Verbum Caro Factum Est : 4
X.
March 18
Interstate 16, Georgia
They were pulling an all-nighter in the car again. Orbs of highway light floated through the interior like they were in a lottery tumbler. The dashboard was covered with dust, torn out newspaper articles, scrawled notes, a lone French fry. They had worn out the road trip games hours ago: letter finder and punch-a-hybrid-freak. It was a matter of finding a place with beds at this point.
Sam dozed with an unread book open on his lap. The wind flapped the open cuffs of his shirt and blew his hair around his eyes.
“Hey, jackass! Forty-five miles an hour? In the hammer lane? For cryin’ out…” Dean muttered. He leaned further onto his folded arm so that his head was halfway out the window, his face angled into the cool breeze.
Sam looked up with mild interest and saw a foreign beater slowing down in the median. Smoke was pouring from underneath it. He sat up.
“Hey, that car. It was on fire.” He looked behind them as they passed it. The shape of the person in the car had one hand raised to their ear. “I don’t think they know.”
“What do you want me to do, huh? Pull over so you can splash holy water on it?”
Sam’s eyes got small.
Dean glanced in the rear view mirror. “It’s not our problem, Sam.”
“Dad would’ve stopped.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.” Dean glared at him.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing!”
“Wouldn’t he?”
“Look, Sam! Do you see Dad in this car, where he should be? No. He isn’t. And you know why? Dad’s not here because he would’ve stopped... he’s not here because he didn’t know when to stop. I should know. And I’m not-” Dean held his breath. His right hand gripped the top of the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white.
Sam’s chin jutted out and his tongue searched his lips for the right words, but found none. Finally, he whispered, “Are you … saying what I think you’re saying? That you regret it?”
The silhouette of Dean’s stony expression was all Sam could see in the dark. He blinked his disbelief into the silence and propped the tips of his fingers in the doorframe, then raised one knee and put his booted foot on the seat.
Dean still said nothing.
Sam took several deep breaths and landed a hard kick to the dashboard, so hard that the glove compartment fell open. The car swerved violently onto the gravel embankment and sent everything flying everywhere, jerked to a stop so fast that Sam had to brace himself.
Engine rumble outlined the silent tension between them.
Then Dean laid his arm protectively across the bench seat as he turned his whole body toward him, lines in his face like mountains. “Don’t you ever… read shit into things that aren’t there. For christssake, Sam.” And just like that, he turned away.
Sam didn’t move to stop him. He heard a loud sigh and the click of the door handle as Dean got out, a thundering honk, a shrieking scrape, an impact. He heard bone, the crunch of Dean’s body, against steel.
Sam bolted up, lunging forward so fast that his forehead smashed into the sun visor before his hands could reach the dash. The car was still moving. “Aw! Ow… Oh, God… I’m gonna puke.”
“Woah,” Dean shouted. “Hold on.” He guided the Impala to the side of the road and stopped.
Sam barely got the door open before he fell out and retched. Dean slid over and kept the door from closing on his head in the wind as he tried to breathe between surges of bile and dry heaving. Cold sweat was making him shiver. Sharp bits of gravel dug deep into the palms of his hands and into his knees.
When he leaned back on his heels and started spitting, Dean handed him a Styrofoam cup of warm water with a chewed straw. “Must have been somethin’ bad. You sure have been moody all night,” he observed. “Sammy?”
“I got it on the door,” Sam croaked and spit again, “and my hands.”
“Okay. We have some shop towels in the trunk,” Dean replied and edged back over to get out.
Before Sam could stop him, he heard the click of the door handle and the horn of an 18-wheeler. His head snapped up just in time to see the freighter whoosh by. Dean had plastered himself to the side of the Impala and was emphatically flipping the bird at the driver with both hands.
XI.
Interstate 95, South Carolina
The dark seemed to be lasting forever, at least what Sam could gauge of it from the sheltering crook of his arm as his whole body slumped against the door. There were no more lights to mark the passing of miles and the stars were out. From the corner of his eye, he could make out Dean’s squinting face in the tiny lights of the scanner and the radio. He, too, was leaning heavily on the door and his left foot was curled almost all the way underneath him, under the bench. The radio was off.
“I hate South Carolina," Dean's voice melded into the steady hum of the road, "Every freakin' highway runs north and south… Hey, you feelin’ okay?”
Sam didn’t move a muscle. “Yeah.” Dean’s fist nudged him in the shoulder, so he lifted his head about an inch.
“Here.” A pack of gum landed in his lap.
“Sorry.”
“I don’t wanna get into the whys of this,” Dean shoved his foot further under the seat, “but I’m starting to wonder about something.”
“Whether or not we should be taking this job?” Sam asked.
“No, not exactly-”
“Because that’s what I’ve been wondering.”
Dean made an effort not to glance at his brother.
“I think we should be looking out for you.” Sam turned his head inside his arm to look at Dean. “You know?”
“You said yourself you’ve looked. Right? Bobby’s looked. And if it just has to land in our laps, solving this thing, then why can’t it land in our laps in Sheldon?”
“What are you trying to say, Dean?”
“I was just thinkin’,” Dean said dismissively. He peered at the gauges on the dash, into the rearview mirror, then the side mirror. “Maybe your dreams aren’t tied to this job somehow, like Bobby thought.”
Sam looked away.
Dean stared hard out the windshield. When Sam remained silent, he pushed down harder on the accelerator.
XII.
Yemassee, South Carolina
Lights flashed over Sam’s face and he jerked his head up. They were passing through a small town. One street, the main artery, was well lit with street lamps. Not a single bulb was burnt out. But beyond that, where Sam stared down several streets, it was dark and murky.
Dean turned right at a set of train tracks and they followed that road, into the darkness, for about ten minutes before incongruous towers of metal appeared to their left, at once familiar and looming, for almost a mile. A break in the fence and deep sandy ruts sloped away from the pavement next to a sign that clung with baling wire to an upright railroad tie sunk into the earth: 'Gracian Restoration'.
The Impala avoided the deepest of the ruts under Dean’s guidance and heaved over several mounds of short grass before lurching onto an uneven trail of gravel. A few yards from the house, she gave a lulling groan at Dean’s request for torque. He stopped, patted the steering wheel, turned the ignition off and opened the door wordlessly, leaving Sam sitting alone.
Bobby’s Chevelle was already there, parked close to a white, early seventies Buick Riviera and the porch steps of a double-wide mobile home. Large covered decks had been expertly constructed, sheltering half of the front of the house and wrapping around to the back. Bobby was leaning against the railing at one corner, a beer in his hand, watching Dean grab his bag and the weapons satchel from the trunk. Dean left the trunk open and didn’t turn to look at Sam as he mounted the steps to the house.
Sam blinked. The dial clock in the center of the dash read 3:09. He grabbed his wrists to turn his arms and stretch his shoulders before he got out and grabbed his own gear, careful not to let the trunk slam shut.
Bobby half lifted his longneck bottle in greeting to him, not having moved again from clasping Dean’s arm and pointing him inside.
Sam nodded once before his feet stopped moving. His gaze moved upward as the sky descended around him. “So many stars out here,” he almost whispered.
“You can see all seven Sisters,” answered a rugged voice from the edge of the darkness. The dint of a shovel digging into hard packed earth rang in Sam's ears and a thin man emerged from the shadows, his overalls and short white hair visible first, his dark skin finally outlined by the two spotlights beaming from Bobby’s corner of the porch. He wiped his hands together and held out his right one to Sam without another word or symbol of introduction.
The three of them moved inside, Bobby sliding the screen door shut behind them. The sound of a running shower was coming from what had to be the bathroom and the thin man draped himself over the kitchen sink, pulling water up over his arms and around his neck. “Long drive you boys jus’ made. There’s the cot n’ the couch, but das it. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks,” Sam responded with a short smile that was completely lost on the man. He set his bag on the cot and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.
Bobby set himself in one of four deep wooden chairs closest to the wall.
The breeze from the screen door lifted the edges of the papers on the round table.
“So,” walking over to the counter, Sam leaned both hands on the smooth surface, palms open but knuckles down, a confused half-smile on his face. “Bobby’s never mentioned you that I can remember. You guys known each other long?”
The old man’s voice was drawn out as he shook his hands and wiped them meditatively on a clean towel. “Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.”
Sam turned around to glance at Bobby, who sipped the last of his beer and gave a noncommittal shrug in the direction of the kitchen. “Taught me at least half of what I know about demons.”
Dean emerged from the bathroom in a plume of steam, jeans pulled on but undone and a towel around his shoulders. Without looking up, he walked in and yanked open the refrigerator, grabbed a longneck from the door and uncapped it with his ring. “Hey Hal, you got any band-aids?”
Sam gave him a what the hell look. Dean returned it unflinchingly as he took a long pull from the bottle.
“Weren’t none under the sink?” Gracian caught the door before Dean closed it and pulled two more bottles. He faked a swing and then lobbed one across the room to Bobby, who caught it without moving much.
A long burp escaped from Dean and he gritted his teeth as he savored the bite in the back of his throat. “Nope.”
“Look in the kit under my bed, then.”
Dean nodded and turned back down the hallway.
“I’ve walked into the Twilight Zone,” Sam muttered, staring in Dean’s direction but at nothing in particular.
Gracian seemed to suddenly appear right in front of him with an open bottle in his hand. “There’s one left,” he said.
Sam took it with a short nod and a furrowed brow.
“Boy, you’d think…” Gracian’s smile showed a neat row of white teeth as he looked Sam up and down. “Well. Dean never was much for talk when he was here, anyhow.” He went to sit next to Bobby and pulled a worn deck of playing cards from his pocket, shoved several recent newspapers, print-outs, a laptop and a binder to one side. He glanced up to see Sam sip from the bottle, his long legs crossed and stiff where he leaned against the counter. He dealt four hands on the clear part of the table. “Bobby, help a kid out. He’s lookin’ a mite socially constipated.”
“I asked Dean to come out here about four years ago to help Hal with a poltergeist,” Bobby explained simply. He watched Sam’s expression soften, if only a little. “Dunno why he never said anything.”
“He wasn’t in the business anymore,” Dean said from behind Sam. He strolled in and sat down across from Bobby, picked up the cards and looked at them under his palm.
An uncomfortable beat of silence made its way around the table. Gracian rearranged the cards in his hand with his head tilted back. Bobby used the edge of his thumb to lift the corners of his cards and had to chase one as it flicked off the table. Dean continued to hold his under two folded hands, quirking his mouth to the side as he sniffed.
Without looking up from his cards, Gracian said, “Take a seat, Sam.”
Sam uncrossed his legs but didn’t move from his spot against the counter.
Dean turned his head to look at him. His eyes hesitated on something over Sam’s left shoulder before moving to his face with a look that veiled no apologies, but asked for at least the appearance of a ceasefire.
“What’s the game?” Sam asked as he eased over and took the chair next to Dean, facing Gracian. He picked up the stack of cards with one hand. The edges were brown and frayed. He glanced down at the face of the bottom card.
“What else?” Gracian frowned into his hands.
Bobby snorted and gestured to the fridge. “Nothin’ to bet with.”
Gracian smiled. “Sure as there be a Sunday comin’.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dean asked so cautiously that Sam couldn’t help but smile a little, then leaned back so far that the chair reared onto the back two legs. “Aw, come on-”
“One of us is gonna be real busy soon makin’ more iron rounds than they can shake a stick at.”
“Dammit,” Dean commented with a devious smile and fanned his cards. “I need a whole new hand, then.”
“Ain’t your call. It’s FDR’s over there,” Gracian muttered off-handedly.
Bobby sputtered into his beer. “You ain’t earned that yet. Show me what you got.” Bobby’s face turned serious, an expression he wouldn’t be able to hold for long.
Gracian shook his head.
Dean wiped his mouth with his hand to hide a smile.
Sam’s shoulders shook in silent amazement. He caught Bobby’s eye. “FDR?”
Bobby feigned indifference. “It’s Robert Franklin James. Well, don’t look at me.” He pointed at Gracian with three fingers, “He’s the one with more middle names than anybody’s ever gotta right to.”
Sam’s confusion only magnified when he glanced from Dean, who was practicing his poker face, to Gracian, who had an amused glint in his eye.
Bobby leaned forward and laid three cards on the table. “What is it, again, Hal? Fredric William Patrick Henry Adams Lincoln?”
Dean’s smile finally broke.
Gracian rolled his eyes. “How many times…?” Bobby raised his hands in a farcical surrender, so he turned his full attention to Sam, pausing to collect himself with somber genuflection. “’But though the blast is frantic and though the tempest raves, the deep immense Atlantic is still beneath the waves.’”
“Myers,” Sam said, smiling. “Fredric William Henry.”
“Smart boy. You’re all right. Not named after no crazy presidents or bank robbers, must be why.”
“Roosevelt wadn’t crazy,” Bobby retorted.
“Time to be scurred, Rosie,” Gracian drawled and slapped three cards down in a neat pile at the center of the table. “Turn ‘em in, fellas.”
Bobby shuffled his two cards back to front restlessly and Dean kneed Sam under the table with a sly smile. “Hope you’re not attached to those. Hal plays by his own rules,” he whispered and tossed his own three into the pile.
Sam fingered the top three cards off his stack without looking.
“You know,” Gracian pondered, “this hunt's gonna be a mite harder this time around. People are sayin’ things I ain’t heard before.”
“Oh? Like what?” Dean answered.
Gracian reached for the dealer stack and turned over a card, Bobby hissing at the result. “For one, whatever it is ain't just goin’ after people. Took out a whole herd of horses, too.” He turned over another card. “And stories ‘bout Old Sheldon bein’ populated with nonsensicals are startin’ again,” he turned the last ‘flop’ card, “seein’ as it’s almost Easter.”
Sam’s eyes darted sideways to Dean, who looked distracted by the cards, but before he could open his mouth, Dean asked nonchalantly, “What’s so special about Easter? I mean, besides Mr. Fluffy.”
Picking up a picture from the disorganized pile of paperwork, Bobby handed it to Sam. “Ostara, a Saxon fertility goddess, among other things. Those 40 days of Lent originally started as a pagan celebration, the Aurora spring festival, that ends on the night of the spring equinox. Sacred animal was a hare.”
Sam studied the angelic visage of a woman in flowing white robes holding a staff of flowers and surrounded by cherubs, rabbits, and a crane. Then he turned it for Dean to see.
Bobby elaborated, “Old Sheldon is a church, well, it used to be. There’s not much left now. It burned down a long time ago.”
“Oh, it’s still used by the locals here some of the time, for special occasion. One of which just happenin’ to be that spring festival,” Gracian continued.
Dean adjusted his legs. “So, they’re out there every year dissecting little bunny rabbits and dancing naked? Man, I’ve been missin’-”
“The point is,” Bobby interrupted, “Is that those kinds of rituals, they leave scars on a place after a while. It can take centuries, but there’s a history of sacrifice and resurrection in that place that'd make your hair stand straight up.”
Gracian nodded, laid down the ‘turn’ card and picked up the other thread of the conversation. “It’s the hare now. Part of the traditional sacrifice, if you went the way of them ancient, dark pagans.” He paused, staring at the new card and running his fingers around the edges of the deck meditatively. “Guess what it was originally.”
“Horses,” Sam blinked.
Gracian pointed at him in confirmation and then turned the ‘river’ card.
Dean, Bobby and Gracian all leaned forward.
“Hal, did you shuffle these?” Bobby asked.
“Yep.”
“Huh.”
“Hell," Gracian retorted, "You still don’t believe me about this deck doin’ all the talkin’, do ya? After all these years.”
Dean touched the edge of the river card, the deuce of spades. “Why two?”
“I imagine ‘cause it’s better than one. These middle three mean someone or somethin' is takin’ tributes and it don’t seem to care much who knows it,” Gracian replied.
Sam picked up his two cards and looked at them: the jack of clubs and the ace of spades. Bobby leaned over and glanced at them, gave a cursory nod and looked at Dean.
Dean nodded. “Hal?”
“Yeah.”
“The twentieth is the spring equinox. That’s only two days. I think me and Sam outta go talk to these people before we get caught with our pants down around our ankles on this thing.”
“What’d you get?” Gracian pointed his nose in the direction of Dean’s cards.
Dean flipped them over and made his best pick-up line face, “Deuce and king of hearts.”
“Shit.”
“What?”
Bobby looked at Dean with a tinge of disbelief. “That’s the suicide king. You ain’t goin’ anywhere alone, not unless Hal says so.”
Dean shifted in his chair and looked at Sam, who flipped his cards over and folded his arms, staring a hole into the top of Gracian’s head.
Gracian glanced at the cards and held Sam’s gaze, then nodded, his voice tinged with certainty, “I guess two is better than one, Ace. If he sticks close.”
Sam nodded back with a hard smile. Dean rolled his eyes and took another swig of beer.
“Not in my case,” Bobby flung his two cards at Gracian’s head. “You turned the jack of spades on me, you old geezer. I’m gonna be makin’ iron rounds until my eyes fall out.”
Sam followed Bobby outside.
Gracian re-collected the research from the hasty piles on the table, and laid it out for Dean to see.
Elbows straddling the research, Dean rubbed the tips of his fingers into the sides of his face. “I don’t understand how this has anything to do with Sam, Hal.”
The look that Gracian gave his own cards was long and hard. Then he thumbed the 'turn' card that had made him pause earlier and slid it toward Dean. It was obviously one he had waited to discuss: the nine of diamonds. “You got a little more than a month left, don’t ya?”
Dean sighed. "Bobby? He told you?"
"He don't say much that don't need sayin'."
“Forty-six days.” Dean looked up at the 50’s era clock above the cabinet. “Forty-five,” he redacted calmly.
“Then this has everything to do with Sam,” Gracian gently reminded him.
Down the steps and several yards behind the mobile home was another trailer, older and yellower, with a dingy porch light that was attracting the first flying insects of the season.
“Bobby,” Sam had been walking behind him and Bobby pretended not to notice, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his vest and his hat pulled down low. Without any warning, Bobby turned on his heels, his face as close to Sam’s as he could get.
“Are you doing anything?” Bobby’s voice was impatient, terrified.
Sam stumbled backwards, tripping over clumps of dead grass.
“There’s a right and wrong way to go about this, Sam.” Bobby almost followed him, but stopped short, his chest rising and falling. “So help me, I don’t wanna tell Dean, but I will if I have to.”
His voice refused to work. Sam’s eyes betrayed confusion, hurt and surprise for only a second before they washed over with flat metal. He steadied himself and stood up straight. “No.”
“Well, stop it.” Bobby breathed tensely, wheeled around and strode for the trailer.
Sam turned around, too, and faced the house for a minute before pulling his phone from his pocket. He glanced behind him to make sure Bobby had gone inside before pushing the call button. They were still sitting at the table, Dean making frustrated gestures at the piles on the table and Gracian leaning toward him on one elbow. The phone crackled and hissed with static.
:”My long lost Sam. How are you, Sam?”: said a voice that sounded a bit like a vinyl recording on a warped turntable, :”Are you calling to say how much you miss me?”:
He didn’t waste time with preamble. “I need you to do what we talked about and I need it now.”
He heard a long-suffering sigh. :”I told you before. If I wanted to pass the time licking the dirt off your boots, you know I’d be there in a heartbeat. Tracking down a nest of bloodsuckers and making one talk is not my idea of a good time. Although, now that I think about it, the making her talk part might be kind of fun…”:
“You hurt her and this whole thing will blow up in your face as fast as I can find you.”
:”Oh, Sam, that's kinky. Tell me what you’d do.”:
Sam glanced up nervously when the shadows inside the house shifted and Dean was rising from the table. He shifted his weight back and forth. “Ruby,” he said firmly, “Find Lenore. I need to know if she’s okay.”
:”She’s dead, Sam.”:
“What?”
He could practically hear her eyes roll over the phone. :”You mean besides the obvious fact that she’s dead.”:
Resisting the urge to shout, he rested a hand on his hip and took a deep breath. “Just do it.” He had to end the call and stuff the phone in his pocket. Dean was opening the door and walking outside, toward the car.
“Are we going somewhere?” Sam raised his voice to broach the distance, even though it wasn’t as far as the darkness made it seem.
Dean opened the trunk and looked surprised to see him there, noticeably not noticing that Sam was alone in the dark again. “Hey, Sasquatch. You talk to Bobby?”
Sam hesitated before shaking his head. “Not yet, not really. He was pretty beat.” He looked behind him at the dark path to the trailer.
Nodding, Dean lifted the bags of reference books from the trunk and shut it again. “Well, Hal’s got a hunch about what these things are. And your freak ass should take the couch, it’s longer. Sam?”
He faced Dean again and smiled vaguely.
“Give an old man a hand?” Sternly, Dean held out the bag and then grinned.
CHAPTER 5
March 18
Interstate 16, Georgia
They were pulling an all-nighter in the car again. Orbs of highway light floated through the interior like they were in a lottery tumbler. The dashboard was covered with dust, torn out newspaper articles, scrawled notes, a lone French fry. They had worn out the road trip games hours ago: letter finder and punch-a-hybrid-freak. It was a matter of finding a place with beds at this point.
Sam dozed with an unread book open on his lap. The wind flapped the open cuffs of his shirt and blew his hair around his eyes.
“Hey, jackass! Forty-five miles an hour? In the hammer lane? For cryin’ out…” Dean muttered. He leaned further onto his folded arm so that his head was halfway out the window, his face angled into the cool breeze.
Sam looked up with mild interest and saw a foreign beater slowing down in the median. Smoke was pouring from underneath it. He sat up.
“Hey, that car. It was on fire.” He looked behind them as they passed it. The shape of the person in the car had one hand raised to their ear. “I don’t think they know.”
“What do you want me to do, huh? Pull over so you can splash holy water on it?”
Sam’s eyes got small.
Dean glanced in the rear view mirror. “It’s not our problem, Sam.”
“Dad would’ve stopped.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.” Dean glared at him.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing!”
“Wouldn’t he?”
“Look, Sam! Do you see Dad in this car, where he should be? No. He isn’t. And you know why? Dad’s not here because he would’ve stopped... he’s not here because he didn’t know when to stop. I should know. And I’m not-” Dean held his breath. His right hand gripped the top of the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white.
Sam’s chin jutted out and his tongue searched his lips for the right words, but found none. Finally, he whispered, “Are you … saying what I think you’re saying? That you regret it?”
The silhouette of Dean’s stony expression was all Sam could see in the dark. He blinked his disbelief into the silence and propped the tips of his fingers in the doorframe, then raised one knee and put his booted foot on the seat.
Dean still said nothing.
Sam took several deep breaths and landed a hard kick to the dashboard, so hard that the glove compartment fell open. The car swerved violently onto the gravel embankment and sent everything flying everywhere, jerked to a stop so fast that Sam had to brace himself.
Engine rumble outlined the silent tension between them.
Then Dean laid his arm protectively across the bench seat as he turned his whole body toward him, lines in his face like mountains. “Don’t you ever… read shit into things that aren’t there. For christssake, Sam.” And just like that, he turned away.
Sam didn’t move to stop him. He heard a loud sigh and the click of the door handle as Dean got out, a thundering honk, a shrieking scrape, an impact. He heard bone, the crunch of Dean’s body, against steel.
Sam bolted up, lunging forward so fast that his forehead smashed into the sun visor before his hands could reach the dash. The car was still moving. “Aw! Ow… Oh, God… I’m gonna puke.”
“Woah,” Dean shouted. “Hold on.” He guided the Impala to the side of the road and stopped.
Sam barely got the door open before he fell out and retched. Dean slid over and kept the door from closing on his head in the wind as he tried to breathe between surges of bile and dry heaving. Cold sweat was making him shiver. Sharp bits of gravel dug deep into the palms of his hands and into his knees.
When he leaned back on his heels and started spitting, Dean handed him a Styrofoam cup of warm water with a chewed straw. “Must have been somethin’ bad. You sure have been moody all night,” he observed. “Sammy?”
“I got it on the door,” Sam croaked and spit again, “and my hands.”
“Okay. We have some shop towels in the trunk,” Dean replied and edged back over to get out.
Before Sam could stop him, he heard the click of the door handle and the horn of an 18-wheeler. His head snapped up just in time to see the freighter whoosh by. Dean had plastered himself to the side of the Impala and was emphatically flipping the bird at the driver with both hands.
XI.
Interstate 95, South Carolina
The dark seemed to be lasting forever, at least what Sam could gauge of it from the sheltering crook of his arm as his whole body slumped against the door. There were no more lights to mark the passing of miles and the stars were out. From the corner of his eye, he could make out Dean’s squinting face in the tiny lights of the scanner and the radio. He, too, was leaning heavily on the door and his left foot was curled almost all the way underneath him, under the bench. The radio was off.
“I hate South Carolina," Dean's voice melded into the steady hum of the road, "Every freakin' highway runs north and south… Hey, you feelin’ okay?”
Sam didn’t move a muscle. “Yeah.” Dean’s fist nudged him in the shoulder, so he lifted his head about an inch.
“Here.” A pack of gum landed in his lap.
“Sorry.”
“I don’t wanna get into the whys of this,” Dean shoved his foot further under the seat, “but I’m starting to wonder about something.”
“Whether or not we should be taking this job?” Sam asked.
“No, not exactly-”
“Because that’s what I’ve been wondering.”
Dean made an effort not to glance at his brother.
“I think we should be looking out for you.” Sam turned his head inside his arm to look at Dean. “You know?”
“You said yourself you’ve looked. Right? Bobby’s looked. And if it just has to land in our laps, solving this thing, then why can’t it land in our laps in Sheldon?”
“What are you trying to say, Dean?”
“I was just thinkin’,” Dean said dismissively. He peered at the gauges on the dash, into the rearview mirror, then the side mirror. “Maybe your dreams aren’t tied to this job somehow, like Bobby thought.”
Sam looked away.
Dean stared hard out the windshield. When Sam remained silent, he pushed down harder on the accelerator.
XII.
Yemassee, South Carolina
Lights flashed over Sam’s face and he jerked his head up. They were passing through a small town. One street, the main artery, was well lit with street lamps. Not a single bulb was burnt out. But beyond that, where Sam stared down several streets, it was dark and murky.
Dean turned right at a set of train tracks and they followed that road, into the darkness, for about ten minutes before incongruous towers of metal appeared to their left, at once familiar and looming, for almost a mile. A break in the fence and deep sandy ruts sloped away from the pavement next to a sign that clung with baling wire to an upright railroad tie sunk into the earth: 'Gracian Restoration'.
The Impala avoided the deepest of the ruts under Dean’s guidance and heaved over several mounds of short grass before lurching onto an uneven trail of gravel. A few yards from the house, she gave a lulling groan at Dean’s request for torque. He stopped, patted the steering wheel, turned the ignition off and opened the door wordlessly, leaving Sam sitting alone.
Bobby’s Chevelle was already there, parked close to a white, early seventies Buick Riviera and the porch steps of a double-wide mobile home. Large covered decks had been expertly constructed, sheltering half of the front of the house and wrapping around to the back. Bobby was leaning against the railing at one corner, a beer in his hand, watching Dean grab his bag and the weapons satchel from the trunk. Dean left the trunk open and didn’t turn to look at Sam as he mounted the steps to the house.
Sam blinked. The dial clock in the center of the dash read 3:09. He grabbed his wrists to turn his arms and stretch his shoulders before he got out and grabbed his own gear, careful not to let the trunk slam shut.
Bobby half lifted his longneck bottle in greeting to him, not having moved again from clasping Dean’s arm and pointing him inside.
Sam nodded once before his feet stopped moving. His gaze moved upward as the sky descended around him. “So many stars out here,” he almost whispered.
“You can see all seven Sisters,” answered a rugged voice from the edge of the darkness. The dint of a shovel digging into hard packed earth rang in Sam's ears and a thin man emerged from the shadows, his overalls and short white hair visible first, his dark skin finally outlined by the two spotlights beaming from Bobby’s corner of the porch. He wiped his hands together and held out his right one to Sam without another word or symbol of introduction.
The three of them moved inside, Bobby sliding the screen door shut behind them. The sound of a running shower was coming from what had to be the bathroom and the thin man draped himself over the kitchen sink, pulling water up over his arms and around his neck. “Long drive you boys jus’ made. There’s the cot n’ the couch, but das it. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks,” Sam responded with a short smile that was completely lost on the man. He set his bag on the cot and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.
Bobby set himself in one of four deep wooden chairs closest to the wall.
The breeze from the screen door lifted the edges of the papers on the round table.
“So,” walking over to the counter, Sam leaned both hands on the smooth surface, palms open but knuckles down, a confused half-smile on his face. “Bobby’s never mentioned you that I can remember. You guys known each other long?”
The old man’s voice was drawn out as he shook his hands and wiped them meditatively on a clean towel. “Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.”
Sam turned around to glance at Bobby, who sipped the last of his beer and gave a noncommittal shrug in the direction of the kitchen. “Taught me at least half of what I know about demons.”
Dean emerged from the bathroom in a plume of steam, jeans pulled on but undone and a towel around his shoulders. Without looking up, he walked in and yanked open the refrigerator, grabbed a longneck from the door and uncapped it with his ring. “Hey Hal, you got any band-aids?”
Sam gave him a what the hell look. Dean returned it unflinchingly as he took a long pull from the bottle.
“Weren’t none under the sink?” Gracian caught the door before Dean closed it and pulled two more bottles. He faked a swing and then lobbed one across the room to Bobby, who caught it without moving much.
A long burp escaped from Dean and he gritted his teeth as he savored the bite in the back of his throat. “Nope.”
“Look in the kit under my bed, then.”
Dean nodded and turned back down the hallway.
“I’ve walked into the Twilight Zone,” Sam muttered, staring in Dean’s direction but at nothing in particular.
Gracian seemed to suddenly appear right in front of him with an open bottle in his hand. “There’s one left,” he said.
Sam took it with a short nod and a furrowed brow.
“Boy, you’d think…” Gracian’s smile showed a neat row of white teeth as he looked Sam up and down. “Well. Dean never was much for talk when he was here, anyhow.” He went to sit next to Bobby and pulled a worn deck of playing cards from his pocket, shoved several recent newspapers, print-outs, a laptop and a binder to one side. He glanced up to see Sam sip from the bottle, his long legs crossed and stiff where he leaned against the counter. He dealt four hands on the clear part of the table. “Bobby, help a kid out. He’s lookin’ a mite socially constipated.”
“I asked Dean to come out here about four years ago to help Hal with a poltergeist,” Bobby explained simply. He watched Sam’s expression soften, if only a little. “Dunno why he never said anything.”
“He wasn’t in the business anymore,” Dean said from behind Sam. He strolled in and sat down across from Bobby, picked up the cards and looked at them under his palm.
An uncomfortable beat of silence made its way around the table. Gracian rearranged the cards in his hand with his head tilted back. Bobby used the edge of his thumb to lift the corners of his cards and had to chase one as it flicked off the table. Dean continued to hold his under two folded hands, quirking his mouth to the side as he sniffed.
Without looking up from his cards, Gracian said, “Take a seat, Sam.”
Sam uncrossed his legs but didn’t move from his spot against the counter.
Dean turned his head to look at him. His eyes hesitated on something over Sam’s left shoulder before moving to his face with a look that veiled no apologies, but asked for at least the appearance of a ceasefire.
“What’s the game?” Sam asked as he eased over and took the chair next to Dean, facing Gracian. He picked up the stack of cards with one hand. The edges were brown and frayed. He glanced down at the face of the bottom card.
“What else?” Gracian frowned into his hands.
Bobby snorted and gestured to the fridge. “Nothin’ to bet with.”
Gracian smiled. “Sure as there be a Sunday comin’.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dean asked so cautiously that Sam couldn’t help but smile a little, then leaned back so far that the chair reared onto the back two legs. “Aw, come on-”
“One of us is gonna be real busy soon makin’ more iron rounds than they can shake a stick at.”
“Dammit,” Dean commented with a devious smile and fanned his cards. “I need a whole new hand, then.”
“Ain’t your call. It’s FDR’s over there,” Gracian muttered off-handedly.
Bobby sputtered into his beer. “You ain’t earned that yet. Show me what you got.” Bobby’s face turned serious, an expression he wouldn’t be able to hold for long.
Gracian shook his head.
Dean wiped his mouth with his hand to hide a smile.
Sam’s shoulders shook in silent amazement. He caught Bobby’s eye. “FDR?”
Bobby feigned indifference. “It’s Robert Franklin James. Well, don’t look at me.” He pointed at Gracian with three fingers, “He’s the one with more middle names than anybody’s ever gotta right to.”
Sam’s confusion only magnified when he glanced from Dean, who was practicing his poker face, to Gracian, who had an amused glint in his eye.
Bobby leaned forward and laid three cards on the table. “What is it, again, Hal? Fredric William Patrick Henry Adams Lincoln?”
Dean’s smile finally broke.
Gracian rolled his eyes. “How many times…?” Bobby raised his hands in a farcical surrender, so he turned his full attention to Sam, pausing to collect himself with somber genuflection. “’But though the blast is frantic and though the tempest raves, the deep immense Atlantic is still beneath the waves.’”
“Myers,” Sam said, smiling. “Fredric William Henry.”
“Smart boy. You’re all right. Not named after no crazy presidents or bank robbers, must be why.”
“Roosevelt wadn’t crazy,” Bobby retorted.
“Time to be scurred, Rosie,” Gracian drawled and slapped three cards down in a neat pile at the center of the table. “Turn ‘em in, fellas.”
Bobby shuffled his two cards back to front restlessly and Dean kneed Sam under the table with a sly smile. “Hope you’re not attached to those. Hal plays by his own rules,” he whispered and tossed his own three into the pile.
Sam fingered the top three cards off his stack without looking.
“You know,” Gracian pondered, “this hunt's gonna be a mite harder this time around. People are sayin’ things I ain’t heard before.”
“Oh? Like what?” Dean answered.
Gracian reached for the dealer stack and turned over a card, Bobby hissing at the result. “For one, whatever it is ain't just goin’ after people. Took out a whole herd of horses, too.” He turned over another card. “And stories ‘bout Old Sheldon bein’ populated with nonsensicals are startin’ again,” he turned the last ‘flop’ card, “seein’ as it’s almost Easter.”
Sam’s eyes darted sideways to Dean, who looked distracted by the cards, but before he could open his mouth, Dean asked nonchalantly, “What’s so special about Easter? I mean, besides Mr. Fluffy.”
Picking up a picture from the disorganized pile of paperwork, Bobby handed it to Sam. “Ostara, a Saxon fertility goddess, among other things. Those 40 days of Lent originally started as a pagan celebration, the Aurora spring festival, that ends on the night of the spring equinox. Sacred animal was a hare.”
Sam studied the angelic visage of a woman in flowing white robes holding a staff of flowers and surrounded by cherubs, rabbits, and a crane. Then he turned it for Dean to see.
Bobby elaborated, “Old Sheldon is a church, well, it used to be. There’s not much left now. It burned down a long time ago.”
“Oh, it’s still used by the locals here some of the time, for special occasion. One of which just happenin’ to be that spring festival,” Gracian continued.
Dean adjusted his legs. “So, they’re out there every year dissecting little bunny rabbits and dancing naked? Man, I’ve been missin’-”
“The point is,” Bobby interrupted, “Is that those kinds of rituals, they leave scars on a place after a while. It can take centuries, but there’s a history of sacrifice and resurrection in that place that'd make your hair stand straight up.”
Gracian nodded, laid down the ‘turn’ card and picked up the other thread of the conversation. “It’s the hare now. Part of the traditional sacrifice, if you went the way of them ancient, dark pagans.” He paused, staring at the new card and running his fingers around the edges of the deck meditatively. “Guess what it was originally.”
“Horses,” Sam blinked.
Gracian pointed at him in confirmation and then turned the ‘river’ card.
Dean, Bobby and Gracian all leaned forward.
“Hal, did you shuffle these?” Bobby asked.
“Yep.”
“Huh.”
“Hell," Gracian retorted, "You still don’t believe me about this deck doin’ all the talkin’, do ya? After all these years.”
Dean touched the edge of the river card, the deuce of spades. “Why two?”
“I imagine ‘cause it’s better than one. These middle three mean someone or somethin' is takin’ tributes and it don’t seem to care much who knows it,” Gracian replied.
Sam picked up his two cards and looked at them: the jack of clubs and the ace of spades. Bobby leaned over and glanced at them, gave a cursory nod and looked at Dean.
Dean nodded. “Hal?”
“Yeah.”
“The twentieth is the spring equinox. That’s only two days. I think me and Sam outta go talk to these people before we get caught with our pants down around our ankles on this thing.”
“What’d you get?” Gracian pointed his nose in the direction of Dean’s cards.
Dean flipped them over and made his best pick-up line face, “Deuce and king of hearts.”
“Shit.”
“What?”
Bobby looked at Dean with a tinge of disbelief. “That’s the suicide king. You ain’t goin’ anywhere alone, not unless Hal says so.”
Dean shifted in his chair and looked at Sam, who flipped his cards over and folded his arms, staring a hole into the top of Gracian’s head.
Gracian glanced at the cards and held Sam’s gaze, then nodded, his voice tinged with certainty, “I guess two is better than one, Ace. If he sticks close.”
Sam nodded back with a hard smile. Dean rolled his eyes and took another swig of beer.
“Not in my case,” Bobby flung his two cards at Gracian’s head. “You turned the jack of spades on me, you old geezer. I’m gonna be makin’ iron rounds until my eyes fall out.”
Sam followed Bobby outside.
Gracian re-collected the research from the hasty piles on the table, and laid it out for Dean to see.
Elbows straddling the research, Dean rubbed the tips of his fingers into the sides of his face. “I don’t understand how this has anything to do with Sam, Hal.”
The look that Gracian gave his own cards was long and hard. Then he thumbed the 'turn' card that had made him pause earlier and slid it toward Dean. It was obviously one he had waited to discuss: the nine of diamonds. “You got a little more than a month left, don’t ya?”
Dean sighed. "Bobby? He told you?"
"He don't say much that don't need sayin'."
“Forty-six days.” Dean looked up at the 50’s era clock above the cabinet. “Forty-five,” he redacted calmly.
“Then this has everything to do with Sam,” Gracian gently reminded him.
Down the steps and several yards behind the mobile home was another trailer, older and yellower, with a dingy porch light that was attracting the first flying insects of the season.
“Bobby,” Sam had been walking behind him and Bobby pretended not to notice, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his vest and his hat pulled down low. Without any warning, Bobby turned on his heels, his face as close to Sam’s as he could get.
“Are you doing anything?” Bobby’s voice was impatient, terrified.
Sam stumbled backwards, tripping over clumps of dead grass.
“There’s a right and wrong way to go about this, Sam.” Bobby almost followed him, but stopped short, his chest rising and falling. “So help me, I don’t wanna tell Dean, but I will if I have to.”
His voice refused to work. Sam’s eyes betrayed confusion, hurt and surprise for only a second before they washed over with flat metal. He steadied himself and stood up straight. “No.”
“Well, stop it.” Bobby breathed tensely, wheeled around and strode for the trailer.
Sam turned around, too, and faced the house for a minute before pulling his phone from his pocket. He glanced behind him to make sure Bobby had gone inside before pushing the call button. They were still sitting at the table, Dean making frustrated gestures at the piles on the table and Gracian leaning toward him on one elbow. The phone crackled and hissed with static.
:”My long lost Sam. How are you, Sam?”: said a voice that sounded a bit like a vinyl recording on a warped turntable, :”Are you calling to say how much you miss me?”:
He didn’t waste time with preamble. “I need you to do what we talked about and I need it now.”
He heard a long-suffering sigh. :”I told you before. If I wanted to pass the time licking the dirt off your boots, you know I’d be there in a heartbeat. Tracking down a nest of bloodsuckers and making one talk is not my idea of a good time. Although, now that I think about it, the making her talk part might be kind of fun…”:
“You hurt her and this whole thing will blow up in your face as fast as I can find you.”
:”Oh, Sam, that's kinky. Tell me what you’d do.”:
Sam glanced up nervously when the shadows inside the house shifted and Dean was rising from the table. He shifted his weight back and forth. “Ruby,” he said firmly, “Find Lenore. I need to know if she’s okay.”
:”She’s dead, Sam.”:
“What?”
He could practically hear her eyes roll over the phone. :”You mean besides the obvious fact that she’s dead.”:
Resisting the urge to shout, he rested a hand on his hip and took a deep breath. “Just do it.” He had to end the call and stuff the phone in his pocket. Dean was opening the door and walking outside, toward the car.
“Are we going somewhere?” Sam raised his voice to broach the distance, even though it wasn’t as far as the darkness made it seem.
Dean opened the trunk and looked surprised to see him there, noticeably not noticing that Sam was alone in the dark again. “Hey, Sasquatch. You talk to Bobby?”
Sam hesitated before shaking his head. “Not yet, not really. He was pretty beat.” He looked behind him at the dark path to the trailer.
Nodding, Dean lifted the bags of reference books from the trunk and shut it again. “Well, Hal’s got a hunch about what these things are. And your freak ass should take the couch, it’s longer. Sam?”
He faced Dean again and smiled vaguely.
“Give an old man a hand?” Sternly, Dean held out the bag and then grinned.
CHAPTER 5