SPN fic: "Hickory Hill" 4/8+epilogue
Headers in Chapter 1.
Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3
Chapter 4
There were times when Dean really wished he was the kind of guy who got satisfaction out of saying "I told you so." Because he had totally told Sam so, he'd said messing with that Ouija board was a bad idea, but did anyone listen to him? No.
He'd known the exact moment when everything went pear-shaped. Sammy had touched the board and gone instantly, preternaturally still. So still that for a few horrific seconds, Dean had thought he wasn't breathing. When Dean shook him by the shoulder, it had been like shaking a rag doll, Sam's head lolling back and forth on his neck and his arms flopping like wet noodles. It would've been kind of funny if not for the thin trickle of blood seeping from Sam's left ear.
"Sammy!" Dean could barely hear his own voice over the ruckus the geist was making outside their circle. He gave Sam's shoulder another shake, then shifted his hand to press his fingers against Sam's throat. There was a pulse, thank God. Now that Dean looked more closely, he could see the faint rise and fall of Sam's chest as he breathed. He wouldn't respond, though, not even when Dean pinched a fold of skin at the base of his neck hard enough to bruise. When Dean let go, Sam slumped forward bonelessly, his forehead nearly touching his folded legs.
Dean looked down at the board. He'd taken both his hands and his attention from it when he'd reached for Sam. The planchette was still moving, spelling out random nonsense as it zigged and zagged all over the alphabet. Dean slapped one hand down on top of it and held it in place, felt it vibrate furiously against his palm as it tried to force its way free.
Close the board, idiot. Dean pushed the planchette toward "Goodbye." It fought him all the way, wriggling under his hand like some freaky triangular bug, gouging his palm with its barbed corners, scratching deep grooves in the cardboard as Dean forced it to keep moving. Outside the circle, the floorboards bucked and creaked. One of the cell doors flew right off its hinges to crash into the wall behind it. The window burst with a sound like a gunshot. Dean automatically flung up one arm to shield his face from the spray of broken glass, but all the fragments landed neatly outside the salt circle. Dean dragged the planchette a few more inches and suddenly everything went still.
He held it down a little longer, just to make sure the thing wasn't faking, before lifting his hand up to see "oodby" neatly framed within the clear plastic. The planchette stayed put, so Dean shoved the board out of the way and reached over to grasp Sam's shoulder's again.
"Sam! Sammy!"
Sam shuddered and jerked his head up, sucking in air with a painful-sounding wheeze. His eyes fluttered open, and Dean quickly attempted to school his face into some semblance of calm.
"You still with me, dude?"
"No," Sam muttered in a slurred voice, and slumped forward again, an awkward dead weight in Dean's grip. His breathing stayed strong and steady, though, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Dean lowered him gently onto the floor, loosened his collar, and stuck one of the duffel bags under his feet to elevate his legs.
"This is why I'm gonna have grey hair before I'm thirty," he grumbled, patting Sam's face roughly with one hand. "Come on, Sammy, quit fucking around and talk to me."
"Olivia..." Sam blinked back into wakefulness with a muffled groan. "Ugh... what happened?"
"You passed out." Dean sat back on his heels and rubbed one unsteady hand across his face. "Twice. And dude, did you just call me Olivia?"
"Wasn't talking to you." Sam swung his feet off the duffel and attempted to sit up, but managed only to prop himself up on wobbly elbows. "Did you see her, Dean? Is she gone?"
"I didn't see anybody. Just you looking..." dead "even freakier than usual. What the hell happened, Sam?"
"I spoke to her."
"To Olivia?"
"Yeah. I think she was a slave here once." Sam shook his head, then stopped and winced as if the motion hurt him. He still looked dazed and much too pale for Dean's liking, but his eyes seemed to be tracking. "It was so weird, Dean. She was solid and I was the ghost. And she was so scared..."
"Whoa. Okay, hold on a sec." Dean patted Sam's chest with one hand, partly to shut him up and partly to reassure himself that Sam was, in fact, still solid and not a ghost. "Let me get this straight. You went on... what? Some sort of astral travel jaunt? Out of body experience? Because your body was right here the whole time, and I'm pretty sure you weren't in it." He could hear his own voice rising on that last sentence, and mentally snapped at himself to tone it down, but Sam didn't seem to notice. He was too busy trying to sit up again. Dean held his arm out and Sam grabbed onto his sleeve with both hands and finally pulled himself up into a sitting position.
"Thanks," he grunted. "Shit. My head hurts."
"That'll teach you to stay put in your body," Dean told him. "Now stop whining and tell me what happened."
Slowly, with a lot of stumbling and wincing along the way, Sam described his encounter with Olivia-the-ghost. Apparently, time had passed slower for him than it had for Dean -- Sammy could babble a mile a minute when he put his mind to it, but there was no way he could've done all that talking in the few seconds before Dean had ended the seance. It sounded like Olivia hadn't tried to hurt him, and Sam was clearly ready to declare himself her new best friend, but Dean wasn't sure how much he trusted that. Death wasn't too conducive to sanity, and ghosts weren't rational things you could make friends with. No telling what might make one turn on you.
"--And then you closed the board and I got pulled back," Sam finished. He sounded vaguely disappointed by that, and Dean scowled at him.
"Well, sorry if I interrupted your fascinating conversation with the dead chick, but it did the job, didn't it?" He waved one arm at the quiet darkness outside their circle. "Haven't heard a peep since you got back."
"You think it worked, then?" Sam rose unsteadily to his feet, using Dean's shoulder for support. He walked over to the edge of the circle, picked up one of the candles, and leaned forward to peer down the corridor. "You think the board sent them all back?"
"Them?"
"I don't think Olivia was the only spirit there." Sam's face was grim and tired. In the dim candle light, the streak of blood beneath his ear looked almost black. "She was the only one I saw and talked to, but I heard other voices. And Stacey and her friends said they heard more than one."
"Yeah, well, we're not hearing anything now, are we?" Dean stood up and took the EMF meter from his pocket again. "Only one way to tell for sure, though. Do a sweep outside the circle, see if we pick up anything."
"What about the poltergeist? It hadn't been summoned by the board in the first place, so it wouldn't be sent away by it either."
Dean shrugged. "The poltergeist is a wuss, remember? It's the ghosts that made the trouble."
"I'm not so sure about that." Sam frowned. "Olivia didn't seem hostile or violent at all, and--"
"Do the math, Sammy. Before the seance -- nothing but scary noises and creaky walls. After the seance -- teenage girls get thrown down the stairs. Maybe your new girlfriend wasn't violent, but something sure was." Dean bent down to retrieve one of the salt-loaded shotguns from his duffel and hand it to Sam. "Here. Think you're well enough to aim straight?"
"I'll manage." Sam's voice sounded weak, but his hands were steady on the gun and his face was slowly regaining its normal color. Dean allowed himself to relax a little.
"Good. Stay in the circle while I check the place out. If anything tries to jump me, shoot it."
"Right." Sam bent down to plant the candle on the floor by his feet again, then stood up straight and pumped the shotgun. "Be careful, Dean. I have a bad feeling about all this."
"Join the club," Dean muttered and stepped outside the circle.
Nothing happened. The EMF meter didn't so much as blink; the silence in the corridor remained undisturbed. Dean took a couple of slow, silent steps down the corridor and poked his head into the nearest cell on the left.
"Nothing he--" He never got to finish the sentence. The meter shrieked in his hand, then clattered to the floor as something slammed into Dean's side with sledgehammer force, hurling him into the cell and against the back wall.
"Dean!" Sam's voice was barely audible over the wind that was once again howling down the corridor. Dean swore and pushed away from the wall, wincing as all the freshly-bruised muscles along his back complained.
"Stay in the circle, Sam!" It would keep Sam from getting a clear shot until Dean got out of the cell, but it would also keep Sam safe. "Can you see anything?"
Before Sam could reply, the geist struck again. It felt like a giant fist clenching around Dean's body, picking him up like a toy and giving a few good shakes before tossing him out of the cell and clear across the corridor. The door on the other side was shut. Dean hit it sideways and felt something in his shoulder wrench and pop from the impact.
It hurt like a bitch, but at least he was out in the open now, in Sam's line of sight. He could even see Sam, less than five feet away, standing with the shotgun braced against his shoulder. Dean tried to move toward him, but the same invisible hand that had thrown him earlier now held him pinned against the door, and Dean's attempts to move only served to strain his injured shoulder, sending white-hot jolts of pain down his arm and along his side.
"Shoot the fucker!" Dean yelled. Sam planted his feet and swept the gun barrel from side to side.
"I can't see it!"
"Just shoot, dammit!"
There was a dull, metallic clang somewhere nearby, and something Dean couldn't quite make out came hurtling at him out of the darkness. He couldn't duck, couldn't move aside. Just barely managed to turn his head enough to not take the blow square in his face. Somebody cried out -- maybe himself, maybe Sam, he wasn't sure -- and everything went black and still.
Chapter 5
Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3
Chapter 4
There were times when Dean really wished he was the kind of guy who got satisfaction out of saying "I told you so." Because he had totally told Sam so, he'd said messing with that Ouija board was a bad idea, but did anyone listen to him? No.
He'd known the exact moment when everything went pear-shaped. Sammy had touched the board and gone instantly, preternaturally still. So still that for a few horrific seconds, Dean had thought he wasn't breathing. When Dean shook him by the shoulder, it had been like shaking a rag doll, Sam's head lolling back and forth on his neck and his arms flopping like wet noodles. It would've been kind of funny if not for the thin trickle of blood seeping from Sam's left ear.
"Sammy!" Dean could barely hear his own voice over the ruckus the geist was making outside their circle. He gave Sam's shoulder another shake, then shifted his hand to press his fingers against Sam's throat. There was a pulse, thank God. Now that Dean looked more closely, he could see the faint rise and fall of Sam's chest as he breathed. He wouldn't respond, though, not even when Dean pinched a fold of skin at the base of his neck hard enough to bruise. When Dean let go, Sam slumped forward bonelessly, his forehead nearly touching his folded legs.
Dean looked down at the board. He'd taken both his hands and his attention from it when he'd reached for Sam. The planchette was still moving, spelling out random nonsense as it zigged and zagged all over the alphabet. Dean slapped one hand down on top of it and held it in place, felt it vibrate furiously against his palm as it tried to force its way free.
Close the board, idiot. Dean pushed the planchette toward "Goodbye." It fought him all the way, wriggling under his hand like some freaky triangular bug, gouging his palm with its barbed corners, scratching deep grooves in the cardboard as Dean forced it to keep moving. Outside the circle, the floorboards bucked and creaked. One of the cell doors flew right off its hinges to crash into the wall behind it. The window burst with a sound like a gunshot. Dean automatically flung up one arm to shield his face from the spray of broken glass, but all the fragments landed neatly outside the salt circle. Dean dragged the planchette a few more inches and suddenly everything went still.
He held it down a little longer, just to make sure the thing wasn't faking, before lifting his hand up to see "oodby" neatly framed within the clear plastic. The planchette stayed put, so Dean shoved the board out of the way and reached over to grasp Sam's shoulder's again.
"Sam! Sammy!"
Sam shuddered and jerked his head up, sucking in air with a painful-sounding wheeze. His eyes fluttered open, and Dean quickly attempted to school his face into some semblance of calm.
"You still with me, dude?"
"No," Sam muttered in a slurred voice, and slumped forward again, an awkward dead weight in Dean's grip. His breathing stayed strong and steady, though, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Dean lowered him gently onto the floor, loosened his collar, and stuck one of the duffel bags under his feet to elevate his legs.
"This is why I'm gonna have grey hair before I'm thirty," he grumbled, patting Sam's face roughly with one hand. "Come on, Sammy, quit fucking around and talk to me."
"Olivia..." Sam blinked back into wakefulness with a muffled groan. "Ugh... what happened?"
"You passed out." Dean sat back on his heels and rubbed one unsteady hand across his face. "Twice. And dude, did you just call me Olivia?"
"Wasn't talking to you." Sam swung his feet off the duffel and attempted to sit up, but managed only to prop himself up on wobbly elbows. "Did you see her, Dean? Is she gone?"
"I didn't see anybody. Just you looking..." dead "even freakier than usual. What the hell happened, Sam?"
"I spoke to her."
"To Olivia?"
"Yeah. I think she was a slave here once." Sam shook his head, then stopped and winced as if the motion hurt him. He still looked dazed and much too pale for Dean's liking, but his eyes seemed to be tracking. "It was so weird, Dean. She was solid and I was the ghost. And she was so scared..."
"Whoa. Okay, hold on a sec." Dean patted Sam's chest with one hand, partly to shut him up and partly to reassure himself that Sam was, in fact, still solid and not a ghost. "Let me get this straight. You went on... what? Some sort of astral travel jaunt? Out of body experience? Because your body was right here the whole time, and I'm pretty sure you weren't in it." He could hear his own voice rising on that last sentence, and mentally snapped at himself to tone it down, but Sam didn't seem to notice. He was too busy trying to sit up again. Dean held his arm out and Sam grabbed onto his sleeve with both hands and finally pulled himself up into a sitting position.
"Thanks," he grunted. "Shit. My head hurts."
"That'll teach you to stay put in your body," Dean told him. "Now stop whining and tell me what happened."
Slowly, with a lot of stumbling and wincing along the way, Sam described his encounter with Olivia-the-ghost. Apparently, time had passed slower for him than it had for Dean -- Sammy could babble a mile a minute when he put his mind to it, but there was no way he could've done all that talking in the few seconds before Dean had ended the seance. It sounded like Olivia hadn't tried to hurt him, and Sam was clearly ready to declare himself her new best friend, but Dean wasn't sure how much he trusted that. Death wasn't too conducive to sanity, and ghosts weren't rational things you could make friends with. No telling what might make one turn on you.
"--And then you closed the board and I got pulled back," Sam finished. He sounded vaguely disappointed by that, and Dean scowled at him.
"Well, sorry if I interrupted your fascinating conversation with the dead chick, but it did the job, didn't it?" He waved one arm at the quiet darkness outside their circle. "Haven't heard a peep since you got back."
"You think it worked, then?" Sam rose unsteadily to his feet, using Dean's shoulder for support. He walked over to the edge of the circle, picked up one of the candles, and leaned forward to peer down the corridor. "You think the board sent them all back?"
"Them?"
"I don't think Olivia was the only spirit there." Sam's face was grim and tired. In the dim candle light, the streak of blood beneath his ear looked almost black. "She was the only one I saw and talked to, but I heard other voices. And Stacey and her friends said they heard more than one."
"Yeah, well, we're not hearing anything now, are we?" Dean stood up and took the EMF meter from his pocket again. "Only one way to tell for sure, though. Do a sweep outside the circle, see if we pick up anything."
"What about the poltergeist? It hadn't been summoned by the board in the first place, so it wouldn't be sent away by it either."
Dean shrugged. "The poltergeist is a wuss, remember? It's the ghosts that made the trouble."
"I'm not so sure about that." Sam frowned. "Olivia didn't seem hostile or violent at all, and--"
"Do the math, Sammy. Before the seance -- nothing but scary noises and creaky walls. After the seance -- teenage girls get thrown down the stairs. Maybe your new girlfriend wasn't violent, but something sure was." Dean bent down to retrieve one of the salt-loaded shotguns from his duffel and hand it to Sam. "Here. Think you're well enough to aim straight?"
"I'll manage." Sam's voice sounded weak, but his hands were steady on the gun and his face was slowly regaining its normal color. Dean allowed himself to relax a little.
"Good. Stay in the circle while I check the place out. If anything tries to jump me, shoot it."
"Right." Sam bent down to plant the candle on the floor by his feet again, then stood up straight and pumped the shotgun. "Be careful, Dean. I have a bad feeling about all this."
"Join the club," Dean muttered and stepped outside the circle.
Nothing happened. The EMF meter didn't so much as blink; the silence in the corridor remained undisturbed. Dean took a couple of slow, silent steps down the corridor and poked his head into the nearest cell on the left.
"Nothing he--" He never got to finish the sentence. The meter shrieked in his hand, then clattered to the floor as something slammed into Dean's side with sledgehammer force, hurling him into the cell and against the back wall.
"Dean!" Sam's voice was barely audible over the wind that was once again howling down the corridor. Dean swore and pushed away from the wall, wincing as all the freshly-bruised muscles along his back complained.
"Stay in the circle, Sam!" It would keep Sam from getting a clear shot until Dean got out of the cell, but it would also keep Sam safe. "Can you see anything?"
Before Sam could reply, the geist struck again. It felt like a giant fist clenching around Dean's body, picking him up like a toy and giving a few good shakes before tossing him out of the cell and clear across the corridor. The door on the other side was shut. Dean hit it sideways and felt something in his shoulder wrench and pop from the impact.
It hurt like a bitch, but at least he was out in the open now, in Sam's line of sight. He could even see Sam, less than five feet away, standing with the shotgun braced against his shoulder. Dean tried to move toward him, but the same invisible hand that had thrown him earlier now held him pinned against the door, and Dean's attempts to move only served to strain his injured shoulder, sending white-hot jolts of pain down his arm and along his side.
"Shoot the fucker!" Dean yelled. Sam planted his feet and swept the gun barrel from side to side.
"I can't see it!"
"Just shoot, dammit!"
There was a dull, metallic clang somewhere nearby, and something Dean couldn't quite make out came hurtling at him out of the darkness. He couldn't duck, couldn't move aside. Just barely managed to turn his head enough to not take the blow square in his face. Somebody cried out -- maybe himself, maybe Sam, he wasn't sure -- and everything went black and still.
Chapter 5