An Ancient Pitch 1/?
Title: An Ancient Pitch
Author: Deanish
Rating: PG-13
Length: 4,800 words
Characters/Pairings: Dean. Sam. More to come.
Summary: Dean's out of hell, and the brothers are enjoying their version of normal. Until a couple of witches get in the way.
Notes: First, thanks to mirandajel and queeberquabbler for the advance reads.
Second, I should admit up front that I’m a plagiarizer. Besides stealing characters from Eric Kripke, I’m shamelessly stealing … if not characters, then definitely concepts from Sarah Addison Allen, author of "Garden Spells" and "Sugar Queen." It's not a crossover, and you don't need to know anything at all about the books to read this. But I would be a bad person not to give her some credit.
In my defense, though, it’s her fault for being so clever that I couldn’t help but copy her. Seriously, even if you can’t stand this, go buy her books. They’re new favorites.
Chapter 1
Once upon a time, there was a quiet little town. And in that town there was bright and wholesome diner. And in that diner there was a pie …
OOO
For once, even Sam was only thinking about the pie. It was … there wasn’t even a word for what it was. As brother of Dean, lover of all things pie, Sam’d had ample opportunity to sample pies across the country, and this one took the cake.
No pun intended.
It was flaky, but firm; rich, but sweet. And at just the right temperature for the mixture of its hot and the accompanying scoop of ice cream’s cold to blend into perfect equilibrium on his tongue. Sam closed his eyes, threw back his head and just … savored.
"Mmmph," he sighed.
Dean answered with an affirmative, "MmMMmm."
Sam opened his eyes to snag Dean’s gaze and grin. The pie tasted like … sunny kitchens and starched curtains fluttering in the breeze. Milk-mustached bedtime kisses and covers tucked securely under chins. Comfort food like he’d never known. So sweet, it almost made him sad. But not quite; instead, he smiled down at his plate and contemplated the etiquette of using his finger to mop up the remaining crumbs and melted ice cream.
"Whew," Dean said, dropping his plate back to the table after actually licking the ice cream dregs off. The fork clattered merrily on impact.
"Yeah," Sam agreed. And they sat in companionable silence for a moment.
It was June, and Dean had been out of Hell for more than a month. Lilith was dead and the brothers had been celebrating, really celebrating, for weeks. Sam couldn’t remember ever feeling this … relaxed. Carefree. Content. Things were good, and the pie was a symptom of that, a symptom of how it was OK to enjoy the simple things again. Not like how Dean had enjoyed them after he made the deal, all desperate and frenetic. But really enjoy. Savor.
"So you liked that, huh?" Cammie, their apple-cheeked, jail-bait waitress was back and smirking knowingly at them. "What’d I tell you? Best. Pie. Ever."
Dean smiled back at her - a real smile with none of the ulterior motives that normally lurked behind his smiles - and shook his head. "I’ve tried a few ‘World’s Best Pies’ in my time, but man. That one …" he trailed off. Finally he just let out a low whistle and sagged back in the booth with a sated expression.
Cammie’s smirk blossomed into something toothy. "Y’all still gonna be ‘round tomorrow?" she asked. "’Cause tomorrow’s Pie du Jour is home-grown peach, and some people say it’s even better than the buttermilk."
Just the word - peach - sent Sam into daydreams of plucking sun-warm peaches from leafy green trees, the fuzzy skin tickling his lips and the explosion of hot juice dribbling down his chin. Bees buzzing in the distance and the scent of -
Cammie’s snort brought him back to the diner. "I’ll see you two tomorrow," she laughed, slapping their bill down on the table.
Sam had to blink a few times, feeling a little dazed. That had been … oddly vivid.
Dean was still slouched in the corner where the booth met the window, basking - eyes closed - in the evening sunlight streaming in. So Sam pulled the check over. No computerized receipts here - it was a quaint throwback to the last century, with a perforated number strip at the bottom and a big smiley face hand drawn under their total. Which, Sam winced, was more than they’d normally pay for the couple of sandwiches they’d ordered. But he couldn’t say it wasn’t worth it.
And really, he’d known it wasn’t going to be cheap as soon as they’d walked through the door. It was just a small town diner, like any of the thousands he and Dean had eaten in over the years, but where the 1950s décor in the others was just plain old, Courthouse Square Café’s was retro. The black-and-white-checked tile was gleaming, and the frilly white aprons the waitresses wore were crisp. He’d had to drag Dean away from the shiny red barstools that spun at the counter in front of the spotless kitchen.
It was nice, actually. Even Dean seemed to appreciate it.
Maybe they could stay and try that peach pie tomorrow.
The cowbell above the door jangled jauntily as a couple of soccer moms filed in, mid conversation.
"… done something to Jonathan, I’m sure of it," the slightly blonder one was saying. Then her voice dropped low and serious. "You know what I mean?"
"Like a spell?" her companion hissed, sounding horrified - in a thrilled sort of way - at the prospect. Sam noticed Dean’s eyes gleaming through slits in his eyelids, which meant he’d picked up on the conversation, too, despite his still-casual posture.
The first one shot her a look that clearly meant yes. "The Fischer family has always been a little funny," she said. "And how else would you explain Jonathan’s behavior? Last week he was mere minutes away from giving Shelby Gates a ring. Now he’s just batty over that woman. And Fosters are positively known for their level-headedness."
Sam and Dean exchanged small, exasperated smiles and relaxed again. Just some poor, love-sick schmuck. Not their kind of thing after al-
"You’re new, so you wouldn’t know, but when my grandmother was little, her grandmother once made it rain frogs."
Then again ...
OOO
The doors of the car squealed in unison, announcing the end of their lunch break. They folded themselves into the front seat and took a moment to consider the bustling brick street in front of them.
"So," Dean finally said.
"Yeah," Sam answered, trying to keep the reluctance out of his voice.
"Probably nothin’," Dean pointed out.
"Probably," Sam agreed.
"Then again, frogs. Could be something."
"Could be."
"No harm in checkin’."
"Nope."
"Not like we were headed anywhere particular."
"True."
"And," and Dean hesitated before getting to the crux of the matter. "I mean, I would kind of like to try that peach pie."
Sam let the smile spread slowly to the far corners of his face before turning toward Dean. "There is that," he admitted.
Dean flicked his wrist, and the car roared to life, accompanied by Don McLean crooning "Bye bye Miss American Pie." Sam just laughed and shook his head as Dean threw the stick into reverse. He didn’t know how Dean did it, but he always managed to have the music cued up just right.
OOO
Sam eyed the Chapel Hill Public Library as Dean roared away the next morning. It was housed in a two-story, robin-egg blue Victorian, which Sam figured did not bode well for its reference section.
Sure enough, while the children’s section had the very latest in Goosebumps, 12 copies of the complete Chronicles of Narnia boxed set and a groaning shelf packed with hardback Harry Potters, the research materials consisted primarily of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica dated 1987. But, said the sweet, white-haired librarian who smelled pleasantly of fresh-baked bread, she’d let him look at the bound copies of the award-winning Chapel Hill Newsboy if he promised not to eat or drink within 10 feet of them. Would that help?
It would indeed, Sam assured her, turning out his pockets to prove he wasn’t carrying chocolate contraband into the storage room.
His step stuttered, however, as he passed through the doorway. It was the smell. That dusty, fragile smell of old, old books. It brought all the desperation of the past year’s search for a fix for Dean’s deal rushing back for just a moment. Sam closed his eye and put a steadying hand on the door jam, reminding himself that it’d worked. He’d found his answer, and Dean was safe. The smell was one of success, not failure. He’d loved it for twenty-four twenty-fifths of his life, and he’d learn to love it again.
He was sure of it.
So he took a deep breath and pressed on into the room.
‘It’s just a room,’ he reminded himself. ‘Just a regular old storage room.’ And it was. Shelves on every wall held the sorts of books that librarian sorts wouldn’t feel comfortable letting the general public touch unsupervised. But they were all clearly labeled in English and none of them sported odd symbols on the front, so Sam had no reason to find them anything but innocuous.
"They start over here," the librarian was saying, indicating the top row of a wall of the oversized books that bound newsprint came in. "And go through here. Of course, we don’t have this year’s yet, because it’s not done. But 2007 just came back from the binder."
She beamed proudly at him, clearly thrilled to be helping, and Sam couldn’t help but return the gesture. "Thanks," he said. "This is perfect."
"Now you just have a seat right over here," she said, pushing him toward a table in the middle of the room, "and I’ll bring you a few. Do you want to start with the first one?"
She was about 5’2 and no less than 90 years old. Sam worried her bones might snap in half if she tried to pull one of those monsters off the shelf. "Oh no, ma’am, please, let me get that."
"Oh no," she insisted. "You relax. This is my job."
He thought about forcing the issue, but she gave him the evil eye when he attempted to rise from his seat, so he decided he’d better stay put. He watched helplessly as she shuffled over to the shelves, gulped as she began her rickety climb of the short stepladder and cringed as the book almost toppled her when she slid it off the shelf. But a few minutes later she was laying it safely in front of him.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he did not, in fact, want to start at the beginning.
So that was how he came to be reading the 1873 issues of the Chapel Hill Newsboy, when the object of his query was almost certainly born within the last century. Winchesters weren’t known for their luck, but on occasion …
In the best of times, searching bound archival prints of old newspapers was difficult. In a small town like this, there was no concordance of any sort, and since time was usually the last thing you had plenty of during a hunt, Sam was used to having to skim and hope for the best. Which was why he was so surprised to find the name he was looking for in the lede article on the front page of the first edition of the Chapel Hill Newsboy.
The Chapel Hill Newsboy spit out its first copy right in the thick of the Panic of 1873, its founder being one of the few to profit during the depression. It wasn’t the town’s first newspaper, but there was no journalistic record of the life of the town before that, because in 1873 the office of the Newsboys’ predecessor, the Chapel Hill Citizen, burned to the ground, leaving its publisher to beg for a beat job from the Newsboy publisher. Who just happened to be his brother.
The brothers were Able and Evan Fischer.
Turns out Sam need not have worried about having to dig to find the Fischer name in print, because the Fischers apparently had no quarrel with partiality in journalism, no qualms about covering their own family members’ triumphs and success with blaring headlines. Everything from "Fischer Bank Stands Proud Amidst Sea of Swindlers" to "Fischer Daughter Takes Chapel Hill Cherry Queen Crown, Third Consecutive Year."
Possibly it was the biased coverage, but it looked to Sam like the Fischers had owned Chapel Hill during the 19th century. Literally, if the store names in the advertisements were any indication: Fischer’s Foods, Fischer’s Fine Fashions, Fischer’s Feed Supply. Sam had never realized the alliterative possibilities of the letter F.
He shook his head in amazement, grabbed a few more editions from the shelves and kept reading. Several hours later, he had ink-stained hands and a pretty good picture of the family’s history.
The Fischers’ influence held into the 20th century, but the first World War was hard on them. By the end of the second, their numbers had dwindled down to just three families, and only one of them had a surviving son.
The Newsboy was bought out by one of the large newspaper chains then, and the records of the Fischer family got to be a little harder to find. Sam had to start trolling the birth, wedding and funeral announcements to keep the thread. Through those snippets, however, he was able to make out that Clark Fischer, the last male heir, married Candace Fischer, a second cousin, and begot Blake, who in turn married Leighanne Truly. Clark and Candace died of a broken heart and cancer - respectively but not chronologically - in the space of two months in 1995. And Blake and Leighanne were killed in a 2007 car wreck.
That just left their two daughters: Anna and Elinore.
Not having a relative in journalism cut down on the Fischers’ media exposure by quite a bit. Anna and Elinore showed up occasionally for honor rolls (Elinore) and sports awards (Anna), but it seemed almost … grudging when they did. They were usually blinking or mid-sentence in the accompanying photos. And since high school graduations, the mentions had been downright perfunctory. A society page’s blurb that claimed "the event was catered by Anna Fischer" here. A real estate ad that promised "the home was designed by Elinore Fischer Inc." there.
It could just have been a bad case of small-town journalism, but for some reason Sam didn’t think so. He suspected he should have been reading more into what wasn’t written, but he just had no clue where to start. Small towns, he well knew, could be secretive like that, sometimes. Especially in the South. Things - good and bad - tended to get exaggerated in the South.
Not that that was always a bad thing. It made the article he was actually looking for that much easier to find: The May 12, 1945, edition headline read, "Biblical Plague Visits Chapel Hill’s Fourth Grade."
According to the story, the children of the local primary school had been out on their annual end-of-year nature walk, uncovering the relationship between April showers and May flowers and other mysteries of the universe. Apparently the way it worked was, the older you got, the more advanced the nature you learned about. First and second graders started with plants, and in third grade you graduated to bugs. By fourth grade you were ready for vertebrates of the aquatic and amphibious variety, which were trumped only by fifth grade’s yearly pilgrimage to a local farm.
Except in 1945, when nothing trumped the amphibians.
The fourth graders had, by all accounts, been looking for tadpoles in a water sample taken from a small pond, when the first of the frogs showed up. Despite the story that the woman in the café’s grandmother had apparently passed down, they did not rain from the sky. Though, to be fair, it might have seemed that way to a fourth grader, when the frogs started leaping from nearby trees.
Chaos ensued and children were terrified. Except for one Candace Fischer, who was - judging from the photo accompanying the article - delighted. The photo showed Candace surrounded by frogs, including one perched on her shoulder. And the photographer had caught her lowering puckered lips to the head of the one held between her hands. The caption identified "The Frog Prince" as her "very most favorite fairy tale."
Nothing in the article actually identified Candace as the cause of the sudden Anuran influx, but then that would be considered sketchy journalism, even in a small town. And it wasn’t able to identify any other cause, either.
Sam thoughtfully returned all the newspaper books to their rightful spots on the shelves and was taking a look at one of the library’s few other reference books - the Chapel Hill Phone Directory - when Dean returned. They tended to have good timing like that.
"So we’ve definitely got a case," Dean announced.
His tone made Sam wary. It implied he’d found something big, and Sam just didn’t know how he felt about that. They’d been taking it pretty easy since Lilith, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to go back to their old pace. They rarely came across true witches, the kind that would provoke that tone in Dean’s voice, and nothing Sam had found was serious enough to spoil his assumption - or perhaps hope - that this would be some wannabe going a little heavy handed on the love potion.
But it was too late now.
"Oh yeah?" Sam said.
"Oooh yeah," Dean replied. "That poor bastard Jonathan that those women were talking about?"
"Yeah?"
"Dead."
"What?" Sam exclaimed.
"As a doornail. Happened just last night, in fact. Hung himself from his own peach tree."
OOO
While Sam was getting his research groove on, Dean decided to play to his own strengths: women. The two Chatty Cathies in the café had said that ol’ Jonathan had been about to ask Shelby Gates for her hand - before he fell head over heels for "that Fischer woman," and Dean was willing to bet that Miss Gates would have a little something to say about that.
He’d thought he’d hit pay dirt when she answered her door in the middle of the day, sobbing and swollen. He’d thought he wasn’t even going to need a cover story.
"Oh, uh hi," he’d said, feigning surprise at her distress. "Gosh. I’m so sorry to bother you I was just going to see if … but you know what? Never mind. Are you OK?"
"I-I-I-I-I’m sorry," the woman stuttered, and Dean wondered what happened to Hell hath no fury. "Mu-mu-mu-mu-my fiancé was murdered last night, an-an-an-an-and I’m a li-li-li-little upset."
Dean didn’t have to fake his jaw dropping. "Murdered!" he said before he could stop himself. "What happened?"
The woman just let out a wounded wail, and suddenly another woman appeared behind her.
"Shelby?" the new woman asked. "Sweetie, go sit down. Let me take care of the callers."
Shelby stumbled away from the door, and the new woman stepped into her place. "Can I help you?" she asked, a bit warily, but the way she sized Dean up indicated she might be talked into talking with one of his nicer smiles.
"Uh, no, no," Dean said, stuttering a bit himself and looking worriedly up from beneath his lashes, playing up his embarrassment. "I’m so sorry. I was going to … but I didn’t realize. Is she OK?"
"No, not really," the woman said, smiling sadly. "She had some bad news today."
"Yeah, she said," Dean said. "Her fiancé was murdered?"
The woman blanched. "Is that what she said? He wasn’t exactly, um … It’s complicated."
Dean didn’t say anything, just kept his face open and sympathetically inquisitive. Most of the time, people found that more encouraging than actual requests for more information.
Sure enough, the woman was dying to talk about it. She shot a furtive look toward the room Shelby had disappeared into, then took another step out the door, pull it closed behind her.
"Jonathan, he, uh. Well, he wasn’t actually her fiancé yet. And he wasn’t … I mean, we don’t know for sure that he was murdered."
"Oh right," Dean said, adopting a tentatively fascinated expression. "I’d heard something about Jonathan and … oh what’s-her-name Fischer."
"Elinore," the woman prompted, voice hardening instantaneously. "Elinore Fischer. And murder or not, she’s to blame."
"Really?" Dean said, legitimately taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. "What do you mean?"
The woman snapped her mouth shut, and Dean thought for a second that was all he was going to get from her. But apparently the strength of her antipathy for Elinore Fischer was enough to overcome her reluctance to air dirty laundry before strangers.
"Do you believe in magic?" she asked, with all the earnestness of a 7th grader at her first séance.
Dean played his hand carefully. "What?" he said with all the incredulity he could muster. "You don’t really believe in that love spell crap, do you?"
"All I know is, Jonathan was seen buying a ring at Miller’s Jewelry - an engagement ring. And then, two days later, he’s suddenly following Elinore Fischer around like a love-sick puppy. Given that Jonathan’s a Foster and Fosters are known for their level heads and smart choices in wives, and Elinore’s a Fischer, known for being a little funny, if you know what I mean … well, you do the math."
Dean tried, he really did. But these small towns with their twisted family trees - it was worse than calculus. "Actually, I’m new," he finally decided. It had worked for the friend of Gabby Gossip in the café. "I don’t really know what that means."
The woman pursed her lips, disappointed in Dean’s lack of aptitude for the subject. "Clearly a woman like Elinore is not of the caliber that could catch a man like Jonathan," she explained impatiently.
Dean nodded slowly, but clearly didn’t do a good job of hiding his bemusement. The woman sighed and launched into lecture mode.
"The Fischers have lived in this town for years," she said, warming quickly to her topic. "Since it was founded, probably. There have always been Fischers in that old house on Peachtree Street. And all of them have been a little off. Their grandmother once made it rain frogs."
Geez with the italics already, Dean thought. He said, "Yeah, uh, I heard something about that. Frogs? Really?"
"Really. But that’s not the half of it. If Elinore gives you a band-aid? You could bet a million dollars that you’re going to be bleeding in the next five minutes. And in five minutes, you’d be a million dollars richer."
Dean cocked his head and squinted at the lady. He thought about that before finally just giving up and repeating, "A band-aid?" But she was past the point of needing an encouraging smile to egg her on, anyway.
"And her sister. Anna? She’s almost as bad. She can make a soup that will make you cry. And I don’t mean from too much pepper."
OOO
Sam frowned, confused. "Cursed band-aids and weepy soup? Doesn’t exactly scream murder."
"Hold on, I’m not done yet," Dean fussed.
OOO
After Dean was unable to hold in a snort at the pepper comment, he found his source a bit less willing to talk. So his next stop was the home of poor Jonathan Foster, unrequiting beloved of Shelby Gates and supposed lover of Elinore Fischer.
There things took a decided turn for the dark.
He felt it almost as soon as he arrived. Just a trace, a hint - like a perfumed letter from many years ago. Just enough for him to recognize. Just enough to stop him cold.
Evil.
Dean didn’t really remember May. He knew, intellectually, that he’d been … in Hell. And he suspected that it had been … well, horrible only scratched the surface of what the full-body muscle spasms and lightning-quick mental redirects triggered by even a suggestion of the subject indicated it had been, but it was a start. He didn’t know if he was actively repressing the memories and they might one day spring themselves on him when set off. Or if it was just so bad that the human mind, as housed in a physical body, just couldn’t comprehend it and be expected to function.
But he knew that whatever had happened here, at Jonathan Foster’s house, whispered of a kinship to whatever it was he’d experienced in that missing month. And he was suddenly hit by how very badly he never ever wanted to experience it again.
Still. This was his job. So he put one foot in front of the other and followed the walk to Jonathan Foster’s front door.
There was no police line, and Dean allowed himself a moment’s hope that, despite the chill he felt just looking at the house, Shelby was just looking for someone to blame. That Jonathan had been the victim of an unfortunate fall or an allergic reaction.
It lasted until he’d opened the front door and took in the view of the back yard through the wall of picture windows facing him. The morning dew had glued peach blossom petals to the yellow tape like confetti. It couldn’t have been easy for a man of any height to hang himself from the sprawling tree; he - or whoever was controlling him - must have been pretty determined.
Now Dean just needed to know which it was.
He didn’t bother to check the actual scene of the hanging. The useful evidence would be long gone. He’d have to get Sam to hack into the police database for the crime scene photos. Unless an extra set of footprints showed up or the placement of the noose indicated that Foster had been pulled up, rather than dropped down, to his death - in which case, it was probably a police matter, anyway - they’d work on the assumption that if it was a murder, it was done from a distance.
The small bag of delicate bones and dried flowers that he found secreted between the support slats of Foster’s bed frame didn’t leave him with much hope that it was a faulty assumption. Dean didn’t know the herbs as well as Sam, but he thought he recognized rose petals, nasturtium and marigold, to start with. Love, jealousy, sexual desire. He’d bet that the bones were from a dove or love bird. All mixed together with what was almost certainly blood. Enough to drive any man to distraction.
And judging by the collage of photos Foster had erected on his bedroom wall, distracted was a pretty apt description. Dozens, possibly even hundreds of photos of a single blond woman. Shopping. Jogging. Checking her mail.
"Batty," the woman in the diner had said. "Love-sick puppy," according to Shelby’s friend.
This went way beyond that.
OOO
"So," Sam started, still sounding confused, "we think this Elinore Fischer - of cursed band-aids fame - what? Spelled some guy into stalking her? And then killing himself?"
"I don’t know. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she just meant for him to fall in love with her."
Sam chewed on that - and his bottom lip - for a few minutes before shaking his head reluctantly. "Maybe, but … you’d have to be pretty naïve to use a hex bag in a love spell and not expect it to turn out messy."
"Well, maybe the stalking thing was just a side effect. Maybe the point was for him to fall so hard that he’d go off the deep end when it turned out she was just a big ol’ tease."
Sam stared off into the distance for a little longer before turning back to Dean. "Guess we need more information," he said.
OOOOOO
Chapter 2: Eat and Love It Until It's All Over