A Haunting
Pre-series. Dean is 18, Sam is 14. John & Dean enter a haunted mansion to go after a vengeful spirit of a serial child killer.
Awesome art by votaku
A Haunting
"You can't keep him from me." The disembodied voice purred so close to John's ear, he shivered at the icy cold breath.
"Watch me." Gripping Dean tighter to his side, John tugged the ornate door handle, unsurprised when it wouldn't budge. Ghost had them bottled up tight on lockdown.
Feminine laughter echoed around the mansion's spacious foyer.
"This way, son." John hefted Dean higher, not liking the kid's sluggish movements. Damn ghost had flung him headlong into the iron-wrought banister. John headed into the east wing, searching for another way out, one arm supporting a groggy Dean, the opposite hand gripping an iron fire poker.
"I can walk," Dean murmured.
"I know you can." John pulled them down the wide gloomy hallway. There hadn't been electricity running through the abandoned estate for a decade, yet the fluted wall sconces flickered around them almost as though the spirit herded them. "Just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. I'll do the rest."
Nudging a door open with his foot, John peered inside, spotting a large bay window they could try. Gauzy curtains with moth-bitten holes billowed inward without a breeze to lift them in front of closed panes of old wavery glass.
"Dad."
Warning edged Dean's tone. John's gaze followed the darkness toward the end of the hallway where the woman materialized.
A slender finger waggled disapprovingly. "You can't keep him from me," her voice sighed around them, as close and intimately as a lover's, though her lips remained still. Her dark hair and pale pink gown-early 1900s style-floated around her willowy frame like smoke. She didn't look anything like a serial killer, yet John Winchester had been at this long enough to know appearances didn't mean jack.
Dorthea Truman had murdered five children when she was alive, two of them her own, though none of their bodies had ever been found, even after Dorthea also disappeared. It was rumored she'd run off out of grief until her journal was found years later inside a nook behind the dumb waiter, confessing to the gruesome murders of the children. Following, the mansion had a long history of children dying of mysterious causes, some simply disappearing until the last owners abandoned the property and whatever evil resided inside went dormant.
None of which would have been noticed by the Winchesters. Hundred-year-old murders weren't exactly on the Hunters' radar until local kids decided daring each other inside the creepy haunted estate would be fun. So far two kids were dead and that was two too many.
John's palm tightened around the fire poker. Spirits that specifically target children were the sickest kind of monsters out there in John's opinion. It's the reason he had kept Sam out of this particular hunt, but apparently at eighteen, Dean was still close enough to a kid for the bitch to go after. Rotting carpet wrinkled beneath John's boot, making him slide a little on the wood beneath. It was going to be a personal pleasure to take her down.
Pearly laughter tinkled around them. "He's mine, he's mine." And abruptly the ghost blinked out of existence and reappeared inches from John's face.
Prepared for the move, John swung out, passing the fire poker through her . . . and nothing . . . not a damn thing happened. Shocked, John swiped out again, but the poker stopped mid-swing as though it slammed against an invisible wall, vibrating in his fist. Light eyes turned to him just before he flew back into a door, jerking Dean from his grasp.
"Dad!" the kid screamed as the woman's arms enveloped him and they disappeared within swirling tendrils of smoke and mist.
Ooo000ooO
"Dean!" John pulled himself up off the floor, ran to where the ghost and Dean had disappeared, his chest heaving with fear. She had taken Dean. Bitch had his son.
What the hell kind of spirit was immune to iron? Did that mean salt and burning her bones-when he found them-wouldn't work either? John was reeling, everything he knew about getting rid of ghosts shot to hell with this one. The only thing for certain he knew about Dorthea Truman was that her ghost was bound to the house somehow. Sammy pointed that out when one of the kids that made it out said the ghost raged at the doorway, but sizzled from sight when she attempted to follow him. So get Dean out of the mansion, then find Dorthea's remains. Maybe she was a powerful enough ghost it would take an exorcism over her bones before he torched them. John knew several exorcisms by heart.
Rage and fear for his son threatened to buckle John's knees. Slow it down. Think it through. Dean needed him to be calm. John took a steadying breath, ran his hands through his hair. Okay, Dorthea couldn't leave the mansion, which meant she'd have to have stashed Dean within the estate somewhere. All John had to do was find him before Dorthea . . .
Gorge rose to his throat. John's hands curled into fists. He had to find Dean now.
ooo000ooo
"Shh, shhhh, darling. All will be well. Everything's going to be just fine."
Soft lips pressed against Dean's temple. Something really stunk. His eyelids fluttered open, sight hazy, brain cloudy, until his vision came into focus on the corpse staring back at him.
Dean flinched back, rolling onto something brittle that ground beneath his shoulder. Craning his neck to see what it was, Dean found himself on top of another skeleton. Small. Child. Dressed in those old-fashioned shorts and frilly shirt they used to force young boys to wear.
Gulping, he turned back to the other corpse, recognizing the thirteen-year-old girl that had gone missing only last week.
Dean frowned. He lay between two murdered children in . . . he took in his surroundings. Small tight dark cramped space. Pointy, like a triangle. Ambient light slashed in from some kind of stained glass window way way up at the point of the triangle. No doors or other windows. Like someone had mortared up their own hidey-hole. No way in or out unless you got dragged in by the poltergeist express. Peachy.
Dean went to sit up, grimacing at the sudden bout of dizziness.
"Don't be afraid, sweetheart. It will be over soon." A cool hand rippled across his brow. The ghost flickered beside him like a TV on the fritz, her knees melding through the dead girl's chest like transparent gelatin.
Dean lurched back from Dorthea Truman's palm. "The hell lady!"
She smiled indulgently, leaning forward over him and Dean found himself held immobile, unable to shift away. A blade suddenly flashed in her hand.
"You get away from me! Dad! Dad! I'm in here!"
"Shhhh." She lifted a finger to his lips at the same time she rucked his T-shirt up and rested the flat side of her blade across the goose pebbles rising across Dean's skin.
"Daaaaaaad!"
Ooo000ooO
Sam paced outside the motel room, too keyed up to remain inside. Something was off with this hunt, but he couldn't figure out what. He'd helped his dad with a lot of the research and it was a clear and clean cut case. Simple. Find the murderess's remains, which had to be in the house, and salt and burn her. His dad and Dean could do a job like this in their sleep. So what was wrong?
Sam's lips twisted, something nagging at him, but he couldn’t place it. He'd gone over the research a billion times. Maybe it was just that it involved kids. Those were always tough. And a crazy ghost. The lady had to be insane to kill her own children. And crazy meant unpredictable. He peered across the dark parking lot, willing the Impala to rumble into view.
Even though there were variables, like how difficult it might be to find a body no one else had managed to uncover in a hundred years, Sam had hoped his brother and father would be back by now.
Sam went over the details in his mind again. Dorthea Truman confessed to the murders in her dairy, but had never given a reason why. She grew up poor, but married into wealth, had the mansion built, then for no reason went bat-shit crazy and murdered her two children, and then two orphans her husband had apparently brought in to console his grieving wife because no one at that time knew she was the killer. Next she killed some random boy a little older than Sam-no one knew where she'd picked him up from or even that there'd been a fifth child until she revealed in her journal, in an almost giddy scrawl, that she was about to take the final child's life and it would all be over. That was her last entry before Dorthea, herself, disappeared. Now Dorthea was back, her ghost replaying the gruesome deeds she had committed in life.
Sam kept asking himself why. Why did she do it? What did she mean when she said it would all be over? He pressed his lips together because even at his young age he knew sometimes there weren't any answers.
Ooo000ooO
John ran down the third corridor, puffs of dust kicking up beneath his boots. He'd already systematically searched every room shooting off from the first two hallways, finding nothing. As a Hunter he knew it was vital to remain calm and keep with the search pattern, but as a father . . . systematic be damned. He was well beyond that now, tearing through the mansion, shouting his son's name.
"Dean! Come on, give me something! Dean!" Where are you, kid?
"Sing a song of sixpence."
A child's voice sang softly through the muted air.
John spun around, staring back at the empty corridor, dust motes floating in the hazy light.
"A pocket full of rye."
A small girl peeked out from behind a claw-footed antique sideboard. Thick blond ringlets bounced as she took a hesitant step backwards. Thin fingers curled into the fabric of her pinafore. One of her long stockings had fallen down, pooling around the ankle of a dainty laced-up boot.
"Do you know where Billy is?" Her bottom lip quivered.
"Billy?" John said and the child shrank back, eye's wide. John lifted his palms in a non-threatening gesture. "Who's Billy, honey?"
Her gaze tracked around the hallway, searching. "My-my brother. Momma took him."
Billy? William. Dorthea's seven-year-old son. John crouched down to be on the young girl's level. "Are you Elizabeth?"
The child nodded, ringlets bobbing. "Do you know where Billy is?"
John shook his head. "I'm sorry. Do you know where you . . ." He paused, wondering how to ask the spirit of a child where her remains were hidden. If he could find her, discover what kind of cranny Dorthea used, it might lead him to Dean. "Do you know where the other part of you is?"
"No!" The sweet little features contorted, eyes and mouth elongating into gaping holes. "I don't like it in there! I'm alone and it's dark!" Arms outstretched, she shoved into John, plowing straight through him like a jolt of electricity inside his chest.
Flat on his back, dazed and trying to squeeze in a breath, John blinked at the trailing wisps of violet light fleeing down the corridor.
Ooo000ooODean came to screaming in pain. He recoiled, expecting the ghost and her knife to still be at him, but he was alone. Well, alone as one could be squashed in a cramped hole with two dead kids. He lifted his head, relieved that he could move, no longer restrained immobile by the bitch while she carved into him. His chest was a bloody mess, drilling sharp pain with each exhalation. He fingered his soaked T-shirt up to survey the damage.
Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as it had felt. The slices weren't even that deep, just bleeding a lot, which could be bad in its own right. At least Insane Jane hadn't messed with his amulet. Dean pushed up on his elbows, stilling at the sudden throbbing in his head. Oh yeah, right. Head met banister earlier. Between his pulsing melon and sliced chest and being ghostknapped and trapped inside a wall, Dean would say things weren't exactly on the up side.
Making it to a sitting position, Dean shrugged out of his flannel shirt, panting through the stabs of pain, pulled his ruined T-shirt off and pressed the wadded flannel against his wounds to stem the bleeding, hissing at the sting.
Great. He really didn't want to face the ghost again shirtless. He already felt stupid and vulnerable enough. He eyed the dead girl next to him. Ghost carved her up as well by the looks of the dried blood coating her blouse, but her oversized open sweater looked clean. Dean grimaced. Naw. He'd rather go without.
Holding the flannel wad to his chest, Dean used his other arm to pull himself up the wall and gain his feet, resting there until the dank little room stopped tilting to the side.
"Okay," Dean spoke to the corpses."The plan is to get out of here and find my dad. Don't
suppose either of you know where crazy train's bones are stashed? No? Didn't think so." He stretched up, trying to reach the little stained glass window, but it was still several feet up. "But don't you two worry. Soon as I take care of her, I'm coming back for you, lay you to rest, well, or whatever."
Dean studied the walls. Old bricks and mortar. It was going to be a bitch to break through, even if he had some kind of sledgehammer. But it was an old house. Maybe he could find a crack in the mortar, loosen it up. Then again . . . he glanced at the little boy. By the old-fashioned outfit and the decay of the body, he had to be one of the original children killed when Dorthea was alive. She couldn't have floated in through walls back then, so how did she carry the kid in here? Had to be some secret entrance somewhere. Unless she dragged the child in here before sealing him up.
Rage flared inside Dean's gut at the thought of some poor kid, scared, alone and bleeding out while the scrape of mortar sliding across bricks little by little walled him in.
He was so going to end this ghost.
ooo000ooo
Sam stole a little blue Toyota truck. He didn't even have his driver's license yet, in his own name at least. He had two under aliases, though he'd never had to use them and Dean said with his baby face no cop would ever buy it anyway. Besides, stolen car. If he got pulled over, underage driving would be the least of his worries.
And then there was his dad to face. Sam had been told explicitly that he was not to be involved in this case beyond research. When Sam showed up at the mansion and found that Dean and their father were okay-which Sam really hoped they were-his dad was going to be pissed. He hadn't even let Sam go with them on their first scope out of the place . . . and they hadn't even gone inside.
Not that Sam complained. His dad's gut instincts were usually on the money and if he didn't want Sam anywhere near the ghost of a child murderer, that was fine by him. But John had also taught his sons to rely on their own instincts and right now Sam's instincts were screaming. His family was in trouble.
He pulled into the long driveway, seeing the mansion at a distance for the first time. Place was huge. The driveway seemed to go on for the length of three city blocks. He pulled up behind the Impala, disappointed that it was still here. He'd almost hoped it'd be gone, his dad and Dean finished and out of here, just missing him on the road. As though he could ever miss the Impala cruising past him.
Sam stepped out of the truck, easing the door quietly closed and looked around. The mansion's front doors were easily twelve feet high and at either side of the entranceway, the front of the building bent into sharp corners that extended outward like reaching arms. An uneasy feeling of those walls slapping together and crushing him between them rushed through Sam, which was stupid because entire building wings didn't just move.
Shaking the feeling off, Sam peered at the soft light flickering through the windows and reached inside the long front pocket of his hoodie for the scant supplies he'd gathered. A flashlight, lighter, small shaker of salt, which was already spilling inside his pocket, and his pocket knife. The lighter and knife he took out and slipped into his jean's pocket. He didn't have any accelerant because his dad had taken all they had with them.
Sam climbed the wide front steps and reached toward the most intricate brass doorknobs he'd ever seen. Looked like horse's heads, or maybe goats. The moment his fingers touched the knob, a hand clamped on his shoulder and yanked him back. He flailed down the steps, his butt smacking the concrete.
A boy flew at him, fists clenched, sending Sam scraping across the driveway until his back whacked against the truck's back tire. The spirit bent down into Sam's face, jaw muscles twitching with rage, veins bulging. Fingers dug against Sam's temples even as he tried to smack them away and feminine whispers floated on the breeze. The boy's eyes jolted up. He jerked away from Sam with a limp, and pressed his hands to his own head, features screwing into a snarl.
Sam didn't understand what was happening. He couldn't make out what the whispers were saying.
Without warning the boy slashed into his own face, clawing at ribbons of skin that curled down, revealing a bloody skull beneath. Hands flew faster and faster, digging into his throat, chest, arms like a swarm of locusts until the pulpy remnants dropped to the ground and dissolved into the pavement like the boy was never there.
The front doors creaked inward.
ooo000ooo
Dean's fingers were raw from searching every brick. Damn superior craftsmanship. None of the bricks were anywhere near loose. He wasn't even certain which of the three walls, if any, were outside walls and which faced the inside of the mansion. He somehow thought those might not be as thick.
He wasn't getting anywhere. His chest hurt, head ached, and the smelly corpses were really starting to freak him out. Plus they made for terrible company.
He sagged against the wall to take a breather, and lifted the wad of flannel his hands had been taking turns pressing to his chest. Bleeding had slowed considerably, would probably stop altogether if he stopped moving around, but his dad had no way of knowing where he was.
Pounding on the walls and shouting 'til he was hoarse hadn't brought Dad to the rescue so it was up to Dean to figure something out.
Dean's throat tightened. What if his dad hadn't come because he couldn't?
"Dad!" He shouted again, kicked at the wall, panicking. He had to get out of here, had to get out now. He grabbed his gun from the back of his waistband, aimed it at the wall, desperate to shoot his way out, willing to take the chance the bullet wouldn't ricochet off the bricks and hit him.
Aiming low so if it did ricochet the bullet would go high, Dean froze, the obvious answer slamming into him. "Stupid, stupid," he muttered, and lifted the muzzle of the gun toward the stained glass. No way his dad wouldn't hear this.
ooo000ooo
John raced down the hall in the direction the little girl-turned-wispy-light had fled, coming to a dead end where a dust-encrusted country landscape hung on the flat wall. It felt like the hallway narrowed, was closing in. He turned, wondering which one of the rooms she'd ducked into when she materialized, screaming at the shrillest timbre of her non-existent lungs, "I said no!" and shoved John into the wall, before speeding away back down the corridor, short legs pumping and blurring into streaky strands of light.
John lurched up after her, then stopped, pivoting back toward the end of the hall, brows furrowed.
Elizabeth appeared again, throwing out her arms and John skidded down the hall, tumbling over the sideboard table. Pushing up to his hands and knees, the girl was there again, flinging John backwards.
"I said no no no! I don't like it in there."
Scrambling backwards, John felt a pull in his side and hissed. Dammit, hopefully just a bruise. He pushed himself painfully up to his feet. Definitely a bruise, nothing felt broken. The child glared at him, but as long as he kept walking backwards toward the foyer she didn't shove him again, which confirmed John's hunch about where her remains were hidden and with any luck where he'd find Dean.
He just had to figure out how to get past a super-hyped up ghost of a five-year-old.
John sped to the foyer, dodged around one side of the crescent-spilt staircase and slid to where he'd dropped the duffel before when Dorthea slammed Dean into the banister. He really needed the sledgehammer inside the Impala's trunk, but since the ghosts had them on lockdown, he'd have to make do with what they'd carried in.
Taking out the canister of salt, he poured a fair amount into his palm, hefted the duffel over his shoulder and stormed back into that hallway.
Elizabeth appeared immediately and got a face full of salt. John didn't even break stride, walking through her dispersing smoke as her young screams trailed after him.
Dropping the bag, John pulled out the short tire iron, knocked away the landscape portrait, and struck the forked end into the faded flower wallpaper, pulling a chunk of the plaster down. He peered inside, cursing inwardly at the brick wall behind the wall of plaster.
Elizabeth shrieked behind him and John swung the tire iron around. The child dissolved around the metal rod passing through her head. At least one of these ghosts gave the appropriate response to iron.
He went back to pulling down the thin lathe boards and plaster until he had about a three-foot hole. He rammed the tire iron against the inner wall, savoring the ring of metal on brick.
"Dean! I'm coming for you, gonna get you out!" Please be in there.
John scanned the bricks, looking for any weak spots in the mortar. Not finding any, he jammed the point of the tire iron between two bricks and pushed in. Harder harder harder he dug in, gritting his teeth so forcefully he thought they might crack, John finally felt some give. Just one brick. He only needed to loosen one brick to give him the slack to pull out the rest.
Argggh! His bruised side was killing him, but a rugaru would have to eat him whole before he gave up. With enough of a hole in the mortar, John twisted the tire iron around and gouged the forked end between the bricks and pulled. The edge of one brick slid toward him. Choking his hands up on the rod like a bat, John tugged harder. Almost there. Got it! He slid the brick out and tossed it into the hall where it clanked against the hardwood floor.
"Dean! Dean!" He tried to see inside, but it was too dark. "Hold on!" Stooping, John rummaged through the duffel until he found a flashlight, clicked it on and came face to face with Elizabeth, almost invisible in the beam of light. He jabbed the tire iron at her, making her cringe back.
"I'm trying to help you," he growled and she blinked out.
Not wasting another moment on her, John angled the flashlight's beam inside the rectangular hole left by the brick, casting it around the three walls of the small room .The light played over the floor where a small skeleton leaned against the wall curled over itself. Brittle yellowed hair still retained the shape of fat ringlets.
She was alone.
No Dean.
Despair washed over John, clinging to his skin like smoke. He sagged away from the hole, the adrenaline of finding his oldest son in there leaking through his grasp, replaced by a deep penetrating sadness for this murdered child, and anguish over his own.
Tears prickled at his eyes, yet he blinked them back. He couldn't be too late. "Dean!"
As in answer to an unconscious plea, a distant gunshot rang out, followed by the clinking of shattering glass.
ooo000ooo
Chest heaving, Sam stared up at the enormous doors. They gaped open like an invitation. He shied backwards. The sense of lurking evil slithered out of that doorway, pawing at Sam with leprous fingers. Whatever was inside watched, waited for him to cross that threshold where he'd be vulnerable. He felt its cravings like a smear of oil staining the air.
Sam shook his head, retreating. He couldn't enter that place. Dad was right to keep him away. But his father and Dean had gone in there, were in there, and the feeling that they were in trouble had only grown stronger the closer he'd gotten to the estate.
Bracing all the young bravado he owned, Sam stepped inside and the doors slammed shut behind him. Jolting, Sam rushed back and yanked on the knobs. The doors were locked tight. Heart racing, Sam turned back to the dark foyer. No backing down now. The only way was forward, find his family, which-his gaze skittered around the space-was going to be difficult. The place was massive.
The foyer on its own was cavernous, the ceiling two-stories high with a crystal chandelier as large as a Volkswagen bug hanging from its center. Several wide hallways led off from the foyer like spokes of a wheel, the two wings in the front, two more on either side and another that ran off between the two sides of the crescent stairways. Looking down one of the halls, Sam could see rooms sandwiched between the halls that most likely had pass-throughs from one corridor to the next.
"Dad?" His whisper bounced disproportionally around the space. "Dean?"
Sam swallowed, straining to hear anything that might give away his brother and father's location. The heavy silence weighed down the air in eerie gloom. Unnerved, Sam headed toward the front corridor on the left, automatically beginning a systematic search. First each corridor and their rooms, then he'd move upstairs. He hoped he found them in one of these close rooms or this was going to take forever and he couldn't shake the sense that his family was running out of time.
As soon as Sam stepped into the hallway, light flickered on within the wall scones, casting weird shadows along the faded wallpaper of dancing satyrs and maidens. He froze, angling his flashlight up. "Okay," the young hunter breathed, passing his beam into the first room. Large dining hall, long table and chairs, very little else. No large pieces of furniture for his dad or Dean to be behind. He moved on to the next room. It was completely empty.
Crossing over to the other side-was the hallway closing in?-the feeling of being watched prickled Sam's skin. Sam pivoted, casting his light out, swinging it back at movement on the wall. Moving closer, Sam peered at the wallpaper, brows pulling together.
Just his imagination. This place was getting to him. Sam resumed his search, not seeing the satyrs leave their positions and follow along the wall after him, leaping across the doorways.
Sam paused, cast the light back the way he had come along the dusty hardwood floor showing between holes of rotting carpet. A plunk-plunk-plunk sounded from the other end and Sam spun back as a little gray ball bounced toward him. Stooping, he caught it in one hand. "Hello?"
Childish laughter spilled around him. A girl darted out of one of the rooms, skirt rucked high over petticoats. She held the hand of a smaller boy as they crossed the hall and dodged inside another room.
Sam ran after them, but found the room empty. He wavered inside the doorway, and scraped his teeth across his bottom lip. He tossed the ball in his hand. "Do you want your ball back?"
Stillness clung to the corners of the room within cobwebs.
Sam shifted back into the hallway.
"Geez!" he exclaimed.
The boy stared up at him, dark hair tousled from play. Small thumbs hooked behind leather suspenders pinned to old-fashion calf-length knickers. Slick blood smudged crisp lines sliced into his white shirt.
"No, Jamie," the girl's voice streamed along Sam's neck, lifting the ends of his hair like a sigh.
"But I want to play." The child held his palm out to Sam, large eyes expectant.
Sam licked his dry lips. "Have you seen anyone else in here?" He spoke to the ghost as though this was a regular conversation, hoping the younger boy would answer.
The kid nodded and Sam's pulse kicked up in speed. "Where?"
The ghost's gaze lowered to the ball in Sam's hand. "I'm not supposed to go near them. She won't let me."
A bite of fear pulled in Sam's stomach. "Who won't let you?"
Thin shoulders hunched in a shrug just before the kid sprang. Cold fingers passed through Sam's, clutching the ball away as the boy disappeared and the ball flew straight toward the back wall, but instead of bouncing off, the ball vanished inside.
Eyes wide with shock, Sam ran to the end of the hall. The end wall had a long crack running down from a small stained glass window several feet up from the foundation shifting at some point. Prying his fingers inside, he was able to pull some of the plaster away, which revealed bricks behind it, but that wall also had a large crack running along the mortar lines.
He lifted the flashlight to see if there was anything beyond that wall when he was shoved from the side, knocked into an open doorway where he slid across the hardwood on his forearms and hip. Sam barely had time to realize he was in a library of some sort when the older boy with the limp from outside materialized, glaring down at him, nostrils flaring in and out in angry exhalations. Sam pushed off the floor when the room exploded in chaos.
Books flew off the shelves, slamming into Sam, coating the air with dust. Sam curled over himself, taking hit after hit to his back as he crawled toward the doorway when he suddenly remembered the salt, pulled the shaker from the front of his hoodie, and fanned the salt out in a circle and the spirit dispersed in a cloud of mist. Books clattered to the floor around Sam.
"Ow." The young hunter rolled to his side, grimacing at the aches, knowing he was going to be sporting bruises for weeks. He was really starting to not like that ghost, but the fact that the boy didn't want Sam looking behind that wall, made him more determined to do it.
Picking himself off the floor, Sam went back into the hallway, picked his flashlight up and shone it through the crack. It was too narrow, so he tapped the end of the flashlight against one of the loose bricks, pushing it in where it fell with a hollow clunk. Leaning close against the bricks, Sam got his first look inside and immediately recoiled.
The younger boy was inside. Sam recognized him by the cuffs of his knickers pushed up above the skeleton's knee bones that were jammed into the sharp corner of the two far walls. The little gray ball rocked back and forth beside the thin finger bones.
A wave of dizziness washed through Sam and he stepped back, heartsick at what the crazy woman had done. How could anyone wall up an innocent child like that?
ooo000ooo"Dean? Dean, are you in there, son?"
John couldn't be sure, but he thought this was the corridor the gun blast had echoed from. Colored pieces of glass littered the floor at the end of the hall. "Dean!"
"Dad?" His oldest son's voice drifted through the shattered window above.
Relief hit John so hard that the tension in his muscles suddenly released and he had to throw out a hand to catch himself on the wall. Dean was alive. Thank God, thank God. "Are you hurt?"
John strained to hear the answer, fear amping back up when Dean didn't immediately reply.
"Not bad." Which could indicate a wide range of injuries the young man downplayed.
"Okay. Hang tight. I'm going to get you out."
His hands started shaking uncontrollably, but John swung the tire iron into the wall, breaking through the plaster, throwing his entire body into every hit and pull. In no time he'd punched out a good-sized hole and began working on the mortar between bricks when a cool finger traced the outline of his ear.
"Shit!" Spinning, John slashed the iron straight through Dorthea Truman.
Light eyes glinting, she leaned close into his neck and purred, "They belong to me." Harsh pain like an electrical current sizzled through John's every nerve, dropping him into blackness.
Part Two
Awesome art by votaku
A Haunting
"You can't keep him from me." The disembodied voice purred so close to John's ear, he shivered at the icy cold breath.
"Watch me." Gripping Dean tighter to his side, John tugged the ornate door handle, unsurprised when it wouldn't budge. Ghost had them bottled up tight on lockdown.
Feminine laughter echoed around the mansion's spacious foyer.
"This way, son." John hefted Dean higher, not liking the kid's sluggish movements. Damn ghost had flung him headlong into the iron-wrought banister. John headed into the east wing, searching for another way out, one arm supporting a groggy Dean, the opposite hand gripping an iron fire poker.
"I can walk," Dean murmured.
"I know you can." John pulled them down the wide gloomy hallway. There hadn't been electricity running through the abandoned estate for a decade, yet the fluted wall sconces flickered around them almost as though the spirit herded them. "Just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. I'll do the rest."
Nudging a door open with his foot, John peered inside, spotting a large bay window they could try. Gauzy curtains with moth-bitten holes billowed inward without a breeze to lift them in front of closed panes of old wavery glass.
"Dad."
Warning edged Dean's tone. John's gaze followed the darkness toward the end of the hallway where the woman materialized.
A slender finger waggled disapprovingly. "You can't keep him from me," her voice sighed around them, as close and intimately as a lover's, though her lips remained still. Her dark hair and pale pink gown-early 1900s style-floated around her willowy frame like smoke. She didn't look anything like a serial killer, yet John Winchester had been at this long enough to know appearances didn't mean jack.
Dorthea Truman had murdered five children when she was alive, two of them her own, though none of their bodies had ever been found, even after Dorthea also disappeared. It was rumored she'd run off out of grief until her journal was found years later inside a nook behind the dumb waiter, confessing to the gruesome murders of the children. Following, the mansion had a long history of children dying of mysterious causes, some simply disappearing until the last owners abandoned the property and whatever evil resided inside went dormant.
None of which would have been noticed by the Winchesters. Hundred-year-old murders weren't exactly on the Hunters' radar until local kids decided daring each other inside the creepy haunted estate would be fun. So far two kids were dead and that was two too many.
John's palm tightened around the fire poker. Spirits that specifically target children were the sickest kind of monsters out there in John's opinion. It's the reason he had kept Sam out of this particular hunt, but apparently at eighteen, Dean was still close enough to a kid for the bitch to go after. Rotting carpet wrinkled beneath John's boot, making him slide a little on the wood beneath. It was going to be a personal pleasure to take her down.
Pearly laughter tinkled around them. "He's mine, he's mine." And abruptly the ghost blinked out of existence and reappeared inches from John's face.
Prepared for the move, John swung out, passing the fire poker through her . . . and nothing . . . not a damn thing happened. Shocked, John swiped out again, but the poker stopped mid-swing as though it slammed against an invisible wall, vibrating in his fist. Light eyes turned to him just before he flew back into a door, jerking Dean from his grasp.
"Dad!" the kid screamed as the woman's arms enveloped him and they disappeared within swirling tendrils of smoke and mist.
Ooo000ooO
"Dean!" John pulled himself up off the floor, ran to where the ghost and Dean had disappeared, his chest heaving with fear. She had taken Dean. Bitch had his son.
What the hell kind of spirit was immune to iron? Did that mean salt and burning her bones-when he found them-wouldn't work either? John was reeling, everything he knew about getting rid of ghosts shot to hell with this one. The only thing for certain he knew about Dorthea Truman was that her ghost was bound to the house somehow. Sammy pointed that out when one of the kids that made it out said the ghost raged at the doorway, but sizzled from sight when she attempted to follow him. So get Dean out of the mansion, then find Dorthea's remains. Maybe she was a powerful enough ghost it would take an exorcism over her bones before he torched them. John knew several exorcisms by heart.
Rage and fear for his son threatened to buckle John's knees. Slow it down. Think it through. Dean needed him to be calm. John took a steadying breath, ran his hands through his hair. Okay, Dorthea couldn't leave the mansion, which meant she'd have to have stashed Dean within the estate somewhere. All John had to do was find him before Dorthea . . .
Gorge rose to his throat. John's hands curled into fists. He had to find Dean now.
ooo000ooo
"Shh, shhhh, darling. All will be well. Everything's going to be just fine."
Soft lips pressed against Dean's temple. Something really stunk. His eyelids fluttered open, sight hazy, brain cloudy, until his vision came into focus on the corpse staring back at him.
Dean flinched back, rolling onto something brittle that ground beneath his shoulder. Craning his neck to see what it was, Dean found himself on top of another skeleton. Small. Child. Dressed in those old-fashioned shorts and frilly shirt they used to force young boys to wear.
Gulping, he turned back to the other corpse, recognizing the thirteen-year-old girl that had gone missing only last week.
Dean frowned. He lay between two murdered children in . . . he took in his surroundings. Small tight dark cramped space. Pointy, like a triangle. Ambient light slashed in from some kind of stained glass window way way up at the point of the triangle. No doors or other windows. Like someone had mortared up their own hidey-hole. No way in or out unless you got dragged in by the poltergeist express. Peachy.
Dean went to sit up, grimacing at the sudden bout of dizziness.
"Don't be afraid, sweetheart. It will be over soon." A cool hand rippled across his brow. The ghost flickered beside him like a TV on the fritz, her knees melding through the dead girl's chest like transparent gelatin.
Dean lurched back from Dorthea Truman's palm. "The hell lady!"
She smiled indulgently, leaning forward over him and Dean found himself held immobile, unable to shift away. A blade suddenly flashed in her hand.
"You get away from me! Dad! Dad! I'm in here!"
"Shhhh." She lifted a finger to his lips at the same time she rucked his T-shirt up and rested the flat side of her blade across the goose pebbles rising across Dean's skin.
"Daaaaaaad!"
Ooo000ooO
Sam paced outside the motel room, too keyed up to remain inside. Something was off with this hunt, but he couldn't figure out what. He'd helped his dad with a lot of the research and it was a clear and clean cut case. Simple. Find the murderess's remains, which had to be in the house, and salt and burn her. His dad and Dean could do a job like this in their sleep. So what was wrong?
Sam's lips twisted, something nagging at him, but he couldn’t place it. He'd gone over the research a billion times. Maybe it was just that it involved kids. Those were always tough. And a crazy ghost. The lady had to be insane to kill her own children. And crazy meant unpredictable. He peered across the dark parking lot, willing the Impala to rumble into view.
Even though there were variables, like how difficult it might be to find a body no one else had managed to uncover in a hundred years, Sam had hoped his brother and father would be back by now.
Sam went over the details in his mind again. Dorthea Truman confessed to the murders in her dairy, but had never given a reason why. She grew up poor, but married into wealth, had the mansion built, then for no reason went bat-shit crazy and murdered her two children, and then two orphans her husband had apparently brought in to console his grieving wife because no one at that time knew she was the killer. Next she killed some random boy a little older than Sam-no one knew where she'd picked him up from or even that there'd been a fifth child until she revealed in her journal, in an almost giddy scrawl, that she was about to take the final child's life and it would all be over. That was her last entry before Dorthea, herself, disappeared. Now Dorthea was back, her ghost replaying the gruesome deeds she had committed in life.
Sam kept asking himself why. Why did she do it? What did she mean when she said it would all be over? He pressed his lips together because even at his young age he knew sometimes there weren't any answers.
Ooo000ooO
John ran down the third corridor, puffs of dust kicking up beneath his boots. He'd already systematically searched every room shooting off from the first two hallways, finding nothing. As a Hunter he knew it was vital to remain calm and keep with the search pattern, but as a father . . . systematic be damned. He was well beyond that now, tearing through the mansion, shouting his son's name.
"Dean! Come on, give me something! Dean!" Where are you, kid?
"Sing a song of sixpence."
A child's voice sang softly through the muted air.
John spun around, staring back at the empty corridor, dust motes floating in the hazy light.
"A pocket full of rye."
A small girl peeked out from behind a claw-footed antique sideboard. Thick blond ringlets bounced as she took a hesitant step backwards. Thin fingers curled into the fabric of her pinafore. One of her long stockings had fallen down, pooling around the ankle of a dainty laced-up boot.
"Do you know where Billy is?" Her bottom lip quivered.
"Billy?" John said and the child shrank back, eye's wide. John lifted his palms in a non-threatening gesture. "Who's Billy, honey?"
Her gaze tracked around the hallway, searching. "My-my brother. Momma took him."
Billy? William. Dorthea's seven-year-old son. John crouched down to be on the young girl's level. "Are you Elizabeth?"
The child nodded, ringlets bobbing. "Do you know where Billy is?"
John shook his head. "I'm sorry. Do you know where you . . ." He paused, wondering how to ask the spirit of a child where her remains were hidden. If he could find her, discover what kind of cranny Dorthea used, it might lead him to Dean. "Do you know where the other part of you is?"
"No!" The sweet little features contorted, eyes and mouth elongating into gaping holes. "I don't like it in there! I'm alone and it's dark!" Arms outstretched, she shoved into John, plowing straight through him like a jolt of electricity inside his chest.
Flat on his back, dazed and trying to squeeze in a breath, John blinked at the trailing wisps of violet light fleeing down the corridor.
Ooo000ooODean came to screaming in pain. He recoiled, expecting the ghost and her knife to still be at him, but he was alone. Well, alone as one could be squashed in a cramped hole with two dead kids. He lifted his head, relieved that he could move, no longer restrained immobile by the bitch while she carved into him. His chest was a bloody mess, drilling sharp pain with each exhalation. He fingered his soaked T-shirt up to survey the damage.
Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as it had felt. The slices weren't even that deep, just bleeding a lot, which could be bad in its own right. At least Insane Jane hadn't messed with his amulet. Dean pushed up on his elbows, stilling at the sudden throbbing in his head. Oh yeah, right. Head met banister earlier. Between his pulsing melon and sliced chest and being ghostknapped and trapped inside a wall, Dean would say things weren't exactly on the up side.
Making it to a sitting position, Dean shrugged out of his flannel shirt, panting through the stabs of pain, pulled his ruined T-shirt off and pressed the wadded flannel against his wounds to stem the bleeding, hissing at the sting.
Great. He really didn't want to face the ghost again shirtless. He already felt stupid and vulnerable enough. He eyed the dead girl next to him. Ghost carved her up as well by the looks of the dried blood coating her blouse, but her oversized open sweater looked clean. Dean grimaced. Naw. He'd rather go without.
Holding the flannel wad to his chest, Dean used his other arm to pull himself up the wall and gain his feet, resting there until the dank little room stopped tilting to the side.
"Okay," Dean spoke to the corpses."The plan is to get out of here and find my dad. Don't
suppose either of you know where crazy train's bones are stashed? No? Didn't think so." He stretched up, trying to reach the little stained glass window, but it was still several feet up. "But don't you two worry. Soon as I take care of her, I'm coming back for you, lay you to rest, well, or whatever."
Dean studied the walls. Old bricks and mortar. It was going to be a bitch to break through, even if he had some kind of sledgehammer. But it was an old house. Maybe he could find a crack in the mortar, loosen it up. Then again . . . he glanced at the little boy. By the old-fashioned outfit and the decay of the body, he had to be one of the original children killed when Dorthea was alive. She couldn't have floated in through walls back then, so how did she carry the kid in here? Had to be some secret entrance somewhere. Unless she dragged the child in here before sealing him up.
Rage flared inside Dean's gut at the thought of some poor kid, scared, alone and bleeding out while the scrape of mortar sliding across bricks little by little walled him in.
He was so going to end this ghost.
ooo000ooo
Sam stole a little blue Toyota truck. He didn't even have his driver's license yet, in his own name at least. He had two under aliases, though he'd never had to use them and Dean said with his baby face no cop would ever buy it anyway. Besides, stolen car. If he got pulled over, underage driving would be the least of his worries.
And then there was his dad to face. Sam had been told explicitly that he was not to be involved in this case beyond research. When Sam showed up at the mansion and found that Dean and their father were okay-which Sam really hoped they were-his dad was going to be pissed. He hadn't even let Sam go with them on their first scope out of the place . . . and they hadn't even gone inside.
Not that Sam complained. His dad's gut instincts were usually on the money and if he didn't want Sam anywhere near the ghost of a child murderer, that was fine by him. But John had also taught his sons to rely on their own instincts and right now Sam's instincts were screaming. His family was in trouble.
He pulled into the long driveway, seeing the mansion at a distance for the first time. Place was huge. The driveway seemed to go on for the length of three city blocks. He pulled up behind the Impala, disappointed that it was still here. He'd almost hoped it'd be gone, his dad and Dean finished and out of here, just missing him on the road. As though he could ever miss the Impala cruising past him.
Sam stepped out of the truck, easing the door quietly closed and looked around. The mansion's front doors were easily twelve feet high and at either side of the entranceway, the front of the building bent into sharp corners that extended outward like reaching arms. An uneasy feeling of those walls slapping together and crushing him between them rushed through Sam, which was stupid because entire building wings didn't just move.
Shaking the feeling off, Sam peered at the soft light flickering through the windows and reached inside the long front pocket of his hoodie for the scant supplies he'd gathered. A flashlight, lighter, small shaker of salt, which was already spilling inside his pocket, and his pocket knife. The lighter and knife he took out and slipped into his jean's pocket. He didn't have any accelerant because his dad had taken all they had with them.
Sam climbed the wide front steps and reached toward the most intricate brass doorknobs he'd ever seen. Looked like horse's heads, or maybe goats. The moment his fingers touched the knob, a hand clamped on his shoulder and yanked him back. He flailed down the steps, his butt smacking the concrete.
A boy flew at him, fists clenched, sending Sam scraping across the driveway until his back whacked against the truck's back tire. The spirit bent down into Sam's face, jaw muscles twitching with rage, veins bulging. Fingers dug against Sam's temples even as he tried to smack them away and feminine whispers floated on the breeze. The boy's eyes jolted up. He jerked away from Sam with a limp, and pressed his hands to his own head, features screwing into a snarl.
Sam didn't understand what was happening. He couldn't make out what the whispers were saying.
Without warning the boy slashed into his own face, clawing at ribbons of skin that curled down, revealing a bloody skull beneath. Hands flew faster and faster, digging into his throat, chest, arms like a swarm of locusts until the pulpy remnants dropped to the ground and dissolved into the pavement like the boy was never there.
The front doors creaked inward.
ooo000ooo
Dean's fingers were raw from searching every brick. Damn superior craftsmanship. None of the bricks were anywhere near loose. He wasn't even certain which of the three walls, if any, were outside walls and which faced the inside of the mansion. He somehow thought those might not be as thick.
He wasn't getting anywhere. His chest hurt, head ached, and the smelly corpses were really starting to freak him out. Plus they made for terrible company.
He sagged against the wall to take a breather, and lifted the wad of flannel his hands had been taking turns pressing to his chest. Bleeding had slowed considerably, would probably stop altogether if he stopped moving around, but his dad had no way of knowing where he was.
Pounding on the walls and shouting 'til he was hoarse hadn't brought Dad to the rescue so it was up to Dean to figure something out.
Dean's throat tightened. What if his dad hadn't come because he couldn't?
"Dad!" He shouted again, kicked at the wall, panicking. He had to get out of here, had to get out now. He grabbed his gun from the back of his waistband, aimed it at the wall, desperate to shoot his way out, willing to take the chance the bullet wouldn't ricochet off the bricks and hit him.
Aiming low so if it did ricochet the bullet would go high, Dean froze, the obvious answer slamming into him. "Stupid, stupid," he muttered, and lifted the muzzle of the gun toward the stained glass. No way his dad wouldn't hear this.
ooo000ooo
John raced down the hall in the direction the little girl-turned-wispy-light had fled, coming to a dead end where a dust-encrusted country landscape hung on the flat wall. It felt like the hallway narrowed, was closing in. He turned, wondering which one of the rooms she'd ducked into when she materialized, screaming at the shrillest timbre of her non-existent lungs, "I said no!" and shoved John into the wall, before speeding away back down the corridor, short legs pumping and blurring into streaky strands of light.
John lurched up after her, then stopped, pivoting back toward the end of the hall, brows furrowed.
Elizabeth appeared again, throwing out her arms and John skidded down the hall, tumbling over the sideboard table. Pushing up to his hands and knees, the girl was there again, flinging John backwards.
"I said no no no! I don't like it in there."
Scrambling backwards, John felt a pull in his side and hissed. Dammit, hopefully just a bruise. He pushed himself painfully up to his feet. Definitely a bruise, nothing felt broken. The child glared at him, but as long as he kept walking backwards toward the foyer she didn't shove him again, which confirmed John's hunch about where her remains were hidden and with any luck where he'd find Dean.
He just had to figure out how to get past a super-hyped up ghost of a five-year-old.
John sped to the foyer, dodged around one side of the crescent-spilt staircase and slid to where he'd dropped the duffel before when Dorthea slammed Dean into the banister. He really needed the sledgehammer inside the Impala's trunk, but since the ghosts had them on lockdown, he'd have to make do with what they'd carried in.
Taking out the canister of salt, he poured a fair amount into his palm, hefted the duffel over his shoulder and stormed back into that hallway.
Elizabeth appeared immediately and got a face full of salt. John didn't even break stride, walking through her dispersing smoke as her young screams trailed after him.
Dropping the bag, John pulled out the short tire iron, knocked away the landscape portrait, and struck the forked end into the faded flower wallpaper, pulling a chunk of the plaster down. He peered inside, cursing inwardly at the brick wall behind the wall of plaster.
Elizabeth shrieked behind him and John swung the tire iron around. The child dissolved around the metal rod passing through her head. At least one of these ghosts gave the appropriate response to iron.
He went back to pulling down the thin lathe boards and plaster until he had about a three-foot hole. He rammed the tire iron against the inner wall, savoring the ring of metal on brick.
"Dean! I'm coming for you, gonna get you out!" Please be in there.
John scanned the bricks, looking for any weak spots in the mortar. Not finding any, he jammed the point of the tire iron between two bricks and pushed in. Harder harder harder he dug in, gritting his teeth so forcefully he thought they might crack, John finally felt some give. Just one brick. He only needed to loosen one brick to give him the slack to pull out the rest.
Argggh! His bruised side was killing him, but a rugaru would have to eat him whole before he gave up. With enough of a hole in the mortar, John twisted the tire iron around and gouged the forked end between the bricks and pulled. The edge of one brick slid toward him. Choking his hands up on the rod like a bat, John tugged harder. Almost there. Got it! He slid the brick out and tossed it into the hall where it clanked against the hardwood floor.
"Dean! Dean!" He tried to see inside, but it was too dark. "Hold on!" Stooping, John rummaged through the duffel until he found a flashlight, clicked it on and came face to face with Elizabeth, almost invisible in the beam of light. He jabbed the tire iron at her, making her cringe back.
"I'm trying to help you," he growled and she blinked out.
Not wasting another moment on her, John angled the flashlight's beam inside the rectangular hole left by the brick, casting it around the three walls of the small room .The light played over the floor where a small skeleton leaned against the wall curled over itself. Brittle yellowed hair still retained the shape of fat ringlets.
She was alone.
No Dean.
Despair washed over John, clinging to his skin like smoke. He sagged away from the hole, the adrenaline of finding his oldest son in there leaking through his grasp, replaced by a deep penetrating sadness for this murdered child, and anguish over his own.
Tears prickled at his eyes, yet he blinked them back. He couldn't be too late. "Dean!"
As in answer to an unconscious plea, a distant gunshot rang out, followed by the clinking of shattering glass.
ooo000ooo
Chest heaving, Sam stared up at the enormous doors. They gaped open like an invitation. He shied backwards. The sense of lurking evil slithered out of that doorway, pawing at Sam with leprous fingers. Whatever was inside watched, waited for him to cross that threshold where he'd be vulnerable. He felt its cravings like a smear of oil staining the air.
Sam shook his head, retreating. He couldn't enter that place. Dad was right to keep him away. But his father and Dean had gone in there, were in there, and the feeling that they were in trouble had only grown stronger the closer he'd gotten to the estate.
Bracing all the young bravado he owned, Sam stepped inside and the doors slammed shut behind him. Jolting, Sam rushed back and yanked on the knobs. The doors were locked tight. Heart racing, Sam turned back to the dark foyer. No backing down now. The only way was forward, find his family, which-his gaze skittered around the space-was going to be difficult. The place was massive.
The foyer on its own was cavernous, the ceiling two-stories high with a crystal chandelier as large as a Volkswagen bug hanging from its center. Several wide hallways led off from the foyer like spokes of a wheel, the two wings in the front, two more on either side and another that ran off between the two sides of the crescent stairways. Looking down one of the halls, Sam could see rooms sandwiched between the halls that most likely had pass-throughs from one corridor to the next.
"Dad?" His whisper bounced disproportionally around the space. "Dean?"
Sam swallowed, straining to hear anything that might give away his brother and father's location. The heavy silence weighed down the air in eerie gloom. Unnerved, Sam headed toward the front corridor on the left, automatically beginning a systematic search. First each corridor and their rooms, then he'd move upstairs. He hoped he found them in one of these close rooms or this was going to take forever and he couldn't shake the sense that his family was running out of time.
As soon as Sam stepped into the hallway, light flickered on within the wall scones, casting weird shadows along the faded wallpaper of dancing satyrs and maidens. He froze, angling his flashlight up. "Okay," the young hunter breathed, passing his beam into the first room. Large dining hall, long table and chairs, very little else. No large pieces of furniture for his dad or Dean to be behind. He moved on to the next room. It was completely empty.
Crossing over to the other side-was the hallway closing in?-the feeling of being watched prickled Sam's skin. Sam pivoted, casting his light out, swinging it back at movement on the wall. Moving closer, Sam peered at the wallpaper, brows pulling together.
Just his imagination. This place was getting to him. Sam resumed his search, not seeing the satyrs leave their positions and follow along the wall after him, leaping across the doorways.
Sam paused, cast the light back the way he had come along the dusty hardwood floor showing between holes of rotting carpet. A plunk-plunk-plunk sounded from the other end and Sam spun back as a little gray ball bounced toward him. Stooping, he caught it in one hand. "Hello?"
Childish laughter spilled around him. A girl darted out of one of the rooms, skirt rucked high over petticoats. She held the hand of a smaller boy as they crossed the hall and dodged inside another room.
Sam ran after them, but found the room empty. He wavered inside the doorway, and scraped his teeth across his bottom lip. He tossed the ball in his hand. "Do you want your ball back?"
Stillness clung to the corners of the room within cobwebs.
Sam shifted back into the hallway.
"Geez!" he exclaimed.
The boy stared up at him, dark hair tousled from play. Small thumbs hooked behind leather suspenders pinned to old-fashion calf-length knickers. Slick blood smudged crisp lines sliced into his white shirt.
"No, Jamie," the girl's voice streamed along Sam's neck, lifting the ends of his hair like a sigh.
"But I want to play." The child held his palm out to Sam, large eyes expectant.
Sam licked his dry lips. "Have you seen anyone else in here?" He spoke to the ghost as though this was a regular conversation, hoping the younger boy would answer.
The kid nodded and Sam's pulse kicked up in speed. "Where?"
The ghost's gaze lowered to the ball in Sam's hand. "I'm not supposed to go near them. She won't let me."
A bite of fear pulled in Sam's stomach. "Who won't let you?"
Thin shoulders hunched in a shrug just before the kid sprang. Cold fingers passed through Sam's, clutching the ball away as the boy disappeared and the ball flew straight toward the back wall, but instead of bouncing off, the ball vanished inside.
Eyes wide with shock, Sam ran to the end of the hall. The end wall had a long crack running down from a small stained glass window several feet up from the foundation shifting at some point. Prying his fingers inside, he was able to pull some of the plaster away, which revealed bricks behind it, but that wall also had a large crack running along the mortar lines.
He lifted the flashlight to see if there was anything beyond that wall when he was shoved from the side, knocked into an open doorway where he slid across the hardwood on his forearms and hip. Sam barely had time to realize he was in a library of some sort when the older boy with the limp from outside materialized, glaring down at him, nostrils flaring in and out in angry exhalations. Sam pushed off the floor when the room exploded in chaos.
Books flew off the shelves, slamming into Sam, coating the air with dust. Sam curled over himself, taking hit after hit to his back as he crawled toward the doorway when he suddenly remembered the salt, pulled the shaker from the front of his hoodie, and fanned the salt out in a circle and the spirit dispersed in a cloud of mist. Books clattered to the floor around Sam.
"Ow." The young hunter rolled to his side, grimacing at the aches, knowing he was going to be sporting bruises for weeks. He was really starting to not like that ghost, but the fact that the boy didn't want Sam looking behind that wall, made him more determined to do it.
Picking himself off the floor, Sam went back into the hallway, picked his flashlight up and shone it through the crack. It was too narrow, so he tapped the end of the flashlight against one of the loose bricks, pushing it in where it fell with a hollow clunk. Leaning close against the bricks, Sam got his first look inside and immediately recoiled.
The younger boy was inside. Sam recognized him by the cuffs of his knickers pushed up above the skeleton's knee bones that were jammed into the sharp corner of the two far walls. The little gray ball rocked back and forth beside the thin finger bones.
A wave of dizziness washed through Sam and he stepped back, heartsick at what the crazy woman had done. How could anyone wall up an innocent child like that?
ooo000ooo"Dean? Dean, are you in there, son?"
John couldn't be sure, but he thought this was the corridor the gun blast had echoed from. Colored pieces of glass littered the floor at the end of the hall. "Dean!"
"Dad?" His oldest son's voice drifted through the shattered window above.
Relief hit John so hard that the tension in his muscles suddenly released and he had to throw out a hand to catch himself on the wall. Dean was alive. Thank God, thank God. "Are you hurt?"
John strained to hear the answer, fear amping back up when Dean didn't immediately reply.
"Not bad." Which could indicate a wide range of injuries the young man downplayed.
"Okay. Hang tight. I'm going to get you out."
His hands started shaking uncontrollably, but John swung the tire iron into the wall, breaking through the plaster, throwing his entire body into every hit and pull. In no time he'd punched out a good-sized hole and began working on the mortar between bricks when a cool finger traced the outline of his ear.
"Shit!" Spinning, John slashed the iron straight through Dorthea Truman.
Light eyes glinting, she leaned close into his neck and purred, "They belong to me." Harsh pain like an electrical current sizzled through John's every nerve, dropping him into blackness.
Part Two