Phantom Load - Part 6
Saturday, November 25th, 2006
When Sam woke up, before he opened his eyes, he sensed that Dean was already awake. Or, by the stillness, that he'd been up for hours. Perhaps that he'd not fallen asleep at all.
"Dean?" he asked, testing the waters.
"Yeah," said Dean right away, as if he'd been waiting for Sam's question.
"Breakfast?" Sam asked now.
"Yeah," said Dean again, though, if possible, with less enthusiasm than before. As if giving in rather than fighting the battle.
It was going to be a long day, Sam could tell that already. His eyes were full of grit, and his lips felt like stretched leather when he moved them.
"We need to find where the body is buried," he said." He tried swallowing the dryness in his throat. It was like trying to swallow sand.
"We need to find the files," said Dean.
Sam heard him sitting up and peeled back his eyelids to see Dean on the edge of the other bed, rubbing his face, his back to Sam.
"Files?
"Yeah, of those kids. All those kids."
This seemed rather cryptic, even for Dean, and Sam wondered if the whole child molestation thing was finally getting to him. Twenty years was a long time to be plucking under-aged fruit without getting caught, it was only too bad that the bastard hanged himself before the courts and the convicts got to him. "What will we do with the files when we find them?"
Dean shrugged. "Give them to the principal, I guess. She'll know what to do with them."
It wasn't like Dean to have so much faith in a school principal, but it made sense. Sam pushed himself out of bed and for a moment they sat knee to knee. Sam in boxers and t-shirt, Dean in sweatpants and the hoodie, even though the room was boiling.
"How's that cold?" He asked this almost under his breath, berating himself for being so hesitant. But he was in no mood to get kicked in the teeth.
"Still kicking me in the ass," said Dean, replying at the same level. For a moment he looked at Sam. Right in the eyes and then away as if he wanted to tell him something. Down went that chin, tucking to the right. The preparation for a fight or the approach of something difficult. It scared Sam; he didn't like that expression on Dean's face and he'd been seeing it a lot lately.
"Dean-"
Dean stood up, moving past Sam as if he'd not spoken, moving like an old man. The conversation was over before it had begun.
"Yeah," said Sam, putting in as much sarcasm as he could muster. "You go ahead. I'll wait."
Dean just gave him the finger. As the door shut behind his brother, there was nothing Sam could do but agree.
*
Breakfast was an improvement on the previous day but only because Dean ordered food without hesitating. It didn't mean that he ate any of it, which considering how good everything smelled when it arrived was pretty weird. The coffee, which Sam laced liberally with cream and sugar, wasn't even burnt.
"Aren't you going to eat that?" he asked, waving his fork in the direction of Dean's still full plate. "Sausage omelet, your favorite."
"You can stop now," said Dean, pushing his plate away. He reached for his black coffee and took a huge swallow.
"Stop what?"
"Fussing like an old woman."
He made himself not say else anything to Dean about it. He'd managed at the onset to finagle it so that Dean was sitting in the seat where the sun was coming through the window. But though his brother was wrapped in layers like a harbor seal, it seemed to make a little improvement. At least Dean wasn't shivering. Sam wondered how long he was going to let Dean keep him from finding out what was going on.
"Do we have bones to burn?" asked Dean. He took a swallow of his coffee. His hand did not shake, but he was clenching the cup so hard his fingertips were white.
"When I track down where he's buried, we will." This said around a mouthful of pancakes.
"Tell you what," said Dean. He pushed his eggs around the plate with his fork. "I'll drop you off where you can get wi-fi, you can research that."
"What about you?"
"I'll head out to the school and look for files."
Sam felt his brow furrow. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with this picture. Dean bundled up for a blizzard, not eating, and, what was strangest of all, volunteering to go back to a school that he hated. This occurred to Sam all at once. It wasn't anything he'd said, he never said this place sucks out loud or anything. He'd never even so much as spat on the sidewalk, come to that. It wasn't his behavior when they'd met with Phil, necessarily, though Dean's reluctance to go into the boiler room had been noticeable, though only momentary.
No, it was the now Dean's white fingered grip on his cup, freckles standing out on his skin like dots. The way he was pretending to eat, on purpose trying to hide it from Sam that no food as yet had passed his lips.
All at once a shiver ran through Dean.
Sam took a breath. "You going to tell me what's going on? Or do I have to beat it out of you?"
In answer, Dean stood up and as he did he jarred the table. His cup and black coffee spilled out like inky lava. As Dean stared down at him, his eyes glittered. Then his shoulders set themselves like he was trying not to be mad.
"Look, I'm just not hungry, okay? There's a wi-fi café down the street. You call me when you want to break for lunch, an' I'll come get you."
A waitress came over to wipe up the coffee spill. She partially blocked Sam's view of Dean.
"Where are you going?" asked Sam, craning around her. Dean was reaching into his wallet, and pulled out a ten. He handed it to Sam as if he was paying him to shut the hell up.
"To the school, like I said," said Dean. He buttoned up his jacket and began walking away. Over his shoulder, he said, "To look for files."
Then he was out the door and walking past the bank of windows not looking up as if Sam wasn't even there.
The sun shone through the glass and all over Sam and the greasy food smell got hot. But the seat across from him was empty, the food untouched. Sam grew cold and shivered.
*
The coffee shop was fairly new but decorated to look like an old-time hangout where the real Boulderites went. If there was such a thing as a real Boulderite. Sam doubted it; the newspaper articles he was looking at while scanning for Gunnarson's obit told the story. Everyone was from someplace else. Hence, the need which came across as slightly desperate, to create a sense of history out of a spot that had recently been razed to the ground and built out of fresh new concrete and bricks.
At least the coffee was good, though expensive. He could taste the espresso shooting directly into his veins as he took a swallow and then licked the whip cream from his lips. Dean, who preferred his working man's black cup of Joe, did not know what he was missing.
A few clicks on the down arrow brought him to the obit section of The Daily Camera. He calculated the date six month's prior, which brought him to the end of May, 2005. He'd only had to scan through a few editions of the paper before he'd found it. The obit didn't give him any details about the suicide or who had found the body only a history of Gunnarson's age, place of employment for how many years and known survivors, of whom there was none. It was a sad ending to such a life, devoted to a school where the word of a lying punk kid could bring him down. But the obit did give Sam the exact death date, the correct and full spelling of the name, Royal A. Gunnarson, and the county of residence. All of these would prove helpful when hacking into Boulder County records for the death certificate and place of burial.
He wrote down the information on his notepad. If anything about Gunnarson the Ghost turned out to be significant, he would transfer that information to his journal. This was a slight improvement over the way Dad had done things, as Dad had written everything in there in the hopes that it would prove to be important one day. The end result was that Dad's journal was a jumbled mess, now Dean's problem, whereas Sam's journal, though tidy, was mostly empty. Maybe Dad's way was better, though, for who was to say which information was significant and which was not?
Taking another swallow of espresso, he spread his fingers out over the keyboard to stretch them. He made and unmade fists to get the blood going. Then he drummed his fingers at the edge of the keyboard. Boulder County was not some backwater town with one sheriff and no resources. Nor was it new to Internet technology. No, with IBM, NOAA, NCAR, and Ball Aerospace right in town, Boulder was on the forefront of double encryption, passwords that were changed every 90 days, and key codes issued to only a specialized few and carried around like talismans.
Sam gave in to the urge to crack his knuckles. Next to map reading and navigating Dean and the Impala back and forth across the country, this was his favorite part of the job. Besides, he could bury himself in this and not worry about Dean for a little while. Just an hour or two. Later though he would suggest a six-pack and maybe some shots. Get Dean talkative. And find out what the hell he'd locked away so hard and so far.
*
It took him three hours and two more shots of espresso (with whipped cream) till he was able to dig down to the death certificate and burial statement. Death by asphyxiation, it said for the official record, which did not surprise Sam. Nor the condition of the body, considering how active a janitor would be. What did surprise him was the coroner's note, which was handwritten and had been scanned in after the fact. It confirmed suicide by hanging, but as an afterthought, as if someone hadn't wanted that bit of information to be included and had almost convinced the coroner of this. But whoever Walter Murphy was, he was honest to a fault and the information was all there.
As was the police report, which indicated that Gunnarson had been found Monday morning, after hanging for three days, by the then principal of the school, Mr. Mates. Perhaps the shock of finding his friend still and blue had been enough to propel Mates into retirement from his beloved school, but it was odd that he'd not mentioned all this when Sam and Dean had talked to him. It was weird but not relevant; Sam chalked it up to the long list of things that people often though were not important. He wrote it down on the notepad anyway, just in case.
There was even a trio of photographs of the man, probably because someone couldn’t decide whether or which one should go in the paper with the obit notice. None of them had. All of them showed an older man with short, grey hair, and glasses. He had a wide jaw, and wasn't smiling. Sam flipped through these fast; he didn't care what Gunnarson looked like.
The last scan was the burial certificate, which included the cost of the coffin and the date and place of interment: Valmont Cemetery. It seemed a strange name for a cemetery and when Sam googled it, he found that the location was far east of town on a ridge, far away from the refined likes of Mountain View, the historic 9th Street Pioneer's Haven, and the modern cemetery on the Diagonal. Valmont Cemetery was old as well and almost no longer used; from the records, it looked like it was going to shut down. There'd been no new burials there for years. Only Gunnarson's. He'd probably bought the plot years ago, which was why Valmont had not refused him.
Though why Sam cared was beyond him.
He tapped his pen on the table. After a minute, a waitress came over to ask if he wanted a refill. He was about to smile and refuse with the old joke that if she did bring him more espresso, she'd have to scrape him off the ceiling. Instead, he saw her watch and looked at his own. It was past one o'clock. Time had flown for him, but surely Dean would have called him as agreed, cranky or not.
"No thanks," he told the waitress. "I'm good here."
He called Dean on the cell phone but there was no answer. Thinking that Dean was on his way, he didn't leave a message. Instead he swallowed the last cold dregs of his espresso, folded up his laptop and waited.
Half an hour later, he was still waiting. He tried the cell phone, but still had no luck and no answer. He left a quick message then was about to shut the phone when he realized that Dean wasn't coming. He would never forget to pick up Sam; that he had never happened in the history of Winchester unless something was wrong.
Dialing the number again, he left a quick message. "I'm walking to you," he said. "You owe me lunch and not Chinese."
*
With a mental map of Boulder in his head and his leather bag slung across his chest, Sam began walking south along 28th Street. This would take him to Baseline where he would head east. When he got to the intersection, he passed under the bridge where the highway traffic raced overhead. And realized, after a minute or two of startled recognition, that he knew exactly where he was. That he'd been there before. And that he knew exactly how much of a walk it was from this point to the trailer where they'd live for a short while.
Of course, the 7-11 had been converted into a noodle joint, but the basic geography was still the same. The McDonalds was still there, as were the wide cement sidewalks, the red stone towers for student housing, and the scarcity of trees amidst the backdrop of the Flatirons that rose up like sentinels against the sky with such imposing force all of a sudden that Sam was surprised at how easily he could forget they were there.
And rather how easily his memories rose of the day he and Dean had walked to the 7-11 to buy candy one Saturday morning with Dean's lunch money, as he recalled. Dad had been pissed about that and had yelled at them both. Or, actually, to be very honest, had lectured in a very hard voice, which to Dean was the same thing as being yelled at. Dad had separated them to do their homework as part of the punishment, and when Dad let Sam out of the back room, Dean had been white-faced. Dad had practically not let them have the candy, but had relented. Sam could remember his stomachache and Dad shaking his head, handing him a glass of water with baking soda stirred in.
As he started walking east, Sam saw the pattern though he didn't want to. Dean hadn't eaten lunch for more than a week to get that money. Whether or not he'd been eating anything else at the time, Sam didn't remember. He had no picture in his head that he could associate with the then Dean not eating. But he certainly wasn't eating now. Sam had watched him up close and personal and though it wasn't like he wasn't always up close and personal, but he could trace it all from practically, if not exactly, to the point when he'd announced the job in Boulder. Something was up with Dean only Sam didn't know what.
He kept walking.
As he was walking, the clouds rolled in and it began to snow. Just like that. He looked at his watch - it was nearing 2:30. By the time he got to Dean and if it kept snowing, it'd be too cold to dig, though burning bones could provide a nice little bonfire, albeit a smelly one since the bones were only six months old.
The snow continued all the way along Baseline as he walked, spitting down like ragged white leaves. It got cold enough so that his jacket, adequate that morning to walk to the diner, began to feel too thin. He passed churches and apartments buildings, and homes, and the snow got thick. Just as the road narrowed and the houses thinned out to country, he stopped and looked up. There it was. The trailer.
The trailer was white in the falling snow, the long side of it paralleling the road. Which only made sense. In windy winters, if you had a trailer with the long side into the wind, it was liable to get blown over. And either it was his kid's mind, painting a nicer picture of the past, or the rust had grown over the years, because now there was rust along the seams; he'd not remembered that. The roof sagged. The windows were spotted and seamed like an old man's skin. The snow coming down through the spindly aspen in the yard made everything look soft. Gentled, somehow, as if the hardness of living in a singlewide on a vacant lot that abutted a junkyard wasn't such a bad life after all.
He had a sudden picture in his head of another snowy evening, the Impala parked out front, and the three of them inside while the wind blew and the frost climbed up the thin windows. Dad had come home from a hunt one night, suddenly. Unexpected, stomping snow from his boots on the metal stairs, his arms ladened with take-out Chinese food. Sam remembered that Dean had been about to make him peanut butter and jelly with potato chips crushed in to make it extra salty. They'd been out of milk so Sam hadn't been looking forward to it. Snow from Dad's boots had stuck to the carpet by the floor and melted like acid on Sam's bare feet as they hung on him.
Good natured, Dad had parceled out the contents of the brown bag before even taking off his coat, though he had snapped at Dean to turn the damn heat down and what the hell did I say about that?
Sam remembered looking at Dean and then turned to the memory now. Dean had been bundled up in one of Dad's wool sweaters, his newest jeans and socks. He'd had to roll up the sleeves to eat, had gotten stains on the old sweater that nobody minded. And they'd all stayed up till past midnight on a school night playing War and Spit, Spoons and Bullshit. It was the only time swearing would help you win. Dad had laughed like anything each time Sam shouted it at the top of his lungs.
And now, more bullshit. And two patterns. Constant cold and not eating, and, he remembered now, nightmares, which had always been more his thing than Dean's. He could add not sleeping to the list but he couldn’t. That was only happening in the now. Still it was enough to go after Dean with a six-pack and a tot of Jagermesiter. If they could make it to the liquor store before the roads got too clogged up.
Sam turned his head till he couldn't see the trailer anymore, looked at the snow drifting down like cotton for a minute, and then started walking. The school was only a mile along the road. Sam made it in good time, speeding up to a dogtrot, holding the laptop steady against his side. Going faster kept him warm, though his face felt numb by the time he crossed the school's parking lot to the Impala.
He touched the hood. It was cold and covered with a dusting of snow.
Dean was still at the school, had not gone anywhere. As to why he wasn't answering his cell phone, Sam felt he had the right to be pissed about that.
He walked up to the doors and opened them. Warm air pushed over him, like a kid rushing to get out, to go home. That the doors weren't locked didn't surprise him. Dean probably didn't expect anyone to try to get in. Plus he'd been in a damn stew about the files. Not that Sam knew what they would help if they did manage to find them. Dean knew, though. He had it all planned in his head.
Sam strolled up the ramp, turning his head and looking. The lights were half banked, but he could still see the X’s like a swarm of bees covering the pale green paint on the large, smooth interior brick. There weren't many lockers open, either. Just the still, warm air and the silence.
Halfway up the ramp he stopped and looked around. There were no more X’s, no more lockers opened. Considering what the EMF said, it was likely that Gunnarson had hidden the files where he'd felt most comfortable. In his own office. Dean had probably seen the pattern of the and come to the same conclusion. Why he'd not seen fit to share that with his own brother was another mystery. Sam intended to find it out, along with everything else.
The boiler room seemed to be where the focus of the ghost's energy was, plus the source of whatever affected Dean, so he decided to go there first. He went down the short corridor, into the darkness, towards the slender light of the far window in a door leading to the outside, through which he could see the snow coming down. It was colder as well, and the boiler room door was open. Sam was almost used to this, used to the spooky and the creepy, but had never quite acclimated himself to it as Dad and Dean seemed to have done. They could wade into a fortress of ghosts, up to their hips in ectoplasm and never bat an eye. For him though, it was a different story. He believed in ghosts like a five year old believed in Santa. And they scared him. Still.
He opened the door to the boiler room all the way. Perhaps on account of the fact that all the lights were out save one, and that the frost of winter flew up the stairs at him, he did not call out. If he called out, he would disturb the silence, more, he would alert whatever was down there that he was coming. As silently as he could, he went down the stairs and along the cement lined passageway, the boilers and blowers blinking their tiny red eyes at him as he went by. Ahead, in the janitor's office, there was a light on. The door was open; frost rimmed the doorjamb. And nothing moved. Nothing.
Going closer, he drew his jacket closer. The snow had melted on his shoulders in the school hallway. Now the dampness was turning to an icy claw. They'd be pumping the heater out on the way back to the motel, that was for sure. Otherwise, yeah, pneumonia for both of them. He was sure for all of Dean's bundling that morning, that he wasn't dressed warmly enough either.
Stepping through the doorway, he was aware of how still the air was, how cold. Like a walk-in freezer in a cheap restaurant, cold enough to burn flesh. He looked around, the naked bulb overhead making his eyes tired and dry. The silence was loud enough to hear the clock ticking, the face of it warped by the spoon shaped dent over the 10. Sam moved into the room and heard a sound. There in the corner, on the other side of the couch, was Dean. He'd shoved himself as far into the cement wall as he could go without actually pushing his body into the narrow darkness that led under the auditorium. His whole body was shaking, eyes closed. Jaw tamped down, head tucked, rolling himself into a ball.
Without thinking, Sam moved. His hands were on Dean before he spoke, his mouth opening over Dean's name without any sound coming out. But Dean heard him, blinking, looking up, squinting as if into a bright, warm light.
"'am?"
"Yeah, Dean, I'm here."
Sam wanted to pull Dean to his feet, right then and there, and carry him out of the janitor's office, away from the school forever. He'd never seen his brother like this, with grey-white skin and that horrible glazed look in his eyes. But the body beneath his hands, arms and shoulders, was quivering as though spasms were ramping through him. If Sam pulled him upright, it would hurt. And that was the last thing Dean needed.
"Did Gunnarson the Ghost get you?" he asked, clasping the back of Dean's neck.
"Whu'?" Dean tried moving his mouth and shook his head. Wincing. "No." His breath was a pant. "I mean, the ghos' yeah…."
Ghosts could pull all of the energy from a room faster than you could spit. Why Dean hadn't hightailed it out of there at the first signs of this, or protected himself with salt, confused Sam. That Dean'd not done any of these things was a sign how distracted he was. Frustration rose in Sam's throat like brambles growing out of a well. He wanted to yell. He wanted to bring Dean to task. He wanted to know what the hell was going on. Now. But none of these things was going to help.
Kneeling by Dean he felt the cold seeping out of Dean's body. He tested the pulse along Dean's neck, and the skin there felt like cold meat.
"Not dyin'," said Dean, twitching his head away.
"We got to get you warmed up and out of here," said Sam. "It's snowing. Is there a blanket somewhere?"
Dean blinked at him, and taking a breath, shook his head. Which could have meant no or I don't know or who knows what.
Sam stood up and looked around. The room was less icy than it had been a minute ago, which meant that the ghost was affronted by the fact that there were two of them in the room. Backing off. Looking for its files. Though, like Dean had pointed out, there wasn't much it could do with them once it found them. Just hover over them, or at least until the hard salt and burn job that Sam and Dean would perform in the morning.
He went over to the green couch. Phil had mentioned it was a foldout couch at one point, but that he'd never been able to get it open. Foldout couches had uncomfortable mattresses and that damn bar along the middle that just hit you at hip level. Sometimes, as well, they had blankets and sheets. Bending down, he pulled at the strap. He put his foot on the edge and hefted with both arms and his back. The thing flew open. Better not tell Phil he was too weak to best an old foldout couch. And there was a blanket. Sam lifted it up, dust flew off the ratty brown fibers. And underneath there was a box, which was why, he could see, that the couch had jammed shut. The box had pushed up into the bar and the springs.
Quickly he furled the blanket around Dean's shoulders, resisting the urge to tuck and pat.
"It's getting warmer already," he said. "What possessed you not to come protected with salt, knowing there was a ghost on the loose?"
Dean shrugged.
Then the hairs on the back of Sam's neck stood up.
"What?" asked Dean.
"Couch," said Sam. "There's a box that was jammed in there."
"Box?"
Dean stood up faster than Sam could have thought possible. The blanket flew from his shoulders and he marched over, pushing Sam to once side. He reached down and tore at the cardboard, flinging the lid aside. And there, stacked like naughty soldiers, were the files. Sam knew it even before Dean pulled one of them out. He only looked at the tab of one of them before nodding and putting it back. The files weren't theirs to read, of course not. Sam didn't want to know what was in any of them anyway.
"Yeah," said Dean. "That's what he was looking for. All these months."
"The kid was right," said Sam. "Not a lying liar after all."
"Not by half."
They stood there for a minute. Sam had his hands on his hips and didn't feel cold anymore. But Dean, at his side, shivered.
"What'll we do with the files?"
"Told you," said Dean. "We give them to the principal. She can process them and we can stay out of the limelight."
"Yeah," said Sam. It would be satisfying to know, really know that all those boys would be helped by the discovery of the files, even though it made his stomach feel nasty at the thought of how many there had been. There was a whole legal storage box full of files. Thick files. Fifty of them. Maybe more. Dean was right; the principal would be the best person to handle it. After all, he and Dean couldn’t stick around for the legal mess that would result. They had to be moving on. As always.
"Let's get out of here," said Dean.
Sam nodded.
"You take an end."
Sam bent to force his fingers between the box and the gritty cement floor. It wasn't as heavy as it was bulky. At some point dampness had softened the cardboard in places. He shifted his hand to compensate. When the box was just out of the couch, Dean dropped his end right on Sam's toe.
"Damnit, Dean!" Sam hopped away, rubbing his sneakered foot. "Shit, shit, shit! If you couldn’t hold onto it, you could have said so for fuck's sake."
He looked up. Dean had his hands behind his back, his face a blank. "If you can't hold up your end, you should have said so. For fuck's sake."
"Jerk," said Sam. He straightened up and then moved to the couch to grab and end of the box. "It's not all that heavy, I'll just carry it. Okay?"
"Don't be such a baby," said Dean. "I'll take half. I won't drop it again, I promise."
He didn't. The two of them managed to get the box up the stairs and into the back seat of the Impala while Dean muttered about it polluting his vinyl seats forever. The snow was coming down hard, flecking out of the sky and through the parking lot lights like sharp white bullets.
"We can do an exorcism of the bad mojo later, Dean," said Sam. "For now, in case you haven't noticed, it's snowing. And we are woefully underdressed, or at least I am, so-"
Dean turned back to the school, leaving Sam standing by the open door of the Impala.
"Where are you going?"
"I've got to lock up the school."
"Oh for Pete's sake," said Sam, mostly to himself, partly to the air. Of course Dean was right, he just wanted to get the hell out of there. He'd not had lunch and his feet felt like blocks of ice. Except for his mashed toe. That was on fire. His laptop, even inside its leather case was probably also feeling the effects of the weather.
Dean had the keys to the Impala and had locked back up, automatically, so Sam had to wait, rubbing his arms, moving from foot to foot, standing in the lee of the car to cut the wind. It didn't help much, the snow piled up on his eyelashes thick enough to blind, and the wind found every wrinkle in his clothes. Pneumonia was a very likely possibility at this point.
When Dean came back, it was growing darker, the night coming down like a hammer in a way he didn't remember from when he was a kid. The clouds were setting low below the edge of the front range as if the sky were falling on top of their heads.
"You going to make it, grandma?" asked Dean, unlocking the front door and leaning over to snap the passenger door open. Sam got in, shivering, feeling the dampness pushing into his skin like fine needles.
"Heat, please."
"You wait," said Dean. "You got to let a lady warm up first before you ask her to put out, you know."
"Oh, for shit, Dean," said Sam. He reached his hand over to snap on the heat, ignoring Dean's huff of displeasure. "I'm cold, I'm starving, you're driving me crazy. I just want to get back to the motel and out of the weather."
"Fine, you big whiner."
Dean let the car idle for a minute or two to the point where even Sam could hear the engine really catch and start throbbing like it was ready to go.
"I had to walk here, you know," he said, as Dean drove out of the parking lot. Sam pointed for him to turn left. "Do you recognize any of this?"
For a moment Dean didn't say anything, and then he took the next right on Baseline without being told. "Yeah, I do. We used to walk this way. Do you remember?"
"Yeah," said Sam. He remembered. Walking with Dean and being at the trailer were the majority of his memories. The times when Dean would walk fast and tease Sam to keep up. The couple of times Dean had looked positively sick coming out of the school, but insisted he had a cold or something mild like that. Sam remembered the wind in their faces. The hard sunlight that didn't warm anything. "I passed by our old trailer on the way here."
"Oh yeah?"
This perked Dean up, so Sam kept his eyes peeled. When they were coming closer, he pointed. "You can pull in actually, and take a look."
It was seldom that they were near any of their old stomping grounds, places that they'd stayed for more than a day or two. Sam didn't know whether it was because there was nothing more to keep them around after a hunt was finished, or the sentimentality of the Winchester family had been burned out long ago; either was as likely as the other.
Dean pulled into the gravel drive, and it struck Sam how the Impala was making the same tracks as it had all those years ago. Dean remembered too, Sam could tell. He turned to Sam, and smiled, his eyes sparkling.
"Remember?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Sam. "Dad came and went, but it felt safe here. It was-"
"What do you mean, safe? Dad always kept us safe."
Another fight in the brewing. Sam made himself not respond to this, to the intent. "I'm not saying that he didn't Dean, if you'd listen for a minute."
He waited.
"I'm listening," said Dean.
"It felt safe because it was our place. We moved in. We had an address that was not a motel. Dad was there as much as he was gone. And you looked after me when he wasn't."
Dean nodded, his eyes on the trailer, the snow coming down past the headlights like thick lace. It was hard to see the roofline, and the rust was hidden beyond the bright lights.
"It got cold in there sometimes," Dean said, conceding. "Luckily we had that space heater. The damn furnace never seemed to be able to cut it."
"No," Sam said to agree. He dipped his head, feeling the pleasure of the better memories. Him and Dean fighting over pudding, cleaning it off the wall before Dad found out. The bits they'd never been able to get off the ceiling. The Saturday morning cartoons. Him waking up to Dean's nightmares.
He looked up. He remembered sometimes Dean waking up in the middle of the night so forcefully that he'd woken Sam up, too. The bed would shake and Sam would reach out, touching the top of Dean's head, or stroking his shoulder to get him to quiet down. To wake his brother up and let the nightmare go away. This usually worked, but Dean was always surprised to see Sam there. There'd been several mornings where he'd woken to feel Dean curled up against him as if for warmth or something else that Dean never talked about, even though Sam had known it was because of the nightmares. For a while there, Sam had felt like the big brother, the protector. He'd liked it in a way, liked being counted on, but Dean had not wanted to admit to any nightmares, nor expressed any gratitude for unasked for comfort.
"Remember Dad falling asleep in the Dad chair to the news?" asked Dean.
This startled him. It wasn't like Dean to reminisce at all. That was Sam's gig. But Sam played along. "He always had it on too loud and wouldn’t let us change the channel."
"Forgot to take his boots off too, sometimes."
"The carpet was a goner the second we moved in."
The Impala sighed and Dean patted the wheel. "She doesn't like sitting here. She wants to keep moving forward."
Sam thought that of course Dean meant himself. It wasn't the first time he'd used the car as his voice. "Okay. Let's go."
Dean put the Impala in reverse and backed out across the snow. The tires spun a bit, making a silky sound, and he laid his arm across the back seat to check his path. Then, as he pulled out onto Baseline, Sam thought he heard his brother say, "I’m just surprised it's still here, is all."
"Yeah," said Sam in the quiet warm air of the cab of the Impala. "Yeah."
With the snow making the wipers do double time, Dean drove for a minute, and then asked, "Who's hungry? Who's for Chinese?"
"I said no Chinese, Dean." Sam still felt damp through and sneaked a hand out to turn up the heater. "I left you a message about it. Besides, you owe me. We've had Chinese every day since we got here."
"Chinese is good for you. It's got vegetables."
"It's also got MSG."
"Not that Fan's place we went to on Thanksgiving. They said so on the menu."
"Dean," said Sam. Then he stopped. He remembered the night Dad brought home Chinese food. It had probably been soaked through with MSG, what difference did it matter now. "If we get Chinese, will you at actually eat some instead of just pretend?"
"Pretend?" asked Dean. He looked at Sam. "I don't pretend to eat. I eat all the time."
"Could have fooled me." Sam chewed on his lip and tried to imagine that he wasn't cold or tired or hungry. That his brother was going to be the death of him. That the job they'd taken in Boulder wasn't all fucked up. That he couldn’t suddenly remember the image of his brother from years ago, sitting on the couch cross-legged, slurping up lo mein and laughing so hard the noodles came back out. The night Dad had come home early, stomping snow from his boots. Dean had eaten then. Maybe he'd eat now.
"Alright. Fans. But what about dropping the files off?"
"We can do that on the way."
Sam sighed and pulled out his cell phone, trying not to help Dean negotiate the roads that were starting to feel slippery under the Impala's road weary tires. It would just make Dean irritated; he might start driving faster. He called Audrey and told her what they'd found, what they wanted to do.
"That makes the most sense," she said. "I know you guys don't want to get involved with the police or anything."
"How do you know that?" asked Sam.
"What does she know?" asked Dean, looking over. Sam waved him away.
"My cousin told me," said Audrey. "He said you guys were like a modern day Robin Hood. The Robin Hood of Ghostbusters."
This made Sam laugh a little; he caught Dean's eye and shook his head.
"Just give me the directions. We're headed west on Baseline."
She gave them directions that took them south on Broadway, which proved to be a bit tricky on the left turn, since the turn lights were out, and Broadway was a six-lane street at that point. The snow, closer to the mountains, was coming down like a bed sheet, and the Impala's wipers almost couldn't keep up.
"We're not going to make it to Fan's," said Sam, as they pulled into Audrey's driveway.
"Then we'll go someplace closer," said Dean. He got out and slammed the door, and a second later, Sam felt the jar of the car as Dean opened the passenger seat door. "Help me with this."
Sam got out, instantly shivering, wishing they could have gone back to the motel to get warmer, dryer clothes before doing this. But Dean was in a big deal hurry to get rid of the files, and Sam couldn’t actually blame him. He figured if it wasn't snowing, and so cold, and if Dean' hadn't dropped the box on his foot, and if he'd actually gotten lunch, he'd be feeling a whole lot better. Hot and sour soup was starting to sound better all the time.
With both of them trying to carry the brunt of the weight of the box, and the fact the path was only one person-width wide, both of them had to walk in the snow. Sam's feet were soaked through; he imagined that Dean's were too. Maybe they could get the Chinese delivered.
Audrey was there before they even rang the bell. She had her housecoat on, and behind her, Sam could see the bright glare of the TV.
"You boys are out in the weather, I see." But this was just idle chitchat. "Are those the files?"
"Yeah," said Sam. He dipped his head, feeling bad. Not that taking the files away would have helped anything, but the fact that they were there to bring. All those boys. Years of silence. And the one poor bastard who'd had the courage to speak up.
She motioned for them to put them just inside the door. Then she opened her mouth as if to invite them in for coffee or something, but Dean was already backing away.
"We have to get going," he said. "And we won't have time to clean all those X's off the walls. We have to bug out before the cops start poking around."
Sam nodded to agree with this. The snow was getting too thick to mess around with, coming down hard enough to make Sam worry. Tomorrow would be worse, and Dean had been fired up to leave the second they'd arrived in Boulder
"Drive safely, then," she said. "I'll tell Phil."
They got into the car, gone ice cold in their absence. Dean turned on the engine, and Sam waited while it heated up. He didn't dare touch the switch to turn on the heater any higher. If Dean was cold, chilled as he had constantly been, then it wasn't any wonder he didn't feel the lack of heat. Not even as the sun went down and the temperatures plummeted fast enough to make Sam feel like he was in one of those movies about failed expeditions to the South Pole.
"We won't make it to Fans," Sam said. "We'll be lucky enough to make it back to the motel."
Dean pulled out into the street, tires spinning. He obviously knew Sam was right and it was pissing him off. "I think I saw a Chinese place near the motel. The food probably sucks there."
Sam didn't say anything. Sometimes Chinese restaurants had, inexplicably, hamburgers. He wondered if they would be any good.
They weren't. It was a whiteout by the time they got to the motel, and Dean volunteered to go get the food. Sam put in his call for a cheeseburger, and Dean obediently bought two back for him. Plus some chocolate pudding, which he knew Sam loved. The food was bad, but the company had gotten better, now that Sam could control the heater, and Dean was content to have Chinese food. Even bad Chinese food. They each sat on their respective avocado green bedspreads, munched in tandem, and watched an old black and white movie. Dean was the one who had found it. While Sam had been unloading the food, Dean had flicked through the channels, and settled on something Sam didn't recognize.
It didn't matter, though. Sam wasn't watching the movie, and Dean wasn't eating. The smell of over salty Chinese food filled the dry air.
"Dean."
"Don't start, Sam," said Dean. He pushed around his lo mein with a fork, but that was it.
"But you said you'd-"
"I'll eat tomorrow, I promise. My cold's almost gone now."
"Thought you said you never got colds?"
For this there was no answer. The black and white movie rumbled on, the tail ends of two bad cheeseburgers tanked in Sam's stomach, and if it wasn't snowing a whiteout outside, he'd have gone for a walk in a heartbeat. And not told Dean where he was going. As it was, he had to wish for antacids, or even some baking soda, and had to do without either. If Dean would remember to throw out the Chinese food, instead of leaving it out on the dresser, he might get enough sleep. At least he could try.
Part 7