Beatty, 1988 (part 5 of 9)
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 + a/n | Full Story (.PDF) | Artwork by starry_ice
the quiet game (i).
Everyone has played the Quiet Game. Crocodile-wearing Aliza Gallagher was fond of it, especially when her soaps were on and she, sweaty and flushed from the tap-tap-tap dance of her shoes around the flat, she collapsed in front of the television. Sam Winchester is world-class.
He can hear jumbled movement downstairs, a sort of haphazard thrashing and shifting and banging that means Pastor Jim has found him vanished. Part of Sam is tired of this already, wants to brush the dust from his clothes and the spiderweb from his hair and pop his head out the attic hatch and scare Pastor Jim half to death. The other part of him is tired in a different way and just wants to tunnel deeper into his city of cardboard boxes and vanity chests, locked safes and moth-eaten drapes.
His chest pulls in two ways: up, because he feels like he's going to retch, he's probably inhaled so much dust; and down, because that's the way your heart pulls when you're lost. That's when he realizes he's in two pieces again.
Warning; small, removable parts. Keep away from children. Recommended ages 4+. Which is what Dean says whenever they lift a toy (which isn't often, and they only ever last just long enough to be missed--kind of like Dad).
When Sam finally turns four, it's like he's been inducted into a secret club. When he makes a point of mentioning this, Dean tells him the 4+ means four years older; means older brothers only. But that's a little too convoluted to be true, even Sam sees that much.
When Sam shouts, you're a fat liar, Dean; I know everything, everything, and all you do is lie to me. I'm not a kid anymore, and you're a liar, Dean drops the toy in question. Styrofoam and balsa wood, some little toy plane that came in a plastic sheath, lying in the green green grass. There's a beat where no one moves or speaks.
For good measure, a coda: I'm not a kid anymore!
I'm not. I know you're lying to me. I know everything.
Dean backs off.
Looks like he's been thwacked in the stomach with a soccer ball. One slow exhale rolls out of him and his head is kind of bobbing-nodding, face twitching like he's trying to keep something in.
Inhale. Stops halfway and Sam can see his brother's throat constrict like that snake did at the store that one time, when the animal lady fed it crickets. That's what Dean's got inside of him. Black, crawly crickets, ugly and dying and hurt-bringing, but Sam doesn't know what put them there.
Sam gives the floor a contrite stare, and he can see the model plane out of the corner of his eye, red and white blurring to pink as he feels hot burning his cheeks and wet pricking at his eyes. Sorry, he doesn't say. He wouldn't know what to be sorry for.
Exhale. It shudders in the middle like broken window blinds and Dean turns it into a biting laugh. "No, you don't. No you don't, twerp." Then his timbre flatlines. "But you got me. There. Take it. It's yours." Then Dean treks back over the green and locks himself in the Impala.
Sam smashes the little plane in a dozen pieces, just kicks and digs and scuffs at it until it's all splinters and grass stained Styrofoam.
Everyone plays the Quiet Game, except for him and Dean. Because then, quiet's never a game. Either it's a command, Sit down shut up and strap in, or it's a consequence.
In Pastor Jim's attic, Sam sucks in air. Sucks in air and dust and who knows what else, and proceeds to cough it all back up. He wants Pastor Jim. He wants Dad. He wants Dean.
He wants to call out, but the banging and shuffling down below is already quiet, and Sam gets missed.
The desire, and subsequent hesitation, give way to something that feels a little like loss. And loss is hope, without the fear it won't be realized. It's the certainty it won't. That's the end of that.
Sam twists, grappling at one of the boxes, pulls himself up. Bits of floor (or is it ceiling? Attics are interesting places) come up with him, needled into the seat of his pants. Long, thin spears of thin old wood. They remind him of painted parts mixed in with blades of grass.
He tries to remember what came next.
Closes his eyes to the broken wood (in the grass. In the attic. Anywhere).
Dad came. They left. No one talked. No one--not even him--said anything when they passed by the world's largest ball of yarn. They just rolled on toward Kansas, leaving that great ball of yarn sitting on the horizon in the rearview mirror until it dropped straight out of sight and the only thing left was Dean's reflection, staring sullenly outward.
Sam wishes Dean would say something.
But it's Dad who speaks. The one thing anyone says the whole drive, and it's about rearview mirrors: "Lot closer than it looks, Sammy. You look at anything in those, and it's all a lot closer than it seems."
All Sam sees is him and Dean.
call waiting (ii).
The phone clicks back into the receiver at the same time everything stops clicking in Dean's head.
Sam was supposed to pick up.
Sammy's supposed to be sitting on Pastor Jim's scratchy lumpy too-familiar couch looking at some book, because that's all there is to do there. He's supposed to be waiting for his phone call, because that's all they ever did when Dad went out and had them left. He's supposed to pick up because Dean needs to talk to him and Sammy is always there to be talked at. Always.
Instead, Dean finds himself two steps shy of peace of mind, because Sam's not here, reallyreally not here, and it never before occurred to Dean that'd ever be an option. Dean is at school, Sam is at home; Sam is a pest, and Dean has locked him out of the car; Sam has set up base camp in the laundry shoot and he will throw detergent in your face--he really will!--if you intrude. Sure, whatever.
But it's never been, Dean is in Hell and Sam is effectively nowhere.
And Dean feels a little stupid, because he shouldn't need his baby brother around to keep him focused. But mostly he just feels like Sam's been gone too long and he's starting to get lost--because what is he supposed to do? He's sitting in Rita's back office, perched on a chair so deep and squishy Dean's chin just clears the desktop, and he doesn't have Sam, and all that's left is Dad; Dad, who's been boiled down to six essential words: sit tight, don't move, cover up.
Dean idles in the office like he's actually talking to someone, because he doesn't want Rita to know he didn't get through.
He doesn't know why.
He just wants--
Hey, little man. What can I do you for? says the waitress, all strawberry curls and too-red lips. Sammy scrunches his nose, doesn't seem to comprehend the question. I'm on vacation with my dad and my brother, he says. Oh really? says she, and Sammy says, Yes, really. And she smacks her lips; asks, Where you headed? and Sammy just keeps talking like she asked the question he wanted to answer--we saw the biggest ball of twine in the whole world! Biggest use'ta be in China, but this one, it started rolling, and just got bigger and bigger with twine until it rolled all around the world and--
Christ; what a mouth. Shut up, Sam.
Don't shush your brother, Dean.
--Yeah, don't shush me, Dean.
Just order your food, Sammy. Whitefall by midnight, remember?
So Strawberry Lady blushes and gets back to her job and--
He just wants normal. Or he wants to look normal, which would be fine, too. Maybe it's a little late for that with Rita, what with the Zombies and the guns and Jim.
At the thought of him, Dean's chest twists in a way he's not expecting, and for a moment he can't breathe and he's desperately afraid his body's going to start on the Not Working track all over again. He tailspins into the next moment before the world rights itself just as quickly as it spun.
No. (Fingers clench.) No, absolutely not. Not again. Breathe.
Breathe. (Onetwothree ontwothree one two three. One, two...three.)
...Okay. Right. So it's a lot late for some half-cocked play at normalcy. He's just teasing along some raw fantasy, and don't he know it. But he just--well.
He really wishes Sam had picked up the damned phone.
He looks up at the clock, hanging skewed on the wall. Five minutes. Oughta shoot for at least seven. Relay his adventures and all. Honestly, Dean'd give anything for thirty seconds. Where are you? Pastor Jim's, stupid. You good? Bored. Yeah, me too. See you tomorrow. You'd better. --That's all he'd need. Instead, he has two minutes of silence to waste.
Rita's got a picture frame on the desk she's using as a phone book, seems like. Two photos stuck inside. Her and some old guy, leather jacket and a shiny head. Nice car. Second one looks like it was taken in the diner. They're sweaty and completely plastered, but they look happy enough. Not a drunk happy, because Dad never got that smiley, no matter how drunk he got; just a normal happy.
Dean wonders where the guy is now. Probably in Blue Earth, Nowhere, like Sam.
Notes taped around the edge of the picture frame go like this:
Beatty Mercantile, 9p-3a. Ask for Simon.
Simon (home). A number.
Simon (parents). A number.
Gloria Tanner. Dress. $270, maybe less if you can talk her down. A number.
Solomon Stewart, flowers. Kady Harper, catering. Ben Foley, music. Agnes Cathcart, rings. Fancy, but Dean can only guess what the hell it's all supposed to be for.
Howard Brace--Carson City PD. Restraining order.
That one's familiar. Restraining order means yeah, Dad killed the thing; 'course he did. But the beneficiary isn't too happy, and it's time to split. New names, new place. New start (but not a fresh one. Same's the last, and same outcome).
Dean tilts his head, looks up again at the skewed clock. Eight minutes. More than enough. He pushes the chair out from under the desk, gives it one last spin.
Comes out.
Rita's waiting.
Dean pictures her sitting right where she is with that Simon guy. Whatever he did made him get gone, Dean wonders if it was better or worse than exhuming Granny's corpse. Breaking and entering. Shooting at things not there.
Probably not worse.
Have to be a monster, it was worse than that. Dad would've heard of it.
...Right?
But then, things get bad enough, they get quieter. Covered up, maybe; talked into never getting talked about. Dean is familiar with the pattern, in more ways than one.
Sam really should've picked up.
the quiet game (ii).
Sam rips into the skin of his finger when he's not paying quite enough attention to the cardboard box he's edging open, and old aches scatter in favor of immediate hurt.
Dean would laugh at him for yelping like that at a papercut, of all things, but Sam maintains that cardboard can be just as vicious as the next thing when it takes you by surprise. Dean's not here and he doesn't see and he doesn't laugh. Dean's not here and he doesn't get the first aid kit and he doesn't rub alcohol into the cut with ow Dean that hurts stop that you're putting too much! especial fervor and he isn't there to make Sam believe Band-Aids are a magic cure-all.
Sam hangs in limbo for a moment, because he's not sure what comes next if Stop that, Dean! doesn't. He isn't sure what comes next, if Dean's not there to move them forward.
But he has to learn someday, so Sam clamps his forefinger in the fist of his good hand and squeezes tight.
He looks inside the offending box.
It's not unlike the trunk of the Impala. Old clothes, moldy-smelling articles that Dad keeps for emergencies and that all of them dread, maybe even more than the emergency itself. The stupid thing about this box is that all the clothes are folded, crisp and neat, like they're store-new.
Sam takes it upon himself to drop the outfits into the disheveled pile they belong in. He's a little tentative at first, trying out his damaged finger after he's decided it's stopped stinging enough to cry over. But it's not bad, and if he gets a little blood on the shirt he balls up and throws in a corner, it's all the better.
It belongs there. Sam is establishing the natural order of things, things as they are supposed to be. His blood on Pastor Jim's ugly old button-up, the rest of the rags strewn about in the attic. It all belongs here.
Sam stands, his back to the window so his shadow stretches out over his handiwork. It looks like a whole town of people fell to dust, leaving only their clothes to mark their space. Pieces of them catch in the sunlight and Sam watches as they skate on some imperceptible wind.
The attic is different now. Not as empty, but just as quiet. Sam knows the feeling, and the familiarity washes over him like late August over summer.
In summertime, everything's a little brighter. Clearer. Pavement flickers out ahead like there's a sheet of water hanging in the air and Dad is going to splash right through it. Dad keeps the windows down and they only stop in places green or bright or new. Summer starts on Long Island and edges northwest: Scranton, Youngtown, Canton, and Kalamazoo. Kokomo, and they sit through a Beach Boys song nobody likes, and it doesn't matter. Dean sings along with the chorus, and Sam hums quietly. Dad joins in by not shutting them up after the seventh sequential rendition. Summer's good. Summer's free, and fast, and breezy straight through Illinois and Iowa. Then the season starts listing--little by little, so slow you can hardly tell, but it's falling behind and Dad doesn't once look back.
They spend a cold evening in Spencer; Dad goes out and it rains and when Dad finally comes back Dean orders Sam under the covers lie down, shut your eyes and don't get up 'til I tell you, and he sounds so much like Dad in that split, broken moment that it scares Sam into shivering submission.
Dad and Dean are up the remaining half of the night, fumbling about in the bathroom. Sam waits up, too. Whole place smells like isopropyl alcohol and plastic adhesive wrap. It's the first time Sam realizes he has absolutely no idea what Dad does.
Only time he'd ever seen someone hurt that bad was when they'd gone down that hill in the shopping cart--that was the time when Dean had somehow managed to crack a rib, 'waiting in the Impala.'
Dad wasn't happy.
If it's possible, Dean is even less happy in Spencer than Dad was then. Sam hides under the covers until morning.
After Spencer, it's a clear break to Blue Earth and they leave summer in a septic heap off Highway 71, outside the Hannah Marie Country Inn. Late August settles in at the edges and pulls; the Impala grinds slower and slower, the windows go up to keep the bugs out, and Dad snaps the radio off, to save whatever energy's left to be saved.
Iowa snakes up into Minnesota and the drive is quieter than whispers, just the hiss of tire rubber against hot pavement and the squeak of sweaty bodies shifting on leather seats. Dad doesn't look back and Dean stares out the window and Sam looks down at the tear in the seam of his left shoe, digs at it with the toe of the other.
It's the kind of quiet that presses in on a roomful--a carful--of people looking through each other. It's the kind of quiet that's got heft to it, turns your eyes down (don't look), glues your lips shut (don't speak), builds up silence like masonry between you and everything else (don't feel).
It's the kind of quiet that walks out the door and leaves you alone in an attic.
Sam sighs, wet and warbly like thunder before tears. He is alone in the attic.
He threads through the stacks of boxes, a giant amongst squat, brown buildings. From their insides, he confiscates music boxes, makeup sets. Girls' combs and dolls and why does Pastor Jim have these things? Curios and snuffboxes, a set of tarnished silverware. Wicker balls, baseball bats, knives with letters scratched into the blade, and old old books--instruments without strings, and cups that look painful to drink from.
There's a quickening in his gut, and his lips are so dry he feels them chafe against his sleeve as he attempts to wipe the dust from his face. He is alone in the attic. There's nothing here.
There's nothing here. He is alone in the attic. But every time he turns around, he expects to see someone hunched over him; blocking his light, or ready to tackle him down, or--something. He kind of expects Dean.
He is alone. He is alone. There is no one in the attic but him. He is alone in the attic. Still, he can't shake his coiling in his chest, like he's swallowed a can of worms and they're struggling their way down to his toes.
"Pastor Jim...?" he calls, tentative. His throat is so dry it's almost not a sound at all. He sounds full of dust. "Pastor Jim?"
He hopes he can climb down the ladder as easy as he climbed up. In his limited experience, it's always harder to go back than it is to plunge forward.
He drops to his knees and starts feeling for the rise in the floor and the latch that seals the way back down. The wood catches on his injured finger and he yelps. "Pastor Jim?"
It doesn't budge.
"Pastor Jim!"
Harder. Pull harder. It's Dean's answer to everything. It has to work.
"Pastor Jim?
Dad?
Dean?
Dean?"
"Hey." A hand jogs his shoulder. "Hey."
Sam freezes.
"Sammy."
The worms turn to rocks in his chest. It's leaning on toward evening one day, late August, in Blue Earth.
There are two people in the world call him Sammy, and they absolutely are not here. But Sam is not alone in the attic.
"Sammy, I don't think we're done here."
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 + a/n | Full Story (.PDF) | Artwork by starry_ice
the quiet game (i).
Everyone has played the Quiet Game. Crocodile-wearing Aliza Gallagher was fond of it, especially when her soaps were on and she, sweaty and flushed from the tap-tap-tap dance of her shoes around the flat, she collapsed in front of the television. Sam Winchester is world-class.
He can hear jumbled movement downstairs, a sort of haphazard thrashing and shifting and banging that means Pastor Jim has found him vanished. Part of Sam is tired of this already, wants to brush the dust from his clothes and the spiderweb from his hair and pop his head out the attic hatch and scare Pastor Jim half to death. The other part of him is tired in a different way and just wants to tunnel deeper into his city of cardboard boxes and vanity chests, locked safes and moth-eaten drapes.
His chest pulls in two ways: up, because he feels like he's going to retch, he's probably inhaled so much dust; and down, because that's the way your heart pulls when you're lost. That's when he realizes he's in two pieces again.
Warning; small, removable parts. Keep away from children. Recommended ages 4+. Which is what Dean says whenever they lift a toy (which isn't often, and they only ever last just long enough to be missed--kind of like Dad).
When Sam finally turns four, it's like he's been inducted into a secret club. When he makes a point of mentioning this, Dean tells him the 4+ means four years older; means older brothers only. But that's a little too convoluted to be true, even Sam sees that much.
When Sam shouts, you're a fat liar, Dean; I know everything, everything, and all you do is lie to me. I'm not a kid anymore, and you're a liar, Dean drops the toy in question. Styrofoam and balsa wood, some little toy plane that came in a plastic sheath, lying in the green green grass. There's a beat where no one moves or speaks.
For good measure, a coda: I'm not a kid anymore!
I'm not. I know you're lying to me. I know everything.
Dean backs off.
Looks like he's been thwacked in the stomach with a soccer ball. One slow exhale rolls out of him and his head is kind of bobbing-nodding, face twitching like he's trying to keep something in.
Inhale. Stops halfway and Sam can see his brother's throat constrict like that snake did at the store that one time, when the animal lady fed it crickets. That's what Dean's got inside of him. Black, crawly crickets, ugly and dying and hurt-bringing, but Sam doesn't know what put them there.
Sam gives the floor a contrite stare, and he can see the model plane out of the corner of his eye, red and white blurring to pink as he feels hot burning his cheeks and wet pricking at his eyes. Sorry, he doesn't say. He wouldn't know what to be sorry for.
Exhale. It shudders in the middle like broken window blinds and Dean turns it into a biting laugh. "No, you don't. No you don't, twerp." Then his timbre flatlines. "But you got me. There. Take it. It's yours." Then Dean treks back over the green and locks himself in the Impala.
Sam smashes the little plane in a dozen pieces, just kicks and digs and scuffs at it until it's all splinters and grass stained Styrofoam.
Everyone plays the Quiet Game, except for him and Dean. Because then, quiet's never a game. Either it's a command, Sit down shut up and strap in, or it's a consequence.
In Pastor Jim's attic, Sam sucks in air. Sucks in air and dust and who knows what else, and proceeds to cough it all back up. He wants Pastor Jim. He wants Dad. He wants Dean.
He wants to call out, but the banging and shuffling down below is already quiet, and Sam gets missed.
The desire, and subsequent hesitation, give way to something that feels a little like loss. And loss is hope, without the fear it won't be realized. It's the certainty it won't. That's the end of that.
Sam twists, grappling at one of the boxes, pulls himself up. Bits of floor (or is it ceiling? Attics are interesting places) come up with him, needled into the seat of his pants. Long, thin spears of thin old wood. They remind him of painted parts mixed in with blades of grass.
He tries to remember what came next.
Closes his eyes to the broken wood (in the grass. In the attic. Anywhere).
Dad came. They left. No one talked. No one--not even him--said anything when they passed by the world's largest ball of yarn. They just rolled on toward Kansas, leaving that great ball of yarn sitting on the horizon in the rearview mirror until it dropped straight out of sight and the only thing left was Dean's reflection, staring sullenly outward.
Sam wishes Dean would say something.
But it's Dad who speaks. The one thing anyone says the whole drive, and it's about rearview mirrors: "Lot closer than it looks, Sammy. You look at anything in those, and it's all a lot closer than it seems."
All Sam sees is him and Dean.
call waiting (ii).
The phone clicks back into the receiver at the same time everything stops clicking in Dean's head.
Sam was supposed to pick up.
Sammy's supposed to be sitting on Pastor Jim's scratchy lumpy too-familiar couch looking at some book, because that's all there is to do there. He's supposed to be waiting for his phone call, because that's all they ever did when Dad went out and had them left. He's supposed to pick up because Dean needs to talk to him and Sammy is always there to be talked at. Always.
Instead, Dean finds himself two steps shy of peace of mind, because Sam's not here, reallyreally not here, and it never before occurred to Dean that'd ever be an option. Dean is at school, Sam is at home; Sam is a pest, and Dean has locked him out of the car; Sam has set up base camp in the laundry shoot and he will throw detergent in your face--he really will!--if you intrude. Sure, whatever.
But it's never been, Dean is in Hell and Sam is effectively nowhere.
And Dean feels a little stupid, because he shouldn't need his baby brother around to keep him focused. But mostly he just feels like Sam's been gone too long and he's starting to get lost--because what is he supposed to do? He's sitting in Rita's back office, perched on a chair so deep and squishy Dean's chin just clears the desktop, and he doesn't have Sam, and all that's left is Dad; Dad, who's been boiled down to six essential words: sit tight, don't move, cover up.
Dean idles in the office like he's actually talking to someone, because he doesn't want Rita to know he didn't get through.
He doesn't know why.
He just wants--
Hey, little man. What can I do you for? says the waitress, all strawberry curls and too-red lips. Sammy scrunches his nose, doesn't seem to comprehend the question. I'm on vacation with my dad and my brother, he says. Oh really? says she, and Sammy says, Yes, really. And she smacks her lips; asks, Where you headed? and Sammy just keeps talking like she asked the question he wanted to answer--we saw the biggest ball of twine in the whole world! Biggest use'ta be in China, but this one, it started rolling, and just got bigger and bigger with twine until it rolled all around the world and--
Christ; what a mouth. Shut up, Sam.
Don't shush your brother, Dean.
--Yeah, don't shush me, Dean.
Just order your food, Sammy. Whitefall by midnight, remember?
So Strawberry Lady blushes and gets back to her job and--
He just wants normal. Or he wants to look normal, which would be fine, too. Maybe it's a little late for that with Rita, what with the Zombies and the guns and Jim.
At the thought of him, Dean's chest twists in a way he's not expecting, and for a moment he can't breathe and he's desperately afraid his body's going to start on the Not Working track all over again. He tailspins into the next moment before the world rights itself just as quickly as it spun.
No. (Fingers clench.) No, absolutely not. Not again. Breathe.
Breathe. (Onetwothree ontwothree one two three. One, two...three.)
...Okay. Right. So it's a lot late for some half-cocked play at normalcy. He's just teasing along some raw fantasy, and don't he know it. But he just--well.
He really wishes Sam had picked up the damned phone.
He looks up at the clock, hanging skewed on the wall. Five minutes. Oughta shoot for at least seven. Relay his adventures and all. Honestly, Dean'd give anything for thirty seconds. Where are you? Pastor Jim's, stupid. You good? Bored. Yeah, me too. See you tomorrow. You'd better. --That's all he'd need. Instead, he has two minutes of silence to waste.
Rita's got a picture frame on the desk she's using as a phone book, seems like. Two photos stuck inside. Her and some old guy, leather jacket and a shiny head. Nice car. Second one looks like it was taken in the diner. They're sweaty and completely plastered, but they look happy enough. Not a drunk happy, because Dad never got that smiley, no matter how drunk he got; just a normal happy.
Dean wonders where the guy is now. Probably in Blue Earth, Nowhere, like Sam.
Notes taped around the edge of the picture frame go like this:
Beatty Mercantile, 9p-3a. Ask for Simon.
Simon (home). A number.
Simon (parents). A number.
Gloria Tanner. Dress. $270, maybe less if you can talk her down. A number.
Solomon Stewart, flowers. Kady Harper, catering. Ben Foley, music. Agnes Cathcart, rings. Fancy, but Dean can only guess what the hell it's all supposed to be for.
Howard Brace--Carson City PD. Restraining order.
That one's familiar. Restraining order means yeah, Dad killed the thing; 'course he did. But the beneficiary isn't too happy, and it's time to split. New names, new place. New start (but not a fresh one. Same's the last, and same outcome).
Dean tilts his head, looks up again at the skewed clock. Eight minutes. More than enough. He pushes the chair out from under the desk, gives it one last spin.
Comes out.
Rita's waiting.
Dean pictures her sitting right where she is with that Simon guy. Whatever he did made him get gone, Dean wonders if it was better or worse than exhuming Granny's corpse. Breaking and entering. Shooting at things not there.
Probably not worse.
Have to be a monster, it was worse than that. Dad would've heard of it.
...Right?
But then, things get bad enough, they get quieter. Covered up, maybe; talked into never getting talked about. Dean is familiar with the pattern, in more ways than one.
Sam really should've picked up.
the quiet game (ii).
Sam rips into the skin of his finger when he's not paying quite enough attention to the cardboard box he's edging open, and old aches scatter in favor of immediate hurt.
Dean would laugh at him for yelping like that at a papercut, of all things, but Sam maintains that cardboard can be just as vicious as the next thing when it takes you by surprise. Dean's not here and he doesn't see and he doesn't laugh. Dean's not here and he doesn't get the first aid kit and he doesn't rub alcohol into the cut with ow Dean that hurts stop that you're putting too much! especial fervor and he isn't there to make Sam believe Band-Aids are a magic cure-all.
Sam hangs in limbo for a moment, because he's not sure what comes next if Stop that, Dean! doesn't. He isn't sure what comes next, if Dean's not there to move them forward.
But he has to learn someday, so Sam clamps his forefinger in the fist of his good hand and squeezes tight.
He looks inside the offending box.
It's not unlike the trunk of the Impala. Old clothes, moldy-smelling articles that Dad keeps for emergencies and that all of them dread, maybe even more than the emergency itself. The stupid thing about this box is that all the clothes are folded, crisp and neat, like they're store-new.
Sam takes it upon himself to drop the outfits into the disheveled pile they belong in. He's a little tentative at first, trying out his damaged finger after he's decided it's stopped stinging enough to cry over. But it's not bad, and if he gets a little blood on the shirt he balls up and throws in a corner, it's all the better.
It belongs there. Sam is establishing the natural order of things, things as they are supposed to be. His blood on Pastor Jim's ugly old button-up, the rest of the rags strewn about in the attic. It all belongs here.
Sam stands, his back to the window so his shadow stretches out over his handiwork. It looks like a whole town of people fell to dust, leaving only their clothes to mark their space. Pieces of them catch in the sunlight and Sam watches as they skate on some imperceptible wind.
The attic is different now. Not as empty, but just as quiet. Sam knows the feeling, and the familiarity washes over him like late August over summer.
In summertime, everything's a little brighter. Clearer. Pavement flickers out ahead like there's a sheet of water hanging in the air and Dad is going to splash right through it. Dad keeps the windows down and they only stop in places green or bright or new. Summer starts on Long Island and edges northwest: Scranton, Youngtown, Canton, and Kalamazoo. Kokomo, and they sit through a Beach Boys song nobody likes, and it doesn't matter. Dean sings along with the chorus, and Sam hums quietly. Dad joins in by not shutting them up after the seventh sequential rendition. Summer's good. Summer's free, and fast, and breezy straight through Illinois and Iowa. Then the season starts listing--little by little, so slow you can hardly tell, but it's falling behind and Dad doesn't once look back.
They spend a cold evening in Spencer; Dad goes out and it rains and when Dad finally comes back Dean orders Sam under the covers lie down, shut your eyes and don't get up 'til I tell you, and he sounds so much like Dad in that split, broken moment that it scares Sam into shivering submission.
Dad and Dean are up the remaining half of the night, fumbling about in the bathroom. Sam waits up, too. Whole place smells like isopropyl alcohol and plastic adhesive wrap. It's the first time Sam realizes he has absolutely no idea what Dad does.
Only time he'd ever seen someone hurt that bad was when they'd gone down that hill in the shopping cart--that was the time when Dean had somehow managed to crack a rib, 'waiting in the Impala.'
Dad wasn't happy.
If it's possible, Dean is even less happy in Spencer than Dad was then. Sam hides under the covers until morning.
After Spencer, it's a clear break to Blue Earth and they leave summer in a septic heap off Highway 71, outside the Hannah Marie Country Inn. Late August settles in at the edges and pulls; the Impala grinds slower and slower, the windows go up to keep the bugs out, and Dad snaps the radio off, to save whatever energy's left to be saved.
Iowa snakes up into Minnesota and the drive is quieter than whispers, just the hiss of tire rubber against hot pavement and the squeak of sweaty bodies shifting on leather seats. Dad doesn't look back and Dean stares out the window and Sam looks down at the tear in the seam of his left shoe, digs at it with the toe of the other.
It's the kind of quiet that presses in on a roomful--a carful--of people looking through each other. It's the kind of quiet that's got heft to it, turns your eyes down (don't look), glues your lips shut (don't speak), builds up silence like masonry between you and everything else (don't feel).
It's the kind of quiet that walks out the door and leaves you alone in an attic.
Sam sighs, wet and warbly like thunder before tears. He is alone in the attic.
He threads through the stacks of boxes, a giant amongst squat, brown buildings. From their insides, he confiscates music boxes, makeup sets. Girls' combs and dolls and why does Pastor Jim have these things? Curios and snuffboxes, a set of tarnished silverware. Wicker balls, baseball bats, knives with letters scratched into the blade, and old old books--instruments without strings, and cups that look painful to drink from.
There's a quickening in his gut, and his lips are so dry he feels them chafe against his sleeve as he attempts to wipe the dust from his face. He is alone in the attic. There's nothing here.
There's nothing here. He is alone in the attic. But every time he turns around, he expects to see someone hunched over him; blocking his light, or ready to tackle him down, or--something. He kind of expects Dean.
He is alone. He is alone. There is no one in the attic but him. He is alone in the attic. Still, he can't shake his coiling in his chest, like he's swallowed a can of worms and they're struggling their way down to his toes.
"Pastor Jim...?" he calls, tentative. His throat is so dry it's almost not a sound at all. He sounds full of dust. "Pastor Jim?"
He hopes he can climb down the ladder as easy as he climbed up. In his limited experience, it's always harder to go back than it is to plunge forward.
He drops to his knees and starts feeling for the rise in the floor and the latch that seals the way back down. The wood catches on his injured finger and he yelps. "Pastor Jim?"
It doesn't budge.
"Pastor Jim!"
Harder. Pull harder. It's Dean's answer to everything. It has to work.
"Pastor Jim?
Dad?
Dean?
Dean?"
"Hey." A hand jogs his shoulder. "Hey."
Sam freezes.
"Sammy."
The worms turn to rocks in his chest. It's leaning on toward evening one day, late August, in Blue Earth.
There are two people in the world call him Sammy, and they absolutely are not here. But Sam is not alone in the attic.
"Sammy, I don't think we're done here."
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 + a/n | Full Story (.PDF) | Artwork by starry_ice