bird. They’re all over the place. ‘Cept this one gushy and still moving.”
Sam must have been at the archway because Dean could hear him using the wall to stand up.
“Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Better than accidently groping slimy half-alive birds.”
“I’m gonna remind you of this the next time you order chicken salad.”
Sam didn’t throw up until he got outside and got a flashlight. Then he threw up and breathed for awhile. Dean waited him out. Sam was tough. You don’t do 180 years in Hell and get stopped by throwing up with a headache.
There were a couple of birds visible in the beam of the flashlight; injured, stupid and listless.
“What do you think she meant,” Sam asked. He sat. He opened a bottle of water.
“I don’t even know what you meant. Something about eels.”
Sam rinsed his mouth out and spat. “No, about getting enough birds together to be.”
“Not an expert on the lifecycle of bird fish. We’ve got a long hike, Sammy, and then you need an ER.”
“First,” Sam took a swig of water. “We go up there.” He looked up at the top of the lighthouse.
“Oh fuck a duck. No. You can’t see straight.”
“There’s a spell up there that will put a human soul back in a body,” Sam said.
“Might be,” Dean said.
“How about I climb until you can check.”
“You’re not climbing.”
“You’re dead, which means unless you want to get pissed and blow me off the stairs, you can’t stop me from trying.”
“Bitch.”
Sam didn’t even bother to respond. He just grinned.
Why was it that they were happiest with each other, most themselves, when they were hunting? Not saving the world, just hunting.
Sam used the wall of the lighthouse to help himself to his feet.
The inside of the lighthouse was in pretty good repair. Sam had to beat the padlock off the door, wincing every time he struck it. The wind and weather had not done the work on the tower that they had the inside of the lightkeeper’s house. But there wasn’t any light and there were places where the handrail was gone.
Sam leaned a shoulder against the wall to steady himself and that way he slowly climbed the spiraling stairs.
“So,” Sam said. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you’re alive again?”
“Kick your limp ass,” Dean said. “Then get drunk. Then get laid.”
“Then what? Which band you gonna listen to.” He sounded tired.
“Concentrate on climbing, Sam.”
Sam stopped and the light showed steel steps, rusting in places. “I need you to do this, Dean. Talk to me. Let me pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“That everything is pretty much Winchester normal. That we’re in the middle of just another hunt.”
“What do you think this is?”
Sam flicked the flashlight around, looking for him, and in doing so, disturbed his own precarious sense of balance. His foot slid on the steps and he went part way down, scraping against stairs. The water bottle fell through the stairs to the floor below. He hung on to the flashlight.
For a moment there was only Sam’s ragged breathing.
“Every time you do the rage thing,” Sam finally said.
The lighthouse sounded hollow. Sam breath was very loud. It made it obvious that there was only one person breathing.
“I told you,” Sam finally said. “You’re less…you. More ghost.”
“Once I get back it’ll all be okay,” Dean said.
Some vermin, mouse, something, was scrabbling in the bottom of the lighthouse. Dean checked it. Mice. Sam was still collecting himself.
Sam got back up and started climbing, careful to watch where he put each foot. The outer rail was gone once they got about two-thirds of the way up. “Sometimes I think I didn’t come back from Hell all me.”
“Come on, Hell changed us but you’re still you,” Dean said. You ever think what came back from Hell wasn’t entirely Sam? Yellow-Eyes had asked. “Watch what you’re doing. This isn’t the time.”
“So if I let you go to Hell not completely Dean, what will happen? If you come back less you… what if I’m fucking up again. What’s better, letting you go to Hell or keeping you as a ghost?”
“Climb, Sammy. Then we hike, then Les calls someone to get you to the ER.”
The one bit of luck was that the hatch at the top of the stairs was open.
The top of the lighthouse was pretty small, really. Space for where the big lighthouse light and lens used to go and a little area to walk around it. Not much space at all.
No cabinets. Nothing. No place for a spell. It was crazy to think that anyone would keep a spell or anything up here. Just the island and stars and far away, the street and city lights of St. Johns looking jewel like.
Sam looked around and it was clear the view was lost on him. Whatever he’d been holding onto collapsed and he sat, the emotional wind knocked out of him. “Sorry, Dean.”
“Let’s get you down and to an ER. We’ve struck out before. We’ll try again.”
Sam didn’t have room to stretch his legs out (when did he?) He draped his wrists over his knees. Didn’t answer. Dean knew. It was hard to give a rat’s ass about anything when you were concussed. Really, he was beginning to wonder if he gave a rat’s ass himself.
“Time for some sleep, Groot,” he said.
“Just let me sit,” Sam said.
“A minute, just a minute.”
Concussed and empty. Thousand yard stare.
“Okay Sam. Deep breath. New day, Snow White. Sun comes up in the morning.
Sam didn’t answer. It was like he didn’t hear. No. Not the subway platform again. “Cut it lose, Sammy. Salt the bones, burn ‘em. It’s okay. You did good.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Sam said.
That flat Sam/not Sam voice. Not possessed, but Sam so far into despair, holding on to the moment by so little it was as if he spoke English like a second language.
“You’re tired and you’re hurt. But we’ll deal with it.”
Sam struggled to get his legs underneath him and pushed himself up. “I’m gonna do it, Dean,” he said but he sounded hopeless. As he stood, the beam of the flashlight jumped around the tiny room.
“Wait,” Dean said. “Flashlight, up.” Up near the ceiling he’d seen something.
It took Sam a moment but he turned the light up. Up just two feet below the ceiling was a ledge that circled the entire room. It was lined completely with old books and manuscripts.
[1] The website Omniglot has this phrase translated into over 100 languages including Nauhatl, Greek, and Lakota Sioux. Just in case anyone ever needed it.
Part Three
Part Five