SPN Fic: Crossbones
Title: Crossbones
Author: baylorsr
Rating: R
Pairing: John/Mary
Summary: The day they buried Mary’s parents, she sat John down at her kitchen table and told him that her family hunted monsters.
Word Count: 17,772
Note: An AU story set after the 1973 events of In The Beginning. This story was written in December 2009/January 2010, before The Song Remains The Same aired, and some of Mary’s backstory as given in that episode doesn't fit with this story. The story is about John and Mary but is a Gen story. Thanks to liptonrm and oselle for being my sounding board, making suggestions and putting up with me in general.
Soundtrack
1. Last Kind Deal
The day they buried Mary’s parents, she sat John down at her kitchen table and told him that her family hunted monsters.
John dismissed it as a strange confusion caused by the sudden, violent death of her mother and father, but then Mary began unlocking and opening the locked and closed doors in the Campbell household, and taking out weaponry and tools that John had no idea rested behind those innocuous doors. Then he began to fear that this was no momentary confusion, no grief-inspired delusion, but a lifelong aberration, a sick and dangerous family fantasy that perhaps had led in some way to her parents’ deaths.
When Mary told him that a demon, not a burglar, had killed her parents, he took her hands and told her that they were going to get her help. Mary was young, and with her parents and their influence gone, John was certain that treatment, therapy, medication - something - could save his Mary.
Mary’s eyes were clear and steady and blue and not at all what John thought crazy-eyes should look like. He’d seen crazy, in the eyes of the enemy, in the eyes of his brothers-in-arms, and it didn’t look like this, but maybe that was because Mary’s crazy went so far beyond the brand caused by the horrors of war.
“Come with me,” Mary said. “Come with me and let me show you, and if you don’t feel differently, then I’ll get whatever help you think I should have.”
John could never tell Mary no, so he went with her to Oklahoma, where they met up with a dusty old guy with bad teeth named Franklin. The Impala followed Franklin’s battered pickup down country roads that led to country lanes that led to a dirt path. Mary armed John with a shotgun, but she and Franklin took pistols, and loaded them with what John could swear were silver bullets.
They led him off the path and into the brush under the light of the full moon, and John didn’t think he’d been so scared even in the jungle. He didn’t know if it was Mary and the old man he feared, or something darker and older and deeper.
They waited.
John thought at first it was a man, and he opened his mouth and raised his arm to stay Mary and Franklin, but they were already out of the cover, and Franklin was yelling at the man, the man who ran wrong, who moved wrong, who looked wrong, and the man - thing - turned and charged and Mary came at it from the other side and shot it right in the chest.
The man - thing - fell to the ground.
Mary held out her hand. “Come here, John,” she said. “Come and see.” He went to her.
The thing on the ground was a man and not a man. It was still alive, taking strangled, bloody gasps through an open mouth that revealed curving, dangerous teeth. Its clawed hands scrabbled at the ground.
Franklin raised his pistol and shot it through the heart, and it was still. Then it changed, and John fell back on the ground in horror, raising a hand to the sight, because the thing was now a man, a dead man in the forest, when a moment ago it had been a creature, and his mind could not make sense of it.
Mary grabbed his hands and pulled them away from his face. “Look, John,” she said, and he did, because he knew what he had seen.
“A werewolf,” he said, and looked at Mary, and she nodded. “A monster,” he said, and Mary nodded again.
He sat trembling on the ground. Mary squeezed his hands and said, “Betcha wish I was just crazy, huh?”
They were silent all the way back to Lawrence. At her parents’ house, John showered and then lay down on the couch and fell into a black sleep. He woke at dawn and made coffee and sat at the kitchen table until Mary woke up and came downstairs to sit across from him. She reached out her small hands and tentatively touched his hands, wrapped around the cold coffee mug.
“John?” she asked, and she sounded so scared, so alone. John pulled his gaze from the kitchen wall and looked her in the eyes.
“Why did you show me this?” he asked. She tightened her fingers around his, and told him.
She finished, and the only sound in the kitchen was the gurgle of the coffee pot and the ticking of the clock. John studied the wall again for a good, long time before looking back to Mary. Her eyes were still clear and steady and blue, but they were also frightened.
“What do we do?” he asked, and relief and love washed over Mary’s face, and her hands tightened around his. She squared her shoulders and set her mouth, and damn, John never wanted to get in the way of this woman, because he wouldn’t stand a chance.
“We find it, and we kill it,” she said with resolve. “And we’ve got 10 years to get the job done.”
John nodded. He stood up.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
* * *
1973 went by too fast.
The minutia of life took up a lot of it. There were the Campbells’ affairs to settle, and the house that Mary would not stay in to sell. John was still working in his father’s garage, and Mary got a part-time job at a florist to cover the bills until the house sold.
Throughout it was training. After Marine boot camp, John had been hard-pressed not to laugh when Mary said she needed to get him into shape, prepare him for the things they would be facing.
He was glad later that he hadn’t laughed at her, because then it might have been even worse.
They told his dad they wanted to see America, and John guessed his old man must have thought Mary was going stir-crazy in the house where her parents died, because he let them take off on their road trips without too much grumbling.
They did ruck-walks in the mountains, then ruck-runs.
They tracked wild animals through the bush for days, then tracked human animals through the city for days.
They climbed rocks, they climbed trees, they climbed the sides of flat, smooth buildings.
John learned to pick a lock, chant in Latin, use a machete, make silver bullets.
He dug grave-deep holes until his time was less than an hour.
He learned how to destroy a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf, a wendigo, a shapeshifter.
Through it all, Mary could still kick his ass.
She didn’t have much knowledge of demons, though, to John’s surprise. In fact, she said she didn’t think her parents had ever encountered one before. So far as Mary knew, there was no way to kill one, but, she said, that didn’t mean a way didn’t exist.
Demons could be sent back to hell, but they could escape again. But before they could do anything - kill it, exorcise it, anything - they had to identify it, and then they had to find it. It almost made killing it seem like the easy part.
None of the hunters that Mary knew had ever tangled with a demon, either, and John wondered just how big of a mess they were in, and if it was part of a larger, more horrific design. He didn’t say these things to Mary, who was ragingly determined and horrifically terrified. She was fearless and scared and tough and fragile and not at all the girl John thought he’d known, but she was always the woman he loved.
* * *
In 1974, she finally married him, saying it looked like she couldn’t scare him away so she might as well. The house sold and they stashed away the money and found a crappy little apartment. John offered to do some fixing up for a discount on the rent, and then he mixed salt into the caulk and weatherized all the doors and windows.
That was also the year they met Jim Murphy.
He was still Father Murphy when they went to see him, but by the end of the year he’d lost that title and told them to call him Jim. John started calling him Pastor Jim, because he figured the man would never stop tending the flock, no matter what Mother Church might say about it.
Mary read newspapers from around the country in the local library, which was how they found Jim. Mary had surreptitiously torn the article out of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and brought it home to show John. The next weekend, they piled into the Impala and headed north.
“That poor child was possessed, without doubt,” Jim told them over coffee at a little diner. They’d been turned away at the church offices, told that Father Murphy was under the Bishop directly now. Somehow, John and Mary didn’t think it was a promotion. They were turned away again at the Diocese offices, but a two-day stakeout finally proved successful, and they trailed him out of sight of the cathedral before approaching him.
He tried to refer them to a local parish at first, and was walking away when Mary said, “It killed my parents, and John, and so I made a deal.” Jim stopped, his back to them, then slowly turned and said, “Well.”
Several years earlier, Jim had published a fact vs. fiction paper about demonic possessions and Church practices and beliefs. That is what had led a desperate Frank Herndon to seek him out.
His little girl was possessed, a maniacal Frank insisted. She’d changed overnight from a loving and ordinary, if somewhat fanciful, child into a vicious, cunning thing that held their house in fear. “I’m your daughter now,” the child would sing-song to her parents as she killed backyard animals.
Jim thought the child must be mentally ill, and indeed, that’s what all the doctors told the Herndons - some type of early onset schizophrenia, or split personality disorder. But he agreed to visit their house, thinking if he could convince the Herndons that Becky wasn’t possessed, that then they would seek proper medical help for her.
They lived in an ordinary little suburban house. A pink bicycle with sparkly streamers flowing from its handlebars lay in the front yard. It smelled like cookies inside, and they found Mona and Becky in the kitchen, making chocolate chip cookie bars.
Becky turned brightly when Jim entered, and said with great cheer, “Oh, I wondered when they would bring a priest!” Then, with eyes of pure black, she picked up the knife her mother had been cutting the bars with and rammed it hilt-deep into her own gut.
“I tried to call someone for help,” Jim told John and Mary. “No one picked up at my parish, and the man I got on the line at the diocese thought I was drunk. I was on my own, and mind you, one paper does not an expert make.”
Holy water burned the child, and she screamed until the windows rattled in their frames at prayers or the name of God. But really, Jim said, it wasn’t at all like The Exorcist. Aside from these things, Becky remained, on the outside, an ordinary child right up to the end.
“She knew everything about us,” Jim said, “and she was cruel, revealing our darkest acts and thoughts to the light with a kind of horrific joy. And all of it in this sweet child’s voice, that giant red stain on her shirt slowly blooming. We thought maybe we could still save her, if we could get it out, take her to a hospital.”
“Why didn’t you just take her with it in her?” John asked, trying to keep judgment out of his voice.
“We couldn’t approach her,” Jim said, and John remembered Mary talking about how the demon that had killed her parents could stop you dead in your tracks and pin you.
They finally filled the bathtub, and Jim blessed the water. Then they took a bucket and threw it on Becky, and while she was distracted, steaming and thrashing and screaming, “It burns, Mommy, it burns, make it stop, help me!” Jim and Frank picked the child up, put her in the tub and dunked her.
The water actually boiled, and Jim showed them faint, still healing scars where his hands had blistered.
They held the child down it the tub, and Jim did the exorcism. When he finished, there was a tub of cold water and a dead child inside of it.
Mary put her hand over her mouth and went outside. Jim and John could see her pacing on the sidewalk.
“What’s going to happen to you?” John asked as he watched Mary out the diner window.
Jim shrugged. “Defrocked, for certain. I’m hoping they won’t excommunicate me, but that’s possible too,” he said. “They don’t think I killed her, certainly, but they think she was a mentally ill child, and I supported the parents’ delusions to the point that they delayed medical care in favor of an unauthorized exorcism and the child ended up dead.”
“What are you going to do then?” John asked, turning back to him. The bell above the door jingled as Mary came in and sat back down, calm but clenched.
Jim gave them a wry little smile. “It seems I’m going to hunt demons,” he said, and John nodded, because, really, what else was there for Jim to do now?
* * *
Jim introduced them to research and demonology, Church teaching and rituals, Latin and exorcisms. For John, a solid B high school student who had never looked to college, it was a lesson in patience with himself, and a hard-learned one.
Mary, on the other hand, seemed to absorb everything Jim taught her at first pass, and the knowledge only fueled her desire for more knowledge.
“We aren’t going to be able to behead, or burn, or shoot this thing,” she would say to John. “This,” and she slapped her hand on a heavy, dusty relic of a volume, “is how we’ll beat it.”
John, knowing she was right, would keep trudging away at his Latin.
* * *
In 1975, John began studying weather patterns, and by its end, he knew more than the meteorologist on the local news. He also knew that across the country, there was no sign of demonic activity. Looking back at 1973, though, there were signs everywhere. The demon had been busy.
It was hard to narrow down its focus, though. Even if they could pinpoint the demon’s activity to a town, to a neighborhood, even to a block, there were still dozens of people who may or may not have made a deal.
Mary was the one who thought to start asking about people who’d had unusual luck, or a big change in circumstances, in 1973.
In Oklahoma, a man had been killed when his car stalled out over the tracks while a train was coming. Witnesses said it looked like he had been trying to get out, but his seat belt was stuck.
His widow was still grieving, but his two teenaged daughters would not meet their eyes. “He loved the girls so much,” their mother sobbed, and the girls flushed and flashed a look at each other.
The younger one looked bewildered when asked if they’d spoken to anyone about needing a change in their life just before their father’s death, but the older one clenched her jaw and looked away, stammering that she didn’t know what they meant.
In Michigan, a young couple had slammed into a tree on an icy night. The woman had been thrown free, but the man had gone through the windshield. No one knew how he could have survived, but he’d recovered without a scar to remember it by.
A miracle, he called it, and he believed it. The woman’s eyes filled with tears and she’d looked away. She wouldn’t cop to a deal when they got her alone, but ran from them, crying.
In Illinois, Susan Franklin made no bones about her deal.
“My mother was dying,” she told them as they walked down her neat suburban street. “He offered to save her. Of course I took the deal.”
“What did you promise him?” Mary said, and Susan shrugged.
“He wouldn’t say,” she said. “Said he’d be by in 10 years to collect, but it wasn’t anything I’d miss. Said I might not even notice.”
“That wasn’t a doctor, you know,” John said, and Susan rolled her eyes.
“I’m guessing fae or some kind of demon,” she said matter-of-factly. “But he didn’t want my soul, so whatever it is, I can live with it. More than my mother could live with a slow, painful death.”
She didn’t want their number, so they left.
Mary was quiet on the drive back to Kansas. They were nearly through Missouri when she said, “Do you think I’m going to hell?”
John pulled off the road and parked on the shoulder. “You didn’t sell your soul, Mary,” he said, turning to look at her.
Mary stared out the windshield at the flat highway ahead of them. “I made a deal with the devil,” she said flatly. “I’m thinking that’s a big black mark on my ledger.”
John didn’t know what to say to that, because she was right, but he couldn’t imagine his Mary - his wonderful, loving, obstinate, brilliant, good Mary - going to hell. “Maybe you should talk to Jim,” he said, because regardless of what the Church had said in the end, Jim was still a priest to John.
“You have to be sorry to gain absolution,” Mary said, and finally looked at John. “And I don’t know that I am, that I would take it back if I could. I can’t imagine being here without you, John.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just put his hand over hers.
* * *
In 1976, they fought. They fought every evil thing they could track, and they fought each other.
They killed a wendigo in Minnesota, and Mary locked John out of the motel and he slept in the Impala.
They cleaned out a vampire nest in Arkansas, and John left Mary at a bar in Pine Bluff and didn’t turn back around for her until Little Rock.
They killed a siren in Chicago, and screamed at each other in the hotel until management knocked on the door.
They fought in the apartment, they fought in the Impala, they fought at the shop, they fought on the job, they fought in bed. They fought so much that John started to think Mary wanted him to leave, wanted to punish herself, or save herself, or punish him, or save him, and drive them apart, but John was a stubborn bastard. He dug his heels in, so they just kept fighting.
They fought until John couldn’t stand the sound of Mary’s voice anymore, so he flipped on the radio and that godawful hippie Sonny and Cher were singing that stupid song, but John turned it up anyway.
Mary reached out and viciously twisted it off, and John cooly twisted it back on without looking at her.
“Goddamn it, John!” Mary shrieked from the passenger seat, red with fury. “You hate this stupid song!” and so John started singing along.
I got flowers in the spring,
I got you to wear my ring.
“John,” Mary screamed, and she was so angry now that she was crying. John sang louder.
And when I’m sad, you’re a clown,
And if I get scared, you’re always around.
Mary twisted in her seat and began slapping at John’s shoulder, angry, open-handed slaps that stung and made the Impala shimmy.
Don’t let them say your hair’s too long,
‘Cause I don’t care, with you I can’t go wrong.
“Stop!” Mary screeched, so John turned it up, grinning.
Then put your little hand in mine,
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb.
And suddenly Mary was laughing, still crying and red-faced and slapping at John. “You’re such a stupid idiot,” she yelled at him, and she was beautiful, angry and frustrated and sniffling and laughing. “I hate you, John Winchester.”
He smiled wider and sang louder, and then she was singing with him, loud and off-key.
I got you to hold my hand,
I got you to understand,
I got you to walk with me,
I got you to talk with me.
They barreled down the highway, fighting and laughing and loving and singing.
I got you, babe.
I got you, babe.
I got you, babe.
2. Just The Right Bullets
In 1977, Jim heard of a man in South Dakota named Bobby Singer, and the three of them drove up to find him.
Singer looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, and he ran a salvage yard adjacent to his old country house. Both Singer and the house looked like they had once been well-cared for, but now they were getting frayed around the edges.
He almost sent them packing, but as he started to shut the door, Jim said, “Mr. Singer, please, this is John and Mary Winchester and I’m Jim Murphy and we want to ask you about -”
The door came back open, and Singer looked Jim up and down.
“So you’re Jim Murphy, huh?” he asked, and scratched his beard. “I was lookin’ for you, a while back. Sorry to hear the Church gave you the boot.”
Jim blinked in surprise. “Thank you,” he said, then hesitated, now leery himself. John slid his hand inside his jacket and quietly thumbed the safety off his gun. “Why were you looking for me?”
Singer had a steady, open face, and he was careful with his motions, keeping his eyes on Jim, which told John he knew just where his hand was. “Thought you might could use some help,” he said, “but I guess you went to ground. Good idea, too, after that exorcism. Don’t know what might have come looking for you.”
Jim smiled wearily. “I think the Church has done all the damage she can to me,” he said mildly, and Singer gave a short, grim bark of a laugh.
“Ain’t the Church I’m worried about,” he said, and invited them in.
Singer poured them shots and grabbed them beer, and then Jim blessed the tap water and they all took a slug of that before sitting down at Singer’s kitchen table.
“Worried you might have demons on your ass,” Singer said, after tossing back the whiskey shot on the heels of the water. He cracked open his beer. “They know you now, and they hold a grudge. Went over to St. Paul couple years ago, and from what I gathered, you sure stepped in something you weren’t aiming for. Good way to end up dead, or worse.”
Jim cleared his throat, fidgeted with his whiskey shot, cleared his throat again and then downed the shot.
“Need another?” Singer asked placidly, and Jim shook his head.
“I’ve been traveling, staying with friends, family,” he said. “It didn’t occur to me that anyone, or anything, might be looking for me.”
“It better occur to you now,” Singer told him. “Maybe you been lucky, but luck don’t hold.”
Jim tipped his head in acknowledgment. Singer nodded back, then turned his keen eyes on John and Mary. “And what’ve you brought with you?”
John, whiskey still burning its way down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “John Winchester,” he said, “and my wife -”
“I’m Mary Campbell,” Mary cut him off. “I’m Samuel and Deanna’s daughter.”
Singer stared at her, then pulled off his trucker cap and ran a hand over his head.
“Ah, honey,” he said in a gruff, kind voice, “I’m sorry.”
Mary nodded, and if her lips quivered ever-so-slightly, her eyes were clear. “Let’s talk demons,” she said.
* * *
Karen Singer was an anthropology professor at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The photograph on Singer’s mantle was of a woman with a heart-shaped face and intelligent eyes, the smallest touch of sass to her smile.
They’d known each other since they were kids, Singer said, taking down the photograph and lightly touching his fingers to it, went to school together, but then Karen had headed off to college and he’d become a working man. His friends all got married and settled down, but he’d never found a woman to suit, and it didn’t bother him none.
One day he turned the aisle in the local grocery and there she was. They stood in the store and talked for two hours, and he left with her phone number. He went home and sat on his couch and looked at the piece of paper, wondering how long he had to wait until he could call her. However long it was, it was too long.
Karen’s mother was sick, so she’d left her teaching position at the University of Lawrence - “Your stomping ground,” Singer said, nodding to Mary - and come home. She had a part-time position at the USD for the moment, and her hands full at home.
They waited a year, while her mother fought and lost to cancer, then waited another year, while Karen grieved and put things in order. Singer put the time to good use and by the time Karen Hill became Karen Singer, he was a home and business owner.
“Still don’t know what she wanted with me,” he told them. “Karen was smart, so smart, and beautiful, and could have taken her pick. But we fit together, somehow, like we were made for it.”
Karen was a historical anthropologist, studying the beliefs and customs of the ancient peoples who lived in the cradle of civilization. She was published and invitations to lecture were becoming more common. Bobby got used to large, dusty books in dead languages sitting around the house.
It was May and warm already the night Karen shook him awake, trembling all over. “Kare?” Bobby asked groggily, and then sat up with alarm when he saw her white face. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Her teeth were chattering, and the room was oddly cold. “Something’s wrong,” she said, wide-eyed and terrified. “I was reading a book, a book of rituals, working on the language, reading aloud to hear the cadence, and now something is horribly wrong.”
“You were reading a book and now something is wrong?” Bobby asked, confused. “Is someone here?” He glanced outside the window, thinking maybe a late tornado was heading toward them.
Karen fisted her hands and pressed them to her mouth. “Something’s here,” she whispered. “I’ve let something in, Bobby. God help us, I’ve let it in.”
There was nothing in the house, and Bobby didn’t know what to think except that maybe Karen had fallen asleep working and had one zinger of a nightmare. He coaxed her into bed and held her for hours until sleep won out.
She was herself the next morning, a little embarrassed and apologetic. “Let my mind play tricks on me,” she said, abashed, and Bobby had rubbed her back.
“You work too much,” he said. “Need a vacation.”
Karen had taken a deep breath, then smiled up at him. “Let’s do that,” she said. “I’ll tell them I can’t teach that summer class, and we’ll go somewhere together. Call it a belated honeymoon.”
“I’m sold,” Bobby said, and kissed her soundly.
He came in three nights later and her eyes were black.
* * *
He would have gone to prison for murder, Singer told them, except that while he was towing a car back from Lennox, Karen had gone into work and killed the rare books librarian when the man wouldn’t let her take a book out of the building.
She’d stopped at a gas station on the way home and killed the clerk as well. Both men had their throats cut with one of the Singers’ kitchen knives, and bled out in minutes.
Bobby had already stabbed her twice with the very same knife, after she’d thrown it at him and missed, narrowly, but she was still coming at him, still covered in blood and saying - Singer shuddered, and didn’t continue. Saying awful things, he concluded, when the house lit up with police lights from the drive.
“I’ll see you later, lover,” Karen had purred at him, and black smoke poured out of her mouth. When it was gone, all that was left was Karen’s bloody body.
They sat in silence at the table for a long time, and John got up and turned on the kitchen lights, because it was growing dark, and the house pressed upon him.
“What was the book?” Jim asked finally, and Singer looked up as if he’d forgotten they were in the room. He ran a hand over his face.
“Book?” he asked.
“That the librarian wouldn’t let her take,” Jim clarified, and Bobby sighed and stood up.
“The Key of Solomon,” he said in his den, over his desk, and showed them poor, worn photocopies. “One of three copies in the world, on loan to USD when Karen took it.” He rifled the papers out and John saw symbols and drawings and dead words. “These are the pieces I’ve been able to get my hands on.”
Mary touched the papers carefully, as if they were fragile. “Where are the other two copies?” she asked.
Singer scratched his beard. “One’s in a private collection in Afghanistan,” he said. “That’s actually where most of these copies came from. Owner’s pretty cooperative, but it’s not like I can drop in and borrow it, and mail’s not too reliable in those parts.”
“The second?” John asked, and Singer let out his weary sigh.
“Damn Nazis,” he said. “It’s somewhere, Europe or maybe South America, but damned if I know where to get my hands on it. The third, the one Karen took, belonged to the Library of Congress.”
“It must be real,” Jim said quietly. He was holding an intricate drawing of a pentagram. “Otherwise, no reason to take it.”
“Oh, it’s real,” Singer said grimly. “I’ve no doubt that the demon inside of Karen stashed it someplace and then collected it once it had itself a new host. But that right there in your hands,” he nodded at Jim, “that’ll keep and hold a demon, powerless, while you exorcise it. I’ve used it twice now, and it’s as real as it can be.”
“We need to find it,” Mary said. “Who knows what else is in it, what it could give us to fight them.”
Singer nodded. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said.
* * *
Jim stayed with Singer, and John and Mary drove back to Kansas in silent thought. They’d just crossed the state line when John said, “How did your parents become hunters?”
Mary frowned, startled out of her own funk. “What?” she asked, giving her head a little shake. “You’ve never asked me that before.”
John shrugged, looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Seems like pretty big things, that turn other people to this life,” he said.
Mary kept her eyes on the road. “I had a baby sister,” she said, “once,” and then she swallowed convulsively and John didn’t think she was going to continue, but after a long, weighted silence, she did.
“Our name isn’t really Campbell,” she said. “It’s Harrison. So I was Mary Harrison and I lived with my parents and my baby sister in Salem, Oregon. I was almost five years old, and my sister was almost six months old, and I was excited because I was going to kindergarten in the fall.”
She was silent again. It started to rain, and John turned on the lights and the wipers.
“Then one day my sister was gone and something else was in her crib,” Mary said, and shuddered, then clutched at herself. “Something that looked like her but wasn’t. Something, something horrible, John, so horrible.” She covered her mouth with one hand and John wondered if he was going to have to pull over, but when she pulled her hand away, she was steady again.
“Changeling, I guess you would call it,” Mary said with a shrug. “It was like something evil had crawled into the baby’s skin. I wouldn’t sleep in my bed anymore, in the same room with it. I remember sleeping under the dining room table, pulling all the chairs in close around me for protection.
“Mom nearly lost her mind. She was hysterical, for days on end. Dad couldn’t face it, he kept saying it was some kind of delayed baby blues, something wrong with Mom and that I was just picking up on it. He knew though, because what was in that crib - of course he knew. And then one day he came downstairs from putting the baby down and sat on the couch and turned on the television, and when the baby started crying ... when that ... that thing started squalling, none of us would go upstairs to her. We all just sat there, watching the television.”
The windshield was fogging up, and John turned on the defroster. The wipers swished steadily. John kept his eyes on the road.
“I fell asleep like that,” Mary said, and she sounded like she was telling a story about some other family, some other child. “When I woke up, I was in the back of the car, covered with a blanket. My favorite doll was beside me. It was dark, and Mom and Dad were silent in the front seat. Dad’s hand was bandaged, white with a red stain. I could see it on the steering wheel. I lose some time after that, but when I started kindergarten, I was Mary Campbell, and we lived in Lawrence, Kansas.”
Neither of them spoke again until John parked the car at their apartment an hour later.
“What was her name?” he said after he’d turned off the ignition.
Mary turned to him, but he couldn’t see her eyes in the dark.
“I don’t remember,” she said, and got out of the car.
* * *
Jim had been staying with friends and relatives, but now he restricted himself to staying with other hunters, or living on the road. John thought it was a lonely way to live, and he told Jim so once after they’d killed a wendigo in Wisconsin together.
Jim was putting careful, neat stitches into John’s left calf, where the creature, already on fire, screaming and writhing, had made one last attempt to take someone, anyone, down with it. Its claw-like fingernails had torn a long, jagged rip through John’s jeans and into his flesh.
“I don’t want to bring these things into unsuspecting homes,” Jim was saying. “No way to repay friends and family who open their doors to you.”
“Yeah,” John said, “but don’t you feel, I don’t know, ungrounded?”
Jim shrugged, and John wished he could take back the question, because it suddenly occurred to him that Jim must feel ungrounded, anyway, after being barred from the church.
He thought, too, of his own father, covering John’s shift this weekend at the shop, knowing nothing of demons and ghosts and monsters, and shifted uneasily.
“Hold still,” Jim murmured, and tightened his grip on John’s leg.
“I’ve thought about starting my own church,” Jim said after a few moments.
“Yeah?” John said. “The Church of 20th Century Hunters?”
Jim laughed. “Or St. Hubert’s,” he said. “Patron saint of hunters.”
John chuckled, then said seriously, “You should think about that, really.”
Jim nodded. “I am, really,” he said, and tied off the last stitch. He wiped the wound clean and wrapped a light bandage around the leg. “Done,” he pronounced, and John swung his leg, testing it, then tentatively got to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said, and hobbled over to the bed to flop down. “Mary lived most of her life in the same place,” he pointed out. “Her family had connections, and they still hunted.”
Jim was neatly putting away the first aid supplies. “True,” he said mildly, “but that might not be the best example, John.”
“Oh,” John said, and remembered with the same shiver it always gave him that he had been dead, along with Mary’s parents.
“Do you remember it?” Jim asked, turning around, curious. “Being dead?”
John shook his head. He remembered Mary’s father pulling her out of the car, her screaming that he was hurting her, trying to get her away, and then a black space before waking up in the middle of the road in Mary’s arms. There had been no white light, no voices, nothing more than unconsciousness.
Jim sat on the second bed across from John. “You realize,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “If we succeed, in killing or stopping the demon Mary made her deal with, that it might nullify the whole deal.”
John lifted his head. “What’re you trying to say there, Pastor?”
“It brought you back to life,” Jim said gently. “If the deal is off, you might die.”
“Oh.” John let his head drop back down. It hadn’t occurred to him, actually, but he found he wasn’t too worried about it. He shrugged. “Well, I should be dead a few years over now,” he said. “Worth if it I know Mary’s safe.” He thought then of Mary, alone in the world without parents or husband, and picked his head back up to look at Jim.
“You guys would take care of her, right?” he said. “You and Bobby and -” He waved a hand vaguely to indicate the hunting world. “If I’m not around?”
“Of course,” Jim said. “Not that Mary needs taking care of.”
John snorted, because, yeah, Mary could lay out just about anyone. But then he thought about Mary alone, hunting, and how it could easily erode from her all the wonderful things that made her Mary, and leave her a tough and impenetrable shell, like too many old hunters he’d met.
“The hunt could eat her,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “She’ll need people to remind her there’s more in the world.”
“Yes,” Jim said, then leaned over to pat John’s good leg. “But for now, let’s plan on keeping you around a while longer to do that.”
“Fine by me,” John said.
* * *
In 1978, John learned about the Colt.
The Colt, he was told, was made by Samuel Colt the gun-maker in 1835, when Haley’s Comet was overhead. It was made for a hunter, and it was said that it could kill anything.
Including demons.
“It’s a hunters’ fairy tale, John,” Mary told him in exasperation when he asked her about it. “Dad used it tell it to me as a bedtime story.”
“That’s what people say about the things we hunt, Mary,” John answered, throwing his arms out. “What if it’s real? What if we could find it? Do you know what this could mean? No hoping we can send this thing to hell, and that it won’t come back, looking for revenge. Dead, Mary, we could kill this thing dead.”
“Sounds great,” she said, and turned back to the dishes in the sink. “Seen it lying around?”
John left the apartment and went down to the garage, flipping on the lights and turning the radio up to blast the Stones and getting to work on an engine overhaul. He banged his head on the underside of the hood when the radio shut off abruptly.
“You know I’m not paying you overtime, right?” his dad called, and John poked his head out.
“I know it,” he said. “Just wanted to get this ready for morning, get it finished up tomorrow.”
“Uh-huh,” his dad said, and went into the office.
He was finishing up by the time his father came back out, giving John’s work a quick, critical eye followed by a grunt of approval.
“You ought to get home to that girl,” his dad said.
John pressed his lips together. He’d needed something to put his hands on, something he knew how to take apart and put together and make run the way it ought to. He’d yet to figure out how to do any of that with Mary.
Feeling his father’s eyes on him, John grabbed a rag and started wiping grease off his hands. He heard his dad heave a sigh, and then he said, “I sure wish your mom could have met her.”
John’s head jerked up in surprise. His mother had died of a heart attack, clear out of the blue, when John was 16, and John could count on his fingers the number of times his father had brought her up since then. Now he met John’s startled look with a sad smile.
“She sure would have liked that firecracker,” he said, and John had to smile back, because, yeah, his mother would have loved Mary.
“Would have told me she was too much woman for me to handle,” he said ruefully, and his father barked a laugh.
“That’s the truth,” he said, and swatted John with the rolled-up newspaper in his hand. “Good thing we Winchester men don’t know when we’re beat.”
John shook his head and gave a half-laugh, then turned and closed the car hood. “We are an obstinate bunch,” he said, and his dad grunted.
“See you in the morning, son,” his father said, and John, wiping off and putting away tools, called a “Bye,” over his shoulder as his father let himself out.
When he was done cleaning up, John went into the office and sat at the desk, then picked up the phone and dialed Bobby.
“Oh, sure, it might be real,” Bobby said, “but that don’t mean we can get our hands on it.”
“If we wanted to,” John asked, “how do you think we would start?”
Bobby sighed on the other end, and John could hear him scratching his beard. “Trace it back, same as anything,” he said finally. “Maybe knowing where it’s been might tell us where it is now. Come to think of it, I’m mighty curious if there is such a weapon, how Colt came by the knowledge to make it.”
“He made it for a hunter, right?” John said. “Maybe someone had a, a recipe for it, but they needed a real gun-maker to put it all together.”
“Boy, if there’s a recipe for a magic everything-killin’ weapon out there, do you know how hell-bent, well, hell would be on keeping that out of our hands?” he said, and then both men were silent, breathing and thinking.
“The Key of Solomon,” John said finally.
“Yeah,” Bobby said.
“We gotta find it,” John said.
“Yeah,” Bobby repeated. They were quiet again for a moment, and then Bobby cleared his throat.
“Guess I know where to start with that,” he said. “Been meaning to go back over Karen’s case, trace her steps from that day, anything that might clue us in. Ain’t the first time I’ve done it, but I’ve got more tricks up my sleeve now, know more what to look for.”
“Call Jim,” John said. “Get him to come help you.” Bobby didn’t speak, but his breath was loud over the line. “Don’t do it alone, Bobby,” John said, then added, “Outside eyes might see things differently.”
Bobby grunted. “True enough,” he said. “I’ll give him a call. Talk to you later,” and he hung up.
John put the receiver in the cradle, shut off the lights, locked up, and went home to Mary.
* * *
In May, it was five years. Five down, and five to go.
* * *
In June, John came home late from work to a dark apartment. He went straight to the kitchen before flipping on a light and jumped when it revealed Mary sitting at the table.
“Babe?” he asked, and cold fear gripped him. “What is it?”
Mary’s hands were on the table, tightly clenched, and John sat down and put his hand over them. They were icy cold and he started rubbing them, almost automatically. “Mary?” he asked, and the word “Christo” was on his lips when she said, “I went to a clinic, but then I couldn’t do it.” She started crying silently, tears dripping down her cheeks and onto the table.
John didn’t understand. “A clinic?” he asked. “What couldn’t you do?” but Mary just looked at him, white-faced and more terrified than he’d ever seen her, and suddenly he knew what she meant.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked, dumbfounded, because Mary took that pill, but she was nodding. “But -”
“It just happens sometimes,” she said, and she sounded more like herself.
“A baby,” John said, and he was scared and happy and confused all at once. “A baby,” he said again, and looked at Mary’s wet face. “Mary, I mean, I know we didn’t plan it, but - our baby, Mary,” and he smiled at her.
Mary shook her head and looked away. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I was sitting there filling out the forms and - it’s our baby, John.”
“Why would you go there at all?” he asked, because while he and Mary had agreed that raising a baby and hunting demons didn’t go exactly hand-in-hand, they’d talked about postponing parenthood, not closing the door on it.
Mary shook her head again and sniffed, then turned back to look at him. “What have I done, John?” she said, and her voice shook. “It wanted something from me.” She slid her cold hands out from under his and placed them over her belly protectively. “What if this is what it wants? What if it wants our baby?” and she started crying in earnest.
John could only sit there in shock for a moment, cold, sick fear in his stomach, and then he got up and wrapped his arms around Mary, bending over her as if to shield her. “What have I done? What have I done?” she sobbed, and John shushed her and kissed the top of her head and rocked her and felt the cold block of terror crystallize into something hard and immovable inside of him:
It can’t have our baby.
* * *
In 1979, Dean arrived, red-faced and demanding and squawking his displeasure.
John counted his fingers and toes, and measured his hands and feet against his own. He ran one finger over the downy hair, and the baby squinted open watery blue-green eyes and his cries faded to unhappy grumbles.
“I hear ya, buddy,” John said softly, and the baby blew bubbles on his lips while glaring at John. “You’re in charge.”
You know it, Dean’s belligerent look seemed to say, and John laughed quietly and rocked gently and was so happy he felt almost crushed by it.
Mary wouldn’t hold him.
She begged off as being too tired to the nurses, but when Dean’s first 24 hours passed without him being in Mary’s arms, John waited until they were alone and stood up from the bedside chair and stooped over the bed, little blue bundle in his arms.
“No, John,” Mary said, and she had that nasty sour-lemon look on her face, but John completely ignored her and just plopped Dean into her arms, and they curved automatically around the baby. Mary obstinately turned her face away and looked out the window so Dean let out a high-pitched shriek of displeasure and kicked his mother firmly in the solar plexus with both tiny feet.
“Ow!” Mary said, and looked at the baby in spite of herself. John started to laugh at the look of indignant outrage on her face, but then he stopped because Mary was looking at the baby, who was glaring fiercely back at her, and then she said, “Oh, Dean.”
“Yeah,” John said, and bent over to put his arms around her. He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah.”
* * *
It was also the year John’s father died. He didn’t come into the shop one day, and John went over to the house and found him on the floor beside his recliner. The television was still on. An auto magazine was on the floor beside him.
A surprisingly sizable sum of money went to John’s older brother, Glen, and his family. John got the shop and the house. He and Mary moved into the house after a few months, and after a few more months of seven-day weeks at the shop, John took on a partner.
Dean started crawling. Dean said, “Mama,” and then, “Dada,” and then, “Eat.” Dean carried around a toy car and slept with it like it was a teddy bear. He said, “Vroom!”
In between feedings and diaper changes and toy car races, Mary read every demonology text she could get her hands on. She studied the weather patterns that John didn’t have time to study anymore. She made daily sojourns to the library to scour newspapers from across the continent.
They didn’t do much hunting. John found a weekend to help Bobby and a couple other guys clean out a vampire nest. Mary and Jim shut down a poltergeist in Oklahoma, a vengeful spirit in Missouri. They both stayed close to home, close to Dean, close to each other.
Every day was one day closer to 10 years. John, who had not attended church since his mother died, started praying.
Part Two
Author: baylorsr
Rating: R
Pairing: John/Mary
Summary: The day they buried Mary’s parents, she sat John down at her kitchen table and told him that her family hunted monsters.
Word Count: 17,772
Note: An AU story set after the 1973 events of In The Beginning. This story was written in December 2009/January 2010, before The Song Remains The Same aired, and some of Mary’s backstory as given in that episode doesn't fit with this story. The story is about John and Mary but is a Gen story. Thanks to liptonrm and oselle for being my sounding board, making suggestions and putting up with me in general.
Soundtrack
1. Last Kind Deal
The day they buried Mary’s parents, she sat John down at her kitchen table and told him that her family hunted monsters.
John dismissed it as a strange confusion caused by the sudden, violent death of her mother and father, but then Mary began unlocking and opening the locked and closed doors in the Campbell household, and taking out weaponry and tools that John had no idea rested behind those innocuous doors. Then he began to fear that this was no momentary confusion, no grief-inspired delusion, but a lifelong aberration, a sick and dangerous family fantasy that perhaps had led in some way to her parents’ deaths.
When Mary told him that a demon, not a burglar, had killed her parents, he took her hands and told her that they were going to get her help. Mary was young, and with her parents and their influence gone, John was certain that treatment, therapy, medication - something - could save his Mary.
Mary’s eyes were clear and steady and blue and not at all what John thought crazy-eyes should look like. He’d seen crazy, in the eyes of the enemy, in the eyes of his brothers-in-arms, and it didn’t look like this, but maybe that was because Mary’s crazy went so far beyond the brand caused by the horrors of war.
“Come with me,” Mary said. “Come with me and let me show you, and if you don’t feel differently, then I’ll get whatever help you think I should have.”
John could never tell Mary no, so he went with her to Oklahoma, where they met up with a dusty old guy with bad teeth named Franklin. The Impala followed Franklin’s battered pickup down country roads that led to country lanes that led to a dirt path. Mary armed John with a shotgun, but she and Franklin took pistols, and loaded them with what John could swear were silver bullets.
They led him off the path and into the brush under the light of the full moon, and John didn’t think he’d been so scared even in the jungle. He didn’t know if it was Mary and the old man he feared, or something darker and older and deeper.
They waited.
John thought at first it was a man, and he opened his mouth and raised his arm to stay Mary and Franklin, but they were already out of the cover, and Franklin was yelling at the man, the man who ran wrong, who moved wrong, who looked wrong, and the man - thing - turned and charged and Mary came at it from the other side and shot it right in the chest.
The man - thing - fell to the ground.
Mary held out her hand. “Come here, John,” she said. “Come and see.” He went to her.
The thing on the ground was a man and not a man. It was still alive, taking strangled, bloody gasps through an open mouth that revealed curving, dangerous teeth. Its clawed hands scrabbled at the ground.
Franklin raised his pistol and shot it through the heart, and it was still. Then it changed, and John fell back on the ground in horror, raising a hand to the sight, because the thing was now a man, a dead man in the forest, when a moment ago it had been a creature, and his mind could not make sense of it.
Mary grabbed his hands and pulled them away from his face. “Look, John,” she said, and he did, because he knew what he had seen.
“A werewolf,” he said, and looked at Mary, and she nodded. “A monster,” he said, and Mary nodded again.
He sat trembling on the ground. Mary squeezed his hands and said, “Betcha wish I was just crazy, huh?”
They were silent all the way back to Lawrence. At her parents’ house, John showered and then lay down on the couch and fell into a black sleep. He woke at dawn and made coffee and sat at the kitchen table until Mary woke up and came downstairs to sit across from him. She reached out her small hands and tentatively touched his hands, wrapped around the cold coffee mug.
“John?” she asked, and she sounded so scared, so alone. John pulled his gaze from the kitchen wall and looked her in the eyes.
“Why did you show me this?” he asked. She tightened her fingers around his, and told him.
She finished, and the only sound in the kitchen was the gurgle of the coffee pot and the ticking of the clock. John studied the wall again for a good, long time before looking back to Mary. Her eyes were still clear and steady and blue, but they were also frightened.
“What do we do?” he asked, and relief and love washed over Mary’s face, and her hands tightened around his. She squared her shoulders and set her mouth, and damn, John never wanted to get in the way of this woman, because he wouldn’t stand a chance.
“We find it, and we kill it,” she said with resolve. “And we’ve got 10 years to get the job done.”
John nodded. He stood up.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
* * *
1973 went by too fast.
The minutia of life took up a lot of it. There were the Campbells’ affairs to settle, and the house that Mary would not stay in to sell. John was still working in his father’s garage, and Mary got a part-time job at a florist to cover the bills until the house sold.
Throughout it was training. After Marine boot camp, John had been hard-pressed not to laugh when Mary said she needed to get him into shape, prepare him for the things they would be facing.
He was glad later that he hadn’t laughed at her, because then it might have been even worse.
They told his dad they wanted to see America, and John guessed his old man must have thought Mary was going stir-crazy in the house where her parents died, because he let them take off on their road trips without too much grumbling.
They did ruck-walks in the mountains, then ruck-runs.
They tracked wild animals through the bush for days, then tracked human animals through the city for days.
They climbed rocks, they climbed trees, they climbed the sides of flat, smooth buildings.
John learned to pick a lock, chant in Latin, use a machete, make silver bullets.
He dug grave-deep holes until his time was less than an hour.
He learned how to destroy a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf, a wendigo, a shapeshifter.
Through it all, Mary could still kick his ass.
She didn’t have much knowledge of demons, though, to John’s surprise. In fact, she said she didn’t think her parents had ever encountered one before. So far as Mary knew, there was no way to kill one, but, she said, that didn’t mean a way didn’t exist.
Demons could be sent back to hell, but they could escape again. But before they could do anything - kill it, exorcise it, anything - they had to identify it, and then they had to find it. It almost made killing it seem like the easy part.
None of the hunters that Mary knew had ever tangled with a demon, either, and John wondered just how big of a mess they were in, and if it was part of a larger, more horrific design. He didn’t say these things to Mary, who was ragingly determined and horrifically terrified. She was fearless and scared and tough and fragile and not at all the girl John thought he’d known, but she was always the woman he loved.
* * *
In 1974, she finally married him, saying it looked like she couldn’t scare him away so she might as well. The house sold and they stashed away the money and found a crappy little apartment. John offered to do some fixing up for a discount on the rent, and then he mixed salt into the caulk and weatherized all the doors and windows.
That was also the year they met Jim Murphy.
He was still Father Murphy when they went to see him, but by the end of the year he’d lost that title and told them to call him Jim. John started calling him Pastor Jim, because he figured the man would never stop tending the flock, no matter what Mother Church might say about it.
Mary read newspapers from around the country in the local library, which was how they found Jim. Mary had surreptitiously torn the article out of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and brought it home to show John. The next weekend, they piled into the Impala and headed north.
“That poor child was possessed, without doubt,” Jim told them over coffee at a little diner. They’d been turned away at the church offices, told that Father Murphy was under the Bishop directly now. Somehow, John and Mary didn’t think it was a promotion. They were turned away again at the Diocese offices, but a two-day stakeout finally proved successful, and they trailed him out of sight of the cathedral before approaching him.
He tried to refer them to a local parish at first, and was walking away when Mary said, “It killed my parents, and John, and so I made a deal.” Jim stopped, his back to them, then slowly turned and said, “Well.”
Several years earlier, Jim had published a fact vs. fiction paper about demonic possessions and Church practices and beliefs. That is what had led a desperate Frank Herndon to seek him out.
His little girl was possessed, a maniacal Frank insisted. She’d changed overnight from a loving and ordinary, if somewhat fanciful, child into a vicious, cunning thing that held their house in fear. “I’m your daughter now,” the child would sing-song to her parents as she killed backyard animals.
Jim thought the child must be mentally ill, and indeed, that’s what all the doctors told the Herndons - some type of early onset schizophrenia, or split personality disorder. But he agreed to visit their house, thinking if he could convince the Herndons that Becky wasn’t possessed, that then they would seek proper medical help for her.
They lived in an ordinary little suburban house. A pink bicycle with sparkly streamers flowing from its handlebars lay in the front yard. It smelled like cookies inside, and they found Mona and Becky in the kitchen, making chocolate chip cookie bars.
Becky turned brightly when Jim entered, and said with great cheer, “Oh, I wondered when they would bring a priest!” Then, with eyes of pure black, she picked up the knife her mother had been cutting the bars with and rammed it hilt-deep into her own gut.
“I tried to call someone for help,” Jim told John and Mary. “No one picked up at my parish, and the man I got on the line at the diocese thought I was drunk. I was on my own, and mind you, one paper does not an expert make.”
Holy water burned the child, and she screamed until the windows rattled in their frames at prayers or the name of God. But really, Jim said, it wasn’t at all like The Exorcist. Aside from these things, Becky remained, on the outside, an ordinary child right up to the end.
“She knew everything about us,” Jim said, “and she was cruel, revealing our darkest acts and thoughts to the light with a kind of horrific joy. And all of it in this sweet child’s voice, that giant red stain on her shirt slowly blooming. We thought maybe we could still save her, if we could get it out, take her to a hospital.”
“Why didn’t you just take her with it in her?” John asked, trying to keep judgment out of his voice.
“We couldn’t approach her,” Jim said, and John remembered Mary talking about how the demon that had killed her parents could stop you dead in your tracks and pin you.
They finally filled the bathtub, and Jim blessed the water. Then they took a bucket and threw it on Becky, and while she was distracted, steaming and thrashing and screaming, “It burns, Mommy, it burns, make it stop, help me!” Jim and Frank picked the child up, put her in the tub and dunked her.
The water actually boiled, and Jim showed them faint, still healing scars where his hands had blistered.
They held the child down it the tub, and Jim did the exorcism. When he finished, there was a tub of cold water and a dead child inside of it.
Mary put her hand over her mouth and went outside. Jim and John could see her pacing on the sidewalk.
“What’s going to happen to you?” John asked as he watched Mary out the diner window.
Jim shrugged. “Defrocked, for certain. I’m hoping they won’t excommunicate me, but that’s possible too,” he said. “They don’t think I killed her, certainly, but they think she was a mentally ill child, and I supported the parents’ delusions to the point that they delayed medical care in favor of an unauthorized exorcism and the child ended up dead.”
“What are you going to do then?” John asked, turning back to him. The bell above the door jingled as Mary came in and sat back down, calm but clenched.
Jim gave them a wry little smile. “It seems I’m going to hunt demons,” he said, and John nodded, because, really, what else was there for Jim to do now?
* * *
Jim introduced them to research and demonology, Church teaching and rituals, Latin and exorcisms. For John, a solid B high school student who had never looked to college, it was a lesson in patience with himself, and a hard-learned one.
Mary, on the other hand, seemed to absorb everything Jim taught her at first pass, and the knowledge only fueled her desire for more knowledge.
“We aren’t going to be able to behead, or burn, or shoot this thing,” she would say to John. “This,” and she slapped her hand on a heavy, dusty relic of a volume, “is how we’ll beat it.”
John, knowing she was right, would keep trudging away at his Latin.
* * *
In 1975, John began studying weather patterns, and by its end, he knew more than the meteorologist on the local news. He also knew that across the country, there was no sign of demonic activity. Looking back at 1973, though, there were signs everywhere. The demon had been busy.
It was hard to narrow down its focus, though. Even if they could pinpoint the demon’s activity to a town, to a neighborhood, even to a block, there were still dozens of people who may or may not have made a deal.
Mary was the one who thought to start asking about people who’d had unusual luck, or a big change in circumstances, in 1973.
In Oklahoma, a man had been killed when his car stalled out over the tracks while a train was coming. Witnesses said it looked like he had been trying to get out, but his seat belt was stuck.
His widow was still grieving, but his two teenaged daughters would not meet their eyes. “He loved the girls so much,” their mother sobbed, and the girls flushed and flashed a look at each other.
The younger one looked bewildered when asked if they’d spoken to anyone about needing a change in their life just before their father’s death, but the older one clenched her jaw and looked away, stammering that she didn’t know what they meant.
In Michigan, a young couple had slammed into a tree on an icy night. The woman had been thrown free, but the man had gone through the windshield. No one knew how he could have survived, but he’d recovered without a scar to remember it by.
A miracle, he called it, and he believed it. The woman’s eyes filled with tears and she’d looked away. She wouldn’t cop to a deal when they got her alone, but ran from them, crying.
In Illinois, Susan Franklin made no bones about her deal.
“My mother was dying,” she told them as they walked down her neat suburban street. “He offered to save her. Of course I took the deal.”
“What did you promise him?” Mary said, and Susan shrugged.
“He wouldn’t say,” she said. “Said he’d be by in 10 years to collect, but it wasn’t anything I’d miss. Said I might not even notice.”
“That wasn’t a doctor, you know,” John said, and Susan rolled her eyes.
“I’m guessing fae or some kind of demon,” she said matter-of-factly. “But he didn’t want my soul, so whatever it is, I can live with it. More than my mother could live with a slow, painful death.”
She didn’t want their number, so they left.
Mary was quiet on the drive back to Kansas. They were nearly through Missouri when she said, “Do you think I’m going to hell?”
John pulled off the road and parked on the shoulder. “You didn’t sell your soul, Mary,” he said, turning to look at her.
Mary stared out the windshield at the flat highway ahead of them. “I made a deal with the devil,” she said flatly. “I’m thinking that’s a big black mark on my ledger.”
John didn’t know what to say to that, because she was right, but he couldn’t imagine his Mary - his wonderful, loving, obstinate, brilliant, good Mary - going to hell. “Maybe you should talk to Jim,” he said, because regardless of what the Church had said in the end, Jim was still a priest to John.
“You have to be sorry to gain absolution,” Mary said, and finally looked at John. “And I don’t know that I am, that I would take it back if I could. I can’t imagine being here without you, John.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just put his hand over hers.
* * *
In 1976, they fought. They fought every evil thing they could track, and they fought each other.
They killed a wendigo in Minnesota, and Mary locked John out of the motel and he slept in the Impala.
They cleaned out a vampire nest in Arkansas, and John left Mary at a bar in Pine Bluff and didn’t turn back around for her until Little Rock.
They killed a siren in Chicago, and screamed at each other in the hotel until management knocked on the door.
They fought in the apartment, they fought in the Impala, they fought at the shop, they fought on the job, they fought in bed. They fought so much that John started to think Mary wanted him to leave, wanted to punish herself, or save herself, or punish him, or save him, and drive them apart, but John was a stubborn bastard. He dug his heels in, so they just kept fighting.
They fought until John couldn’t stand the sound of Mary’s voice anymore, so he flipped on the radio and that godawful hippie Sonny and Cher were singing that stupid song, but John turned it up anyway.
Mary reached out and viciously twisted it off, and John cooly twisted it back on without looking at her.
“Goddamn it, John!” Mary shrieked from the passenger seat, red with fury. “You hate this stupid song!” and so John started singing along.
I got flowers in the spring,
I got you to wear my ring.
“John,” Mary screamed, and she was so angry now that she was crying. John sang louder.
And when I’m sad, you’re a clown,
And if I get scared, you’re always around.
Mary twisted in her seat and began slapping at John’s shoulder, angry, open-handed slaps that stung and made the Impala shimmy.
Don’t let them say your hair’s too long,
‘Cause I don’t care, with you I can’t go wrong.
“Stop!” Mary screeched, so John turned it up, grinning.
Then put your little hand in mine,
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb.
And suddenly Mary was laughing, still crying and red-faced and slapping at John. “You’re such a stupid idiot,” she yelled at him, and she was beautiful, angry and frustrated and sniffling and laughing. “I hate you, John Winchester.”
He smiled wider and sang louder, and then she was singing with him, loud and off-key.
I got you to hold my hand,
I got you to understand,
I got you to walk with me,
I got you to talk with me.
They barreled down the highway, fighting and laughing and loving and singing.
I got you, babe.
I got you, babe.
I got you, babe.
2. Just The Right Bullets
In 1977, Jim heard of a man in South Dakota named Bobby Singer, and the three of them drove up to find him.
Singer looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s, and he ran a salvage yard adjacent to his old country house. Both Singer and the house looked like they had once been well-cared for, but now they were getting frayed around the edges.
He almost sent them packing, but as he started to shut the door, Jim said, “Mr. Singer, please, this is John and Mary Winchester and I’m Jim Murphy and we want to ask you about -”
The door came back open, and Singer looked Jim up and down.
“So you’re Jim Murphy, huh?” he asked, and scratched his beard. “I was lookin’ for you, a while back. Sorry to hear the Church gave you the boot.”
Jim blinked in surprise. “Thank you,” he said, then hesitated, now leery himself. John slid his hand inside his jacket and quietly thumbed the safety off his gun. “Why were you looking for me?”
Singer had a steady, open face, and he was careful with his motions, keeping his eyes on Jim, which told John he knew just where his hand was. “Thought you might could use some help,” he said, “but I guess you went to ground. Good idea, too, after that exorcism. Don’t know what might have come looking for you.”
Jim smiled wearily. “I think the Church has done all the damage she can to me,” he said mildly, and Singer gave a short, grim bark of a laugh.
“Ain’t the Church I’m worried about,” he said, and invited them in.
Singer poured them shots and grabbed them beer, and then Jim blessed the tap water and they all took a slug of that before sitting down at Singer’s kitchen table.
“Worried you might have demons on your ass,” Singer said, after tossing back the whiskey shot on the heels of the water. He cracked open his beer. “They know you now, and they hold a grudge. Went over to St. Paul couple years ago, and from what I gathered, you sure stepped in something you weren’t aiming for. Good way to end up dead, or worse.”
Jim cleared his throat, fidgeted with his whiskey shot, cleared his throat again and then downed the shot.
“Need another?” Singer asked placidly, and Jim shook his head.
“I’ve been traveling, staying with friends, family,” he said. “It didn’t occur to me that anyone, or anything, might be looking for me.”
“It better occur to you now,” Singer told him. “Maybe you been lucky, but luck don’t hold.”
Jim tipped his head in acknowledgment. Singer nodded back, then turned his keen eyes on John and Mary. “And what’ve you brought with you?”
John, whiskey still burning its way down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “John Winchester,” he said, “and my wife -”
“I’m Mary Campbell,” Mary cut him off. “I’m Samuel and Deanna’s daughter.”
Singer stared at her, then pulled off his trucker cap and ran a hand over his head.
“Ah, honey,” he said in a gruff, kind voice, “I’m sorry.”
Mary nodded, and if her lips quivered ever-so-slightly, her eyes were clear. “Let’s talk demons,” she said.
* * *
Karen Singer was an anthropology professor at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The photograph on Singer’s mantle was of a woman with a heart-shaped face and intelligent eyes, the smallest touch of sass to her smile.
They’d known each other since they were kids, Singer said, taking down the photograph and lightly touching his fingers to it, went to school together, but then Karen had headed off to college and he’d become a working man. His friends all got married and settled down, but he’d never found a woman to suit, and it didn’t bother him none.
One day he turned the aisle in the local grocery and there she was. They stood in the store and talked for two hours, and he left with her phone number. He went home and sat on his couch and looked at the piece of paper, wondering how long he had to wait until he could call her. However long it was, it was too long.
Karen’s mother was sick, so she’d left her teaching position at the University of Lawrence - “Your stomping ground,” Singer said, nodding to Mary - and come home. She had a part-time position at the USD for the moment, and her hands full at home.
They waited a year, while her mother fought and lost to cancer, then waited another year, while Karen grieved and put things in order. Singer put the time to good use and by the time Karen Hill became Karen Singer, he was a home and business owner.
“Still don’t know what she wanted with me,” he told them. “Karen was smart, so smart, and beautiful, and could have taken her pick. But we fit together, somehow, like we were made for it.”
Karen was a historical anthropologist, studying the beliefs and customs of the ancient peoples who lived in the cradle of civilization. She was published and invitations to lecture were becoming more common. Bobby got used to large, dusty books in dead languages sitting around the house.
It was May and warm already the night Karen shook him awake, trembling all over. “Kare?” Bobby asked groggily, and then sat up with alarm when he saw her white face. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Her teeth were chattering, and the room was oddly cold. “Something’s wrong,” she said, wide-eyed and terrified. “I was reading a book, a book of rituals, working on the language, reading aloud to hear the cadence, and now something is horribly wrong.”
“You were reading a book and now something is wrong?” Bobby asked, confused. “Is someone here?” He glanced outside the window, thinking maybe a late tornado was heading toward them.
Karen fisted her hands and pressed them to her mouth. “Something’s here,” she whispered. “I’ve let something in, Bobby. God help us, I’ve let it in.”
There was nothing in the house, and Bobby didn’t know what to think except that maybe Karen had fallen asleep working and had one zinger of a nightmare. He coaxed her into bed and held her for hours until sleep won out.
She was herself the next morning, a little embarrassed and apologetic. “Let my mind play tricks on me,” she said, abashed, and Bobby had rubbed her back.
“You work too much,” he said. “Need a vacation.”
Karen had taken a deep breath, then smiled up at him. “Let’s do that,” she said. “I’ll tell them I can’t teach that summer class, and we’ll go somewhere together. Call it a belated honeymoon.”
“I’m sold,” Bobby said, and kissed her soundly.
He came in three nights later and her eyes were black.
* * *
He would have gone to prison for murder, Singer told them, except that while he was towing a car back from Lennox, Karen had gone into work and killed the rare books librarian when the man wouldn’t let her take a book out of the building.
She’d stopped at a gas station on the way home and killed the clerk as well. Both men had their throats cut with one of the Singers’ kitchen knives, and bled out in minutes.
Bobby had already stabbed her twice with the very same knife, after she’d thrown it at him and missed, narrowly, but she was still coming at him, still covered in blood and saying - Singer shuddered, and didn’t continue. Saying awful things, he concluded, when the house lit up with police lights from the drive.
“I’ll see you later, lover,” Karen had purred at him, and black smoke poured out of her mouth. When it was gone, all that was left was Karen’s bloody body.
They sat in silence at the table for a long time, and John got up and turned on the kitchen lights, because it was growing dark, and the house pressed upon him.
“What was the book?” Jim asked finally, and Singer looked up as if he’d forgotten they were in the room. He ran a hand over his face.
“Book?” he asked.
“That the librarian wouldn’t let her take,” Jim clarified, and Bobby sighed and stood up.
“The Key of Solomon,” he said in his den, over his desk, and showed them poor, worn photocopies. “One of three copies in the world, on loan to USD when Karen took it.” He rifled the papers out and John saw symbols and drawings and dead words. “These are the pieces I’ve been able to get my hands on.”
Mary touched the papers carefully, as if they were fragile. “Where are the other two copies?” she asked.
Singer scratched his beard. “One’s in a private collection in Afghanistan,” he said. “That’s actually where most of these copies came from. Owner’s pretty cooperative, but it’s not like I can drop in and borrow it, and mail’s not too reliable in those parts.”
“The second?” John asked, and Singer let out his weary sigh.
“Damn Nazis,” he said. “It’s somewhere, Europe or maybe South America, but damned if I know where to get my hands on it. The third, the one Karen took, belonged to the Library of Congress.”
“It must be real,” Jim said quietly. He was holding an intricate drawing of a pentagram. “Otherwise, no reason to take it.”
“Oh, it’s real,” Singer said grimly. “I’ve no doubt that the demon inside of Karen stashed it someplace and then collected it once it had itself a new host. But that right there in your hands,” he nodded at Jim, “that’ll keep and hold a demon, powerless, while you exorcise it. I’ve used it twice now, and it’s as real as it can be.”
“We need to find it,” Mary said. “Who knows what else is in it, what it could give us to fight them.”
Singer nodded. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said.
* * *
Jim stayed with Singer, and John and Mary drove back to Kansas in silent thought. They’d just crossed the state line when John said, “How did your parents become hunters?”
Mary frowned, startled out of her own funk. “What?” she asked, giving her head a little shake. “You’ve never asked me that before.”
John shrugged, looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Seems like pretty big things, that turn other people to this life,” he said.
Mary kept her eyes on the road. “I had a baby sister,” she said, “once,” and then she swallowed convulsively and John didn’t think she was going to continue, but after a long, weighted silence, she did.
“Our name isn’t really Campbell,” she said. “It’s Harrison. So I was Mary Harrison and I lived with my parents and my baby sister in Salem, Oregon. I was almost five years old, and my sister was almost six months old, and I was excited because I was going to kindergarten in the fall.”
She was silent again. It started to rain, and John turned on the lights and the wipers.
“Then one day my sister was gone and something else was in her crib,” Mary said, and shuddered, then clutched at herself. “Something that looked like her but wasn’t. Something, something horrible, John, so horrible.” She covered her mouth with one hand and John wondered if he was going to have to pull over, but when she pulled her hand away, she was steady again.
“Changeling, I guess you would call it,” Mary said with a shrug. “It was like something evil had crawled into the baby’s skin. I wouldn’t sleep in my bed anymore, in the same room with it. I remember sleeping under the dining room table, pulling all the chairs in close around me for protection.
“Mom nearly lost her mind. She was hysterical, for days on end. Dad couldn’t face it, he kept saying it was some kind of delayed baby blues, something wrong with Mom and that I was just picking up on it. He knew though, because what was in that crib - of course he knew. And then one day he came downstairs from putting the baby down and sat on the couch and turned on the television, and when the baby started crying ... when that ... that thing started squalling, none of us would go upstairs to her. We all just sat there, watching the television.”
The windshield was fogging up, and John turned on the defroster. The wipers swished steadily. John kept his eyes on the road.
“I fell asleep like that,” Mary said, and she sounded like she was telling a story about some other family, some other child. “When I woke up, I was in the back of the car, covered with a blanket. My favorite doll was beside me. It was dark, and Mom and Dad were silent in the front seat. Dad’s hand was bandaged, white with a red stain. I could see it on the steering wheel. I lose some time after that, but when I started kindergarten, I was Mary Campbell, and we lived in Lawrence, Kansas.”
Neither of them spoke again until John parked the car at their apartment an hour later.
“What was her name?” he said after he’d turned off the ignition.
Mary turned to him, but he couldn’t see her eyes in the dark.
“I don’t remember,” she said, and got out of the car.
* * *
Jim had been staying with friends and relatives, but now he restricted himself to staying with other hunters, or living on the road. John thought it was a lonely way to live, and he told Jim so once after they’d killed a wendigo in Wisconsin together.
Jim was putting careful, neat stitches into John’s left calf, where the creature, already on fire, screaming and writhing, had made one last attempt to take someone, anyone, down with it. Its claw-like fingernails had torn a long, jagged rip through John’s jeans and into his flesh.
“I don’t want to bring these things into unsuspecting homes,” Jim was saying. “No way to repay friends and family who open their doors to you.”
“Yeah,” John said, “but don’t you feel, I don’t know, ungrounded?”
Jim shrugged, and John wished he could take back the question, because it suddenly occurred to him that Jim must feel ungrounded, anyway, after being barred from the church.
He thought, too, of his own father, covering John’s shift this weekend at the shop, knowing nothing of demons and ghosts and monsters, and shifted uneasily.
“Hold still,” Jim murmured, and tightened his grip on John’s leg.
“I’ve thought about starting my own church,” Jim said after a few moments.
“Yeah?” John said. “The Church of 20th Century Hunters?”
Jim laughed. “Or St. Hubert’s,” he said. “Patron saint of hunters.”
John chuckled, then said seriously, “You should think about that, really.”
Jim nodded. “I am, really,” he said, and tied off the last stitch. He wiped the wound clean and wrapped a light bandage around the leg. “Done,” he pronounced, and John swung his leg, testing it, then tentatively got to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said, and hobbled over to the bed to flop down. “Mary lived most of her life in the same place,” he pointed out. “Her family had connections, and they still hunted.”
Jim was neatly putting away the first aid supplies. “True,” he said mildly, “but that might not be the best example, John.”
“Oh,” John said, and remembered with the same shiver it always gave him that he had been dead, along with Mary’s parents.
“Do you remember it?” Jim asked, turning around, curious. “Being dead?”
John shook his head. He remembered Mary’s father pulling her out of the car, her screaming that he was hurting her, trying to get her away, and then a black space before waking up in the middle of the road in Mary’s arms. There had been no white light, no voices, nothing more than unconsciousness.
Jim sat on the second bed across from John. “You realize,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “If we succeed, in killing or stopping the demon Mary made her deal with, that it might nullify the whole deal.”
John lifted his head. “What’re you trying to say there, Pastor?”
“It brought you back to life,” Jim said gently. “If the deal is off, you might die.”
“Oh.” John let his head drop back down. It hadn’t occurred to him, actually, but he found he wasn’t too worried about it. He shrugged. “Well, I should be dead a few years over now,” he said. “Worth if it I know Mary’s safe.” He thought then of Mary, alone in the world without parents or husband, and picked his head back up to look at Jim.
“You guys would take care of her, right?” he said. “You and Bobby and -” He waved a hand vaguely to indicate the hunting world. “If I’m not around?”
“Of course,” Jim said. “Not that Mary needs taking care of.”
John snorted, because, yeah, Mary could lay out just about anyone. But then he thought about Mary alone, hunting, and how it could easily erode from her all the wonderful things that made her Mary, and leave her a tough and impenetrable shell, like too many old hunters he’d met.
“The hunt could eat her,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “She’ll need people to remind her there’s more in the world.”
“Yes,” Jim said, then leaned over to pat John’s good leg. “But for now, let’s plan on keeping you around a while longer to do that.”
“Fine by me,” John said.
* * *
In 1978, John learned about the Colt.
The Colt, he was told, was made by Samuel Colt the gun-maker in 1835, when Haley’s Comet was overhead. It was made for a hunter, and it was said that it could kill anything.
Including demons.
“It’s a hunters’ fairy tale, John,” Mary told him in exasperation when he asked her about it. “Dad used it tell it to me as a bedtime story.”
“That’s what people say about the things we hunt, Mary,” John answered, throwing his arms out. “What if it’s real? What if we could find it? Do you know what this could mean? No hoping we can send this thing to hell, and that it won’t come back, looking for revenge. Dead, Mary, we could kill this thing dead.”
“Sounds great,” she said, and turned back to the dishes in the sink. “Seen it lying around?”
John left the apartment and went down to the garage, flipping on the lights and turning the radio up to blast the Stones and getting to work on an engine overhaul. He banged his head on the underside of the hood when the radio shut off abruptly.
“You know I’m not paying you overtime, right?” his dad called, and John poked his head out.
“I know it,” he said. “Just wanted to get this ready for morning, get it finished up tomorrow.”
“Uh-huh,” his dad said, and went into the office.
He was finishing up by the time his father came back out, giving John’s work a quick, critical eye followed by a grunt of approval.
“You ought to get home to that girl,” his dad said.
John pressed his lips together. He’d needed something to put his hands on, something he knew how to take apart and put together and make run the way it ought to. He’d yet to figure out how to do any of that with Mary.
Feeling his father’s eyes on him, John grabbed a rag and started wiping grease off his hands. He heard his dad heave a sigh, and then he said, “I sure wish your mom could have met her.”
John’s head jerked up in surprise. His mother had died of a heart attack, clear out of the blue, when John was 16, and John could count on his fingers the number of times his father had brought her up since then. Now he met John’s startled look with a sad smile.
“She sure would have liked that firecracker,” he said, and John had to smile back, because, yeah, his mother would have loved Mary.
“Would have told me she was too much woman for me to handle,” he said ruefully, and his father barked a laugh.
“That’s the truth,” he said, and swatted John with the rolled-up newspaper in his hand. “Good thing we Winchester men don’t know when we’re beat.”
John shook his head and gave a half-laugh, then turned and closed the car hood. “We are an obstinate bunch,” he said, and his dad grunted.
“See you in the morning, son,” his father said, and John, wiping off and putting away tools, called a “Bye,” over his shoulder as his father let himself out.
When he was done cleaning up, John went into the office and sat at the desk, then picked up the phone and dialed Bobby.
“Oh, sure, it might be real,” Bobby said, “but that don’t mean we can get our hands on it.”
“If we wanted to,” John asked, “how do you think we would start?”
Bobby sighed on the other end, and John could hear him scratching his beard. “Trace it back, same as anything,” he said finally. “Maybe knowing where it’s been might tell us where it is now. Come to think of it, I’m mighty curious if there is such a weapon, how Colt came by the knowledge to make it.”
“He made it for a hunter, right?” John said. “Maybe someone had a, a recipe for it, but they needed a real gun-maker to put it all together.”
“Boy, if there’s a recipe for a magic everything-killin’ weapon out there, do you know how hell-bent, well, hell would be on keeping that out of our hands?” he said, and then both men were silent, breathing and thinking.
“The Key of Solomon,” John said finally.
“Yeah,” Bobby said.
“We gotta find it,” John said.
“Yeah,” Bobby repeated. They were quiet again for a moment, and then Bobby cleared his throat.
“Guess I know where to start with that,” he said. “Been meaning to go back over Karen’s case, trace her steps from that day, anything that might clue us in. Ain’t the first time I’ve done it, but I’ve got more tricks up my sleeve now, know more what to look for.”
“Call Jim,” John said. “Get him to come help you.” Bobby didn’t speak, but his breath was loud over the line. “Don’t do it alone, Bobby,” John said, then added, “Outside eyes might see things differently.”
Bobby grunted. “True enough,” he said. “I’ll give him a call. Talk to you later,” and he hung up.
John put the receiver in the cradle, shut off the lights, locked up, and went home to Mary.
* * *
In May, it was five years. Five down, and five to go.
* * *
In June, John came home late from work to a dark apartment. He went straight to the kitchen before flipping on a light and jumped when it revealed Mary sitting at the table.
“Babe?” he asked, and cold fear gripped him. “What is it?”
Mary’s hands were on the table, tightly clenched, and John sat down and put his hand over them. They were icy cold and he started rubbing them, almost automatically. “Mary?” he asked, and the word “Christo” was on his lips when she said, “I went to a clinic, but then I couldn’t do it.” She started crying silently, tears dripping down her cheeks and onto the table.
John didn’t understand. “A clinic?” he asked. “What couldn’t you do?” but Mary just looked at him, white-faced and more terrified than he’d ever seen her, and suddenly he knew what she meant.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked, dumbfounded, because Mary took that pill, but she was nodding. “But -”
“It just happens sometimes,” she said, and she sounded more like herself.
“A baby,” John said, and he was scared and happy and confused all at once. “A baby,” he said again, and looked at Mary’s wet face. “Mary, I mean, I know we didn’t plan it, but - our baby, Mary,” and he smiled at her.
Mary shook her head and looked away. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I was sitting there filling out the forms and - it’s our baby, John.”
“Why would you go there at all?” he asked, because while he and Mary had agreed that raising a baby and hunting demons didn’t go exactly hand-in-hand, they’d talked about postponing parenthood, not closing the door on it.
Mary shook her head again and sniffed, then turned back to look at him. “What have I done, John?” she said, and her voice shook. “It wanted something from me.” She slid her cold hands out from under his and placed them over her belly protectively. “What if this is what it wants? What if it wants our baby?” and she started crying in earnest.
John could only sit there in shock for a moment, cold, sick fear in his stomach, and then he got up and wrapped his arms around Mary, bending over her as if to shield her. “What have I done? What have I done?” she sobbed, and John shushed her and kissed the top of her head and rocked her and felt the cold block of terror crystallize into something hard and immovable inside of him:
It can’t have our baby.
* * *
In 1979, Dean arrived, red-faced and demanding and squawking his displeasure.
John counted his fingers and toes, and measured his hands and feet against his own. He ran one finger over the downy hair, and the baby squinted open watery blue-green eyes and his cries faded to unhappy grumbles.
“I hear ya, buddy,” John said softly, and the baby blew bubbles on his lips while glaring at John. “You’re in charge.”
You know it, Dean’s belligerent look seemed to say, and John laughed quietly and rocked gently and was so happy he felt almost crushed by it.
Mary wouldn’t hold him.
She begged off as being too tired to the nurses, but when Dean’s first 24 hours passed without him being in Mary’s arms, John waited until they were alone and stood up from the bedside chair and stooped over the bed, little blue bundle in his arms.
“No, John,” Mary said, and she had that nasty sour-lemon look on her face, but John completely ignored her and just plopped Dean into her arms, and they curved automatically around the baby. Mary obstinately turned her face away and looked out the window so Dean let out a high-pitched shriek of displeasure and kicked his mother firmly in the solar plexus with both tiny feet.
“Ow!” Mary said, and looked at the baby in spite of herself. John started to laugh at the look of indignant outrage on her face, but then he stopped because Mary was looking at the baby, who was glaring fiercely back at her, and then she said, “Oh, Dean.”
“Yeah,” John said, and bent over to put his arms around her. He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah.”
* * *
It was also the year John’s father died. He didn’t come into the shop one day, and John went over to the house and found him on the floor beside his recliner. The television was still on. An auto magazine was on the floor beside him.
A surprisingly sizable sum of money went to John’s older brother, Glen, and his family. John got the shop and the house. He and Mary moved into the house after a few months, and after a few more months of seven-day weeks at the shop, John took on a partner.
Dean started crawling. Dean said, “Mama,” and then, “Dada,” and then, “Eat.” Dean carried around a toy car and slept with it like it was a teddy bear. He said, “Vroom!”
In between feedings and diaper changes and toy car races, Mary read every demonology text she could get her hands on. She studied the weather patterns that John didn’t have time to study anymore. She made daily sojourns to the library to scour newspapers from across the continent.
They didn’t do much hunting. John found a weekend to help Bobby and a couple other guys clean out a vampire nest. Mary and Jim shut down a poltergeist in Oklahoma, a vengeful spirit in Missouri. They both stayed close to home, close to Dean, close to each other.
Every day was one day closer to 10 years. John, who had not attended church since his mother died, started praying.
Part Two