Fic: John of the Cabin (2/2)
Dad didn't come home that night. Dean knew -- he'd stayed up, waiting for him.
The next day, Dean took it easy. He didn't have much of a choice, really, the way his both his hands and his ribs yelled at him any time he tried to get any work done. Instead, he bummed around and tried to pretend he wasn't watching out the front window, waiting for the Impala to pull up. But Dad didn't come home during the day, either.
"It's not really cold out," Sam told Dean over a dinner of baloney sandwiches.
"Hm?" Dean pulled his gaze from the front hall and stared at Sam.
"It's, like, fifty-five degrees," Sam said. "And it's stopped raining."
It had. Dean had noticed in the approximately two minutes he'd spent attempting to rake leaves in the front yard, in between bouts of crippling worry. "Okay."
"And, anyway, Matt and Kelly both said that it never snows here before Thanksgiving."
Sam had officially lost Dean. "Are you seriously talking about the weather?"
Sam shrank an inch in his seat. "I'm just saying."
"Who the hell are Matt and Kelly?"
"My friends. Matt lives down the street."
Leave it to Sam to actually manage to make friends in this yuppie commune. "And you talk to them about the weather."
"I'm just saying." Sam slapped his sandwich back onto his plate. "It's nice out, so you don't have to worry about Dad."
Dean blinked, careful to keep his expression neutral. "Who's worrying?"
"He does this all the time," Sam continued as though Dean hadn't spoken. "He'll be back when he's done with the hunt, and he'll drag us off somewhere else."
Oh, Dean was not listening to another "Dad sucks" tirade. Not now. "Sam, so help me --"
"I'm just saying --"
"Well don't."
Sam stared at him. Dean held his gaze, refusing to budge until Sam dropped his eyes and started on his sandwich again.
Dean's eyes drifted back to the door. The skin between his shoulder blades prickled. Sam was right, Dad did this sort of thing all the time. Except he hadn't since Dean had dropped out of school to help out. He hadn't promised not to, but it'd been unspoken.
Hadn't it?
Dad didn't come home that night, either.
The next day dawned bright and cool, the temperature having dropped at least fifteen degrees overnight. Dean threw a hat and gloves at Sam along with his morning pop tart, and waited just long enough to be sure he'd caught his bus before heading out into the neighborhood. He didn't mind colder air, usually, but his first few breaths today made his lungs ache deep down. He blamed his unscheduled canal bath, and didn't look forward to walking back down to the lock. They were still a few dozen poker games short of the cash Dad needed to get himself a second vehicle though, so Dean was stuck with his own two feet for a little longer.
He headed off through the neighborhood, hands in his pockets, trying his damnedest to look like just another happy yuppie out for a walk instead of the hoodlum they probably all thought he was. He was nearly to the end of the houses and wondering how best to cross the parkway when he saw her, parked haphazardly against the curb, gleaming in the early morning sun.
Son of a bitch. This whole time, and Dad had only been a few blocks away.
Dean jogged up to the Impala, running his hand over the roof as he scanned the nearby houses. One sported a flag with turkeys all over it, another was already rocking a wreath on the door. Unless Dad had decided to hook up with a housewife, he wasn't likely to be in either of them. "What the hell?" Dean muttered, bending down to look inside. "Why did Dad --" He broke off, swallowing hard.
There, in the driver's side foot well, just barely visible through the window, were Dad's keys.
"Shit." Dean tried the door and wasn't sure whether to be relieved or more worried that Dad had remembered to lock it. He dug into his pocket for his spare -- never leave home without it -- and popped the door open, leaning in to see if Dad had left any other clues about where he was, or where he was going. When he didn't turn up anything, he straightened up and took another look at the houses, wondering if it was too early to try knocking on doors, see if any of them knew anything, or at least knew how long the Impala had been sitting there. He caught a glimpse of something sparkling through the trees and remembered the canal. Dad had been seriously anxious about ganking the lockkeeper. Dean could always come back to ask questions.
Though it couldn't possibly be more than half a mile away, it still took Dean ages to get down to the lock. The parkway was packed with traffic trying to make its way into the city, and the tiny parking lot was nearly full when Dean finally managed to pull in, cutting off an SUV about four times larger than anyone could possibly need this close to the city. Dean ignored the blaring horn and the shouted curses as he parked, and set off along the path to the lock proper at a jog. He slowed to a stop as he approached the footbridge crossing the canal. A small crowd had gathered, a young couple with matching mountain bikes and gear, an older man with two black labs, a woman in sweats, and a couple teens in high school gym shirts. They were all looking across the bridge to the tow path, and talking loud enough that Dean knew what he'd find before he even made it all the way over.
The tow path had been dug up, not just where Dad and Dean had dug for the lock keeper's grave, but all up and down the length of the lock and a good twenty feet away in either direction. Where the first hole had been fairly neat, with clearly defined sides, the excess dirt and gravel contained to a small pile on the river side of the path, the new holes where ragged and hurried, dirt flung every which way.
Rumors about the source of the holes were flying back and forth between the visitors: it was a crime scene investigation, or a serial killer, an alien experiment, an archeological survey. Someone even proposed it was "John of the Cabin, back for his gold". Dean was about to ask about that last one when a couple of joggers rounded the corner downstream, and the crowd erupted into shouts, waving their arms to get their attention and warn them of the potholes up ahead. The two labs, riled up in the excitement, set to barking and bounding around the man holding their leashes, and by the time he managed to calm them down, the woman in the sweats had pulled out a cellphone and was talking about calling the cops.
Time for Dean to get back out of there.
*
Dean hated research. Given the chance, he would gladly foist it off on either Dad or Sam, or even Pastor Jim or Bobby to do. But Sam was at school and Dad was missing and neither Pastor Jim nor Bobby could help a whole lot with local lore, so Dean made his way to the library -- only to get immediately rerouted north when he mentioned the Cabin John pirate treasure.
"You're working with Dawson, right?" The librarian asked.
It took Dean a second to remember if that was Dad's current alias. "Yeah, that's right. He wanted me to double check his sources."
"I'll tell you what I told him, then. You want that kind of detail, you're best off going to the Historical Society."
The Historical Society turned out to be a house museum a good ten miles north, a haven for little blue-haired ladies not quite a full block from the local court house. It took him ten minutes of driving around before he found the tiny gravel parking lot between the house and the library, which was tucked into a converted barn and run by a single, harried-looking young woman not much older than Dean himself.
"Hey," he said, flashing her a grin, his charm turned up to eleven. "What can you tell me about Cabin John?"
She looked him over, apparently unimpressed. "You're with Dawson?" He nodded, and she shut the text she'd been flipping through when he entered. "Thought so. We don't get that many guys like you two coming in here."
"I guess not."
"Well, I don't know how much more I've got for you." She walked across the library, just a single, cramped room, and pulled down a few books. "Just the same memoirs and lock house records Dawson asked about."
Dean leaned against the counter. "Actually, I was wondering what you might have on John of the Cabin?"
She looked up, raising an eyebrow, and looked him over again. "Best way to get that kind of information is to talk to a local. Let me give you Linda's number."
And soon enough, Dean was back in the car, this time driving ten miles east through unbroken suburbia until he pulled up in front of the tiny, single story house along an access road with an overgrown lawn and a bright orange mailbox.
"This is local?" he muttered. Linda, a cheerful blond woman just over the hump of middle age, appeared in the doorway to the house, holding an enormous, shaggy black dog back by the collar. The dog took one look at Dean and began to howl. "Yeah, this'll be fun."
"Don't mind Ox, here," she said by way of greeting. "He makes a lot of noise, but he's really a big, slobbery sweetheart. You must be Dean. I'm Linda."
"Yeah," Dean said, accepting her free hand while trying not to give Ox the fish-eye. The dog was massive, coming up nearly to Linda's hip. His wagging tail looked like it could take out a chupacabra. "They told me at the Historical Society that you knew about Cabin John."
"That's right." Linda hauled back on Ox's collar, dragging him back like he was no more than a rambunctious puppy. "Come on in."
Linda, it turned out, had lived most of her life in Cabin John, before property values skyrocketed and she couldn't afford it, any more. She still kept up with the latest news, though, and was working on a book about its history. "Just because you leave a place," she said, "doesn't mean it leaves you."
As for John of the Cabin, she explained, it depended on who you asked. The name was usually given to a legendary old hermit, said to have lived by himself down by the river in the days before the bridge was built. One story said that he was the husband of the Female Stranger, a woman who arrived, died, and was buried under mysterious circumstances in Alexandria, Virginia. He'd been so filled with grief that he'd taken a boat across the river and up the creek to the then unsettled area that would become Cabin John, to live out his life in mournful solitude.
Really, she'd used those words. "Mournful solitude."
The other popular legend was the one that Sam had found, that John was a pirate who'd come up river to bury his gold. This one she backed with turn of the century newspaper reports about the hermit seen wearing a coonskin cloak and playing a banjo, that he was covered in tattoos and was saving his gold so he could return to his wealthy lover and buy her hand in marriage.
Dean suspected that the wealthy lover bit was Linda's own addition. She seemed pretty keen on John as a romantic figure.
"So if there's this treasure around," Dean asked. "Why hasn't anyone found it? It's not like there's a lot of places left that it could be."
"Well," Linda said. "Maybe someone did. Folks used to be really superstitious, especially in that area. There were those that said that anyone who found even a single piece of John's treasure would be cursed, chased by Old John himself for the rest of their days. People wouldn't even cross that old bridge after dark for fear of him."
"Spooky," Dean said.
"And you know," Linda continued, leaning back in her seat and scratching Ox behind the ears. "There was that lockkeeper."
Dean bolted upright. "Yeah?"
"It was 1918, I think, late summer. They found one of the lockkeepers in the canal one morning, just floating in the lock with both the gates closed. They suspected foul play, but were never able to even find a suspect. All they knew was he'd been bragging to the folks up at the hotel by the bridge -- there wasn't much of a neighborhood in the area, back then -- that he'd come into a tidy sum of money, but he never would tell anyone how. None of his relatives knew a thing about it. There's those that say he was the first one to find John of the Cabin's treasure, and the first to suffer the curse."
Dean's mouth hardened, though he did his best to keep up his pleasant, history-buff demeanor. "This lockkeeper, he was buried by the lock?"
"Oh heavens no. He'd be buried somewhere in Bethesda, I should think."
Dean nodded, pushing himself to his feet. "Thanks. I think that's all I need."
Ox, who'd settled in next to Linda, bounced up as well, tail wagging all over again. Linda wrapped her hand in his collar like an afterthought. "Not at all. I hope that'll work for your book."
"Oh yeah, totally," Dean promised. "The readers are going to eat it right up." He smiled as brightly as possible, even as he made a beeline for the door. Let her think that he was anxious to get started writing, or that he had a hot date to get to. Hell, she could think he was intimidated by her dog, if she wanted. It wasn't important. He had bigger problems to deal with.
Dad hadn't brought Dean to the canal to dig up the lockkeeper's grave. He'd been there to dig up the treasure. The one that Sam had found a piece of, and brought into their house.
*
It should have only taken maybe twenty minutes to get back to Cabin John from Linda's house, if the highway hadn't transformed itself into a parking lot. Dean wasn't familiar enough with the area to try and navigate the winding side roads without a good map or directions, so he was stuck in inching traffic almost all the way back to the river. By the time he got home, it was nearly dark out, and Dean had called the other drivers every terrible name in his repertoire at least three times.
Sam was waiting for him on the front porch, his arms draped over his raised knees, his mouth turned down in an epic frown. Dean winced. The kid was pretty clearly pissed, and rightfully so. Dean was never gone when Sam got home from school, not without leaving a note or something. He pulled up into the driveway and got out, shoving his hands into his pockets, and waited for the inevitable explosion.
Sam stared at him for a long moment, squinting into the twilight. He frowned. "Dad let you have the car?"
"No," said Dean. He leaned back against the Impala. "What happened to that coin you found?"
Sam shrugged. "I don't know, you guys got rid of it, or something."
Dean nodded. "I think Dad has it." He kicked at the leaves that always seemed to coat the lawn no matter how often he raked them. "I think it's cursed."
"So it is pirate gold?"
"Looks like." Dad had said it wasn't real gold, but Dean was pretty sure now that was the curse talking, trying to keep Dean from getting too interested in it. "I think Dad's cursed," he said. "I think he's possessed by John of the Cabin."
Sam frowned harder, his lips drawing together in the beginnings of what Dean was sure would someday be a truly epic bitch-face. "Dad ran off because he's possessed by the ghost of a crazy pirate hermit."
Dean nodded.
"And you still don't think we should disown him."
Dean groaned. "Shut up, Sam. Are you going to help me find him and bring him back, or not?"
Sam pushed himself to his feet and slouched forward a few steps, then looked up, swiped his hair out of his face, and huffed a dramatic sigh. "But only 'cause if I didn't, you'd go out and get your ass cursed or killed, too."
Dean wrapped one arm over his shoulders and dragged him in for a half-hug, half-noogie, relief fluttering low in his chest. "Good. I'd hate to have to ground you for being a little bitch."
*
Dean led the way back into the woods, headed for the old foundation. Sam trailed behind, occasionally stooping to look down at the leaves.
"We should call Uncle Bobby," Sam said. "He could track him."
"Uncle Bobby could track Dad in a real forest," Dean said. "These woods are, like, three inches thick."
"Dude," said Sam. "You know this is a park, right?"
"Parkway, Sam. There's a difference." Dean slowed as they got near the foundation, throwing a hand out to keep Sam from tromping right on by him.
"What?"
Dean nodded forward, then tugged Sam with him to move behind one of the trees, not that it made for much cover. The foundation wasn't just a foundation, any more. Someone had started building on it, slapping together a lean-to made of milk crates and roofing sheets. It didn't take a genius to guess who it was.
Sam leaned around the tree the other way. "Is that --"
Dean lifted his hand, cutting Sam off. "Shut up," he hissed. He nodded again, this time further down the hill, towards the bridge. "Look."
A shadow unfolded itself from the growing darkness under the bridge, made birdlike by the shape of the furs practically dripping from its form. It stood upright, stretching its arms, silhouetted against the dying sun bleeding into the valley, then turned uphill, towards the ramshackle shelter. A flash of reflected light from a passing car illuminated the figure's face, and for a moment, Dean didn't even recognize him.
Son of a bitch. Dad actually almost looked happy.
"Is he wearing fur?" Sam squawked. Dean reached a hand back to smack him, but missed. He wasn't taking his eyes off their father.
Dad paused on the hill, his face once more in shadow. He lifted his arm again, this time holding something out, towards the tree where Dean and Sam were hiding. Dean stared. There was no way. Absolutely none. It couldn't be --
Sam grabbed him around the waist, managing to yank Dean to the ground despite the fact that Dean still had almost a foot on him in height. The tree above them exploded in a shower of bark as the gunshot echoed through the valley.
"Yeah," Sam breathed, picking his head up out of the leaves. "Dad's cursed."
"Fuck," said Dean. "You are never allowed to bring treasure home again."
*
Dad didn't follow them out of the woods, which Dean supposed he had to be thankful for if the old man was going to keep shooting at them. They made it up to the edge of the road that ran across the bridge, and Dean sat down on the edge of one of the three historical plaques that detailed the construction of the bridge and the history of its hotel.
They made no mention at all of John of the Cabin, or of any curses.
Sam sat down on low stone wall that supported the plaques. "I vote we go find the crazy old warning dude."
Dean nodded. He hadn't really started to think about what to do next beyond "get Dad the fuck back".
"Hey," Sam said, bumping his shoulder against Dean's arm. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think Dad recognized us."
Dean snorted softly. "That make you feel any better?"
Sam sighed. "No."
"Okay, then." Dean pushed himself to his feet, feeling about as old as the bridge itself. "Crazy old warning dude it is."
Not that they had much to go on when it came to tracking the crazy old warning dude down. Dean was sure the whole town was chock full of crazy old dudes wandering around scaring kids in the woods. Sam, who'd apparently spent way more time talking to the locals than Dean had realized, led them off down the side of the road to the local convenience store.
Dean raised his eyebrow. "'Captin's Market'? Dude, even I know that's wrong."
"Shut up," Sam said. "It's been here forever. Come on."
Dean wasn't sure, but followed Sam's lead. Sure enough, they managed to land a name for the guy -- Tuohey, which Dean was still pretty sure was supposed to be a spitting noise, not a name -- and a possible location. It seemed that when he wasn't terrorizing kids in the woods, he liked to help out at the community center, where Dean supposed he could terrorize kids indoors.
The community center was, of course, along the same road that ran across the bridge, and Sam and Dean hiked their way back down it, kicking their way through leaves and stepping aside occasionally to allow people on bikes and walking their dogs to pass.
"These people are far too into exercise," Dean decided as they waited for their chance to cross the busy street.
"I like it," Sam said.
"Yeah, well, you would."
After a few minutes of asking around -- Sam had apparently at least spoken to everyone in town -- they found Crazy Old Tuohey in a small gym in the back, coaching some local kids in a game of basketball. "Too into exercise," Dean muttered again. Sam elbowed him in the chest.
Tuohey glanced up from the game, spotted them, and started booking it -- in his rickety old man way -- off the court and through the building. Dean scowled. "Hey!" He started after him, intent on tackling him to the ground if need be, but Sam managed to loop around another hallway and cut him off, instead.
"We just want to talk," he said.
"I talk to you, kid," said Tuohey, "your brother will shoot me."
"Might shoot you if you don't," Dean said.
"It's about what you said in the woods," said Sam.
"You picked it up," Tuohey said. "You picked it up and you took it home, didn't you? Well you got what you deserved, kid. I don't need you bringing it down on my head, too." He tried to turn away, only to find himself facing down Dean instead of Sam. Dean set his feet, refusing to budge.
"It has our dad," Sam said quietly. Tuohey dropped his head and cursed.
"Well I'm sorry then, kid. But there's nothing I can do."
"All we're asking is that you talk." Sam slipped around, stepping up in front of Dean. "Please."
"And you don't have it on you?" asked Tuohey. Sam shook his head. "Fine. Don't suppose either of you is old enough to buy me a damned beer, first?"
*
"So here's the deal," said Tuohey, in between sips of his beer. "My name isn't actually Tuohey. They just started calling me that back in the day, because I used to always hang around Tuohey's Tavern, down near the fire house. I grew up here, see, lived here all my life. My pop moved us in back when this was set up for the naval engineers, before all those trees and roads sprung up all over. Folks back then didn't think much of those of us kids living around here. Called us 'river rats' or worse. Used to blame us for all kinds of crap -- and, well, we got up to most of it. But the worst rap we ever got was for the disappearances. Folks would go down by the creek, specially around sunset or after dark, and they wouldn't come back up. Didn't happen too often, mind you, but enough to give us a reputation. Folks wouldn't cross the bridge from Glen Echo after dark, and those that didn't blame ghosts said it was because of us.
"Well, my friends and I got to noticing that some of those disappearances were happening around the same part of the woods, down there by that old foundation. It's been there longer than I can remember, always bare like that, and broken. So we figured we'd go in and find out what was going on. My buddy Johnnie and I went down to take a look around after school some days, but we didn't find much of anything, not till Johnnie started going weird on me. Started heading down into those woods at all hours, not telling anyone where he was going. Then one day, like that," Tuohey snapped his fingers, "he just stopped showing up at all. I'm sorry to say I gave up on him. Figured he'd run away, headed into the city or maybe up north. But going down into the woods wasn't any fun without him, and the disappearances tapered off, and I didn't think much more about it, not for a long, long time. Then about thirty years ago, folks came in wanting to do a book about this place, and asked me to help them out with their research.
"Now I'm sure you boys have heard of the old Cabin John Bridge Hotel by now, right? Hell, there's signs about it all over the damn place, it's kind of hard to miss. Well, seems the weird little . . . quirks of that area started up a lot earlier than I realized. There's not much of an official record of it, of course, but folks reported from time to time seeing strange things down by the bridge while they were staying there, and they had more than one nasty murder happen, especially in the basement. Some stories even talk of employees going batty, turning paranoid on each other. And reading those things, it took me back to those river rat days, out in the woods with Johnnie. So I figured I'd take one last look at the area, see what I could find."
Tuohey looked straight at Sam here, eyes dark and cold. "I think you can guess what I found."
"Treasure," Sam breathed. Dean rubbed his forehead and took another sip of his own beer.
"That's right. Not much of it, just a coin. But I knew the moment I touched it that it was part of the legendary treasure. I took it home with me and tucked it into my safe. I kept telling myself I'd let someone know, get a whole survey crew out there to check the whole area. Who knows what they'd find, under all those leaves? I was doing okay by then, not rich, but comfortable, you know? I had a good life built up, and it'd be real good for the community. But I couldn't bring myself to speak up. And the longer it went on, the harder it was to think about anything but finding that treasure for myself.
"I got real paranoid, always looking over my shoulder. I was convinced everyone I knew, even my closest friends, were stalking me. I thought they knew, about the coin, about the treasure. They knew and they wanted it for themselves. Reached the point where I started thinking the only way to keep the treasure was to get them out of the picture. I actually started thinking those things. About my friends."
"How'd you stop it?" Sam asked. Dean shifted in his seat, tensing, half expecting the answer to be "I didn't", followed by the old man pulling a weapon. Instead, Tuohey just took a long gulp of beer and hung his head.
"I don't remember how it happened, really, but the tavern burned down. Right next to the fire station, but completely wiped out. I didn't lose any friends in the fire, but I knew I was damned lucky. Something about that snapped me out of it. I realized that those thoughts, that paranoia, they weren't mine. Something was in me, thinking those thoughts for me. Something that had taken Johnnie and probably the hotel employee and who knew how many other people. Anyway, I knew that the disappearances always happened in that one part of the woods, and I'd heard that spirits couldn't cross flowing water --"
"That's not actually true," Sam said, and Tuohey frowned.
"I'll tell you what's damn well true, boy. I took that coin down to the river and threw it as far across as I could. I knew it wasn't gone-gone, but it stopped bothering me after that. So I stick around here, and I keep an eye on those woods, and everything was fine right up until you managed to dig up another coin."
Sam colored. "I didn't have to dig. It was right there."
Dean tilted his head, frowning, as he went over the details of Tuohey's story in his head. "Hey," he said, and Tuohey and Sam both looked startled, as though they'd forgotten he was still sitting there. "You never said. What's your real name?"
"It's John," Tuohey said. "John Poole."
*
"John's a really common name, Dean," Sam said, once Tuohey was gone and they were back home in their own living room.
"And we know for a fact that three people who have it have been possessed by a spirit called 'John of the Cabin'." Dean opened Sam's notebook to the page on the old hotel and set it on the coffee table above his own quickly scrawled notes from his trip to see Linda, then pulled out an area map.
"Right. And I'm going to get possessed by Samuel Beckett."
"Don't be an idiot. You can't get possessed by TV characters." Dean smirked. "You keep your face like that, and it'll freeze that way."
"Anyway," Sam said, clearly making an effort to wipe the bitch off his face. "So Dad and the foundation and the treasure activity is all around here." He circled the woods southwest of the bridge with a red pen. "And the lock is down here. Hey, was the lockkeeper a John?"
Dean shook his head. "His name was George. But he might've been offed by a John."
"Or a Larry."
"Tuohey says he tossed the coin somewhere around here," Dean said, marking a spot about a quarter mile east of the lock. "And the tavern was over here."
"And the hotel was here," Sam said. "Other than generally all being in town, I don't see a pattern."
"Well, other than the lock and the coin toss, they're all west of the bridge," Dean pointed out. "And except for the tavern, they're all south."
"Maybe it's the water thing, like Tuohey said. The creek and the canal and the river. Maybe the spirit can only cross the water when its possessing somebody."
"That's a whole lot of maybes, Sam." Dean rubbed his forehead. "And like you said, spirits aren't deterred by running water."
"They might be if they think they are. That superstition was pretty common a hundred years ago, and most of the legends say John was a sailor, even the ones who don't call him a pirate. He would have a lot of water-based beliefs."
"Okay, fine. But then what's keeping it from hanging out up here?" Dean circled the much larger expanse of woods northwest of the bridge.
Sam's eyes went wide. "The aqueduct."
"What?"
Sam traced the line of the road that ran over the bridge with his pen. "MacArthur Boulevard used to be called Conduit Road. Because under it is the pipeline for the DC aqueduct. That's why they built the bridge in the first place!"
"Dude, it can't cross an underground pipe?"
"That'd explain why it never comes into the neighborhood, too, Dean. Why it's contained to that one small area."
Dean nodded slowly. "Okay. It's worth a shot. It's not like we're going to find the grave of a guy that most people can't even agree existed. We can work with that."
Sam grinned. "And I think I know how."
*
As Linda had predicted, George the lockkeeper had been buried in an old churchyard in Bethesda. Once they found his grave, it was child's play to go out to it in the middle of the night and summon him up for a chat.
Well, as child's play as any summoning ever was. One of those really complicated games that kids play with too many rules that change on a moment's notice.
George seemed to recognize Dean; he lunged for him first thing, his mouth twisted into a sneer, and Dean couldn't help but fall back a step, hands going protectively to his ribs, which still twinged when he twisted too fast. The containment symbol they'd gotten from Uncle Bobby held, though, and George couldn't do anything but glare at them as Sam stepped up to play diplomat.
"We know you're pissed," he said, while Dean stood by with the salt and iron. Call him cynical, but he didn't think much of a ghost's ability to reason. "We are, too. John of the Cabin took our dad."
George flickered and snarled. Dean glared. Sam sighed.
"Look, just tell us where you hid the treasure. We can make sure that he never bothers you again."
By salting and burning your ass, Dean added mentally. He flashed his teeth at George.
George snarled harder and started clawing at the air where the containment spell closed him in.
Sam sighed. "Let's try this again."
*
Dean had been standing right there, and he still wasn't sure just how Sam had managed to talk George into telling them where the treasure was. They trooped out to the canal the next morning, well after daybreak when Dad seemed to prefer to keep to the shadows of the bridge. There was a long metal footbridge spanning the canal between locks, and following George's directions, they made their way across the tow path and down onto the overgrown banks of the Potomac. Dean surveyed the river while Sam dug. "How about there?" he asked, pointing out towards the center of the river, where a few rocks broke the surface.
"We need something a little bigger," Sam said. "I think I saw something closer to the lock."
Dean nodded, turning around and scanning the tow path through the trees. "You know, this thing's been buried here almost a hundred years. What makes you think it hasn't been washed away already?"
Sam shrugged. "It might be. But I figured this was easier than trying to sneak past Dad and snatch another coin over by the bridge."
"If we have to, I'll distract him," Dean offered.
"Great. You can 'yes, sir' him into submission while he shoots you to death."
Dean sighed. "You're really not going to lay off him, are you?"
Sam peered up at him through his bangs. Dean nodded.
"Yeah. That's what I thought."
Dean took over the digging when Sam's arms got tired, and they struck gold, as it were, about half an hour later, when Dean jammed the shovel between the roots of one of the trees to further break up the ground. He spotted the rotten remains of the burlap sack that George had buried the gold in and called Sam over, though he knew the moment he spotted it exactly what he'd found. It was disconcerting, the way "pirates" and "treasure" seemed to just slink into his brain.
"Right," he said, tucking one of the coins into a salt-filled pouch. "Let's go rent us a boat."
*
"Are you ready for this?" Dean asked as they stood at the very edge of the woods, staring down into the dark valley. The sun had set hours ago -- they'd needed to wait until it was late enough that no one would get caught in the crossfire. When Sam didn't answer, Dean glanced over, half expecting to see him staring down at the coin. Instead, Sam was looking up, his head tilted back like he was star gazing.
"The sky's orange," he said. Dean looked up to see that he was right. It was faint, a dusky shade broken up here and there by wisps of dark gray and black, but it was undeniably orange.
"Huh," Dean said. "That's good, right? Red sky at night, sailor's delight?"
"It's not red," Sam pointed out. "I've seen it other nights, too. Like when you and Dad went out to the lock."
"So, what, you're saying it's an omen?"
Sam scowled at him. "It's the light from the city reflected off the clouds, Dean. It means it's going to rain."
"Right," said Dean. "I keep forgetting it's the freaking monsoon season. Guess we'd better get on with it, then."
The first part was to get Dad's attention.
"Hey! Cabin Boy!" Dean waved his arms in the air, then shone his flashlight on the coin in Sam's hand.
That was the easy part.
Part two was leading Dad to the river without losing him, getting caught, or being hit by any cars. Considering that this required them getting Dad to follow them up into the neighborhood, across another bridge over the parkway, down the canal to one of the foot bridges, and then out onto the river itself in the canoes they'd rented and stashed earlier, that part wasn't so easy.
The third part was the banishing ritual itself, another present sent along from Bobby. They'd set up a containment circle on the island just before sunset. All they had to do was get Dad into it, and then Sam would recite the spell and sprinkle some salt and essential oils around, and that was it. They'd have Dad back.
That was, of course, the hard part.
The wind picked up almost the moment they set foot on the island. The Potomac River valley was wide and deep in this area, and the wind whipped through it mercilessly. The tiny island, no more than ten feet across at its widest point, had absolutely no cover or windbreaks. Dean eyed the containment circle warily. Painted on with a mixture of salt and lamb's blood, it wasn't likely to blow away, but the rapids around the island were rising steadily, and Dean was no longer sure it was far enough from the waterline to keep from being washed away.
Dad arrived just moments later and fired his shotgun. Dean reminded himself that they had bigger things to worry about than the storm as he dropped to the ground. Dad fired again, then shouted in a language Dean didn't recognize. Sam shouted back from where he was crouched low to the ground with his backpack -- Dean assumed it was English, but didn't catch the words -- and threw the coin into the middle of the containment circle. Dad's eyes locked onto it. He stepped forward, toes at the very edge of the circle as he reached out for the coin.
Dean let out a roar of frustration and rage and rushed Dad, slamming into him from behind and knocking him forward into the circle. Dad's shotgun skidded out of his hands, teetering on the edge of the island for a moment before dropping into the river. Dean sat up and crabwalked out of the circle, watching as Dad tried to chase after him but was brought up short.
"Now, Sam!" Dean shouted, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than it started to rain. There was no build up this time. No day-long drizzle or light patter, just two fat drops, one landing on Dean's shoulder, the other on one of the painted lines of the circle, and then it was pouring, blowing about in sheets. It took only seconds before the circle washed away and John of the Cabin pounced.
He came for Dean, practically landing on top of his chest. His knees pressed into Dean's already bruised ribs, squeezing the air from Dean's lungs, and he reached for Dean's throat.
"Do it, Sam!" Dean hissed, using up some of the last of his air to get the command out as he grabbed onto Dad's wrists and tried to shove him away. He couldn't get the right leverage to hold him back for long. Dad's hands locked tight around his throat, and Dean gagged.
Between the dark, the driving rain, and the spots rapidly forming before his eyes, Dean didn't see Sam coming up until he was practically on top of them, wrapping one scrawny arm around Dad's neck. Dad roared and twisted, letting go of Dean to throw Sam off his back and across the rocks. Dean watched in horror as Sam's head hit one of the canoes and he fell into the now raging river.
"No," Dean choked. He struggled against Dad, trying to worm his way out from under him and get to Sam. It took him more than a few moments to realize that Dad wasn't fighting back.
"Sam?" Dad said, and Dean's heart surged into his throat. "Sam." Dad swayed once, his body shuddering as a wave of freezing air passed over Dean. "Sam!" And then Dad was up and running, splashing down into the rapids, and Dean could only lie there and try to remember how to breathe.
He should have known. No ghost was any match for Dad when Sam was in trouble.
He managed to roll over to his hands and knees, and nearly lost his dinner at the pain the movement sent through his chest. He shoved it to the back of his mind. Dad had been living in the woods, eating who knew what and probably not sleeping much at all for days, now. He was in no condition to be fishing Sam out of the water, especially not if Sam had lost consciousness.
They needed him, and Dean was not about to let them down.
He made it to his feet, though he wouldn't bet on how straight his path was as he headed for where Sam had gone under. He paused just a moment at the first canoe to catch his breath, then stumbled his way into the water, clinging to the edge of the boat for balance and for a guide. Water slapped him in the face from every angle, the rain above, the river below, the wind sending both of them about in torrents. He struggled to focus through it and scanned the roiling surface of the river.
"Dad?" he called. "Sam?!" When he didn't hear an answer, he took as deep a breath as he could manage, then dropped below the surface.
It was almost a relief, getting out of the wind and rain, though the water tugged and pressed at him, trying to shove him back against the rocks. He kept his hand wrapped around the edge of the canoe, nearly capsizing it as he used it as his anchor. He opened his eyes, but couldn't see a damn thing.
There was no way he was going to find them. Not like this.
He surfaced, grabbing onto the canoe with his other hand as he tried to regroup. He'd completely lost all sense of time -- for all he knew, Dad and Sam could have been under for hours, yet. He could have been lying on the rocks wasting time while his family drowned, all thanks to some dumb ass pirate with his dumb ass treasure --
Something brushed against his leg in the water, and Dean would have lashed out if he hadn't been so very nearly beaten. He froze instead, waiting to see if it had been a ghost or a fish, if it tried to grab him or if it just vanished into the currents. Then Sam broke the surface, heaving in a tremendous gasp, and flailed at the water. "Dean!"
"Sam!" Dean lunged forward in the water, losing his grip on the canoe in his desperation to get to his brother.
"It's Dad," Sam said, and Dean realized one of his arms was still under water and he was struggling to drag it upward. Dean made it to his side in a few strokes, his feet still brushing the ground. He put one arm around Sam's waist to help keep his head above water, then grabbed for what Sam had been holding on to. He got a handful of wet fur and pulled, yanking Dad up against his chest. He nearly cheered when Dad coughed, then turned to look back to the island. They'd managed to drift several yards down river, but it was still closer than either shore. Not that it mattered, if they still couldn't reach it. Dean looked the other way and spotted a single rock jutting up above the surface just a few feet away. He caught Sam's eye and nodded to it. Sam nodded back, and between the two of them, they managed to maneuver over to it. Sam clambered up on top of it and grabbed for Dad, pulling him up just far enough to keep his head mostly above water.
"Go get the canoe," Sam said.
"Way ahead of you," Dean answered, and he struck out back towards the island. He was swimming against the current, now, and his lungs felt fit to burst, but he'd be damned if he was going to drown and leave Sam and Dad stranded on a rock in the middle of a river.
The canoe he'd been hanging on to had been swept away by the current, but the other one was still wedged up onto the shore line, only its back end dragging in the water. Dean grabbed on to it and was about to climb up onto the island itself when he caught a flicker out of the corner of his eye.
John of the Cabin stood in the center of the island. His hair was a wild bird's nest of tangles sticking out every which way, and deep black tattoos snaked up his neck and over his hands. He wore a long cloak of raccoon skins that draped over his arms and swirled in the wind. His eyes were wide and round and a solid, milky white that stared straight into Dean, making his shoulders twitch and his neck prickle. This was the thing that Dean had felt watching them since they arrived, standing there on that island now, waiting for Dean to come out of the water where he could get him. In his hands, he clutched the gold coin like it was the whole world.
Dean flicked him off and dragged the canoe off the island, swimming it back downriver to the rock where Sam and Dad waited.
When they reached the shore, Dad fully awake again, coughing and grumbling, they all three leaned against each other as they stumbled their way onto the tow path, not far from one of the locks. Sam looked around and groaned.
"I just realized," he said. "We still have to walk home."
*
By unspoken, unanimous decision, Sam got the first shower. Dean figured he and Dad were still pretty freaked about him knocking his head and falling into the river, and by the time they'd gotten home, the kid had been shivering like it was his job. Dad threw one of the wool army blankets at Dean and claimed one for himself, and they both settled into the living room while they waited, Dean with a cup of coffee, Dad with a bottle of whiskey.
Dean wanted to ask if Dad was okay. He wanted to ask how much Dad remembered. He wanted to know so many things that they all got backed up in his throat and all he could do was cough roughly into the blanket. Dad looked up at him, eyes heavy lidded and bleary.
"That doesn't sound good," Dad said. Dean looked away.
"It's fine."
"You sure about that?" Dad's voice was hard and rough, and just about the best sound Dean had heard in ages. "I seem to remember this wasn't your first unscheduled bath, this week."
"So you do remember."
Dean heard Dad set down his whiskey. He still wasn't looking up from his own cup of coffee. "Yeah, son. I remember."
Dean closed his eyes and braced himself. "I'm sorry."
Silence. It went on long enough that Dean glanced up, just to make sure Dad hadn't passed out on him and missed the apology. He found Dad studying him, his expression inscrutable. "For what?"
"I never should have let Sam bring that coin home. Shouldn't have let him pick it up in the first place. I should have noticed something was weird with you and gotten you help sooner. I should never have let Sam come out to the island with us. I --" Dean cut off when Dad raised a hand.
"Sam's fine," Dad said. "I got nothing worse than a good hangover will cure." Dad narrowed his eyes. "From the looks of it, you've got an appointment with at least a week's worth of antibiotics. Wipe out whatever that canal water left in your lungs."
Dean looked down again. "Yes, sir."
"Now what's the story with the ghost? He gone for good?"
Dean shrugged. "He won't cross running water, not without someone to possess. He's trapped on the island."
Dad hummed thoughtfully. "You sure about that?"
Dean shrugged. "Pretty sure."
"Pretty sure doesn't cut it, Dean. That spirit is dangerous."
Dean's jaw clenched. "There's nothing else we could do. We couldn't find his grave. For all we know, he was carried off by wild raccoons when he died.
"Did you try?"
"Honestly, I was pretty much just focused on getting you back."
Dad looked at him silently for several seconds, then gave a slow nod. "The lockkeeper?"
"Him we salted and burned."
Another nod. Dad picked up his whiskey and took a long sip. Dean cradled his coffee, letting the steam and the heat soothe his face and throat. In the shower, they could hear Sam singing softly -- and terribly -- to let them know he hadn't passed out and smashed his head open.
"You did a good job on this place," Dad said.
Dean raised his eyebrow. "Thanks."
"Think you're just about ready to get out of here?"
"Yes, sir." Dean didn't think he'd ever meant anything more in his life than he did those words. "Nebraska sounds good."
Dad's lips curled, just barely visible under his facial hair. "Alright. We'll see if we can't find something in Nebraska."
Dean smiled, even as he let out another hard, wet cough.
"Just as soon as you get over that pneumonia," Dad said.
Dean groaned and curled tighter into his chair.
The end
Additional author's notes:
I will admit to taking certain liberties with the location in this fic. Cabin John is a wonderful -- now rather gentrified -- community on the outskirts of Washington DC, but while it’s where my father grew up, it’s not somewhere I have spent a great deal of time. As such, many of the details included here are based on spotty memories of a six year old traipsing through the woods, combined with an early November walking tour that pretty much just went right on down MacArthur Boulevard and only peered through the trees at Cabin John Gardens. I didn’t get a chance to go traipsing through the woods again until the fic was nearly done, and I’d already decided I was going to fictionalize a lot of it.
These are the things that are true: Cabin John Gardens is a small community that sits southwest of the Cabin John Bridge, right up against the edge of the creek valley. There is an old foundation in the woods by the creek with steps peppered with marbles and the outline to a pair of scissors, as well as a horseshoe, sharks teeth, and several other objects. We don’t know where it came from or what it was for, but it has been there for most if not all of my father’s life. The Captin’s Market is real (as is the misspelling), as is the community center, and the historical society library that Dean visits. The area of the canal by Cabin John is known as “Seven Locks”, due to several locks of the type described in the story all packed together in about a two mile stretch of the C&O canal. The tow path is a very popular bike and jogging path, especially on nice days in the spring, summer, and fall.
It really does rain that much around here in November.
The Cabin John Bridge Hotel was real, and it was really right where Cabin John Gardens is, today. There really were murders in the basement, especially in the 1920s, when the basement was an illegal rathskeller, or bar. Tuohey’s Tavern was a real landmark until it burned down in the 1970s. No one was killed in that fire.
John of the Cabin is a real legend. The John in question has been said to be Captain John Smith, of colonial fame, Captain John the Jamaican pirate, John the husband of the Female Stranger of Alexandria, and many other Johns besides. There really was a clause in the early deeds to the land that any treasure found had to be split with the seller. People really did avoid going over the bridge at night, and there are stories of the bridge being haunted (though most of them came from my father). The children of Cabin John Gardens were really considered the lowest of the low by the folks in the surrounding communities, even lower than the African-American community, prior to the Civil Rights Movement. These days, Cabin John Gardens is an upper-scale artsy community. We’re not sure when the change happened, as Dad moved out in 1969, when he was seventeen.
Here are the things I changed or invented: the foundation in the woods is actually north of the bridge, in the area that John of the Cabin in this story refused to go into. The lock where Dean is attacked by George is around where Lock 7 is,. by Glen Echo, but is actually much more similar in construction and repair to one of the earlier locks closer to Georgetown. There are a number of stories associated with the canal, too (again, mostly told by my father), but none about a vicious lockkeeper out to guard his illicit pirate treasure. As far as I know, there’s nothing dangerous about being named John in Cabin John at all, even legendarily.
Many of the smaller characters in this fic are based on family members or people I know, and all of the last names mentioned are names of prominent families in Montgomery County, Maryland. Because details are fun!
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! This sucker was a beast, but I’m quite proud of it, anyway.
The next day, Dean took it easy. He didn't have much of a choice, really, the way his both his hands and his ribs yelled at him any time he tried to get any work done. Instead, he bummed around and tried to pretend he wasn't watching out the front window, waiting for the Impala to pull up. But Dad didn't come home during the day, either.
"It's not really cold out," Sam told Dean over a dinner of baloney sandwiches.
"Hm?" Dean pulled his gaze from the front hall and stared at Sam.
"It's, like, fifty-five degrees," Sam said. "And it's stopped raining."
It had. Dean had noticed in the approximately two minutes he'd spent attempting to rake leaves in the front yard, in between bouts of crippling worry. "Okay."
"And, anyway, Matt and Kelly both said that it never snows here before Thanksgiving."
Sam had officially lost Dean. "Are you seriously talking about the weather?"
Sam shrank an inch in his seat. "I'm just saying."
"Who the hell are Matt and Kelly?"
"My friends. Matt lives down the street."
Leave it to Sam to actually manage to make friends in this yuppie commune. "And you talk to them about the weather."
"I'm just saying." Sam slapped his sandwich back onto his plate. "It's nice out, so you don't have to worry about Dad."
Dean blinked, careful to keep his expression neutral. "Who's worrying?"
"He does this all the time," Sam continued as though Dean hadn't spoken. "He'll be back when he's done with the hunt, and he'll drag us off somewhere else."
Oh, Dean was not listening to another "Dad sucks" tirade. Not now. "Sam, so help me --"
"I'm just saying --"
"Well don't."
Sam stared at him. Dean held his gaze, refusing to budge until Sam dropped his eyes and started on his sandwich again.
Dean's eyes drifted back to the door. The skin between his shoulder blades prickled. Sam was right, Dad did this sort of thing all the time. Except he hadn't since Dean had dropped out of school to help out. He hadn't promised not to, but it'd been unspoken.
Hadn't it?
Dad didn't come home that night, either.
The next day dawned bright and cool, the temperature having dropped at least fifteen degrees overnight. Dean threw a hat and gloves at Sam along with his morning pop tart, and waited just long enough to be sure he'd caught his bus before heading out into the neighborhood. He didn't mind colder air, usually, but his first few breaths today made his lungs ache deep down. He blamed his unscheduled canal bath, and didn't look forward to walking back down to the lock. They were still a few dozen poker games short of the cash Dad needed to get himself a second vehicle though, so Dean was stuck with his own two feet for a little longer.
He headed off through the neighborhood, hands in his pockets, trying his damnedest to look like just another happy yuppie out for a walk instead of the hoodlum they probably all thought he was. He was nearly to the end of the houses and wondering how best to cross the parkway when he saw her, parked haphazardly against the curb, gleaming in the early morning sun.
Son of a bitch. This whole time, and Dad had only been a few blocks away.
Dean jogged up to the Impala, running his hand over the roof as he scanned the nearby houses. One sported a flag with turkeys all over it, another was already rocking a wreath on the door. Unless Dad had decided to hook up with a housewife, he wasn't likely to be in either of them. "What the hell?" Dean muttered, bending down to look inside. "Why did Dad --" He broke off, swallowing hard.
There, in the driver's side foot well, just barely visible through the window, were Dad's keys.
"Shit." Dean tried the door and wasn't sure whether to be relieved or more worried that Dad had remembered to lock it. He dug into his pocket for his spare -- never leave home without it -- and popped the door open, leaning in to see if Dad had left any other clues about where he was, or where he was going. When he didn't turn up anything, he straightened up and took another look at the houses, wondering if it was too early to try knocking on doors, see if any of them knew anything, or at least knew how long the Impala had been sitting there. He caught a glimpse of something sparkling through the trees and remembered the canal. Dad had been seriously anxious about ganking the lockkeeper. Dean could always come back to ask questions.
Though it couldn't possibly be more than half a mile away, it still took Dean ages to get down to the lock. The parkway was packed with traffic trying to make its way into the city, and the tiny parking lot was nearly full when Dean finally managed to pull in, cutting off an SUV about four times larger than anyone could possibly need this close to the city. Dean ignored the blaring horn and the shouted curses as he parked, and set off along the path to the lock proper at a jog. He slowed to a stop as he approached the footbridge crossing the canal. A small crowd had gathered, a young couple with matching mountain bikes and gear, an older man with two black labs, a woman in sweats, and a couple teens in high school gym shirts. They were all looking across the bridge to the tow path, and talking loud enough that Dean knew what he'd find before he even made it all the way over.
The tow path had been dug up, not just where Dad and Dean had dug for the lock keeper's grave, but all up and down the length of the lock and a good twenty feet away in either direction. Where the first hole had been fairly neat, with clearly defined sides, the excess dirt and gravel contained to a small pile on the river side of the path, the new holes where ragged and hurried, dirt flung every which way.
Rumors about the source of the holes were flying back and forth between the visitors: it was a crime scene investigation, or a serial killer, an alien experiment, an archeological survey. Someone even proposed it was "John of the Cabin, back for his gold". Dean was about to ask about that last one when a couple of joggers rounded the corner downstream, and the crowd erupted into shouts, waving their arms to get their attention and warn them of the potholes up ahead. The two labs, riled up in the excitement, set to barking and bounding around the man holding their leashes, and by the time he managed to calm them down, the woman in the sweats had pulled out a cellphone and was talking about calling the cops.
Time for Dean to get back out of there.
*
Dean hated research. Given the chance, he would gladly foist it off on either Dad or Sam, or even Pastor Jim or Bobby to do. But Sam was at school and Dad was missing and neither Pastor Jim nor Bobby could help a whole lot with local lore, so Dean made his way to the library -- only to get immediately rerouted north when he mentioned the Cabin John pirate treasure.
"You're working with Dawson, right?" The librarian asked.
It took Dean a second to remember if that was Dad's current alias. "Yeah, that's right. He wanted me to double check his sources."
"I'll tell you what I told him, then. You want that kind of detail, you're best off going to the Historical Society."
The Historical Society turned out to be a house museum a good ten miles north, a haven for little blue-haired ladies not quite a full block from the local court house. It took him ten minutes of driving around before he found the tiny gravel parking lot between the house and the library, which was tucked into a converted barn and run by a single, harried-looking young woman not much older than Dean himself.
"Hey," he said, flashing her a grin, his charm turned up to eleven. "What can you tell me about Cabin John?"
She looked him over, apparently unimpressed. "You're with Dawson?" He nodded, and she shut the text she'd been flipping through when he entered. "Thought so. We don't get that many guys like you two coming in here."
"I guess not."
"Well, I don't know how much more I've got for you." She walked across the library, just a single, cramped room, and pulled down a few books. "Just the same memoirs and lock house records Dawson asked about."
Dean leaned against the counter. "Actually, I was wondering what you might have on John of the Cabin?"
She looked up, raising an eyebrow, and looked him over again. "Best way to get that kind of information is to talk to a local. Let me give you Linda's number."
And soon enough, Dean was back in the car, this time driving ten miles east through unbroken suburbia until he pulled up in front of the tiny, single story house along an access road with an overgrown lawn and a bright orange mailbox.
"This is local?" he muttered. Linda, a cheerful blond woman just over the hump of middle age, appeared in the doorway to the house, holding an enormous, shaggy black dog back by the collar. The dog took one look at Dean and began to howl. "Yeah, this'll be fun."
"Don't mind Ox, here," she said by way of greeting. "He makes a lot of noise, but he's really a big, slobbery sweetheart. You must be Dean. I'm Linda."
"Yeah," Dean said, accepting her free hand while trying not to give Ox the fish-eye. The dog was massive, coming up nearly to Linda's hip. His wagging tail looked like it could take out a chupacabra. "They told me at the Historical Society that you knew about Cabin John."
"That's right." Linda hauled back on Ox's collar, dragging him back like he was no more than a rambunctious puppy. "Come on in."
Linda, it turned out, had lived most of her life in Cabin John, before property values skyrocketed and she couldn't afford it, any more. She still kept up with the latest news, though, and was working on a book about its history. "Just because you leave a place," she said, "doesn't mean it leaves you."
As for John of the Cabin, she explained, it depended on who you asked. The name was usually given to a legendary old hermit, said to have lived by himself down by the river in the days before the bridge was built. One story said that he was the husband of the Female Stranger, a woman who arrived, died, and was buried under mysterious circumstances in Alexandria, Virginia. He'd been so filled with grief that he'd taken a boat across the river and up the creek to the then unsettled area that would become Cabin John, to live out his life in mournful solitude.
Really, she'd used those words. "Mournful solitude."
The other popular legend was the one that Sam had found, that John was a pirate who'd come up river to bury his gold. This one she backed with turn of the century newspaper reports about the hermit seen wearing a coonskin cloak and playing a banjo, that he was covered in tattoos and was saving his gold so he could return to his wealthy lover and buy her hand in marriage.
Dean suspected that the wealthy lover bit was Linda's own addition. She seemed pretty keen on John as a romantic figure.
"So if there's this treasure around," Dean asked. "Why hasn't anyone found it? It's not like there's a lot of places left that it could be."
"Well," Linda said. "Maybe someone did. Folks used to be really superstitious, especially in that area. There were those that said that anyone who found even a single piece of John's treasure would be cursed, chased by Old John himself for the rest of their days. People wouldn't even cross that old bridge after dark for fear of him."
"Spooky," Dean said.
"And you know," Linda continued, leaning back in her seat and scratching Ox behind the ears. "There was that lockkeeper."
Dean bolted upright. "Yeah?"
"It was 1918, I think, late summer. They found one of the lockkeepers in the canal one morning, just floating in the lock with both the gates closed. They suspected foul play, but were never able to even find a suspect. All they knew was he'd been bragging to the folks up at the hotel by the bridge -- there wasn't much of a neighborhood in the area, back then -- that he'd come into a tidy sum of money, but he never would tell anyone how. None of his relatives knew a thing about it. There's those that say he was the first one to find John of the Cabin's treasure, and the first to suffer the curse."
Dean's mouth hardened, though he did his best to keep up his pleasant, history-buff demeanor. "This lockkeeper, he was buried by the lock?"
"Oh heavens no. He'd be buried somewhere in Bethesda, I should think."
Dean nodded, pushing himself to his feet. "Thanks. I think that's all I need."
Ox, who'd settled in next to Linda, bounced up as well, tail wagging all over again. Linda wrapped her hand in his collar like an afterthought. "Not at all. I hope that'll work for your book."
"Oh yeah, totally," Dean promised. "The readers are going to eat it right up." He smiled as brightly as possible, even as he made a beeline for the door. Let her think that he was anxious to get started writing, or that he had a hot date to get to. Hell, she could think he was intimidated by her dog, if she wanted. It wasn't important. He had bigger problems to deal with.
Dad hadn't brought Dean to the canal to dig up the lockkeeper's grave. He'd been there to dig up the treasure. The one that Sam had found a piece of, and brought into their house.
*
It should have only taken maybe twenty minutes to get back to Cabin John from Linda's house, if the highway hadn't transformed itself into a parking lot. Dean wasn't familiar enough with the area to try and navigate the winding side roads without a good map or directions, so he was stuck in inching traffic almost all the way back to the river. By the time he got home, it was nearly dark out, and Dean had called the other drivers every terrible name in his repertoire at least three times.
Sam was waiting for him on the front porch, his arms draped over his raised knees, his mouth turned down in an epic frown. Dean winced. The kid was pretty clearly pissed, and rightfully so. Dean was never gone when Sam got home from school, not without leaving a note or something. He pulled up into the driveway and got out, shoving his hands into his pockets, and waited for the inevitable explosion.
Sam stared at him for a long moment, squinting into the twilight. He frowned. "Dad let you have the car?"
"No," said Dean. He leaned back against the Impala. "What happened to that coin you found?"
Sam shrugged. "I don't know, you guys got rid of it, or something."
Dean nodded. "I think Dad has it." He kicked at the leaves that always seemed to coat the lawn no matter how often he raked them. "I think it's cursed."
"So it is pirate gold?"
"Looks like." Dad had said it wasn't real gold, but Dean was pretty sure now that was the curse talking, trying to keep Dean from getting too interested in it. "I think Dad's cursed," he said. "I think he's possessed by John of the Cabin."
Sam frowned harder, his lips drawing together in the beginnings of what Dean was sure would someday be a truly epic bitch-face. "Dad ran off because he's possessed by the ghost of a crazy pirate hermit."
Dean nodded.
"And you still don't think we should disown him."
Dean groaned. "Shut up, Sam. Are you going to help me find him and bring him back, or not?"
Sam pushed himself to his feet and slouched forward a few steps, then looked up, swiped his hair out of his face, and huffed a dramatic sigh. "But only 'cause if I didn't, you'd go out and get your ass cursed or killed, too."
Dean wrapped one arm over his shoulders and dragged him in for a half-hug, half-noogie, relief fluttering low in his chest. "Good. I'd hate to have to ground you for being a little bitch."
*
Dean led the way back into the woods, headed for the old foundation. Sam trailed behind, occasionally stooping to look down at the leaves.
"We should call Uncle Bobby," Sam said. "He could track him."
"Uncle Bobby could track Dad in a real forest," Dean said. "These woods are, like, three inches thick."
"Dude," said Sam. "You know this is a park, right?"
"Parkway, Sam. There's a difference." Dean slowed as they got near the foundation, throwing a hand out to keep Sam from tromping right on by him.
"What?"
Dean nodded forward, then tugged Sam with him to move behind one of the trees, not that it made for much cover. The foundation wasn't just a foundation, any more. Someone had started building on it, slapping together a lean-to made of milk crates and roofing sheets. It didn't take a genius to guess who it was.
Sam leaned around the tree the other way. "Is that --"
Dean lifted his hand, cutting Sam off. "Shut up," he hissed. He nodded again, this time further down the hill, towards the bridge. "Look."
A shadow unfolded itself from the growing darkness under the bridge, made birdlike by the shape of the furs practically dripping from its form. It stood upright, stretching its arms, silhouetted against the dying sun bleeding into the valley, then turned uphill, towards the ramshackle shelter. A flash of reflected light from a passing car illuminated the figure's face, and for a moment, Dean didn't even recognize him.
Son of a bitch. Dad actually almost looked happy.
"Is he wearing fur?" Sam squawked. Dean reached a hand back to smack him, but missed. He wasn't taking his eyes off their father.
Dad paused on the hill, his face once more in shadow. He lifted his arm again, this time holding something out, towards the tree where Dean and Sam were hiding. Dean stared. There was no way. Absolutely none. It couldn't be --
Sam grabbed him around the waist, managing to yank Dean to the ground despite the fact that Dean still had almost a foot on him in height. The tree above them exploded in a shower of bark as the gunshot echoed through the valley.
"Yeah," Sam breathed, picking his head up out of the leaves. "Dad's cursed."
"Fuck," said Dean. "You are never allowed to bring treasure home again."
*
Dad didn't follow them out of the woods, which Dean supposed he had to be thankful for if the old man was going to keep shooting at them. They made it up to the edge of the road that ran across the bridge, and Dean sat down on the edge of one of the three historical plaques that detailed the construction of the bridge and the history of its hotel.
They made no mention at all of John of the Cabin, or of any curses.
Sam sat down on low stone wall that supported the plaques. "I vote we go find the crazy old warning dude."
Dean nodded. He hadn't really started to think about what to do next beyond "get Dad the fuck back".
"Hey," Sam said, bumping his shoulder against Dean's arm. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think Dad recognized us."
Dean snorted softly. "That make you feel any better?"
Sam sighed. "No."
"Okay, then." Dean pushed himself to his feet, feeling about as old as the bridge itself. "Crazy old warning dude it is."
Not that they had much to go on when it came to tracking the crazy old warning dude down. Dean was sure the whole town was chock full of crazy old dudes wandering around scaring kids in the woods. Sam, who'd apparently spent way more time talking to the locals than Dean had realized, led them off down the side of the road to the local convenience store.
Dean raised his eyebrow. "'Captin's Market'? Dude, even I know that's wrong."
"Shut up," Sam said. "It's been here forever. Come on."
Dean wasn't sure, but followed Sam's lead. Sure enough, they managed to land a name for the guy -- Tuohey, which Dean was still pretty sure was supposed to be a spitting noise, not a name -- and a possible location. It seemed that when he wasn't terrorizing kids in the woods, he liked to help out at the community center, where Dean supposed he could terrorize kids indoors.
The community center was, of course, along the same road that ran across the bridge, and Sam and Dean hiked their way back down it, kicking their way through leaves and stepping aside occasionally to allow people on bikes and walking their dogs to pass.
"These people are far too into exercise," Dean decided as they waited for their chance to cross the busy street.
"I like it," Sam said.
"Yeah, well, you would."
After a few minutes of asking around -- Sam had apparently at least spoken to everyone in town -- they found Crazy Old Tuohey in a small gym in the back, coaching some local kids in a game of basketball. "Too into exercise," Dean muttered again. Sam elbowed him in the chest.
Tuohey glanced up from the game, spotted them, and started booking it -- in his rickety old man way -- off the court and through the building. Dean scowled. "Hey!" He started after him, intent on tackling him to the ground if need be, but Sam managed to loop around another hallway and cut him off, instead.
"We just want to talk," he said.
"I talk to you, kid," said Tuohey, "your brother will shoot me."
"Might shoot you if you don't," Dean said.
"It's about what you said in the woods," said Sam.
"You picked it up," Tuohey said. "You picked it up and you took it home, didn't you? Well you got what you deserved, kid. I don't need you bringing it down on my head, too." He tried to turn away, only to find himself facing down Dean instead of Sam. Dean set his feet, refusing to budge.
"It has our dad," Sam said quietly. Tuohey dropped his head and cursed.
"Well I'm sorry then, kid. But there's nothing I can do."
"All we're asking is that you talk." Sam slipped around, stepping up in front of Dean. "Please."
"And you don't have it on you?" asked Tuohey. Sam shook his head. "Fine. Don't suppose either of you is old enough to buy me a damned beer, first?"
*
"So here's the deal," said Tuohey, in between sips of his beer. "My name isn't actually Tuohey. They just started calling me that back in the day, because I used to always hang around Tuohey's Tavern, down near the fire house. I grew up here, see, lived here all my life. My pop moved us in back when this was set up for the naval engineers, before all those trees and roads sprung up all over. Folks back then didn't think much of those of us kids living around here. Called us 'river rats' or worse. Used to blame us for all kinds of crap -- and, well, we got up to most of it. But the worst rap we ever got was for the disappearances. Folks would go down by the creek, specially around sunset or after dark, and they wouldn't come back up. Didn't happen too often, mind you, but enough to give us a reputation. Folks wouldn't cross the bridge from Glen Echo after dark, and those that didn't blame ghosts said it was because of us.
"Well, my friends and I got to noticing that some of those disappearances were happening around the same part of the woods, down there by that old foundation. It's been there longer than I can remember, always bare like that, and broken. So we figured we'd go in and find out what was going on. My buddy Johnnie and I went down to take a look around after school some days, but we didn't find much of anything, not till Johnnie started going weird on me. Started heading down into those woods at all hours, not telling anyone where he was going. Then one day, like that," Tuohey snapped his fingers, "he just stopped showing up at all. I'm sorry to say I gave up on him. Figured he'd run away, headed into the city or maybe up north. But going down into the woods wasn't any fun without him, and the disappearances tapered off, and I didn't think much more about it, not for a long, long time. Then about thirty years ago, folks came in wanting to do a book about this place, and asked me to help them out with their research.
"Now I'm sure you boys have heard of the old Cabin John Bridge Hotel by now, right? Hell, there's signs about it all over the damn place, it's kind of hard to miss. Well, seems the weird little . . . quirks of that area started up a lot earlier than I realized. There's not much of an official record of it, of course, but folks reported from time to time seeing strange things down by the bridge while they were staying there, and they had more than one nasty murder happen, especially in the basement. Some stories even talk of employees going batty, turning paranoid on each other. And reading those things, it took me back to those river rat days, out in the woods with Johnnie. So I figured I'd take one last look at the area, see what I could find."
Tuohey looked straight at Sam here, eyes dark and cold. "I think you can guess what I found."
"Treasure," Sam breathed. Dean rubbed his forehead and took another sip of his own beer.
"That's right. Not much of it, just a coin. But I knew the moment I touched it that it was part of the legendary treasure. I took it home with me and tucked it into my safe. I kept telling myself I'd let someone know, get a whole survey crew out there to check the whole area. Who knows what they'd find, under all those leaves? I was doing okay by then, not rich, but comfortable, you know? I had a good life built up, and it'd be real good for the community. But I couldn't bring myself to speak up. And the longer it went on, the harder it was to think about anything but finding that treasure for myself.
"I got real paranoid, always looking over my shoulder. I was convinced everyone I knew, even my closest friends, were stalking me. I thought they knew, about the coin, about the treasure. They knew and they wanted it for themselves. Reached the point where I started thinking the only way to keep the treasure was to get them out of the picture. I actually started thinking those things. About my friends."
"How'd you stop it?" Sam asked. Dean shifted in his seat, tensing, half expecting the answer to be "I didn't", followed by the old man pulling a weapon. Instead, Tuohey just took a long gulp of beer and hung his head.
"I don't remember how it happened, really, but the tavern burned down. Right next to the fire station, but completely wiped out. I didn't lose any friends in the fire, but I knew I was damned lucky. Something about that snapped me out of it. I realized that those thoughts, that paranoia, they weren't mine. Something was in me, thinking those thoughts for me. Something that had taken Johnnie and probably the hotel employee and who knew how many other people. Anyway, I knew that the disappearances always happened in that one part of the woods, and I'd heard that spirits couldn't cross flowing water --"
"That's not actually true," Sam said, and Tuohey frowned.
"I'll tell you what's damn well true, boy. I took that coin down to the river and threw it as far across as I could. I knew it wasn't gone-gone, but it stopped bothering me after that. So I stick around here, and I keep an eye on those woods, and everything was fine right up until you managed to dig up another coin."
Sam colored. "I didn't have to dig. It was right there."
Dean tilted his head, frowning, as he went over the details of Tuohey's story in his head. "Hey," he said, and Tuohey and Sam both looked startled, as though they'd forgotten he was still sitting there. "You never said. What's your real name?"
"It's John," Tuohey said. "John Poole."
*
"John's a really common name, Dean," Sam said, once Tuohey was gone and they were back home in their own living room.
"And we know for a fact that three people who have it have been possessed by a spirit called 'John of the Cabin'." Dean opened Sam's notebook to the page on the old hotel and set it on the coffee table above his own quickly scrawled notes from his trip to see Linda, then pulled out an area map.
"Right. And I'm going to get possessed by Samuel Beckett."
"Don't be an idiot. You can't get possessed by TV characters." Dean smirked. "You keep your face like that, and it'll freeze that way."
"Anyway," Sam said, clearly making an effort to wipe the bitch off his face. "So Dad and the foundation and the treasure activity is all around here." He circled the woods southwest of the bridge with a red pen. "And the lock is down here. Hey, was the lockkeeper a John?"
Dean shook his head. "His name was George. But he might've been offed by a John."
"Or a Larry."
"Tuohey says he tossed the coin somewhere around here," Dean said, marking a spot about a quarter mile east of the lock. "And the tavern was over here."
"And the hotel was here," Sam said. "Other than generally all being in town, I don't see a pattern."
"Well, other than the lock and the coin toss, they're all west of the bridge," Dean pointed out. "And except for the tavern, they're all south."
"Maybe it's the water thing, like Tuohey said. The creek and the canal and the river. Maybe the spirit can only cross the water when its possessing somebody."
"That's a whole lot of maybes, Sam." Dean rubbed his forehead. "And like you said, spirits aren't deterred by running water."
"They might be if they think they are. That superstition was pretty common a hundred years ago, and most of the legends say John was a sailor, even the ones who don't call him a pirate. He would have a lot of water-based beliefs."
"Okay, fine. But then what's keeping it from hanging out up here?" Dean circled the much larger expanse of woods northwest of the bridge.
Sam's eyes went wide. "The aqueduct."
"What?"
Sam traced the line of the road that ran over the bridge with his pen. "MacArthur Boulevard used to be called Conduit Road. Because under it is the pipeline for the DC aqueduct. That's why they built the bridge in the first place!"
"Dude, it can't cross an underground pipe?"
"That'd explain why it never comes into the neighborhood, too, Dean. Why it's contained to that one small area."
Dean nodded slowly. "Okay. It's worth a shot. It's not like we're going to find the grave of a guy that most people can't even agree existed. We can work with that."
Sam grinned. "And I think I know how."
*
As Linda had predicted, George the lockkeeper had been buried in an old churchyard in Bethesda. Once they found his grave, it was child's play to go out to it in the middle of the night and summon him up for a chat.
Well, as child's play as any summoning ever was. One of those really complicated games that kids play with too many rules that change on a moment's notice.
George seemed to recognize Dean; he lunged for him first thing, his mouth twisted into a sneer, and Dean couldn't help but fall back a step, hands going protectively to his ribs, which still twinged when he twisted too fast. The containment symbol they'd gotten from Uncle Bobby held, though, and George couldn't do anything but glare at them as Sam stepped up to play diplomat.
"We know you're pissed," he said, while Dean stood by with the salt and iron. Call him cynical, but he didn't think much of a ghost's ability to reason. "We are, too. John of the Cabin took our dad."
George flickered and snarled. Dean glared. Sam sighed.
"Look, just tell us where you hid the treasure. We can make sure that he never bothers you again."
By salting and burning your ass, Dean added mentally. He flashed his teeth at George.
George snarled harder and started clawing at the air where the containment spell closed him in.
Sam sighed. "Let's try this again."
*
Dean had been standing right there, and he still wasn't sure just how Sam had managed to talk George into telling them where the treasure was. They trooped out to the canal the next morning, well after daybreak when Dad seemed to prefer to keep to the shadows of the bridge. There was a long metal footbridge spanning the canal between locks, and following George's directions, they made their way across the tow path and down onto the overgrown banks of the Potomac. Dean surveyed the river while Sam dug. "How about there?" he asked, pointing out towards the center of the river, where a few rocks broke the surface.
"We need something a little bigger," Sam said. "I think I saw something closer to the lock."
Dean nodded, turning around and scanning the tow path through the trees. "You know, this thing's been buried here almost a hundred years. What makes you think it hasn't been washed away already?"
Sam shrugged. "It might be. But I figured this was easier than trying to sneak past Dad and snatch another coin over by the bridge."
"If we have to, I'll distract him," Dean offered.
"Great. You can 'yes, sir' him into submission while he shoots you to death."
Dean sighed. "You're really not going to lay off him, are you?"
Sam peered up at him through his bangs. Dean nodded.
"Yeah. That's what I thought."
Dean took over the digging when Sam's arms got tired, and they struck gold, as it were, about half an hour later, when Dean jammed the shovel between the roots of one of the trees to further break up the ground. He spotted the rotten remains of the burlap sack that George had buried the gold in and called Sam over, though he knew the moment he spotted it exactly what he'd found. It was disconcerting, the way "pirates" and "treasure" seemed to just slink into his brain.
"Right," he said, tucking one of the coins into a salt-filled pouch. "Let's go rent us a boat."
*
"Are you ready for this?" Dean asked as they stood at the very edge of the woods, staring down into the dark valley. The sun had set hours ago -- they'd needed to wait until it was late enough that no one would get caught in the crossfire. When Sam didn't answer, Dean glanced over, half expecting to see him staring down at the coin. Instead, Sam was looking up, his head tilted back like he was star gazing.
"The sky's orange," he said. Dean looked up to see that he was right. It was faint, a dusky shade broken up here and there by wisps of dark gray and black, but it was undeniably orange.
"Huh," Dean said. "That's good, right? Red sky at night, sailor's delight?"
"It's not red," Sam pointed out. "I've seen it other nights, too. Like when you and Dad went out to the lock."
"So, what, you're saying it's an omen?"
Sam scowled at him. "It's the light from the city reflected off the clouds, Dean. It means it's going to rain."
"Right," said Dean. "I keep forgetting it's the freaking monsoon season. Guess we'd better get on with it, then."
The first part was to get Dad's attention.
"Hey! Cabin Boy!" Dean waved his arms in the air, then shone his flashlight on the coin in Sam's hand.
That was the easy part.
Part two was leading Dad to the river without losing him, getting caught, or being hit by any cars. Considering that this required them getting Dad to follow them up into the neighborhood, across another bridge over the parkway, down the canal to one of the foot bridges, and then out onto the river itself in the canoes they'd rented and stashed earlier, that part wasn't so easy.
The third part was the banishing ritual itself, another present sent along from Bobby. They'd set up a containment circle on the island just before sunset. All they had to do was get Dad into it, and then Sam would recite the spell and sprinkle some salt and essential oils around, and that was it. They'd have Dad back.
That was, of course, the hard part.
The wind picked up almost the moment they set foot on the island. The Potomac River valley was wide and deep in this area, and the wind whipped through it mercilessly. The tiny island, no more than ten feet across at its widest point, had absolutely no cover or windbreaks. Dean eyed the containment circle warily. Painted on with a mixture of salt and lamb's blood, it wasn't likely to blow away, but the rapids around the island were rising steadily, and Dean was no longer sure it was far enough from the waterline to keep from being washed away.
Dad arrived just moments later and fired his shotgun. Dean reminded himself that they had bigger things to worry about than the storm as he dropped to the ground. Dad fired again, then shouted in a language Dean didn't recognize. Sam shouted back from where he was crouched low to the ground with his backpack -- Dean assumed it was English, but didn't catch the words -- and threw the coin into the middle of the containment circle. Dad's eyes locked onto it. He stepped forward, toes at the very edge of the circle as he reached out for the coin.
Dean let out a roar of frustration and rage and rushed Dad, slamming into him from behind and knocking him forward into the circle. Dad's shotgun skidded out of his hands, teetering on the edge of the island for a moment before dropping into the river. Dean sat up and crabwalked out of the circle, watching as Dad tried to chase after him but was brought up short.
"Now, Sam!" Dean shouted, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than it started to rain. There was no build up this time. No day-long drizzle or light patter, just two fat drops, one landing on Dean's shoulder, the other on one of the painted lines of the circle, and then it was pouring, blowing about in sheets. It took only seconds before the circle washed away and John of the Cabin pounced.
He came for Dean, practically landing on top of his chest. His knees pressed into Dean's already bruised ribs, squeezing the air from Dean's lungs, and he reached for Dean's throat.
"Do it, Sam!" Dean hissed, using up some of the last of his air to get the command out as he grabbed onto Dad's wrists and tried to shove him away. He couldn't get the right leverage to hold him back for long. Dad's hands locked tight around his throat, and Dean gagged.
Between the dark, the driving rain, and the spots rapidly forming before his eyes, Dean didn't see Sam coming up until he was practically on top of them, wrapping one scrawny arm around Dad's neck. Dad roared and twisted, letting go of Dean to throw Sam off his back and across the rocks. Dean watched in horror as Sam's head hit one of the canoes and he fell into the now raging river.
"No," Dean choked. He struggled against Dad, trying to worm his way out from under him and get to Sam. It took him more than a few moments to realize that Dad wasn't fighting back.
"Sam?" Dad said, and Dean's heart surged into his throat. "Sam." Dad swayed once, his body shuddering as a wave of freezing air passed over Dean. "Sam!" And then Dad was up and running, splashing down into the rapids, and Dean could only lie there and try to remember how to breathe.
He should have known. No ghost was any match for Dad when Sam was in trouble.
He managed to roll over to his hands and knees, and nearly lost his dinner at the pain the movement sent through his chest. He shoved it to the back of his mind. Dad had been living in the woods, eating who knew what and probably not sleeping much at all for days, now. He was in no condition to be fishing Sam out of the water, especially not if Sam had lost consciousness.
They needed him, and Dean was not about to let them down.
He made it to his feet, though he wouldn't bet on how straight his path was as he headed for where Sam had gone under. He paused just a moment at the first canoe to catch his breath, then stumbled his way into the water, clinging to the edge of the boat for balance and for a guide. Water slapped him in the face from every angle, the rain above, the river below, the wind sending both of them about in torrents. He struggled to focus through it and scanned the roiling surface of the river.
"Dad?" he called. "Sam?!" When he didn't hear an answer, he took as deep a breath as he could manage, then dropped below the surface.
It was almost a relief, getting out of the wind and rain, though the water tugged and pressed at him, trying to shove him back against the rocks. He kept his hand wrapped around the edge of the canoe, nearly capsizing it as he used it as his anchor. He opened his eyes, but couldn't see a damn thing.
There was no way he was going to find them. Not like this.
He surfaced, grabbing onto the canoe with his other hand as he tried to regroup. He'd completely lost all sense of time -- for all he knew, Dad and Sam could have been under for hours, yet. He could have been lying on the rocks wasting time while his family drowned, all thanks to some dumb ass pirate with his dumb ass treasure --
Something brushed against his leg in the water, and Dean would have lashed out if he hadn't been so very nearly beaten. He froze instead, waiting to see if it had been a ghost or a fish, if it tried to grab him or if it just vanished into the currents. Then Sam broke the surface, heaving in a tremendous gasp, and flailed at the water. "Dean!"
"Sam!" Dean lunged forward in the water, losing his grip on the canoe in his desperation to get to his brother.
"It's Dad," Sam said, and Dean realized one of his arms was still under water and he was struggling to drag it upward. Dean made it to his side in a few strokes, his feet still brushing the ground. He put one arm around Sam's waist to help keep his head above water, then grabbed for what Sam had been holding on to. He got a handful of wet fur and pulled, yanking Dad up against his chest. He nearly cheered when Dad coughed, then turned to look back to the island. They'd managed to drift several yards down river, but it was still closer than either shore. Not that it mattered, if they still couldn't reach it. Dean looked the other way and spotted a single rock jutting up above the surface just a few feet away. He caught Sam's eye and nodded to it. Sam nodded back, and between the two of them, they managed to maneuver over to it. Sam clambered up on top of it and grabbed for Dad, pulling him up just far enough to keep his head mostly above water.
"Go get the canoe," Sam said.
"Way ahead of you," Dean answered, and he struck out back towards the island. He was swimming against the current, now, and his lungs felt fit to burst, but he'd be damned if he was going to drown and leave Sam and Dad stranded on a rock in the middle of a river.
The canoe he'd been hanging on to had been swept away by the current, but the other one was still wedged up onto the shore line, only its back end dragging in the water. Dean grabbed on to it and was about to climb up onto the island itself when he caught a flicker out of the corner of his eye.
John of the Cabin stood in the center of the island. His hair was a wild bird's nest of tangles sticking out every which way, and deep black tattoos snaked up his neck and over his hands. He wore a long cloak of raccoon skins that draped over his arms and swirled in the wind. His eyes were wide and round and a solid, milky white that stared straight into Dean, making his shoulders twitch and his neck prickle. This was the thing that Dean had felt watching them since they arrived, standing there on that island now, waiting for Dean to come out of the water where he could get him. In his hands, he clutched the gold coin like it was the whole world.
Dean flicked him off and dragged the canoe off the island, swimming it back downriver to the rock where Sam and Dad waited.
When they reached the shore, Dad fully awake again, coughing and grumbling, they all three leaned against each other as they stumbled their way onto the tow path, not far from one of the locks. Sam looked around and groaned.
"I just realized," he said. "We still have to walk home."
*
By unspoken, unanimous decision, Sam got the first shower. Dean figured he and Dad were still pretty freaked about him knocking his head and falling into the river, and by the time they'd gotten home, the kid had been shivering like it was his job. Dad threw one of the wool army blankets at Dean and claimed one for himself, and they both settled into the living room while they waited, Dean with a cup of coffee, Dad with a bottle of whiskey.
Dean wanted to ask if Dad was okay. He wanted to ask how much Dad remembered. He wanted to know so many things that they all got backed up in his throat and all he could do was cough roughly into the blanket. Dad looked up at him, eyes heavy lidded and bleary.
"That doesn't sound good," Dad said. Dean looked away.
"It's fine."
"You sure about that?" Dad's voice was hard and rough, and just about the best sound Dean had heard in ages. "I seem to remember this wasn't your first unscheduled bath, this week."
"So you do remember."
Dean heard Dad set down his whiskey. He still wasn't looking up from his own cup of coffee. "Yeah, son. I remember."
Dean closed his eyes and braced himself. "I'm sorry."
Silence. It went on long enough that Dean glanced up, just to make sure Dad hadn't passed out on him and missed the apology. He found Dad studying him, his expression inscrutable. "For what?"
"I never should have let Sam bring that coin home. Shouldn't have let him pick it up in the first place. I should have noticed something was weird with you and gotten you help sooner. I should never have let Sam come out to the island with us. I --" Dean cut off when Dad raised a hand.
"Sam's fine," Dad said. "I got nothing worse than a good hangover will cure." Dad narrowed his eyes. "From the looks of it, you've got an appointment with at least a week's worth of antibiotics. Wipe out whatever that canal water left in your lungs."
Dean looked down again. "Yes, sir."
"Now what's the story with the ghost? He gone for good?"
Dean shrugged. "He won't cross running water, not without someone to possess. He's trapped on the island."
Dad hummed thoughtfully. "You sure about that?"
Dean shrugged. "Pretty sure."
"Pretty sure doesn't cut it, Dean. That spirit is dangerous."
Dean's jaw clenched. "There's nothing else we could do. We couldn't find his grave. For all we know, he was carried off by wild raccoons when he died.
"Did you try?"
"Honestly, I was pretty much just focused on getting you back."
Dad looked at him silently for several seconds, then gave a slow nod. "The lockkeeper?"
"Him we salted and burned."
Another nod. Dad picked up his whiskey and took a long sip. Dean cradled his coffee, letting the steam and the heat soothe his face and throat. In the shower, they could hear Sam singing softly -- and terribly -- to let them know he hadn't passed out and smashed his head open.
"You did a good job on this place," Dad said.
Dean raised his eyebrow. "Thanks."
"Think you're just about ready to get out of here?"
"Yes, sir." Dean didn't think he'd ever meant anything more in his life than he did those words. "Nebraska sounds good."
Dad's lips curled, just barely visible under his facial hair. "Alright. We'll see if we can't find something in Nebraska."
Dean smiled, even as he let out another hard, wet cough.
"Just as soon as you get over that pneumonia," Dad said.
Dean groaned and curled tighter into his chair.
The end
Additional author's notes:
I will admit to taking certain liberties with the location in this fic. Cabin John is a wonderful -- now rather gentrified -- community on the outskirts of Washington DC, but while it’s where my father grew up, it’s not somewhere I have spent a great deal of time. As such, many of the details included here are based on spotty memories of a six year old traipsing through the woods, combined with an early November walking tour that pretty much just went right on down MacArthur Boulevard and only peered through the trees at Cabin John Gardens. I didn’t get a chance to go traipsing through the woods again until the fic was nearly done, and I’d already decided I was going to fictionalize a lot of it.
These are the things that are true: Cabin John Gardens is a small community that sits southwest of the Cabin John Bridge, right up against the edge of the creek valley. There is an old foundation in the woods by the creek with steps peppered with marbles and the outline to a pair of scissors, as well as a horseshoe, sharks teeth, and several other objects. We don’t know where it came from or what it was for, but it has been there for most if not all of my father’s life. The Captin’s Market is real (as is the misspelling), as is the community center, and the historical society library that Dean visits. The area of the canal by Cabin John is known as “Seven Locks”, due to several locks of the type described in the story all packed together in about a two mile stretch of the C&O canal. The tow path is a very popular bike and jogging path, especially on nice days in the spring, summer, and fall.
It really does rain that much around here in November.
The Cabin John Bridge Hotel was real, and it was really right where Cabin John Gardens is, today. There really were murders in the basement, especially in the 1920s, when the basement was an illegal rathskeller, or bar. Tuohey’s Tavern was a real landmark until it burned down in the 1970s. No one was killed in that fire.
John of the Cabin is a real legend. The John in question has been said to be Captain John Smith, of colonial fame, Captain John the Jamaican pirate, John the husband of the Female Stranger of Alexandria, and many other Johns besides. There really was a clause in the early deeds to the land that any treasure found had to be split with the seller. People really did avoid going over the bridge at night, and there are stories of the bridge being haunted (though most of them came from my father). The children of Cabin John Gardens were really considered the lowest of the low by the folks in the surrounding communities, even lower than the African-American community, prior to the Civil Rights Movement. These days, Cabin John Gardens is an upper-scale artsy community. We’re not sure when the change happened, as Dad moved out in 1969, when he was seventeen.
Here are the things I changed or invented: the foundation in the woods is actually north of the bridge, in the area that John of the Cabin in this story refused to go into. The lock where Dean is attacked by George is around where Lock 7 is,. by Glen Echo, but is actually much more similar in construction and repair to one of the earlier locks closer to Georgetown. There are a number of stories associated with the canal, too (again, mostly told by my father), but none about a vicious lockkeeper out to guard his illicit pirate treasure. As far as I know, there’s nothing dangerous about being named John in Cabin John at all, even legendarily.
Many of the smaller characters in this fic are based on family members or people I know, and all of the last names mentioned are names of prominent families in Montgomery County, Maryland. Because details are fun!
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! This sucker was a beast, but I’m quite proud of it, anyway.