Fic: Fear No More (12/13)
Chapter XI: How Spells Aren't Easy to Reverse
Chapter XII: How Some Ends Always Come
"So is it true?" Dennis asked, practically bouncing on the edge of my bed. He'd had one of the quickest recoveries, going from barely moving to sugar-high three-year-old in just a few hours. The doctors, fortunately, were satisfied to call it a miracle without asking too many difficult questions.
I was improving, too, but it wasn't miraculous - and it was far too slow for Dean's liking. He said it was because I'd exerted myself and hadn't used the blankets when he'd told me to. (Of course that damn well wasn't the real reason, idiot.) I was feeling much healthier. (How do I know what the real reason was? I'm not a doctor!) But I still needed a lot of rest and more sleep than usual. (Because you're not a doctor, either.) Dean was seeing that I got it.
Principal Summers had insisted that Dean and I move back to the school while I recovered, so I didn't have to miss any of the school year. He'd even offered to let me finish the year out at Ellison. (I think he'd have been happy for me to finish high school at Ellison, just so he could be certain something supernatural wouldn't happen again.) But I didn't see Dad allowing it. I had a few weeks, though, till the end of the semester, and that was more than I'd expected.
Dean, of course, wasn't even pretending to be a student anymore. I don't know exactly what he told them he was or did, though I did once hear him muttering to the cheerleaders - something involving "CIA" and "top-secret mission" and "youngest-ever doctor at the CDC". I didn't even try to figure out the rest.
Dean he didn't attend a single class. He hung out with his former classmates at mealtimes and when they went to the gym, but that was it. He spent the hours when I was in class or study group helping the kids in the electronics lab. Once I was back in my room he came and sat with me and threatened me with a blanket if I so much as cleared my throat.
Fortunately for my sanity, Mark, Alan and Victor (the guys who'd gone after Jacobi with him) managed to keep him occupied at least part of the time. From what Dean told me, they'd had an idea that something was going on because they'd had parents at Ellison in the sixties. Their parents hadn't outright suspected what was happening - Jacobi's spell had seen to that - but they'd had a vague feeling of wrongness (Dean's words, not mine) which, along with the knowledge of the earlier deaths, they'd passed on to their kids.
It didn't sound like much, but it had made them not call Dean a lunatic, and that had kept me alive, so I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Anyway, they came by some evenings, and persuaded Dean to go talk to them out in the corridor. He never went so far that he wouldn't hear me if I raised my voice.
That afternoon, I'd actually managed the climb up the stairs to my room without leaning on either the banister or Dean's arm. Dean had responded with a proud grin as bright as the sun, and I hadn't had the heart to shove him off when he slid a supporting hand under my elbow afterwards.
He'd been in a good mood, and when Dennis had come to enquire after me Dean decided I was healthy enough for him to leave us alone while he went to look up Natalya and tell her more about his top-secret counter-espionage activities.
"So you hunt demons and ghosts and things?" Dennis asked in an awed whisper. "All the time?"
I laughed. "When I can't get out of it. Not as cool as it sounds, man."
"I bet it's way cooler. So what was going on here? Jacobi's a ghost?"
"Not exactly," I said, smiling. "Ghosts can't be handcuffed to a hospital bed. He was a… a witch, I guess. That's the closest I can come. The evil kind."
"But there were ghosts?"
"Yeah."
"Awesome."
I thought about Tucker.
Earlier - and maybe that's where I should have started, but Dean stopped me on the grounds of I don't want to relive that crap again, Sam, we are sure as hell not talking about it - and he calls me a girl! (Shut up, Dean.) Anyway, earlier, I'd realized that Tucker was the evidence of Jacobi's evil that we had to wipe out. Not just Tucker, but the ghosts of all Jacobi's victims. They had to be laid to rest.
It had taken four days, because most of them had died in their homes or on vacation, far away from the school. Dad had called Josh and Caleb and Pastor Jim and Bobby, and they'd spread out across the country and systematically tracked down local legends and burned bodies.
Four days while I got progressively sicker and Dad sat with the phone glued to his ear and refused to shave or eat or go anywhere that wasn't the library to look up more victims, and Dean bought a copy of Andersen's fairytales and read them to me till his voice cracked under the strain. Four days of coughing and pain and exhaustion and my brother's reassuring arms.
Four days, and then Bobby had called to tell us that he'd burned the lock of Savannah Jennings' hair that her little sister had kept in a locket. That had been the last of the out-of-towners.
Dean and Dad had snuck into the cemetery that night to salt and burn Mary-Jo, Melinda and Kurt Otto. The thought made me sick - Melinda had been my first friend in this place, the first person at Ellison to actually be nice to me. (That was the one part of the story I didn't share with Dennis. Ghost-hunting was cool. Desecrating graves, not so much.)
Then there had only been two victims left: Tucker and Zoë Morales.
Zoë had had a hunter's funeral, of course. That had been one of the provisions of her will and Principal Culver had seen it done. But I'd been pretty sure the weapons I'd found in the basement must've been her stash. Dean and Dad had agreed, so one night they'd taken everything out and burnt it.
That had left Tucker. He'd been the hardest.
Dad and Dean had hoped to find a headstone for him in the local cemetery, but they hadn't. We hadn't known where to start looking. Ellison was a huge school, with classrooms and labs and the library and gym and lockers and bedrooms and kitchens - whatever was holding Tucker back could have been anywhere. Dean had agonized over it, poring over the school's blueprints while running one hand distractedly through my hair.
We were lucky that destroying the altar had stopped all the students from deteriorating as fast as they had been. They were all sick and weak, but nobody died in those four days.
Finally it had been Tucker himself who'd shown us the way. Dean had taken me up to the school - the students had been sent home; I think Summers just called it a dangerous and highly contagious virus - in the hope that, between us, we'd be able figure it out.
By then I couldn't walk more than a couple of steps without help, so by the time we actually got inside the building I was exhausted. I leaned into Dean's solid warmth and tried to catch my breath.
While we were standing in the foyer Tucker appeared in front of us.
I nudged Dean.
"Yeah, I see him," Dean said. "He doesn't look vengeful."
"If he wanted to hurt me, he had plenty of chances," I pointed out.
Tucker took a couple of steps forward and then backed away, just as he'd done in the garden the other day.
"I think he wants us to follow him," I told Dean.
"Awesome. Let's go."
It was very slow going. Dean was taking most of my weight: it was all I could do to keep my balance. Eventually, though, we got to the principal's office.
"You left something here?" Dean asked Tucker. "You're either exactly like me or exactly like Sam."
Tucker smiled at me before indicating a glass display case behind the desk. It held rows of cups and trophies, spoils of Ellison's sporting victories. (And considering the amount the school could afford to spend on trainers and physios and gym equipment, they had a lot of those.) Dean deposited me in one of the chairs and went around the desk to look at them.
"One of these yours?" he asked Tucker. "Which team were you on?"
"It would be from before 1970," I told Dean. "That was the year Tucker died. And Tucker was twelve when he died, so maybe between 1965 and 1970."
"Thanks, geek," Dean muttered. "Well, we have three possibilities, given the kid's age and the timeframe." He pulled out three trophies and put them on the table. "Baseball." He tapped one. "Soccer." The second. "Another baseball." He indicated the third. "So, which is it?"
Tucker shimmered forward and touched the soccer trophy.
"Soccer, huh?" Dean asked. "You are so like Sammy."
We took the trophy outside. Dean set fire to it. Tucker smiled at us gratefully before he faded into mist.
And now it was over. I was getting stronger every day. The students had begun to trickle back, although the school wouldn't be at full strength again until the next semester. Some of the victims - like Dennis - were already back to normal. Nobody other than Dennis (and Dean's three friends) had figured out that something supernatural had been involved. They'd all been sworn to secrecy, of course, and for once Dad wasn't too worried about people finding out. Summers was grateful enough (and apologetic enough over my illness) that he'd make sure nobody asked too many difficult questions.
Dennis and I were discussing our next upcoming field trip when Tom, who had come back only that morning, burst into the room.
"Have you heard about Jacobi?" he demanded.
"What about him?" I asked, although I had a feeling I already knew. After all, we'd undone the spell that had kept him alive.
"He's dead," Tom said, confirming my suspicions. "Nothing unusual about it, though. They say he was pretty beat up." He dropped into the desk chair. "So is it true he was into some Satanic crap?"
"Yeah," I said, warning Dennis with a glance not to reveal more.
"And he was trying to sacrifice you?"
I shrugged. "I was lucky to get away from him."
"You think maybe he got… you know… unhinged because of all the other weird stuff? Kids getting hurt and sick, maybe he started to - panic, or something."
"Maybe," Dennis agreed. "Sam's right. He's lucky Dean got to him in time."
"Dean? Dean Peters?" Tom looked at me in astonishment. "The senior? He saved you? Man, I thought he hated you."
"What?" I asked, astonished. "Why?"
Tom checked to make sure the door was shut and then leaned forward. "Rayne told me. She's just started cheer squad this year and she said Natalya's friend Shari was - you know,interested - and apparently Dean talked her out of it."
"Dean might have been trying to save her trouble," Dennis said mildly. "Sam's jailbait."
"Man, Shari's only sixteen. Besides, it's not like anyone would've known or anything. Well, I mean, we would've known, but outside the school…"
I laughed as I listened to Tom's chatter and amused myself imagining what Dean's reaction would be if I made out with an older girl. He would either be horrified enough to try to salt and burn her or pleased and amused enough to buy me a beer and embarrass me publicly, and they was absolutely no knowing which way it would go.
When Dean came back later in the evening, I was by myself again, Tom and Dennis having gone to finish their homework and work on a paper that Ms. Gomez had said firmly that we had to hand in, mystery illnesses or no mystery illnesses.
"Hey, kid." He peered over my shoulder. "Trig? On a nice afternoon like this? Only you, Sammy." He pulled my chair away from the desk and turned it so it faced the bed. "I have to talk to you." He sat on the bed.
"Really? You want to talk? Are you sure you're not sick now?"
"Shut up. I'm serious!" Dean leaned forward. "You hear about Jacobi?"
"I heard. We'll have to salt and burn. If anyone's going to come back as a vengeful spirit…"
"Yeah, I'll tell Dad… Sammy?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you mad at me?"
I stared at Dean. This was a little weird even for him. "About Jacobi? Why would I be mad at you? You didn't kill him. We always knew he'd die if we undid his spell; it was only a question of time. And we could hardly let him keep draining kids."
"Yeah, but I beat him up."
I shrugged. Jacobi had almost killed me. Dean had let loose on him. It had been a natural progression of events. It wasn't like I hadn't known what would happen from the moment Jacobi talked about hurting me in Dean's presence.
"So?" I asked. "He still would've died, dude. Maybe not in a hospital bed."
"Maybe not as soon."
"Really?" I asked, lifting my eyebrows. "You're telling me that if he hadn't been in a hospital room surrounded by half the local police force, you and Dad would just have let him be?"
Dean scowled and dropped his head into his hands. "Would you have wanted me to?"
"He was a murderer, Dean. He would have done it again. And you didn't kill him. You beat him up, and he deserved that for what he did. What's wrong with you, man?"
"You got mad when I said it earlier."
"When you said what?"
"That I could - drain Jacobi - to save you."
"That's not the same thing." I scooted my chair closer. "That would've been cold-blooded murder, Dean. I didn't want murder on your hands. It's not worth it. This was different. We had to reverse his ritual."
"Yeah." Dean didn't sound like he was entirely certain I wasn't upset with him. He ruffled my hair and got to his feet. "OK. I have to go to the gym - I promised I'd help with the basketball practise. I'll see you after dinner, yeah?"
"Sure," I said.
After Dean left, I really didn't feel like sitting in my room by myself, trigonometry homework or not. I got Dennis and Tom and we went to get some fresh air. Going downstairs was difficult, and I had to use the banisters to keep my balance, but when I got outside I decided it had been worth the effort. It was a beautiful afternoon.
We wound up wandering in the direction of the tool shed.
"Fitch was in a bad mood," Tom commented when he saw it. "I ran into him this morning and he yelled at me for trampling the lawn."
I felt a stab of sympathy. I could remember the way Dean's entire body had shaken with the force of his sobs that day at the hospital. If Fitch felt even half as bad about actuallylosing his son as Dean had at the idea of losing me, he had to be feeling pretty miserable. And it wasn't Fitch's fault his son had been evil.
"Let's check it out," I indicated the tool shed. "Maybe he's there."
"You want to meet him?"
I shrugged. "Why not? Maybe he's in a better mood now."
Tom shook his head, but he led the way down the path to the tool shed anyway. As soon as we were within ten feet of it, I knew something was wrong. I could smell the distinct acrid scent of -
"What's that?" Dennis asked, wrinkling his nose.
"No idea, man," Tom said. "Some new fertilizer, maybe?"
Gunpowder. It was gunpowder.
The door swung open at Tom's touch. Even before it did, I knew what we'd see.
Fitch was lying in a puddle of blood on the floor, a pistol clutched in his dead fingers.
TBC