SPN Fic: Now Hollow Fires Burn (Gen, PG-13)
Title: Now Hollow Fires Burn
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG-13, season one
W/C: 6,500
Disclaimer: Property of Eric Kripke and the CW.
a/n: Set between Route 666 and Nightmare. My gratitude to the maintainer(s) of the season one timeline on the Super-wiki. Title from A.E. Housman. Thank you to innie_darling for the beta read and the extra nudge and to pheebs1 for listening to me blather about the fic in email.
Written for vichan for spn_summergen 2008, run by the patient and awesome mahoni and ignipes. Originally posted here.
Summary: The house has no violent history, no cold spots, no strange noises. But there's something not quite right about it.
Sam finished scribbling his last line of notes. In the quiet of the library, the tip of the ball point pen scratched loudly across the page.
"Hey," Sam whispered, and nudged Dean.
"Whuh?" Dean jerked his head up from where he'd had his cheek pressed against the wooden tabletop. He looked around as if he expected ghosts to materialize in the stacks. Then he seemed to orient himself, eyes focusing, and he rubbed his hand over his face. "You done with that yet?"
"Done." Sam closed the old town record book with care, conscious of how the pages crumbled at the edges if he touched them too much. The binding made a crackling sound.
"Thank you, God." Dean leaned over and rested his forehead on one of the many books strewn across the table. "We've been here for..." He glanced at his watch. "Six hours."
"What happened to research is as much a part of hunting as shooting?" Rolling his neck, Sam yawned and squinted at the late afternoon brightness outside the windows.
"That's Dad, not me," Dean said. As soon as he spoke, his eyes went shadowed. He lifted his head, chest pressing against the edge of the table, and stared at the antique map hanging on the wall.
"You say it plenty." Sam started putting his pen and notebook away into his backpack, sorry now he'd brought it up. It was something Dean said, but Dad said it first, and they tried not to bring up Dad because every time they did, one of them would say, you think he's okay? and the other one would say sure, it's Dad, and neither of them ever felt better. Dad could've saved them a lot of sleepless nights if he'd just answer his phone. Swallowing down the surge of resentment, Sam started to neatly stack the books.
Dean scraped his chair back so loudly the librarian working at her desk snapped her head up and glared at him. She was a cute brunette in her early thirties who had ignored or resisted every one of Dean's grins, eyebrow waggles, and hints that they should meet for a drink after work.
She looked back down at her desk, and Dean stuck his tongue out at her.
"You find what you needed?" Dean asked, once they were outside.
"Yeah. It adds up." Sam's stomach growled. "There was a death in the house in 1903, another in '23, '43, and in '63. Then it stopped because the house has been empty."
"Awesome," said Dean.
"How is that awesome?"
"It means something weird is going on at the place, and we get to go find what's causing it, and kill it." Dean grinned, looking immensely pleased with himself, as if the whole thing had been his idea.
As if Sam hadn't found the first reference online, scrolled through miles of microfiche, scoured Lexis-Nexis, then spent an hour and a half over burgers and sodas arguing with Dean until he admitted it might be a job.
"I guess we do." Sam put his hand on his stomach. "First, I want food."
"I like your priorities, Sammy." As they reached the Impala, which was parked at the curb under the branches of an oak tree, Dean shoved him, not too hard, just hard enough to make Sam stumble like a dork and nearly trip over the curb.
Sam recovered and smacked Dean in the arm with his backpack, while Dean laughed in that way that made Sam feel like he was eight years old, always following his big brother.
The electricity had been turned off years ago, but Dean said they couldn't use it anyway. Even though the house was set well back from the road, at the end of a twisting dirt drive that went through a patch of woods, they couldn't risk a neighbor seeing the lights and coming over to check it out.
"There's no furniture," Sam said, his flashlight sweeping what had once been a living room. In his other hand, he balanced the pizza box holding their dinner, heavy and warm against his palm.
"So?" Dean dropped the two sleeping bags they'd bought at the Salvation Army store an hour ago. They thudded softly to the floorboards, disturbing the dust. "What do you think these are for?"
"But...how long will we be here?" The thought of having to sit cross-legged on the floor for hours while he went through the notes on the case -- probably in the dark -- wasn't appealing. Sam was used to making do, but days without a single chair or a bed seemed a bit much, and reminded him of that time years ago when the three of them had slept in the Impala for three nights running.
"Geez, Sammy, you going soft on me?" Dean poked him in the stomach and Sam jumped back, still clutching the pizza box. "Give," he said, and took the box, then flipped the lid up and snagged a slice.
Munching away, Dean sat on his rolled-up sleeping bag. He sniffed. "Should do a sweep of the whole place with the EMF first. Room by room check." He reached down and dug a second flashlight out of his duffel bag, switched it on, and put it on the floor so the beam cut across his boots.
While Dean pulled the paper plates, napkins, and garlic knots out of the white paper bag, Sam took a slice of pizza, placed the box on the floor, and sat with his knees drawn up, back against the wall, facing Dean.
The scent of the pizza and the garlic covered the musty, dead smell of the house.
Flashlight in one hand, EMF in the other, Sam covered the basement and the first floor while Dean took the second floor and the attic. Aside from a rusty lawnmower and some spiders, Sam found nothing much in the basement. The walls down there were brick, the mortar between them crumbling away.
Every death in the house had been of natural causes -- heart attack or brain aneurysm.
That's what the coroner always says when they can't explain what killed someone.
Sometimes people do drop dead of heart attacks or brain aneurysms, Sammy.
Once every twenty years in the same house, each victim in their twenties or early thirties?
Okay, you may have a point there, geek boy.
On the ground floor, Sam wandered from room to room, hearing the creak of Dean's footsteps above him from time to time. The flashlight beam caught out peeling wallpaper, elegant molding, dark wood that needed fresh varnish but looked sound. The place had been built in 1902, just as big and sprawling as houses at that time period tended to be. He wondered what anyone would do with all that space.
It still hurt, enough that he caught his breath as the memory of Jess's face, her hair gone even more golden in candlelight, flickered at him. They'd snuck into one of Palo Alto's old empty buildings, had sex on a blanket spread out on the wood floors, talked about what kind of houses they most liked. Jess had told him that she wanted to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house, someday.
Twitching his shoulders to banish her ghost, Sam finished his sweep, then returned to the living room. He unrolled his sleeping bag and lay back on it, arms folded behind his head, listening to Dean's steps above him. He left his flashlight turned on, beam stretched out across the floor, illuminating dust until the circle of light struck the wall.
After a few minutes, he heard Dean coming down the stairs, heard the snap of wood, Dean's sharp curse, and then the other flashlight beam caught Sam in the face.
"Hey," Sam protested.
Dean flicked it off.
"You get any readings?" Sam asked.
"Nope. You?"
"Nothing."
"Crap," said Dean.
They'd bought bottled water, so they each used that to brush their teeth over the sink in one of the downstairs bathrooms.
It was only after Sam crawled into his sleeping bag that he realized Dean hadn't said a word after their exchange about the EMF readings.
He could hear Dean breathing in the darkness.
"Dean?" He aimed the flashlight over at his brother. Dean lay on his side, facing Sam, eyes closed.
"What," Dean said, sounding tired.
"If there's not EMF, then what's in the house?" Sam turned over and propped himself up on his elbow, facing his brother.
Dean didn't answer.
Sam switched off his flashlight. No EMF, and there was nothing particularly sinister about the house, none of the things Sam had sometimes felt in haunted or cursed places.
He listened to the quiet tick of the old house's settling, and felt a weight sink into his chest.
They slept in shifts, taking turns sitting up to listen to the house, waiting for the unspeakable to introduce itself.
The blast of the shotgun woke Sam, who scrambled out of his sleeping bag, heart racing. He saw Dean's outline in the darkness, holding his gun and facing the wall.
"Dean?"
"Rat. Running along the baseboard," Dean said. "I killed it."
Sam switched on his flashlight; there were now holes where the wall met the floor, and a bloodied rat carcass. He made a disgusted noise, low in his throat. "Dude. It was just a rat."
He waited for the expected snide remark about how gross rats were.
"Go back to sleep," Dean said, his voice flat and calm as he settled back down onto his sleeping bag.
In the morning, Sam woke to pale daylight filling the room, making it look a lot more cheery. The rat mess had been cleaned up and there was a note on Dean's sleeping bag: GONE TO GET DONUTS.
Using the bottled water, Sam washed his face clean of dust and brushed his teeth. The sink was yellowed porcelain, with large metal fixtures that had ivory circles on each tap reading "hot" and "cold." Probably dated almost back to when the house had first been built.
He wandered from room to room. In the kitchen, the fridge and stove had been pulled out years ago, leaving squares where the linoleum floor was paler. A raised circle on the wall, plastered and painted over, marked where there had probably been a coal stove once.
The windows weren't boarded up in the kitchen, and the sun beamed in through the overgrown bushes along the walls. The grass in the backyard had been left to grow tall, mixed with wildflowers.
It was the least menacing haunted house Sam had ever seen. The last inhabitants had stripped it bare, left it clean. Their departure had been deliberate, not hurried. But the family hadn't been able to sell it.
He heard the low rumble of the Impala's engine, and walked back out to the living room in time to hear Dean open the front door and walk in. He was whistling, a box of donuts in one hand and a cardboard holder containing two large cups of coffee in the other.
"Morning, pokey," Dean said, and put the donuts and coffee containers on the floor.
"Uh, hi," Sam said, feeling the weight lift.
Dean flopped down on his sleeping bag and grabbed a chocolate-frosted donut with sprinkles. "So while we eat I thought we should go over the facts again."
"Sure." Sam chose a powdered donut and watched as Dean shoved half the chocolate-frosted in his mouth. "You don't put sugar or milk in your coffee, but you eat that for breakfast?"
"Duh. Yeah." Dean made a face. "Coffee's coffee, man. You don't mess with coffee. So, what've we got."
"1903: William Allan, twenty-one, had just brought home his new bride a few months earlier. Died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm. His widow moved out right away and sold the house immediately." Sam paged through his spiral notebook, careful not to get powdered sugar on the pages. "1923: Estelle McAllister, twenty-five, the middle child of three sisters who lived in the house. Heart attack. 1943: Dan Ethridge, twenty-seven, dropped dead of a heart attack." Sam finished his donut and rubbed his fingers together to get the sugar off. "Then in 1963, Susan Maxwell, nineteen, lived here with her parents and three younger siblings. Cause of death unknown, they put 'cardiac failure' because no one has a heart attack at the age of nineteen." Sam finished his recital and reached for another donut. "House has been empty ever since."
"So we have a pattern, once every twenty years," said Dean.
"God, this is frustrating." Sam put the notebook back into his backpack. "No other deaths on record, no murders or accidents, nothing violent, and no mention of anything odd about the house. No accounts of strange lights, noises, or cold spots. No EMF readings. Maybe it's nothing after all."
"Too bad all of the younger Maxwells hung up on you. You're usually so charming." Dean smirked.
"Not this time, apparently. The minute I mentioned Susan, they got upset and hung up." Donut finished, Sam threaded his fingers together around his knees. "I can't find any of the others, at least not relatives who would've been hanging around at the house around the time of the deaths."
Maybe there was nothing here, maybe they should just go and find a different hunt. But something kept tugging at Sam's mind. It was like a whisper or a shadow in the corner of his eye.
Complaining of boredom, Dean set up for knife-throwing practice, drawing the outline of what Sam guessed was supposed to be a monster on the faded wallpaper.
To the accompaniment of steady thumps as Dean hurled knives into the wall, Sam went through his books, hoping to stumble across something by chance.
After about an hour, Dean pulled the knives out of the wall -- all of them had hit the head of the target. He put them away in their bag, then put his back against the wall and slid down.
"You okay?" Sam's finger hovered over a paragraph about houses that had auras.
"Yeah. Just...tired all of a sudden." Dean flapped a hand. "Must be from sleeping on the floor." He made a move like he wanted to get up, then leaned back against the wall again instead.
The weight in his chest, the sense of something not quite right, flickered at Sam. "Do you think you should--"
"I said I'm okay!" Dean's voice cracked out sharp and directed as a thrown knife.
Sam held up both hands. "Hey, I was just..."
"Yeah. Whatever." Rubbing his hands over his face, Dean pushed himself to his feet. "I'm going to...I don't know. Look around. Or something."
When Dean had gone, Sam closed his book and put it down. Then he stood in the middle of the room, listening, took a step, stopped, turned back. Dean hadn't taken his EMF or holy water or a shotgun. Turning again, Sam walked fast towards the stairs.
The upstairs hall was empty, and so were the first three rooms Sam checked.
"Dean!" He shouted, his voice echoing back at him, bouncing off the hollow house.
Sam pulled out his phone and hit the speed-dial for Dean's number. It went right to voicemail.
Three more rooms, all empty, dust thick on everything, windows smudged or cracked. No one had bothered boarding over the upstairs windows, and the noon sun was almost blinding coming in with no shades, curtains, or shutters to mitigate it. The brightness and the silence gave him a surreal moment of wondering if he was dreaming. The fifth time Sam called Dean's phone and got his voicemail, Sam quelled the impulse to hurl the phone at the wall. He swallowed, driving down the twinges of panic in his chest.
Then he heard a creak above his head, from the attic.
He ran out into the hall and found the access hatch, a ladder he pulled down using a cord. The hinges creaked as it lowered, but he saw the treads in the dust on the rungs, recent marks.
"Dean?" Sam called quietly, climbing into the dimness above him.
Only two small round windows, one at either end of the long attic room, offered any light. He spotted Dean sitting cross-legged under the North window, far too still.
"Dean." He hurried over and crouched.
Dean looked up at him. "The fuck, Sam," he snapped.
"What?" Sam blinked, pulled back.
"Can't I get five minutes to myself without you...hovering--" he smacked away Sam's reaching hand. "Jesus H. Christ."
In the faint, indirect daylight from the window, Sam shifted, trying to get a hard gaze at his brother's face. He looked more tired than he had yesterday, freckles standing out, as if there was less of his face behind them, sharper and more gaunt. Sam moved and the illusion was gone, but Dean still looked pale.
"There's something going on here," Sam said, keeping his voice quiet. He stayed crouched on the floor two feet from Dean, balancing himself with his palms against the dusty wood. "I don't know what yet."
"There's nothing going on here, give it up. That's what you want, isn't it? Give it up, go back to college, get away from your embarrassment of a big brother?"
The venom in Dean's voice was so strong, it was like Sam had been pushed. He almost lost his balance, then steadied himself. Heard the echo of Dean's voice, his own. Only that hadn't really been Dean, but it had, because it'd been Dean's thoughts. And that had been Sam, but not him, except it really had been him but he hadn't meant any of it, not really.
"Christo," said Sam.
Nothing happened.
Sam waited a minute or two, listening to his own breaths and Dean's in the quietness of the attic.
"Dean..."
"Shit." Dean pressed his hands to his head, splaying the fingers into his hair. His shoulders twitched, and then he looked right at Sam. "Shit, Sam, I didn't mean that. I don't know...fuck, this job must be getting to me."
"Yeah, I think it is," Sam said, significantly.
There was a pause, and Dean lowered his hands. "No. Not like that. I mean, that would make no sense." Dean spread his arms wide, sounding like himself. "Not possessed, right?"
"But something's wrong."
He saw Dean's jaw tighten, clench and release. "No way, man." He drew in a breath.
"Could be spirit possession."
"Without EMF readings? The place isn't haunted." Dean uncurled his legs and got to his feet.
Sam also stood up. "Come back downstairs, all right?"
Dean didn't say anything else, but he followed Sam out of the attic.
"You should go," Sam said. "It's something about this house. I don't understand it, but you need to get out of here."
"And leave you dealing with it alone? Uh-uh." Dean curled his hand into a fist resting on his knee.
They sat on the steps of the front porch, the boards warm with the spring sun. There was birdsong in the trees overhead. The whole picture didn't add up. It was a perfectly ordinary house.
"I can handle it."
"I said no." Dean's voice was terse, but in the regular way. His knee twitched, and he kicked at the bottom step with his heel, dislodging paint chips. "Feels better, when I'm outside," he said, his eyes down on his boots.
"You seemed depressed last night," Sam said. "And then when you went away from the house to get donuts, you seemed better after you got back. For a little while."
"I'm not leaving you to do this job alone."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"We get to work." Dean stood up, his shadow falling over Sam. "We haven't dug deep enough." He turned away, stepped down off the last few steps onto the remains of the front walk.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting the sledgehammer and shovels," Dean said. "It's time we started taking the place apart."
There was a piece of torn-off, trailing wallpaper in what had once been the master bedroom. Holding his shovel (for smashing the wall) in one hand, Sam tugged at it, out of instinct and curiosity. No point in overlooking anything.
The whole section of paper came away, revealing dark lines on the wall. Sam tore away more paper and found it was part of a larger pattern painted on the wall.
"Hey, Dean," Sam shouted.
Dean appeared in the doorway. "I found something," he said, sounding a little breathless.
"Me too," said Sam, and nodded at the wall.
"Holy shit," said Dean.
Sam returned to tearing away the rest of the wallpaper, and Dean joined him.
When they were done, they stepped back and looked at their work. They'd cleared a ragged, broad circle of wallpaper around a large sign that ran from halfway up the wall almost to the ceiling. It was a circle within a large circle, with markings inside of it and in the space between the two circles.
"I've seen that somewhere before," Sam said. It tickled the edges of his brain.
"It's demonic," said Dean, tilting his head to one side.
"Yes, but which demon? What's it for? I swear I should know this..." Sam stepped closer and touched the faded black markings. "It looks familiar."
"I think the same marking's on the wall in the other room."
Sam followed Dean down the hall and into the next room, where there was a jagged hole in the wall where Dean had been working with his sledgehammer. Part of the circle was visible. Sam tore away the wallpaper around it, revealing the rest of the symbols.
"Yeah," Sam let out a long breath, opening his hand to let the shreds of wallpaper flutter to the floor. "That's it. Probably..." he turned to look at the opposite wall. "It could be in every room, every wall of the house."
Crap, Sam wished he could remember where he'd seen it and what it meant. Anxiety made his heart beat faster, the back of his mind muttering at him that he'd better figure this out fast, fast. Find out what the symbols were doing.
"Hey, Sam?" Dean said behind him. Sam turned, saw Dean standing with his hands hanging at his sides, staring at the symbol. "Uh...I don't feel so great." He sank to his knees.
Sam hurried over to him, got his hands under Dean's upper arms, pulled him back to his feet. "You have to get out of here."
"I already told you..."
"Yeah, yeah. Look, now we know there is something weird going on." Sam tugged Dean towards the door, out into the hallway. Dean walked under his own power, but Sam could feel his weight pulling on him, leaning. "And the house, it's doing something to you."
They got halfway down the stairs before Dean balked. "I can't." His hand clamped over the railing.
"Dude, you have to."
"Whatever it's doing, it could start doing it to you too."
"But it hasn't yet. You don't have to go far. Just go...sit outside, get a good distance from the house, I'll call and check in every twenty minutes."
Dean suddenly turned, grabbed Sam's shoulders. His eyes were too bright as he gritted out, "I don't feel like me. Feel all...empty." Then before Sam could react to that or process what was happening, Dean shoved him hard.
Sam stumbled down a few steps, grabbed the railing to stop his fall, and watched while Dean ran up the stairs.
Shit.
He ran up after Dean, but he didn't bother calling him, it wouldn't do any good in the frame of mind Dean was in now. Dean darted into the room where Sam had found the first symbol and the door slammed. There was the click of the key -- old and iron and already sitting in the keyhole inside the room -- turning into the lock. Sam had noticed the key there earlier, only hadn't noted it particularly. One of those background things that hadn't seemed important.
Now it seemed like the key had been waiting for Dean. As if the house had put it there so he could lock himself in.
"Dean!"
From inside the room, there was no answer.
"Okay, Dean, just sit tight. I'm going to find out what the symbols are for. Just don't..." What, don't go anywhere? What he needed was Dean out of that house. "Just sit tight."
Sam ran back down the stairs, into the living room. He opened his backpack and pulled out the books, dropping them onto the floor. Snatching the first one, Sam flipped through the pages. Then the next, and the next. Nothing.
"Fuck," Sam whispered, and put his palms to his head while he paced. "Fuck, what am I missing."
He grabbed his spiral notebook, found the phone number he needed. Sitting on the third step from the bottom of the stairs, Sam fidgeted his legs as he dialed the number on his cell. He listened to the rings on the other end. Pick up, come on, pick up.
"Maxwell residence," said an older male voice.
"Hi, Mr. Maxwell? This is Sam Peterson, I called before."
"I already told you, I don't want to talk about--"
"Wait, please please, don't hang up. Please. It's important. My brother isn't...well. And I think what happened to your sister might be connected."
"How could that possibly be connected?"
"We're in the house, Mr. Maxwell. I just, all I need is for you to tell me anything odd about the days before Susan's death. Anything you remember."
"I don't see what--"
"Other people have died here, before Susan," Sam said sharply. Then he inhaled a ragged breath. "Please."
"There wasn't much," James Maxwell said after a long pause. "She was fine, healthy as anything, while our parents moved us into the house. We'd only been living there a few weeks, you understand, when she died." Sam could hear the long-buried grief in his voice, and kept quiet, not wanting to drive him off. "She just...dropped one day. Except there was one thing. Susie was usually so cheerful, but she was tired and snappish, acting very strange, a few days before. Afterwards, folks said she probably wasn't feeling great and trying not to worry anyone, keep a brave face on it. She was energetic, didn't like being sick. So we thought she must've felt ill but didn't tell us."
"But there was nothing weird about the house?"
"No, not that I ever knew."
"Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. Thank you." Sam hung up and chewed his lower lip a moment.
Once every twenty years, with the last in 1963. Over forty years since the house had last -- eaten, Sam's brain wanted to say.
It was hungry. Working faster than usual, if he could assume Susan Maxwell had been typical. Weeks in the house before she started to fall apart, before it got to her.
He glanced down at the notebook page with James Maxwell's phone number on it. The ink of what he'd drawn on the next page bled through, faintly visible.
Sam flipped over the page. It was something he'd doodled at the library, meaningless, just a bunch of circles in blue ink. But now he remembered, he'd drawn something else like it a few weeks ago.
He launched himself up from the bottom step and grabbed his backpack. His other notebook was in there. Sam flipped through it, tearing the perforations in his haste, until he found the page with the symbol.
It wasn't exactly like the one on the walls upstairs, but it was close. Dean was right, it was demonic in origin. Used to bind and lock a demon into an inanimate object instead of a living being, he'd transcribed. Demons can possess objects for short periods of time. By putting the sign on the object first, they can extend their stay indefinitely, and cannot be exorcised.
Cannot be exorcised.
Maybe the symbols were blocking the EMF readings, too.
He could almost hear Dean's voice in his head: Only one thing to do, Sammy. Gotta torch the place.
There were two emergency cans of gasoline in the Impala. Not much, but he hoped that he could cause a large enough blaze to burn the place beyond saving by the time the fire department heard about it and got out there.
Or at least burn some of the signs, forcing the demon out of the house. The problem was, he didn't have time to find every wall that had one, so he splashed the gasoline on the sign Dean had found, and randomly on walls in the various rooms.
When he was done, he went downstairs, rolled up their sleeping bags, and took their gear outside. His hands shook as he turned the key in the trunk lock, but the routine of putting things away in their right places calmed him. Sam slammed the trunk lid, then walked back across the lawn turning golden in the late, warm afternoon sun.
The birds had stopped singing, he noticed.
Then Sam went up the stairs.
His fingers and shirt and hair seemed to stink of gasoline, although he'd been careful not to splash any on himself. Sam would probably smell it for days, maybe weeks after -- if they made it through this. No, not if, when. When they made it through this.
A patch of late afternoon sunlight cut through the murky glass of the window at the end of the hallway, and it steadied him. He turned his attention back to the door. Most of the paint had peeled back, cracked with neglect.
"Dean." Sam rattled the knob, as he'd been rattling it periodically for the past ten minutes. "Dean, listen to me." He put his forehead against the wood. "We have to get out of here. C'mon. Dean."
"Too late." Dean's voice was flat and muffled.
"No it's not." Sam rattled the knob again, slammed his fist against the wood. Bits of paint fell to the floor.
"Go," said Dean.
No, not Dean.
Yes. Yes, it was. It was Dean, not a shapeshifter, doppelganger, or double. It was Dean's body and voice, gone wrong, not replaced.
"We're leaving here, both of us, right now." Sam straightened and pulled his hand from the knob.
"Go the fuck away," Dean screamed, his voice gone raw, as cracked as the paint on the old place, and Sam's shoulders twitched like he'd been physically struck. Then, quieter, Dean went on, "I can't...doesn't feel like me anymore. Hollow."
Sam breathed in gasoline and old paint and dust. His teeth clenched down on his lower lip and he tasted the sharp tang of blood.
Then Sam took a step back, and kicked the door in.
Instead of the door banging open, the old wood cracked and splintered under his kick. Sam had to kick again to knock out a panel. He reached in through the opening, fingers finding the iron key, and unlocked the door.
Dean sat with the sign above him, knees bent and head bowed. It was an illusion, had to be, but for a moment it seemed to Sam that the dark lines and curves of the demonic sign shimmered, bulging out from the wall, reaching down towards his brother.
"C'mon, Dean. We're going," Sam said softly.
"Can't," Dean said, his voice gone to a whisper, raw and tired.
"Fuck that."
Raising his head, Dean looked at him and his face went pleading. "Help me?"
"Always." He went over to Dean and held out his hand. "Let's go."
But Dean didn't move, kept his back against the wall, against the black circles, markings brushing the top of his head like a caress.
"I'll carry you out if I have to," Sam said.
"You and what army?" Dean said, his voice gone flat and hard as flint. It was a familiar phrase they both used all the time, as a joking or a half-serious challenge, but the tone of Dean's voice made Sam's shoulders twitch with a shiver.
Then he grabbed Dean, yanked him from the wall, turned him, trying to get him into a hammerlock. Dean twisted, using moves he'd been trained in since he was eight. Sam countered his blow, lightning-quick, Dean's fist smacking against his palm. The kick caught Sam off-guard; Dean had always been better at this. It knocked the breath out of him but he managed to counter with another move of his own, got Dean's arms locked behind him.
Sam started to push him towards the door but Dean wriggled free and then used a spin-kick hard enough that Sam found himself slamming back against the wall.
Dean stared at him as Sam picked himself up, ignoring the pain in ribs.
"Shit, Sam, I didn't mean --" Dean was breathing hard, starting to sweat. He wiped his sleeve across his face. "It's like part of me's missing," he said, his face twisting like he was tasting something bitter. "Sonuvabitch is eating me alive."
"Not if I can help it," said Sam, and then he launched forward, tackled Dean, managed to get him as far as the door.
They crashed through it, taking what was left of the frame. Out in the hall, Sam dug his knees into Dean's chest, holding him in place as Dean struggled beneath him. The sharp points of Dean's amulet dug into his skin through his jeans, but he hardly felt it.
"Dean, come on, man. Focus. It doesn't have all of you yet. And it won't. I won't let it."
The fight and tension went out of Dean, and Sam thought he might be faking, but when he lessened his hold a fraction, Dean only nodded his head. "It's okay, Sammy. It's okay. I'm still me in here."
Cautiously, Sam released his hold, then helped Dean to his feet.
They got as far as the top of the steps before Dean lunged, not toward Sam, but back down the hall, away from the steps. Sam grabbed the back of his t-shirt and yanked hard. Dean twisted, attacked, and then they both fell. What was left of the wooden banisters knocked loose. Sam heard them clattering to the floor below.
It wasn't the first time Sam had ever fallen down the stairs and it wouldn't be the last. It always hurt like hell. He put his tongue to his lower lip, tasted blood. He could feel a line of it tickling down his cheek as well.
"Hey, you okay?" Dean was disentangling himself, his face looking as battered as Sam's felt. A long, thin scrape on his lower arm was bleeding. "Sammy? You all right?"
"Yeah." Sam winced, braced his palms against the wall of the landing to push himself to his feet. "You?"
"Oh, I'm dandy," Dean said, but it was only his normal sarcasm. "Stupid fucker," he muttered, his glare directed up at the ceiling.
A lot of the fight seemed to have gone out of Dean, or maybe Dean was finally fighting back against the house. He let Sam grab his arm and pull him along into the empty living room.
"Where's our stuff?" Dean said.
"In the car." Sam walked over to the wall where he'd tugged some of the wallpaper loose to use as kindling. He'd also revealed part of another sign.
Dean sniffed. "Gasoline?"
"The house is possessed," Sam said. "The signs. The demon used the signs to stay inside the walls."
"Probably blocked the EMF," Dean mumbled.
We can't exorcise the demon. But if we burn what's holding it..."
"We'll have a demon on the loose." Dean rubbed his face tiredly. "Damn it."
"Too bad." Sam pulled out his lighter. "It won't be able to kill anyone else in this house." Sam raised his thumb to flick the lighter on. "It won't get you."
A wave of lethargy swept through him, and he couldn't complete the motion. It was like something was gnawing at him from the inside. He felt -- what had Dean said? Hollow. Sam stood facing the wall, frozen.
"No, not him too you, you bastard," Sam heard Dean mutter behind him.
Dean's fingers curled over his hand, his thumb covering Sam's, pressing down. The ridges in the wheel of the lighter rubbed rough against his skin. With a snap, the flame leapt up. He felt the tension and tremble in Dean's arm muscles as he guided Sam's hand towards the gasoline-doused strips of wallpaper. It was like they were pushing through something, or something pushed back against them, the closer to the sign their hands got.
The paper caught, flame crawling slow at first before it spread into an ever-widening pool of orange and gold on the wall.
Neither of them could move. Sam felt Dean's heart beating against his shoulder as the fire covered the wall and raced towards the ceiling. The heat radiated against his face. He thought he felt the house shudder beneath his feet.
Sam yanked Dean away from the wall of fire.
Somehow they reached the front door; Sam wasn't sure if Dean was pulling him or he was pulling Dean. Smoke and flame curled after them as if the house were beckoning them to stay.
They stumbled onto the porch, down the steps, and collapsed onto the front lawn. Sam felt exhaustion seep through him as he lay on his back, watching orange fire flicker in the windows of the old house, an echo of the sun going lower at the horizon.
Next to him, Dean lay with his arms spread out, coughing and cursing. "Hey, Sam?"
"Yeah?" Sam said, as he realized he hadn't eaten anything since the donuts at breakfast. His stomach felt like it was going to cave in to touch his backbone.
"I hate demons."
The fire leapt brighter through the windows, and they heard beams cracking, walls falling in, floors giving way. Smoke rose into the sky. Wraithing through it came a darker cloud. It raced upwards into the darkening blue of the evening sky. Dean sat up quickly, watching it go, the light of the flames turning his face ruddy.
Maybe Sam imagined the distant shriek that dispersed with the fleeing column of smoke.
"Great, so it's out there, now." Dean gestured furiously at the sky.
What else were we supposed to do? Sam thought, but stayed quiet, lying on his back on the grass.
When sparks started to land on the ground near them, they got up and went to the Impala, whose windshield captured a distorted reflection of the house and the fire.
"So that demon," Dean said, as the Impala ate up the night miles. "It messes with your head, and then kills you -- what, for shits and giggles?"
The windows were open. Sam saw stars at intervals as the car raced beneath the trees arching above the road.
"It eats souls," Sam said.
He saw Dean shift in his seat, almost wince, and stifle it. His eyes never left the road.
Sam popped open the first aid kit that sat on the seat between them, pulled out two instant ice packs, held one out to Dean and took one for himself.
"You ever hear of anything like that before?" Dean said, eyes still straight ahead as he took the ice pack.
"No. I mean, that's just my theory." Sam opened the pack and put it against his side. "Takes it a bit at a time, so you don't feel like yourself and then, when it's gone..."
"Oh," said Dean, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He activated the ice-pack with one hand before draping it over his shoulder.
Around them, the car hummed as it devoured the road.
Dean reached out and switched on the radio. "Yeah," he said, over a blast of harsh electric guitar, "I definitely hate demons."
~end
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG-13, season one
W/C: 6,500
Disclaimer: Property of Eric Kripke and the CW.
a/n: Set between Route 666 and Nightmare. My gratitude to the maintainer(s) of the season one timeline on the Super-wiki. Title from A.E. Housman. Thank you to innie_darling for the beta read and the extra nudge and to pheebs1 for listening to me blather about the fic in email.
Written for vichan for spn_summergen 2008, run by the patient and awesome mahoni and ignipes. Originally posted here.
Summary: The house has no violent history, no cold spots, no strange noises. But there's something not quite right about it.
Sam finished scribbling his last line of notes. In the quiet of the library, the tip of the ball point pen scratched loudly across the page.
"Hey," Sam whispered, and nudged Dean.
"Whuh?" Dean jerked his head up from where he'd had his cheek pressed against the wooden tabletop. He looked around as if he expected ghosts to materialize in the stacks. Then he seemed to orient himself, eyes focusing, and he rubbed his hand over his face. "You done with that yet?"
"Done." Sam closed the old town record book with care, conscious of how the pages crumbled at the edges if he touched them too much. The binding made a crackling sound.
"Thank you, God." Dean leaned over and rested his forehead on one of the many books strewn across the table. "We've been here for..." He glanced at his watch. "Six hours."
"What happened to research is as much a part of hunting as shooting?" Rolling his neck, Sam yawned and squinted at the late afternoon brightness outside the windows.
"That's Dad, not me," Dean said. As soon as he spoke, his eyes went shadowed. He lifted his head, chest pressing against the edge of the table, and stared at the antique map hanging on the wall.
"You say it plenty." Sam started putting his pen and notebook away into his backpack, sorry now he'd brought it up. It was something Dean said, but Dad said it first, and they tried not to bring up Dad because every time they did, one of them would say, you think he's okay? and the other one would say sure, it's Dad, and neither of them ever felt better. Dad could've saved them a lot of sleepless nights if he'd just answer his phone. Swallowing down the surge of resentment, Sam started to neatly stack the books.
Dean scraped his chair back so loudly the librarian working at her desk snapped her head up and glared at him. She was a cute brunette in her early thirties who had ignored or resisted every one of Dean's grins, eyebrow waggles, and hints that they should meet for a drink after work.
She looked back down at her desk, and Dean stuck his tongue out at her.
"You find what you needed?" Dean asked, once they were outside.
"Yeah. It adds up." Sam's stomach growled. "There was a death in the house in 1903, another in '23, '43, and in '63. Then it stopped because the house has been empty."
"Awesome," said Dean.
"How is that awesome?"
"It means something weird is going on at the place, and we get to go find what's causing it, and kill it." Dean grinned, looking immensely pleased with himself, as if the whole thing had been his idea.
As if Sam hadn't found the first reference online, scrolled through miles of microfiche, scoured Lexis-Nexis, then spent an hour and a half over burgers and sodas arguing with Dean until he admitted it might be a job.
"I guess we do." Sam put his hand on his stomach. "First, I want food."
"I like your priorities, Sammy." As they reached the Impala, which was parked at the curb under the branches of an oak tree, Dean shoved him, not too hard, just hard enough to make Sam stumble like a dork and nearly trip over the curb.
Sam recovered and smacked Dean in the arm with his backpack, while Dean laughed in that way that made Sam feel like he was eight years old, always following his big brother.
The electricity had been turned off years ago, but Dean said they couldn't use it anyway. Even though the house was set well back from the road, at the end of a twisting dirt drive that went through a patch of woods, they couldn't risk a neighbor seeing the lights and coming over to check it out.
"There's no furniture," Sam said, his flashlight sweeping what had once been a living room. In his other hand, he balanced the pizza box holding their dinner, heavy and warm against his palm.
"So?" Dean dropped the two sleeping bags they'd bought at the Salvation Army store an hour ago. They thudded softly to the floorboards, disturbing the dust. "What do you think these are for?"
"But...how long will we be here?" The thought of having to sit cross-legged on the floor for hours while he went through the notes on the case -- probably in the dark -- wasn't appealing. Sam was used to making do, but days without a single chair or a bed seemed a bit much, and reminded him of that time years ago when the three of them had slept in the Impala for three nights running.
"Geez, Sammy, you going soft on me?" Dean poked him in the stomach and Sam jumped back, still clutching the pizza box. "Give," he said, and took the box, then flipped the lid up and snagged a slice.
Munching away, Dean sat on his rolled-up sleeping bag. He sniffed. "Should do a sweep of the whole place with the EMF first. Room by room check." He reached down and dug a second flashlight out of his duffel bag, switched it on, and put it on the floor so the beam cut across his boots.
While Dean pulled the paper plates, napkins, and garlic knots out of the white paper bag, Sam took a slice of pizza, placed the box on the floor, and sat with his knees drawn up, back against the wall, facing Dean.
The scent of the pizza and the garlic covered the musty, dead smell of the house.
Flashlight in one hand, EMF in the other, Sam covered the basement and the first floor while Dean took the second floor and the attic. Aside from a rusty lawnmower and some spiders, Sam found nothing much in the basement. The walls down there were brick, the mortar between them crumbling away.
Every death in the house had been of natural causes -- heart attack or brain aneurysm.
That's what the coroner always says when they can't explain what killed someone.
Sometimes people do drop dead of heart attacks or brain aneurysms, Sammy.
Once every twenty years in the same house, each victim in their twenties or early thirties?
Okay, you may have a point there, geek boy.
On the ground floor, Sam wandered from room to room, hearing the creak of Dean's footsteps above him from time to time. The flashlight beam caught out peeling wallpaper, elegant molding, dark wood that needed fresh varnish but looked sound. The place had been built in 1902, just as big and sprawling as houses at that time period tended to be. He wondered what anyone would do with all that space.
It still hurt, enough that he caught his breath as the memory of Jess's face, her hair gone even more golden in candlelight, flickered at him. They'd snuck into one of Palo Alto's old empty buildings, had sex on a blanket spread out on the wood floors, talked about what kind of houses they most liked. Jess had told him that she wanted to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house, someday.
Twitching his shoulders to banish her ghost, Sam finished his sweep, then returned to the living room. He unrolled his sleeping bag and lay back on it, arms folded behind his head, listening to Dean's steps above him. He left his flashlight turned on, beam stretched out across the floor, illuminating dust until the circle of light struck the wall.
After a few minutes, he heard Dean coming down the stairs, heard the snap of wood, Dean's sharp curse, and then the other flashlight beam caught Sam in the face.
"Hey," Sam protested.
Dean flicked it off.
"You get any readings?" Sam asked.
"Nope. You?"
"Nothing."
"Crap," said Dean.
They'd bought bottled water, so they each used that to brush their teeth over the sink in one of the downstairs bathrooms.
It was only after Sam crawled into his sleeping bag that he realized Dean hadn't said a word after their exchange about the EMF readings.
He could hear Dean breathing in the darkness.
"Dean?" He aimed the flashlight over at his brother. Dean lay on his side, facing Sam, eyes closed.
"What," Dean said, sounding tired.
"If there's not EMF, then what's in the house?" Sam turned over and propped himself up on his elbow, facing his brother.
Dean didn't answer.
Sam switched off his flashlight. No EMF, and there was nothing particularly sinister about the house, none of the things Sam had sometimes felt in haunted or cursed places.
He listened to the quiet tick of the old house's settling, and felt a weight sink into his chest.
They slept in shifts, taking turns sitting up to listen to the house, waiting for the unspeakable to introduce itself.
The blast of the shotgun woke Sam, who scrambled out of his sleeping bag, heart racing. He saw Dean's outline in the darkness, holding his gun and facing the wall.
"Dean?"
"Rat. Running along the baseboard," Dean said. "I killed it."
Sam switched on his flashlight; there were now holes where the wall met the floor, and a bloodied rat carcass. He made a disgusted noise, low in his throat. "Dude. It was just a rat."
He waited for the expected snide remark about how gross rats were.
"Go back to sleep," Dean said, his voice flat and calm as he settled back down onto his sleeping bag.
In the morning, Sam woke to pale daylight filling the room, making it look a lot more cheery. The rat mess had been cleaned up and there was a note on Dean's sleeping bag: GONE TO GET DONUTS.
Using the bottled water, Sam washed his face clean of dust and brushed his teeth. The sink was yellowed porcelain, with large metal fixtures that had ivory circles on each tap reading "hot" and "cold." Probably dated almost back to when the house had first been built.
He wandered from room to room. In the kitchen, the fridge and stove had been pulled out years ago, leaving squares where the linoleum floor was paler. A raised circle on the wall, plastered and painted over, marked where there had probably been a coal stove once.
The windows weren't boarded up in the kitchen, and the sun beamed in through the overgrown bushes along the walls. The grass in the backyard had been left to grow tall, mixed with wildflowers.
It was the least menacing haunted house Sam had ever seen. The last inhabitants had stripped it bare, left it clean. Their departure had been deliberate, not hurried. But the family hadn't been able to sell it.
He heard the low rumble of the Impala's engine, and walked back out to the living room in time to hear Dean open the front door and walk in. He was whistling, a box of donuts in one hand and a cardboard holder containing two large cups of coffee in the other.
"Morning, pokey," Dean said, and put the donuts and coffee containers on the floor.
"Uh, hi," Sam said, feeling the weight lift.
Dean flopped down on his sleeping bag and grabbed a chocolate-frosted donut with sprinkles. "So while we eat I thought we should go over the facts again."
"Sure." Sam chose a powdered donut and watched as Dean shoved half the chocolate-frosted in his mouth. "You don't put sugar or milk in your coffee, but you eat that for breakfast?"
"Duh. Yeah." Dean made a face. "Coffee's coffee, man. You don't mess with coffee. So, what've we got."
"1903: William Allan, twenty-one, had just brought home his new bride a few months earlier. Died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm. His widow moved out right away and sold the house immediately." Sam paged through his spiral notebook, careful not to get powdered sugar on the pages. "1923: Estelle McAllister, twenty-five, the middle child of three sisters who lived in the house. Heart attack. 1943: Dan Ethridge, twenty-seven, dropped dead of a heart attack." Sam finished his donut and rubbed his fingers together to get the sugar off. "Then in 1963, Susan Maxwell, nineteen, lived here with her parents and three younger siblings. Cause of death unknown, they put 'cardiac failure' because no one has a heart attack at the age of nineteen." Sam finished his recital and reached for another donut. "House has been empty ever since."
"So we have a pattern, once every twenty years," said Dean.
"God, this is frustrating." Sam put the notebook back into his backpack. "No other deaths on record, no murders or accidents, nothing violent, and no mention of anything odd about the house. No accounts of strange lights, noises, or cold spots. No EMF readings. Maybe it's nothing after all."
"Too bad all of the younger Maxwells hung up on you. You're usually so charming." Dean smirked.
"Not this time, apparently. The minute I mentioned Susan, they got upset and hung up." Donut finished, Sam threaded his fingers together around his knees. "I can't find any of the others, at least not relatives who would've been hanging around at the house around the time of the deaths."
Maybe there was nothing here, maybe they should just go and find a different hunt. But something kept tugging at Sam's mind. It was like a whisper or a shadow in the corner of his eye.
Complaining of boredom, Dean set up for knife-throwing practice, drawing the outline of what Sam guessed was supposed to be a monster on the faded wallpaper.
To the accompaniment of steady thumps as Dean hurled knives into the wall, Sam went through his books, hoping to stumble across something by chance.
After about an hour, Dean pulled the knives out of the wall -- all of them had hit the head of the target. He put them away in their bag, then put his back against the wall and slid down.
"You okay?" Sam's finger hovered over a paragraph about houses that had auras.
"Yeah. Just...tired all of a sudden." Dean flapped a hand. "Must be from sleeping on the floor." He made a move like he wanted to get up, then leaned back against the wall again instead.
The weight in his chest, the sense of something not quite right, flickered at Sam. "Do you think you should--"
"I said I'm okay!" Dean's voice cracked out sharp and directed as a thrown knife.
Sam held up both hands. "Hey, I was just..."
"Yeah. Whatever." Rubbing his hands over his face, Dean pushed himself to his feet. "I'm going to...I don't know. Look around. Or something."
When Dean had gone, Sam closed his book and put it down. Then he stood in the middle of the room, listening, took a step, stopped, turned back. Dean hadn't taken his EMF or holy water or a shotgun. Turning again, Sam walked fast towards the stairs.
The upstairs hall was empty, and so were the first three rooms Sam checked.
"Dean!" He shouted, his voice echoing back at him, bouncing off the hollow house.
Sam pulled out his phone and hit the speed-dial for Dean's number. It went right to voicemail.
Three more rooms, all empty, dust thick on everything, windows smudged or cracked. No one had bothered boarding over the upstairs windows, and the noon sun was almost blinding coming in with no shades, curtains, or shutters to mitigate it. The brightness and the silence gave him a surreal moment of wondering if he was dreaming. The fifth time Sam called Dean's phone and got his voicemail, Sam quelled the impulse to hurl the phone at the wall. He swallowed, driving down the twinges of panic in his chest.
Then he heard a creak above his head, from the attic.
He ran out into the hall and found the access hatch, a ladder he pulled down using a cord. The hinges creaked as it lowered, but he saw the treads in the dust on the rungs, recent marks.
"Dean?" Sam called quietly, climbing into the dimness above him.
Only two small round windows, one at either end of the long attic room, offered any light. He spotted Dean sitting cross-legged under the North window, far too still.
"Dean." He hurried over and crouched.
Dean looked up at him. "The fuck, Sam," he snapped.
"What?" Sam blinked, pulled back.
"Can't I get five minutes to myself without you...hovering--" he smacked away Sam's reaching hand. "Jesus H. Christ."
In the faint, indirect daylight from the window, Sam shifted, trying to get a hard gaze at his brother's face. He looked more tired than he had yesterday, freckles standing out, as if there was less of his face behind them, sharper and more gaunt. Sam moved and the illusion was gone, but Dean still looked pale.
"There's something going on here," Sam said, keeping his voice quiet. He stayed crouched on the floor two feet from Dean, balancing himself with his palms against the dusty wood. "I don't know what yet."
"There's nothing going on here, give it up. That's what you want, isn't it? Give it up, go back to college, get away from your embarrassment of a big brother?"
The venom in Dean's voice was so strong, it was like Sam had been pushed. He almost lost his balance, then steadied himself. Heard the echo of Dean's voice, his own. Only that hadn't really been Dean, but it had, because it'd been Dean's thoughts. And that had been Sam, but not him, except it really had been him but he hadn't meant any of it, not really.
"Christo," said Sam.
Nothing happened.
Sam waited a minute or two, listening to his own breaths and Dean's in the quietness of the attic.
"Dean..."
"Shit." Dean pressed his hands to his head, splaying the fingers into his hair. His shoulders twitched, and then he looked right at Sam. "Shit, Sam, I didn't mean that. I don't know...fuck, this job must be getting to me."
"Yeah, I think it is," Sam said, significantly.
There was a pause, and Dean lowered his hands. "No. Not like that. I mean, that would make no sense." Dean spread his arms wide, sounding like himself. "Not possessed, right?"
"But something's wrong."
He saw Dean's jaw tighten, clench and release. "No way, man." He drew in a breath.
"Could be spirit possession."
"Without EMF readings? The place isn't haunted." Dean uncurled his legs and got to his feet.
Sam also stood up. "Come back downstairs, all right?"
Dean didn't say anything else, but he followed Sam out of the attic.
"You should go," Sam said. "It's something about this house. I don't understand it, but you need to get out of here."
"And leave you dealing with it alone? Uh-uh." Dean curled his hand into a fist resting on his knee.
They sat on the steps of the front porch, the boards warm with the spring sun. There was birdsong in the trees overhead. The whole picture didn't add up. It was a perfectly ordinary house.
"I can handle it."
"I said no." Dean's voice was terse, but in the regular way. His knee twitched, and he kicked at the bottom step with his heel, dislodging paint chips. "Feels better, when I'm outside," he said, his eyes down on his boots.
"You seemed depressed last night," Sam said. "And then when you went away from the house to get donuts, you seemed better after you got back. For a little while."
"I'm not leaving you to do this job alone."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"We get to work." Dean stood up, his shadow falling over Sam. "We haven't dug deep enough." He turned away, stepped down off the last few steps onto the remains of the front walk.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting the sledgehammer and shovels," Dean said. "It's time we started taking the place apart."
There was a piece of torn-off, trailing wallpaper in what had once been the master bedroom. Holding his shovel (for smashing the wall) in one hand, Sam tugged at it, out of instinct and curiosity. No point in overlooking anything.
The whole section of paper came away, revealing dark lines on the wall. Sam tore away more paper and found it was part of a larger pattern painted on the wall.
"Hey, Dean," Sam shouted.
Dean appeared in the doorway. "I found something," he said, sounding a little breathless.
"Me too," said Sam, and nodded at the wall.
"Holy shit," said Dean.
Sam returned to tearing away the rest of the wallpaper, and Dean joined him.
When they were done, they stepped back and looked at their work. They'd cleared a ragged, broad circle of wallpaper around a large sign that ran from halfway up the wall almost to the ceiling. It was a circle within a large circle, with markings inside of it and in the space between the two circles.
"I've seen that somewhere before," Sam said. It tickled the edges of his brain.
"It's demonic," said Dean, tilting his head to one side.
"Yes, but which demon? What's it for? I swear I should know this..." Sam stepped closer and touched the faded black markings. "It looks familiar."
"I think the same marking's on the wall in the other room."
Sam followed Dean down the hall and into the next room, where there was a jagged hole in the wall where Dean had been working with his sledgehammer. Part of the circle was visible. Sam tore away the wallpaper around it, revealing the rest of the symbols.
"Yeah," Sam let out a long breath, opening his hand to let the shreds of wallpaper flutter to the floor. "That's it. Probably..." he turned to look at the opposite wall. "It could be in every room, every wall of the house."
Crap, Sam wished he could remember where he'd seen it and what it meant. Anxiety made his heart beat faster, the back of his mind muttering at him that he'd better figure this out fast, fast. Find out what the symbols were doing.
"Hey, Sam?" Dean said behind him. Sam turned, saw Dean standing with his hands hanging at his sides, staring at the symbol. "Uh...I don't feel so great." He sank to his knees.
Sam hurried over to him, got his hands under Dean's upper arms, pulled him back to his feet. "You have to get out of here."
"I already told you..."
"Yeah, yeah. Look, now we know there is something weird going on." Sam tugged Dean towards the door, out into the hallway. Dean walked under his own power, but Sam could feel his weight pulling on him, leaning. "And the house, it's doing something to you."
They got halfway down the stairs before Dean balked. "I can't." His hand clamped over the railing.
"Dude, you have to."
"Whatever it's doing, it could start doing it to you too."
"But it hasn't yet. You don't have to go far. Just go...sit outside, get a good distance from the house, I'll call and check in every twenty minutes."
Dean suddenly turned, grabbed Sam's shoulders. His eyes were too bright as he gritted out, "I don't feel like me. Feel all...empty." Then before Sam could react to that or process what was happening, Dean shoved him hard.
Sam stumbled down a few steps, grabbed the railing to stop his fall, and watched while Dean ran up the stairs.
Shit.
He ran up after Dean, but he didn't bother calling him, it wouldn't do any good in the frame of mind Dean was in now. Dean darted into the room where Sam had found the first symbol and the door slammed. There was the click of the key -- old and iron and already sitting in the keyhole inside the room -- turning into the lock. Sam had noticed the key there earlier, only hadn't noted it particularly. One of those background things that hadn't seemed important.
Now it seemed like the key had been waiting for Dean. As if the house had put it there so he could lock himself in.
"Dean!"
From inside the room, there was no answer.
"Okay, Dean, just sit tight. I'm going to find out what the symbols are for. Just don't..." What, don't go anywhere? What he needed was Dean out of that house. "Just sit tight."
Sam ran back down the stairs, into the living room. He opened his backpack and pulled out the books, dropping them onto the floor. Snatching the first one, Sam flipped through the pages. Then the next, and the next. Nothing.
"Fuck," Sam whispered, and put his palms to his head while he paced. "Fuck, what am I missing."
He grabbed his spiral notebook, found the phone number he needed. Sitting on the third step from the bottom of the stairs, Sam fidgeted his legs as he dialed the number on his cell. He listened to the rings on the other end. Pick up, come on, pick up.
"Maxwell residence," said an older male voice.
"Hi, Mr. Maxwell? This is Sam Peterson, I called before."
"I already told you, I don't want to talk about--"
"Wait, please please, don't hang up. Please. It's important. My brother isn't...well. And I think what happened to your sister might be connected."
"How could that possibly be connected?"
"We're in the house, Mr. Maxwell. I just, all I need is for you to tell me anything odd about the days before Susan's death. Anything you remember."
"I don't see what--"
"Other people have died here, before Susan," Sam said sharply. Then he inhaled a ragged breath. "Please."
"There wasn't much," James Maxwell said after a long pause. "She was fine, healthy as anything, while our parents moved us into the house. We'd only been living there a few weeks, you understand, when she died." Sam could hear the long-buried grief in his voice, and kept quiet, not wanting to drive him off. "She just...dropped one day. Except there was one thing. Susie was usually so cheerful, but she was tired and snappish, acting very strange, a few days before. Afterwards, folks said she probably wasn't feeling great and trying not to worry anyone, keep a brave face on it. She was energetic, didn't like being sick. So we thought she must've felt ill but didn't tell us."
"But there was nothing weird about the house?"
"No, not that I ever knew."
"Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. Thank you." Sam hung up and chewed his lower lip a moment.
Once every twenty years, with the last in 1963. Over forty years since the house had last -- eaten, Sam's brain wanted to say.
It was hungry. Working faster than usual, if he could assume Susan Maxwell had been typical. Weeks in the house before she started to fall apart, before it got to her.
He glanced down at the notebook page with James Maxwell's phone number on it. The ink of what he'd drawn on the next page bled through, faintly visible.
Sam flipped over the page. It was something he'd doodled at the library, meaningless, just a bunch of circles in blue ink. But now he remembered, he'd drawn something else like it a few weeks ago.
He launched himself up from the bottom step and grabbed his backpack. His other notebook was in there. Sam flipped through it, tearing the perforations in his haste, until he found the page with the symbol.
It wasn't exactly like the one on the walls upstairs, but it was close. Dean was right, it was demonic in origin. Used to bind and lock a demon into an inanimate object instead of a living being, he'd transcribed. Demons can possess objects for short periods of time. By putting the sign on the object first, they can extend their stay indefinitely, and cannot be exorcised.
Cannot be exorcised.
Maybe the symbols were blocking the EMF readings, too.
He could almost hear Dean's voice in his head: Only one thing to do, Sammy. Gotta torch the place.
There were two emergency cans of gasoline in the Impala. Not much, but he hoped that he could cause a large enough blaze to burn the place beyond saving by the time the fire department heard about it and got out there.
Or at least burn some of the signs, forcing the demon out of the house. The problem was, he didn't have time to find every wall that had one, so he splashed the gasoline on the sign Dean had found, and randomly on walls in the various rooms.
When he was done, he went downstairs, rolled up their sleeping bags, and took their gear outside. His hands shook as he turned the key in the trunk lock, but the routine of putting things away in their right places calmed him. Sam slammed the trunk lid, then walked back across the lawn turning golden in the late, warm afternoon sun.
The birds had stopped singing, he noticed.
Then Sam went up the stairs.
His fingers and shirt and hair seemed to stink of gasoline, although he'd been careful not to splash any on himself. Sam would probably smell it for days, maybe weeks after -- if they made it through this. No, not if, when. When they made it through this.
A patch of late afternoon sunlight cut through the murky glass of the window at the end of the hallway, and it steadied him. He turned his attention back to the door. Most of the paint had peeled back, cracked with neglect.
"Dean." Sam rattled the knob, as he'd been rattling it periodically for the past ten minutes. "Dean, listen to me." He put his forehead against the wood. "We have to get out of here. C'mon. Dean."
"Too late." Dean's voice was flat and muffled.
"No it's not." Sam rattled the knob again, slammed his fist against the wood. Bits of paint fell to the floor.
"Go," said Dean.
No, not Dean.
Yes. Yes, it was. It was Dean, not a shapeshifter, doppelganger, or double. It was Dean's body and voice, gone wrong, not replaced.
"We're leaving here, both of us, right now." Sam straightened and pulled his hand from the knob.
"Go the fuck away," Dean screamed, his voice gone raw, as cracked as the paint on the old place, and Sam's shoulders twitched like he'd been physically struck. Then, quieter, Dean went on, "I can't...doesn't feel like me anymore. Hollow."
Sam breathed in gasoline and old paint and dust. His teeth clenched down on his lower lip and he tasted the sharp tang of blood.
Then Sam took a step back, and kicked the door in.
Instead of the door banging open, the old wood cracked and splintered under his kick. Sam had to kick again to knock out a panel. He reached in through the opening, fingers finding the iron key, and unlocked the door.
Dean sat with the sign above him, knees bent and head bowed. It was an illusion, had to be, but for a moment it seemed to Sam that the dark lines and curves of the demonic sign shimmered, bulging out from the wall, reaching down towards his brother.
"C'mon, Dean. We're going," Sam said softly.
"Can't," Dean said, his voice gone to a whisper, raw and tired.
"Fuck that."
Raising his head, Dean looked at him and his face went pleading. "Help me?"
"Always." He went over to Dean and held out his hand. "Let's go."
But Dean didn't move, kept his back against the wall, against the black circles, markings brushing the top of his head like a caress.
"I'll carry you out if I have to," Sam said.
"You and what army?" Dean said, his voice gone flat and hard as flint. It was a familiar phrase they both used all the time, as a joking or a half-serious challenge, but the tone of Dean's voice made Sam's shoulders twitch with a shiver.
Then he grabbed Dean, yanked him from the wall, turned him, trying to get him into a hammerlock. Dean twisted, using moves he'd been trained in since he was eight. Sam countered his blow, lightning-quick, Dean's fist smacking against his palm. The kick caught Sam off-guard; Dean had always been better at this. It knocked the breath out of him but he managed to counter with another move of his own, got Dean's arms locked behind him.
Sam started to push him towards the door but Dean wriggled free and then used a spin-kick hard enough that Sam found himself slamming back against the wall.
Dean stared at him as Sam picked himself up, ignoring the pain in ribs.
"Shit, Sam, I didn't mean --" Dean was breathing hard, starting to sweat. He wiped his sleeve across his face. "It's like part of me's missing," he said, his face twisting like he was tasting something bitter. "Sonuvabitch is eating me alive."
"Not if I can help it," said Sam, and then he launched forward, tackled Dean, managed to get him as far as the door.
They crashed through it, taking what was left of the frame. Out in the hall, Sam dug his knees into Dean's chest, holding him in place as Dean struggled beneath him. The sharp points of Dean's amulet dug into his skin through his jeans, but he hardly felt it.
"Dean, come on, man. Focus. It doesn't have all of you yet. And it won't. I won't let it."
The fight and tension went out of Dean, and Sam thought he might be faking, but when he lessened his hold a fraction, Dean only nodded his head. "It's okay, Sammy. It's okay. I'm still me in here."
Cautiously, Sam released his hold, then helped Dean to his feet.
They got as far as the top of the steps before Dean lunged, not toward Sam, but back down the hall, away from the steps. Sam grabbed the back of his t-shirt and yanked hard. Dean twisted, attacked, and then they both fell. What was left of the wooden banisters knocked loose. Sam heard them clattering to the floor below.
It wasn't the first time Sam had ever fallen down the stairs and it wouldn't be the last. It always hurt like hell. He put his tongue to his lower lip, tasted blood. He could feel a line of it tickling down his cheek as well.
"Hey, you okay?" Dean was disentangling himself, his face looking as battered as Sam's felt. A long, thin scrape on his lower arm was bleeding. "Sammy? You all right?"
"Yeah." Sam winced, braced his palms against the wall of the landing to push himself to his feet. "You?"
"Oh, I'm dandy," Dean said, but it was only his normal sarcasm. "Stupid fucker," he muttered, his glare directed up at the ceiling.
A lot of the fight seemed to have gone out of Dean, or maybe Dean was finally fighting back against the house. He let Sam grab his arm and pull him along into the empty living room.
"Where's our stuff?" Dean said.
"In the car." Sam walked over to the wall where he'd tugged some of the wallpaper loose to use as kindling. He'd also revealed part of another sign.
Dean sniffed. "Gasoline?"
"The house is possessed," Sam said. "The signs. The demon used the signs to stay inside the walls."
"Probably blocked the EMF," Dean mumbled.
We can't exorcise the demon. But if we burn what's holding it..."
"We'll have a demon on the loose." Dean rubbed his face tiredly. "Damn it."
"Too bad." Sam pulled out his lighter. "It won't be able to kill anyone else in this house." Sam raised his thumb to flick the lighter on. "It won't get you."
A wave of lethargy swept through him, and he couldn't complete the motion. It was like something was gnawing at him from the inside. He felt -- what had Dean said? Hollow. Sam stood facing the wall, frozen.
"No, not him too you, you bastard," Sam heard Dean mutter behind him.
Dean's fingers curled over his hand, his thumb covering Sam's, pressing down. The ridges in the wheel of the lighter rubbed rough against his skin. With a snap, the flame leapt up. He felt the tension and tremble in Dean's arm muscles as he guided Sam's hand towards the gasoline-doused strips of wallpaper. It was like they were pushing through something, or something pushed back against them, the closer to the sign their hands got.
The paper caught, flame crawling slow at first before it spread into an ever-widening pool of orange and gold on the wall.
Neither of them could move. Sam felt Dean's heart beating against his shoulder as the fire covered the wall and raced towards the ceiling. The heat radiated against his face. He thought he felt the house shudder beneath his feet.
Sam yanked Dean away from the wall of fire.
Somehow they reached the front door; Sam wasn't sure if Dean was pulling him or he was pulling Dean. Smoke and flame curled after them as if the house were beckoning them to stay.
They stumbled onto the porch, down the steps, and collapsed onto the front lawn. Sam felt exhaustion seep through him as he lay on his back, watching orange fire flicker in the windows of the old house, an echo of the sun going lower at the horizon.
Next to him, Dean lay with his arms spread out, coughing and cursing. "Hey, Sam?"
"Yeah?" Sam said, as he realized he hadn't eaten anything since the donuts at breakfast. His stomach felt like it was going to cave in to touch his backbone.
"I hate demons."
The fire leapt brighter through the windows, and they heard beams cracking, walls falling in, floors giving way. Smoke rose into the sky. Wraithing through it came a darker cloud. It raced upwards into the darkening blue of the evening sky. Dean sat up quickly, watching it go, the light of the flames turning his face ruddy.
Maybe Sam imagined the distant shriek that dispersed with the fleeing column of smoke.
"Great, so it's out there, now." Dean gestured furiously at the sky.
What else were we supposed to do? Sam thought, but stayed quiet, lying on his back on the grass.
When sparks started to land on the ground near them, they got up and went to the Impala, whose windshield captured a distorted reflection of the house and the fire.
"So that demon," Dean said, as the Impala ate up the night miles. "It messes with your head, and then kills you -- what, for shits and giggles?"
The windows were open. Sam saw stars at intervals as the car raced beneath the trees arching above the road.
"It eats souls," Sam said.
He saw Dean shift in his seat, almost wince, and stifle it. His eyes never left the road.
Sam popped open the first aid kit that sat on the seat between them, pulled out two instant ice packs, held one out to Dean and took one for himself.
"You ever hear of anything like that before?" Dean said, eyes still straight ahead as he took the ice pack.
"No. I mean, that's just my theory." Sam opened the pack and put it against his side. "Takes it a bit at a time, so you don't feel like yourself and then, when it's gone..."
"Oh," said Dean, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He activated the ice-pack with one hand before draping it over his shoulder.
Around them, the car hummed as it devoured the road.
Dean reached out and switched on the radio. "Yeah," he said, over a blast of harsh electric guitar, "I definitely hate demons."
~end