Films About Ghosts (2/4)
My throat tried to lock down and I gagged, spinning in the water, searching until I'd filled my lungs enough to shout.
"Cas!"
He was nowhere in sight.
"This isn't funny! Castiel!"
Someone -- not Cas -- yelled back. I turned in the water again, finally clearing my eyes and my head enough to take in my surroundings.
The lake looked familiar, though I couldn't quite place it. It made sense -- other than the years he'd been at Stanford, Sam and I had gone most places together. I floated a good ways from the tree-lined shore, not far from an anchored wooden raft, weather-beaten and slick. A trio of boys stood on it, facing away from me, wearing nothing but brightly colored swimsuits. As I watched, two of them egged the third forward, daring him in that excited, malicious way that children had, equal parts innocence and sadism. The third boy stepped to the very edge of the raft, his toes hanging off over the water.
"Just swim down the chain and grab something off the bottom," one of them said, a boy with shaggy blond hair and trunks at least a half-size too big.
"I'm not sure --" The boy on the edge of the raft shifted his weight back, away from the water.
"Come on," the other boy said. He could have been the first one's twin from this angle, only with a crew cut and green trunks instead of blue. "What's the matter, Sammy? Too scared?"
"It's Sam," the boy on the edge of the raft said, and he turned and I saw that he was. Not Sammy, the sullen kid who knew too much about the world to get excited about it, but Sam, full grown and simmering.
Cas had brought me right to him.
"Sam!" I raised my hand out of the water, desperate to get his attention, but he was already charging, long legs eating up the full span of the raft as though it were nothing. "No!"
The two other boys turned, and in the bare moments before Sam reached them, I realized I knew them. I shouldn't have even needed that long.
All the Winchester brothers stood on that raft, together again.
Then Sam slammed into Adam, sending them both over the side of the raft and down into the black.
*
I dove.
I knew the visibility would be terrible -- just swim down the chain and grab something from the bottom -- and that I wouldn't be strong enough to bring both of them back up. I'd have to chose.
I wondered if Adam knew that I'd always choose Sam.
Just below the surface the water was in turmoil, all raging swirls of gray and black like something out of an old painting. I couldn't see my own hands pressing down through the water in front of me.
And then it cleared.
It was like surfacing in reverse. The churning stopped abruptly maybe six feet down, sitting on the top of the still water beneath like an overcast sky. Here and there, columns of light broke through, sending finger-like spears down into the waving seaweed and clusters of rocks. The chain of the raft was a bolt of lightning, frozen in the very moment it struck the earth, and like lightning, it crackled against my skin when I tried to touch it.
Sam and Adam were nowhere to be found.
Just swim down the chain and grab something from the bottom.
I wrapped my hands onto the chain. My fingers jumped and twitched, but held as I dragged myself downward.
The base of the chain was covered in a pile of lost objects. There were plastic army men and Lego blocks, broken crayons and cheap novelty erasers and what looked like half an old protractor. There were books, their covers so waterlogged and worn that they looked like strange water plants, the titles long lost to time. Everything that we ever left behind in a motel room was tucked in there. I had my pick of totems.
None of them meant a goddamned thing.
I reached out to the pile, running my fingers over a chipped coffee mug with "Number 1 Dad!" stamped on the side before nudging it away and thrusting my hand down like I was reaching into a bowl of sand, digging with my fingers and shoving bits and pieces of discarded life aside as I searched.
I knew the moment I touched it I'd found the right piece. It was a warm buzz in the cold silent world, soothing after the hard shock of the chain. I scraped at the top of it with my nails before I managed to get my fingers around it, then pulled it up. It caught twice -- once on a red S-shaped key ring, again on the lid of a tarnished flask -- then came free so suddenly I nearly lost my grip on it. I clenched it in my fist and watched the thin leather cord drift in the faint currents.
My amulet. I should have known.
The world shuddered, suddenly roaring, and my vision whited out, jumping and twitching like I was surrounded on all sides by an enormous angry spirit.
-- pulse just spiked.
Sir! Sir, can you --
When it settled again, I was lying on the rocky beach, bone dry, the amulet still clenched in my hand. Sam stared down at me like I was the most disgusting thing he'd ever seen in his life.
*
I was beginning to think this might be one of my worse ideas. "Sammy --"
"No, Dean! You can't just 'Sammy' me this time and make it all okay."
I scowled, pushing myself up on my elbows. "I didn't do anything."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Oh please. You're screwing everything up just by being here."
If Sam was trying to piss me off, he was doing a damn good job of it. "Hey, you have no idea what's going on out there, man."
"Yes I do! It's the same shit that's always going on, and I'm sick of it." He kicked at the ground, sending up a spray of sand. "I'm not leaving. You can't make me!"
I frowned. Sam looked like he was about three words from threatening to hold his breath until I went away. "Jesus, Sam. What are you, twelve?"
Sam rolled his eyes again and folded his arms across his chest. "Uh, duh."
And I realized he really was. Just like that, my damned rhinoceros of a little brother was a five foot tall, floppy-haired brat in flannel two sizes too big for him. I gaped, then looked around. The lakeshore hadn't changed. I could still see the anchored raft a good fifty yards out. Up the hill, a little ways into the woods, I could make out some cabins. I tried to remember if Sam had ever gone to camp, but the thoughts slipped away through my grasping fingers. "Shit."
"It's not a big deal," Sam said, his anger cooling somewhat as he scuffed his foot in the dirt again. "Just tell Dad I ran away or something."
I'd forgotten how infuriating he'd been at this age. "Are you fucking kidding me, Sammy? Do you know what Dad would've done to me if I ever 'just told him' that?" What he had done, when Sam had swanned off in Falstaff?
"Oh, fine! Take his side again!" As Sam glared down, the sky darkened, huge, heavy clouds rolling over with an audible rumble.
"I'm not --" I gulped down the protest and tried to push past the anger. I was old enough to be this Sam's father. Arguing with him like a teenager wasn't going to get either of us anywhere, especially not if he could summon storms when he got angry enough. "Okay, look. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, okay? You can stay here as long as you want. I'm not going to drag you out."
Sam frowned. "But you just said --"
Oh, sure, now he was managing to follow the flow of events. "I was wrong. I'm not looking for you."
Sam beamed at me, and it was like sitting in the sun after getting caught in the rain. He bent down to catch me in a hug, practically lifting me bodily off the sand, then ran off down the beach, following the sudden sound of childish laughter.
"That's not entirely true, you know," Castiel said. I pushed myself up to my feet and turned to see him standing just at the edge of the tree line, his trench coat rustling in the breeze like a living thing.
"Cas." I dug my hands into my pockets to keep from rushing him and either pulling him into a hug or punching him in the face. Just looking at him filled my chest to overflowing, but I knew he wasn't real. "Cryptic as always, I see."
He stepped into my personal space, and as irritating as it had been on the outside, here it just made me want to hug him even more. "I think we should talk." He put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt the familiar sensation of the world falling away from under me as my ears filled with the sound of wings.
*
"Okay," I said, rubbing my thumb over the "El Sol" label on my beer and watching the condensation gather into lines and pools in its wake. I took a long drink, staring out over the splintery wooden railing at Sam and the other kids of the camp running in the open field between cabins. The storm that had rolled over while we were on the beach dumped buckets of rain down on the roof of the porch, and thunder rumbled continuously overhead, but the kids were unaffected, dodging in and out of raindrops in an elaborate game of tag. "What are you doing in here?"
"I could ask you the same."
"You could, but that'd mostly just be really irritating." I looked over at Castiel, standing at the top of the steps up onto the porch. He looked better than when I'd last seen him, but then, that wasn't exactly hard to do. He looked the way I'd always pictured him in my head, rumpled but stoic, always just on the right side of exhaustion. "You part of me, then? I drag you in here like some kind of Inception thing?"
He looked over at me, not saying a word.
"It's a movie, Cas."
"Ah." He looked back over the field, his hands folded behind his back.
"What are you doing here?" I asked again.
Cas was silent for a long moment as Jo -- a gap-toothed, pigtailed version of her, but clearly Jo nonetheless -- dodged out of Sam's long reach, shrieking about tag-backs and cheating. He nodded towards them, his expression dark. "I promised you I would fix him."
I took another long drink. "I remember."
"I want to make sure I keep that promise." He turned his head to look at me, then tilted it towards the kids in the yard. "You realize they're projections?"
"Yeah." I set the beer aside and stood up, going over to stand next to him. Jo wasn't the only one playing with Sam. I spotted Andy amongst the crowd, along with Madison and even Layla, pre-teen sized versions of their adult selves, giggling and splashing around in the puddles. "I guess people really can live on in someone's memory, huh?"
"After a fashion," Castiel said. "Some of us are more real than others."
"Sam," I said. "I have to find him. Before --"
"You do," he agreed. "And you're running short on time."
"You know what happened to him? What will happen, if I can't find him?"
"I'm aware of the consequences." He tilted his head as though he was listening to something far away. I tilted mine to match him, but couldn't hear anything but the game of tag and the roll of thunder. "We're not alone, here," Cas said finally.
"What do you mean?"
"I haven't located it, yet. I've only sensed its presence. There are outside forces at work in this dream."
I swallowed hard. "The thing in the car. The one hiding in the backseat."
Castiel nodded. "There's something in here," he said. "And it wants you gone."
*
Jo ran back to grab my hand, grinning from ear to ear. She dragged me along the trail through the woods. "Come on, Dean. Hurry up, you're going to miss it!"
Up ahead, Sam led the way, whacking branches and brambles and rocks with a long walking stick. The rest of the kids -- the campers, I supposed -- walked in formation behind him, singing The Turtles of all things as they went.
"Imagine me and you,
I do,
I dream about you day and night,
it's only right"
Castiel walked beside me, unaffected by the knee-high ferns or the sloped, rocky terrain.
"To dream about the girl you love
and hold her tight.
So happy together!"
"I think I like this song," he said. "It's much more cheerful than your music."
"Yeah, well, what can I say? Sam really liked Ernest Goes to Camp."
"That's another movie," Castiel guessed.
"Yeah." I let Jo's hand slip from mine as she started to fall behind the rest of the group, and she rushed to catch up. Castiel and I weren't done talking, yet, and Jo didn't need to hear it, even if she was just a projection. "You said this thing's after me?"
Castiel nodded and looked over, dodging past a tree hugging close to the path with a simple twitch of his shoulder. "You're in danger."
"Sam's in danger."
"Yes," Cas said. "Him as well." For a moment, I thought that was all he was going to say, but then he took a breath and continued. "I believe the being has been poisoning the Sams you've encountered. Against you, specifically."
"Say what now?"
"You must have noticed how antagonistic the Sams are being towards you. He tried to bury you, Dean."
Yeah, I wasn't forgetting that in a hurry. I could still just taste the dirt, feel it scrape between my fingers. "I noticed. But, hey, if I die in a dream, I'll just wake up, right?"
"Not necessarily," Cas said. "It depends on several factors, primarily the source of the dream itself."
"Right. Like it worked when the djinn had me under, but dying in an African Dreamroot dream just means you're dead."
Cas nodded. "So you have to ask yourself, Dean: why are you here?"
I swallowed, my mouth tasting brackish and slimy. "He's not going to kill me in here," I said. "He wouldn't. Sam doesn't hate me."
"He seemed quite angry on the beach."
"Yeah, well, we're brothers. That's just how we are, sometimes."
Castiel frowned. "I have never treated my brothers so roughly."
I snorted. "Wow. That's really not true."
Castiel looked down, stepping over a large rock. He hadn't had to look at any of the others.
"Hey, man, I'm not blaming you. You brothers were massive dicks."
"Yes," Cas said. "There are those who would say the same thing about Sam's."
I stopped, staring at him. He took a few more steps, then glanced back, a faint smile at the corners of his lips.
"Damn, Cas." I pressed my hand to my chest, smirking back. "You really know how to hit where it hurts."
A bolt of lightning from the still gathered clouds slammed down into a tree not three feet from Cas, sending visible shockwaves out in every direction. As I was blown backward off my feet, I watched as Castiel's shape wavered and then exploded.
*
"We're under attack!" Sam screamed, and without thinking about it, I was running, leaving the scorched remains of tan trenchcoat behind on the forest floor.
If asked, many people will claim you can't run in a dream. That no matter how hard you try, your legs will always fail you. I've found that it's less a matter that you can't run at all, more that you can never, ever run fast enough.
I couldn't outrun the hellhounds in my final dreams before Lilith came to claim my soul. I couldn't outrun the demons in all the nightmares I've had since. And I could never, ever reach Sam in time when he screamed.
Which was why it was such a surprise when he came barreling back down the trail at me instead, surrounded on all sides by the other campers.
Layla smacked into me first, wrapping her arms around my waist before she even stopped running so that she swung around me like a pole before burying her face in my side. "What --" I didn't have time to finish the question before Madison and Jo hit my other side, Madison growling like an angry puppy while Jo dropped into a childish fighting stance, a giant stick in her hands. Andy and Chuck, scruffy-faced and hungover even at twelve, jittered around each other in a circle of flailing arms, while Sam skidded to a stop right in front of me, craning his neck to meet my eyes.
"We're under attack," he said again, calmly this time, like announcing the newest stage of an elaborate playground game.
"From who?" I asked. "Thor?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Dean. Thor."
"Well how the hell should I know? All I've got to go on here is thunder!"
"Are you kidding?" Sam asked, and though he was still a floppy haired twelve year old, his tone was pitch perfect for just-post-Stanford Sam, realizing daily just how braindead his non-college-educated big brother really was. "You still haven't realized --"
A crack of thunder like an explosion, the sort that shook the ground and set off car alarms, drowned out the rest of his sentence. All of us cringed, and I felt Layla's arms tighten around my waist until I could barely breath. We held still there, a circle of near feral campers and their seriously confused counselor, staring up at the sky.
Then Chuck yelled "we're all gonna die!" and the campers all burst back into action, shooting out in every direction, shrieking half in terror and half in delight, kids scaring the crap out of each other just for the thrill of the adrenaline. I grabbed for the back of Sam's sweatshirt, but he dashed out of my reach, chasing after Madison, waving a stick of his own over his head with a proud bellow. I tried to follow, but suddenly found I really couldn't run. My legs shook and stumbled, feet catching on vines and undergrowth. Small, unseen objects winged by inches from my face as I pressed forward anyway, the only sign of their passing the air on my face and the rattle of leaves as they struck the surrounding plants. I couldn't tell if they were bullets, rocks, or hail stones, if they were aimed or just scattered across the forest. In the distance, the kids chattered back and forth.
"The killer!"
"I saw him!"
"Run, run, run!"
"Thor! It's Thor! Grab a hammer!"
"It's not Thor, you idiot, geez!"
"Well, then, what is it, smarty pants?"
"A killer, duh!"
Apparently, Cas had been blown up by Sam's overactive imagination. As horrifying as it was -- I could have gone a long time without watching him do that again -- it was almost appropriate.
Of course, Sam's overactive imagination might be about to get me killed, too.
*
The woods around the campground were all hill, and most of it up. The grade of the incline seemed to grow with every step I took, until my boots were scraping up rocks and sending them spiraling down tiny cliffs. There was leaf-cover now, too, thick and wet from the storm still raging just behind me, rumbling angrily every time I thought about slowing down or stopping. I'd long since lost track of the kids, their shouts bleeding into thin shrieks before petering out entirely. All I could see in any direction was trees.
It always came back to the goddamn trees. Why couldn't it be a nice office building or a warehouse or a school? Hell, I could even deal with not wearing any pants or something, if I could just get out of these trees.
The break in the forest was so abrupt it sent me stumbling, my feet stuttering against the boulder I was suddenly standing on. "Okay," I muttered. "Not really what I meant."
The sharp incline had turned entirely to stone, a broken rock pile towering skyward, just steep enough to be difficult without -- hopefully -- requiring any climbing equipment. I started to turn, thinking I'd head back, when a jagged dagger of lightning split the sky, crashing to the ground no more than a few feet behind me, nearly knocking me over. I looked up. The cloud cover glared back, a wide, heavy brow bearing down on deeply pitted, charcoal eyes over a broad nose and tight, scowling lips.
Whatever was after me here, it was in the very atmosphere.
"Fuck that!" I yelled. "I'm not going out there for you to blast me!"
Another lightning strike, this one even closer. The top of one of the trees exploded, raining embers and jagged splinters down onto me. I put up my hands, hissing as I waited it out. I looked up again, only to be blasted by cold, stinging rain.
"You're not the one in charge here, you asshole!"
The face in the clouds sneered back, its features blurred and stretched as the cloud cover shifted.
Fuck, I was having a staring contest with the sky.
"Dean!"
I spun again, searching. "Sam?!"
"Dean!"
The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere. The rain kept coming, pouring down harder until I could barely see the rocks in front of me, the edge of the forest behind. "Sammy, where are you?"
And Sam screamed and I was in motion, scrabbling over the boulders, my nostrils filled with the mineral tang of wet stone.
If running was difficult in a dream, climbing was downright impossible. It seemed no matter how many hand- and footholds I found, I could never get any higher. My muscles burned every time I reached up, my nails catching against the rough surface, my arches screaming as I pushed myself to my toes, desperate for every inch of reach. "Sam! Sammy, I'm coming!"
"Dean!"
I didn't know how, but I conquered the first boulder, scrambling on top of it into a tiny hollow. I pressed my palms flat against the slanted rock above me, searching for a route. A warped, scraggly bush jutted out of a crack maybe four feet away, just across a waterfall of rain water over the smooth rock face. If I could move fast enough, I just might manage to grab it before I fell.
All I had to do was jump. I could make it. This was a dream and I was lucid. All I had to do is believe I could make it, and I would. I took a breath, setting my right foot as I started to lean with my left.
And then I looked down.
Jesus fuck.
It wasn't like in Vertigo. The distance didn't expand as I watched, the bottom dropping out from under me. There just wasn't any bottom. The trees I'd run through had vanished, and all that existed at the bottom of the rock pile was rain and darkness.
I couldn't make it.
My feet slipped, then skidded, and I slid, unable to take my eyes off that goddamn chasm at the base of the rocks, and then I was falling, outright falling, nothing below or above me but sky and rain.
This was it. Moment of truth. I'd either wake up -- or I'd die.
I honestly wasn't sure which I'd prefer.
A hand locked around my wrist and I jolted to a stop, my feet still dangling into nothingness. I gasped, my free hand flailing a few moments before I reached up and clamped onto the hand in return. It was huge, flat and wet, the muscles powerful and the knuckles rigid and I knew just who it belonged to. I closed my eyes and just tried to breathe.
"Sammy."
I looked up, and there he was. Not twelve, not furious, not hiding or glaring or pouting, just Sam, my Sam, the right Sam, his face as sure as his grip was tight.
"I've got you, Dean," he said. "I've got you."
*
It should have taken awhile to get back up on that rock. It should have been full of cursing and pulling and grunting and things. And for all I know, it was.
All I remember is Sam looking down, and then being sprawled across the rock, flat on my back next to him.
"You little bitch," I said, between gasps for breath and what I refused to admit out loud were sobs of relief. "I spend all this time looking for you, and you're the one who finds me."
Sam rolled his head, his ridiculous hair light and bouncy despite the pouring rain, his mouth pulled into a small frown. "You were looking for me?"
I closed my eyes, reaching out to thwack him in the chest. "Of course I was. Jesus, why do you think I'm even here?"
"Oh," Sam said. "Oh, you think -- Dean, we're not --"
A giggle blew in on the breeze, cutting him off and making me shudder. "Sammy. Tell me that's not who I think it is. Tell you don't have her in here, too."
"Dean, listen to me." I felt him shift on the rock next to me. "This isn't --"
The breeze turned into a wind, bringing with it a howling scream. My eyes flew open as I suddenly had to dig in my fingers to keep lying on the rock, the wind cutting past so hard and fast that I was beginning to slide sideways. I looked over to Sam and found him looming over me, his eyes wide and terrified, his mouth forming words that the wind stole away before they could reach my ears.
"Sam, lie back down!" The wind was enough to make me skid, but Sam's giant goddamn shoulders were practically a sail, and he was being forced up and back. I stretched out my hand and lunged, wrapping my fist in his shirt, but I wasn't strong enough to hold on to him.
I wasn't strong enough to keep him safe.
His shirt ripped like paper in my hand, and as hard as I tried to grab on again, he slipped away too fast. He was screaming by the time he was headed over the edge, his mouth forming exaggerated shapes as he desperately tried to talk to me. The giggle rang in my ear as I fell back again, my face wet, unable to catch my breath. I understood. I knew what he was trying to tell me.
"Wake up."
"Sammy, you son of a bitch. That's what I want you to do."
*
I stumbled out of the woods onto a road and right into one hell of a hailstorm. Lightning lit up the sky, followed almost immediately by another shockwave of thunder that nearly took me to my knees. I tried to shield my eyes with my hand and winced as the hail bounced off the tender skin of my wrist.
Sam wasn't gone. He might have been torn away from me, but the world didn't exist without him in it, and here was the wind and the storm and the woods and the road, and all of them said Sam in a deep, unconscious way I could never describe. I just had to find him again. I would find him again. I refused to let whatever was trying to get between us win.
It was the story of my life. No matter how many times I dropped him, I wouldn't let anything keep me from Sam.
The surface of the road was cracked and pitted, more dirt than actual pavement, and it wound back and forth through the trees towards a chainlink fence and a battered wooden sign bearing the name of the camp twelve-year-old Sam had made himself, though it was tough to make it out through the storm. "Chautauqua", it read, or maybe "Chitaqua". Some native word, probably picked to make the place sound more "authentic". I looked down the road away from the sign, where it trailed off into darkness. Something skittered amongst the trees, and the next flash of lightning lit up a pair of eyes staring back at me. I flinched back, my hand coming up to grab onto my amulet, where it rested against my chest.
I didn't remember putting it back on. The metal was cool beneath my fingers.
"Right," I muttered. "Not God, then."
I ran my thumb over the familiar contours of the amulet's face. I couldn't remember if I'd had it on the rocks. That was the trouble with dreams; details could flit in and out on a whim. I had to work to even keep track of why I was here, let alone what I had with me at any given moment. I let the amulet drop back against my chest and walked backwards a few steps before turning, deliberately giving whatever it was that skulked through the woods my back.
Fuck it. I could die here. I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here, what led up to this trip to Camp Dream-qua, but I was certain of that, now. But I sure as hell wasn't dying before I found Sam again.
*
The main campgrounds were deserted. No, not just deserted, abandoned. The place reeked of mold and wet decay, the cabins giving in to the drag of gravity like dead trees slowly crumbling back into the earth. Nothing remained of the kids who had run through here what had to only be a few hours ago, of the beers I'd shared with Cas on the porch.
It was all dead. Everything and everyone. Jo and Layla and Madison, Andy and Chuck, Cas. I'd been talking and running with nothing more than ghosts.
The only thing that was real was Sam.
I sat down on the sagging porch of the cabin on the end, resting my elbows against my knees as I tried to work out what my next step should be. The road had led me straight back here, and I wasn't certain it would still be there if I tried to go back. Whatever I needed to find, whatever door would lead me on to wherever the wind had blown Sam, it had to be here somewhere, in this camp that tugged so firmly on the threads of my memory.
I was starting to unravel. To fall into the dream and let it pull me under. I had to stay focused. I had a job to do here. I wasn't here for kicks. I pushed myself to my feet and started walking again.
There was someone sitting in the middle of the campground, right where the flagpole was meant to be. She was small and blonde and dressed in white, and she sat on her knees, digging her fingers down into the dirt.
"You."
Lilith looked up, bright blue eyes shining. "Hi Dean! Didja miss me?"
I couldn't move. She sat maybe ten feet away, grinning at me through crooked teeth, her fingers covered in blood-red dirt, and I couldn't move a muscle.
"Betcha didn't think you'd see me again," she said. "Betcha thought Sammy had me allllllllllll sewn up." Her eyes went white. "Betch're just dying inside."
I breathed out. "Fuck you." And I lunged, reaching for her neck, only to pull up short as strong arms wrapped around me from either side. I didn't look up, refusing to take my eyes off Lilith for even a moment. "Fuck you! I won't let you have him! You hear me? I won't let you have him! Not again!"
"Dean!" The owner of the arms on the left shouted in my ear, almost drowned out by Lilith's high pitched, delighted giggle. "Dean, dammit, listen to me! Dean!"
"I can kill her. Let me kill her, Bobby. I can do it, I know I can, just let me --"
"She ain't real, son!" Bobby yanked me back and with Ellen's help spun me around, dragging me forcefully away from the grinning, giggling nightmare crouched in the dirt. I screamed, struggling harder. I could still hear her, still feel her behind me, and it was Cas exploding and Sam slipping away, literally torn from my grasp all over again.
"No!" The single syllable felt good coming out, round and forceful and so full of everything I'd been holding in and holding down, so I said it again. "NO!" And I threw up, hunching over as Bobby and Ellen struggled to hold me up, my body forcefully expelling all the toxic garbage my life had made me swallow until I felt small and fragile and dirty. "No."
"Shh." Ellen ran her hand over my head, tugging me gently in against her chest. I sobbed, my breath ragged, my entire soul throbbing, unable to hold myself in and together any longer. "It's alright, hon. You're gonna be just fine."
"You with us again, boy?" Bobby asked, his hands still on my other arm. I wrapped my fist in his overshirt, only realizing as I felt the heat from his body how cold I was.
"Bobby."
Bobby's hand gripped my shoulder, giving it a gentle shake. "Yeah, son. It's me."
I clenched my teeth, struggling to get my breathing back under control. Ellen stroked her hand over my head again, holding me up but not still as my shaking slowed.
"Ellen?"
She hummed a yes. I could feel it vibrate against my cheek.
"Bobby," I said again, and I used my fist in his shirt to pull him closer. "You're dead. You guys are dead, you're all dead."
"Yeah, kid." Bobby's breath tickled my ear. It should have been cold, the frosty breeze of the dead and restless, but it warmed me instead. "We just ain't letting that stop us."
I choked on a laugh and, after a moment, found the guts to open my eyes. "Lilith? She gone?"
"She never was," Ellen said. "Not really. Just a nightmare."
"It's all a nightmare. Worst dream I ever had."
"Then wake up, sweetie." Ellen took my face in both her hands. "Wake your damn self up."
I shook my head. "I can't." I swallowed. "I have to find Sam." I pulled back, struggling to collect the tattered strands of my dignity. "It's the only thing I can think about."
Ellen nodded, letting me pull away, though it looked like it cost her. I wondered if she'd seen twelve-year-old Jo, if seeing her hurt her the way seeing Sam could hurt me.
"We know, Dean," Bobby said. I turned to see him standing there, faded but solid, his face drawn but still somehow younger than I'd seen it in years. "Question is, do you know why?"
I frowned. "To -- to get him -- out of here." The words struggled on their way out, and I wondered why it suddenly felt so much less clear. "To get him away from -- from Lucifer. To save him."
I hadn't seen Bobby look so heartbroken since I told him about the deal I made for Sam. "Sam's cured, Dean. Cas bit that bullet for him already."
"What?" I pulled back, only to be penned in by Ellen. "I -- no. Cas is gone. He -- the leviathans --"
"Left him reeling something fierce, but living."
"But this is Sam's dream! I came in to find him!" I knew that. It was the only thing I'd been certain of since back in the car. Even faced with Amy and Gordon and -- and Alistair --
Why would Alistair haunt Sam's head?
"That's right, Dean." Ellen's voice was gentle but firm, and her grip on my arm matched it. "You already know this."
"No, I --" I squeezed my eyes shut. The kids, Adam on the raft, Demon Sam, Lilith. The camp itself. "Chitaqua," I said. "Sam's never been here. Zachariah brought me here, not Sam. He's never seen this place before."
"That's it, boy." Bobby's voice backed up as I straightened. "Almost there."
"This isn't Sam's dream." I thought back, as hard and as far as I could. I remembered Cas, now, how it had felt to find him again, how it felt to leave him behind in return for having Sam back, whole if not healthy. There'd been a couple of cases after that, a demon here, a monster there, and then --
Dick Roman. The leviathans. A convention hall filled with the bastards, and with Roman's screaming human fans, all turning on us. We'd thought we were ready for them, but we weren't. A slam to my front. Pain across the back of my head, a foul taste in my mouth.
"Jesus." I reached up, feeling the back of my skull with my fingers. It was wet, sticky, and sickeningly soft. "I'm in a fucking coma?"
"There it is."
That wasn't Bobby or Ellen. I opened my eyes to Ruby, standing and smirking in front of me. "Knew you'd make it eventually, Short Bus."
And she punched me in the face.
*
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