Hell House (12/17)
Title: Hell House (12/17)
Author: narukyu
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel/Sam, Sam/Andy (one sided); Jake, Lily, Ansem, Ava, Azazel
Rating: R
Warnings: violence, adult language, death (OCs, minor character), gore (not much worse than 3x15), sex, AU (pre-season 1), high school fic (ish), slash, minor femmeslash.
Word Count: 60K-ish
Summary: A devotedly unreligious man sends his youngest son to a private religious school. If that wasn't suspicious enough, Sam can't get a hold of John or Dean, people are disappearing right and left, and, in the night, something whispers in the silence of the old chapel. Soon enough, Sam discovers that something terrible lingers behind the doors to the sacristy--something that sheds a light on the secret holy mission of the Soldiers of Christ as well what happened to his family so many years ago.
My most esteemed brother once told me, “Sometimes, it is necessary for the pacifist to wield the bloodied sword.” This assertion disturbed me greatly and almost drove me from the order. I was new then, unconvinced of the great importance of our most sacred and holy mission. I could not immediately see how the actions of the order could isolate and destroy the adversaries of Christ-all I could see were the children.
I understand my brother now. My sword is my damned tool. I look upon it and despise it. I see the damage it has done. I watch them wake away from it, forever changed from the ordeal. It is horrible, it is heinous, but it is necessary. Without the tool, we would not be able to see evil for what it is. Without the tool, we would not be able to ascertain the success of our endeavors. We would not be able to see their sins or make proper judgments. We are too easily fooled.
Evil lies and every child-damned or innocent-looks exactly alike.
Father Gregory Thompson’s journal, September 9, 1988.
-----
The next time Sam opened his eyes, it was a little later in the day. Morning light streamed stubbornly through the cracks of Gabriel’s heavy curtains, throwing thin, gray shapes of light across the opposite wall and over the bed.
He rubbed the heel of his palm against his eyes, insanely groggy. He didn’t remember going to sleep at all, and he couldn’t remember what woke him up. He couldn’t remember why he should be blinking away spots right at that moment, but he was. He wanted so much to chalk it up to the residual hang over, but John Winchester didn’t raise a fool.
Sam froze as something shifted in the corner of his eye. He wasn’t alone. He turned his head slightly, squinting. There was a dark mass of something sitting on the bed next to him. The shitty light wasn’t helpful.
Sam held his breath as his eyes adjusted, giving the mass a form-a person-and then finally a name.
It was Gabriel. He was naked and sitting on top of the covers, seemingly unaware of the slight chill in the air. He had his knees pulled up to his chest and his toes were digging into the blanket.
He stared off into nothing, his mouth pulled into a frown. Sam couldn’t call it dazed boredom or anything of the like. Gabriel looked too intense, too aware-aware enough to know Sam was awake, even though Sam hadn’t moved much yet. Gabriel cocked his head to the side, as if listening to something Sam couldn’t hear.
When he spoke, his tone was distant. “You’re very annoying, you know that?”
“I’m annoying?” Sam echoed, sitting up just far enough to brace his elbows against the mattress.
Gabriel nodded, his eyebrows drawing together. “Oh, yes. Extremely. Don’t leave.”
Sam blinked at the tangential thought, too aware that Gabriel still wasn’t looking at him. “I have to,” he said patiently, carefully.
“No, you don’t. You could just… stay. Everything would turn out alright for you.” Gabriel finally looked at him. He was frowning. “Stay.”
Sam didn’t immediately respond. He could feel the every place Gabriel had touched him all of a sudden-his hands, his hips, his mouth. Every touched place throbbed like a bruise, but felt sweet like a stretch in the morning.
“I’m not concerned about me,” he said after a while. He had things to do, and while the night off had been nice, he needed to get back to them.
Gabriel flopped back down on the mattress. “Ugh, I know! Martyr.” He covered his face with his hands.
After a moment, Sam flipped on his stomach, resting his chin in his hand as he stared at Gabriel. “Only you can make that sound like a bad thing,” he said quietly.
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” Gabriel said, his voice muffled.
“So I’ve heard.”
Gabriel sighed, letting his hands fall back to the bed. He didn’t really seem to be listening, because he said, “If any of the priests try to corner you and tell you go to the sacristy, don’t go. And if they try to make you, well… you’re a big boy. Fight ‘em off.”
Several things occurred to Sam very quickly, but one took big, looming priority. “Something else you know that you’re not telling me?” Sam couldn’t help the edge in his tone.
“I don’t know. Just a feeling.” Gabriel got a good look at Sam’s still suspicious face and rolled his eyes dramatically. “Geez! I don’t know everything, okay?”
Somehow, Sam strongly doubted that. Gabriel grouchily told him to go back to sleep, which seemed like a good idea all of the sudden. Sleepily, Sam rolled on his arm until he was supine again. His eyes fluttered shut.
Sleep. Sleep sounded awesome. His eyes opened.
But, for some reason, Sam couldn’t stop staring at that damn mirror.
-----
Sam woke up again somewhere around noon. He pushed himself up half-way, squinting at the bedroom. He had to fight to keep himself from falling back on the bed and going back to sleep.
Feeling an odd sense of jittery nerves, Sam looked over at the other side of the bed. Gabriel’s back was to him, bare and vulnerable. Sam started reaching for him without thinking, but stopped, his hand hovering in the space between them for a moment before falling down to the sheets.
In the end, Sam rolled out of bed. He hunted down his clothes and got dressed slowly, thinking about how he was going to be received. He knew he wasn’t going to get away with it. He’d been gone way too long and he didn’t exactly hide the fact that he was leaving the night before. Someone would’ve told the staff by now. Sam didn’t care-with the length of his absence, they were going to ask questions anyway.
And, maybe, they’d ask him to the sacristy. Then, he considered grimly, he could finally see what his enemy was. He could see what terrorized Lily and Jake, what changed Ava and Ansem, and what made Gabriel, of all people, break his vow of silence.
Dread slid up his throat.
It was bad. It had to be bad.
They were waiting for him on the concrete paths, eyes narrowed on the gate like they expected him to come through at any moment. Swallowing harshly, too aware of the fact that his slacks were creased and his vest and tie were still missing, Sam walked up to them, approaching from the left. He attempted nonchalance, but his hands made fists in his pockets.
Bailey was the first to see him. When his gaze shifted, the entire group-one more priest, two nuns, and three staff people-shifted with him. Sam kept walking toward them, too nauseous from nerves to enjoy how startled they looked.
Sam stopped two feet shy of them. “Fathers,” he said blankly, inclining his head to the two men. He only spared a glance at the other priest.
O’Malley, his gray eyes flickering appraisingly over Sam from head to toe, looked pained. Bailey, on the other hand, seemed to gather himself up, like Sam had just given him his reason to be.
“Samuel, you’ve been called to the sacristy,” Bailey said, his voice booming unnecessarily in the quiet afternoon air.
Ignoring a renewed sense of dread, Sam nodded, looking at the property all around him. It was a nice day. And how normal everything seemed! A cool air stirred the top of the bright green grass, bringing with it the smell of moss and growing things. Birds tweeted brightly from somewhere around him. A black, white, and orange butterfly landed with delicate precision on a waving dandelion.
Sam had to force his gaze away, and he did so with a frown. Hell House seemed so unreal for a moment. Sam almost expected to wake up suddenly from a dream-still fifteen, still awkward looking, still crammed in the back of the Impala.
But this was real, whether he liked it or not.
“Sam,” O’Malley prompted quietly.
Sam sighed. “Yeah, I heard.”
Sorry, Gabriel. Sam didn’t fight-wouldn’t fight. He had to do this.
Keeping his hands in his pockets, Sam sighed and shifted his route from the student building to the chapel, passing by the tightly knit group. He was taller than all of them, he noticed, and he definitely didn’t imagine the way all of them edged away from him. He ignored them as best as he could.
As soon as he started walking to the church under his own steam, the group broke up. Some hurried to the church while others reluctantly went to classes. Two men flanked Sam immediately, one missing an eye and looking hateful-Eddie--while the other was O’Malley himself.
“Sam, it, uh…” O’Malley trailed off as they passed a group of nuns. Their feet clattered down the steps of the chapel loudly, drowning out the sounds of everything else. The trek up made by Sam and his escorts was much quieter in comparison.
“What.”
“It needn’t be rough on you,” he murmured as they entered the chapel. The one eyed man shot their bent heads a suspicious look. “Just… submit.”
Sam sought out O’Malley‘s face in the dark room. “To what?”
Candle light danced in the man’s gray eyes. “You’ll see.”
The door slammed shut behind them, and Sam realized that they had been followed by a few others-Sister Catherine, Father Bailey, and a few others who did not ever identify themselves.
Bailey was staring at O‘Malley, clearly disapproving. “The sacristy, not the lobby,” he said quietly to O’Malley, his tone censoring. O’Malley murmured something apologetic, bending his neck as Bailey pushed past down the aisle, cassock flaring around his thin, lanky body.
Sam hurried after the priest, disturbed by the dark look O’Malley shot toward Bailey’s retreating back.
-----
The sacristy was a room in the back of the church. Of all the rooms at Hell House, this room was the least accessible to students. A sacristy, according to his studies, was not a room opened to the public even in normally functioning churches, a thing that Hell House was not. In any case, it didn’t make sense to send students there for punishment.
But Hell House was as compatible with logic as oil was with water, so into the sacristy he went.
Initially, the room looked exactly how he expected it to look-a small, white walled room barely bigger than a closet. It held holy vestments and objects, an ambitious shelf and a tiny sink. But there was a door in the back too, and it was through that door Sam was guided.
The solid, wooden entryway opened to a medium sized room not much bigger than one of their classes. The typical religious paraphernalia littered the walls-a cross on the north wall and pictures of saints on the east wall. It looked like the room shared a wall with the old chapel too, because the smooth white suddenly shifted into pitted stone on the west.
Sam stared at it for a little too long, straining to hear the too high voice. He heard nothing, but he felt the thing nonetheless-present, watching. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
“Come, Samuel,” Sister Catherine murmured, pivoting sharply. There wasn't much room for her to move. Even if all the things in the room had been taken out, there still wouldn't have been enough room for Dean's Impala, and the car wasn't that big.
Sam tore his gaze away from the wall, noticing that everyone had filed in the room, crowding around the edges. He looked at them, eyes darting over every one of their faces. Some of them seem to shy away from eye contact while others stared right back at him, hateful.
Sam’s attention was pulled back to the west wall when he thought he heard his name. This seemed to disturb some of them. The previously quiet room was soon peppered with whispers.
“Same thing, every one of them,” Eddie hissed in a too loud voice. When Sam looked back at him, the man was nervously eyeing the west wall. “Why look there?” The man was elbowed into silence by the few surrounding him. Sullenly, he became quiet too.
The room was silent again, expectant. Sam found himself looking at Bailey.
Bailey seemed impatient now. “Enter the receptacle.” He waved a hand to the thing in the middle of the room.
Sam shifted his gaze to it, cocking his head as he tried to figure out what it was. It was tall, so tall that its domed top nearly scraped the ceiling. It looked like a golden toothed maw set sideways. Eyeing the broken edges of the thing, he stepped into it warily, turning when he heard metal scrape against metal. One of the nuns was carrying a multi-barred thing, and she placed it in the gap. All the broken ends snapped into place with a pull of a lever. The thing was sealed.
And then Sam realized what he was standing in. It was a goddamn cage. He grabbed the bars reflexively, testing the strength of it to no avail. He could feel things pressing into on his palms-letters, words. Momentarily distracted, Sam ran the pads of his fingers over them, mouthing what he could understand, frowning at what he could not. There was Latin etched on the inside of the bars, and symbols Sam had never seen. All the way around, on every bar.
His Latin was shaky, but he recognized at least one line. In nomine patre et fili et spiritus sancti. The holy trinity.
Sister Catherine met him at the bars. “It disappoints me, seeing you here.”
“Whatever it is, get it over with,” he said darkly, shifting his weight back and forth. His mind ran wild--what the hell was this? What was going to happen? He spun in a slow circle, searching for weaknesses in the cage.
When he found none, he tried to smother his panic. He could take this. He had to.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Catherine’s mouth thinned. “We had high hopes for you, Samuel,” she said quietly. “We thought you might be different. That we made a mistake.”
Thompson’s scribblings suddenly flashed vividly in Sam’s mind. He froze.
The devil’s greatest pleasure would no doubt come if our most sacred holy mission was perverted in such a way that, instead of ridding the world of true evil, we committed continuous, heinous acts toward the most innocent of God’s Children.
Sam whipped around, staring at her shadowed face. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded roughly, approaching her. His hands tightened around the bars. “Tell me.”
“Now is not the time for conversation,” she chided him darkly, taking a step back. “You have lost your chance for that.” She closed her eyes, lifting her hands in the air. She said into the stillness of the room, her voice powerful and command, “Oh, damned servant of this church. Serve your purpose, as Christ the Savior compels you!”
Sam stared at her, frozen in disbelief, but then his attention was snared by something more worrisome-a hissing murmur, like air being let out of a balloon. Sam pulled away from the bars, his head moving back and forth as he tried to find the source of the noise.
Then he found it-it was above him. Hanging from the top of the cage was some kind of bowl, and from that bowl came a dark cloud. It shifted sluggishly out of it, spilling over the side. It drifted one way and then the next in the air as it traveled inexorably downward.
Sam was almost memorized by the movement, right up until the thing lurched in his direction. It didn’t stop, not until it had seeped inside of him. He jerked away from it, throwing himself to the back of the cage, but it was too late. He didn’t have enough warning or enough room to evade.
Sam shuddered. The wall of bars burnt his shoulders. Grimacing, he pulled away from it, cautiously staying in the middle of the cage. He shifted his weight to his heels, eyes focusing first on the bars, then on the people just beyond them.
Sam felt his mouth twitch upward at the sight of the little people clutching their crosses.
Somewhere in his head, warning bells were going off, but he couldn’t quit put his finger on it.
Bailey approached the cage with a hesitating step. Sam’s eyes snapped toward him, and, for the first time, he could see the frailty of the man‘s form-the thin, pale skin, the fluttering pulse at his throat, the hitched slide of his Adam’s apple with his swallow.
And, yet, he dared to talk, command. “Tell us, damned servant,” he said, his voice the voice of a thousand tuned out lectures on faith. “Tell us of the wickedness that stains this one’s heart!”
Sam wasn’t going to tell them shit, but then his mouth opened, letting out the most horrifying chuckle he’d ever heard.
That was when he became aware that he wasn’t alone.
“Oh, Sammy Winchester,” Sam’s voice purred. Sam’s hands traveled possessively down his chest. “He’s my favorite.”
Sam knew true horror then when the thing in control now turned around in his mind and winked.
“Focus, fiend!” And then something was thrown at him-water, mere water. But it felt like acid flicking over his skin, burning burning burning… Sam writhed under the pain.
The thing sucked in a breath with Sam’s lungs, the sound pained and desperate. “Sins, yes, sins.” It made a quick, abrupt motion with Sam’s hand. “Take your pick, old man.”
“Start from the beginning,” Bailey commanded, eyes narrowing.
And so it did. It told the everything-everything and nothing-from his birth to his mother’s death and onward. It twisted everything too-his relationship with Dean, his friendships with his other year mates. It took much glee in spilling out how Sam felt about Andy, coaching the stupid, minor little crush in the worst terms, like they screwed in a bed made entirely of baby blood every night. And then it only got worse.
The thing didn’t lie. The cage kept him from outright spilling tall tales. But it didn’t tell the truth either.
It didn’t tell them anything important, like how his family hunted monsters for a living and saved people. It didn’t tell them about how he wanted a normal life doing normal things. It didn’t tell them Sam’s continued faith in God or his attempt to live life as a good, moral person. It didn’t tell them anything important at all.
Sam could feel the gaps in the story where the thing gleefully, purposefully skipped over it, just to make Sam look as bad as possible. And maybe the thing had a point-because none of what it was saying was really a lie, was it?
And then it moved on to Gabriel, and Sam was frightened, because if they could condone doing this to one of their charges, to kids, then what would they do to their one of their own employees?
Sam never noticed the confused stares people shot each other over the life and exploits of Gabriel Norse, church janitor.
Sam’s gaze turned totally inward. His mind raced. There was only one thing that Sam could think of that could do this, that could possess him and then lie so horribly.
Demon, Sam thought. It had to be a demon. His thoughts circling madly, he frantically tried to remember something, anything, that could help him. And then a page from his dad’s journal burned in his mind’s eye, and he knew what he had to do.
Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…
The demon suddenly stopped talking. It twisted and writhed, slamming into him with all the subtlety of a bulldozer to make him stop. Sam, momentarily paralyzed with pain, nevertheless picked up the exorcism again, needing to believe it would work.
He fell to his knees, hard ground hitting bone. His nails gouged deep in his arms. In his head, the demon pounded at him, roaring with pain and anger.
Still, he continued, fighting and pushing and reciting until he had control over his own mouth again.
“Benedictus deus. Gloria patri,” he said in a sigh. His eyes flew open. It didn’t work. It was still inside of him, ripping and tearing and churning like a storm.
Bailey’s enraged face was inches from the bars. “Do not taint the Lord with those damned lips, abomination!” And then he threw holy water at Sam.
The demon laughed before it started screaming-the pain! And then the rage-because, didn’t he see? Didn’t he see what he was doing was wrong? He didn’t, he didn’t care, and damn him for it. Damn him for it all.
Sam’s wrath bled and intertwined with the demon’s own fury. For a moment, there was perfect, damned harmony between the two of them-Sam and that the horrible thing inside of him.
All around him, the cage rattled ominously back and forth. The flames of the many candles went out before the candles themselves bent under unknown pressure. The Bibles in their weak willed hands exploded in a flurry of papers and dust, and for a moment? Sam reveled in their fear.
Suffer, he thought vengefully. The glass over the saints’ pictures shattered inward, like a fist hit each one simultaneously.
The demon celebrated too. Die, die, destroy-
Something familiar in the mantra startled Sam out of his rage-the whispers in the old chapel, that sickening pressure. Sam looked at the west wall reflexively, almost seeing a shadow in the corner-watching, approving.
Sam clenched his eyes shut and started shaking his head. No. Nonono. He wasn’t this… this thing.
He wrenched himself from the demon and the moving air in the sacristy was at once still. The only movement in that small room was from Sam, who slowly rocked on his knees. He trembled.
“Get it out, get it out,” he whispered, clenching at his hair. Sweat made even that handhold precarious. The demon cackled, curling up around Sam with venomous affection, somehow both angry and pleased that Sam wasn’t destroying things any more.
Sam clenched his eyes shut, trying to will the thing away, but it never moved. It felt engrained in him, a part of him. It was a cancer he could never, ever carve out. Then the cancer suddenly surged forward, wresting control back, proving that what little Sam thought he gained was an illusion the demon gave him just for kicks.
If Sam could, he would have cried.
When he opened his eyes again-seconds, minutes, hours later-the sacristy was mostly empty, littered with the remains of broken, wrecked things. But gone were those accusing, heartless eyes. Gone were those twisted preachers and those pseudo-sisters.
All of them-except for two.
“Sam, if you can hear me…” O’Malley was on his hands and knees, looking Sam straight in the eye. His voice was hoarse and, for the first time, Sam could see the age in the priest’s face. It hung heavily around his eyes and his mouth and weakened the line of his hair. “Denounce your wickedness, and we shall give you mercy.”
Behind him, Bailey stood like a pillar of disapproval, his hands tucked behind his back as he stared at Sam with the worst kind of emotion-indifference.
There was silence, because they expected him to speak.
To Sam’s surprise, the demon shuffled off a bit, allowing him to respond, but Sam didn’t know what to say. The force of those vital but unspoken, needed but without voice words swelled in his chest suddenly.
He stared back at O’Malley, his mind racing under the sharp fingered pet of the demon. He shifted his eyes up, including Bailey in his sight.
Just… who were these people? Who were these people who played at being religious figures while decimating everything good about it-the hope, the charity, the love for thy neighbor?
The hate he felt for them now made his earlier rage look pitiful. Quick on the emotion’s heels was a sudden awareness of how sore he was, like the demon had battered him from the inside and out.
Sam rocked forward, laying on his stomach. He pressed his heated cheek to the ground. “Admit to your own failings first,” he said hoarsely. “Then we’ll negotiate about mine.”
O’Malley bowed his head for a moment, but he might as well have faded completely out of the picture, because Bailey was suddenly up again the bars of the cage, righteous glee replacing the disdain.
“You prefer the presence of a demon. I am not surprised,” he said. He cocked his head to the side, a smirk twisting his thin lips. “Perhaps you will discover that a demon is not as warm of a bedfellow once you’ve been with him, oh, about a day?”
“Fuck you,” Sam muttered, swiveling his head away so he wasn’t looking at them.
He kept up his rigid posture until the door behind him closed. Soon enough, he was alone.
But not alone enough.
The demon laughed, long and loud. Oh, cutie pie, don’t think I’m going to make this easy for you. And it slammed its claws into him and twisted.
It didn’t stop twisting the entire night through.
Chapter Twelve
Author: narukyu
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel/Sam, Sam/Andy (one sided); Jake, Lily, Ansem, Ava, Azazel
Rating: R
Warnings: violence, adult language, death (OCs, minor character), gore (not much worse than 3x15), sex, AU (pre-season 1), high school fic (ish), slash, minor femmeslash.
Word Count: 60K-ish
Summary: A devotedly unreligious man sends his youngest son to a private religious school. If that wasn't suspicious enough, Sam can't get a hold of John or Dean, people are disappearing right and left, and, in the night, something whispers in the silence of the old chapel. Soon enough, Sam discovers that something terrible lingers behind the doors to the sacristy--something that sheds a light on the secret holy mission of the Soldiers of Christ as well what happened to his family so many years ago.
My most esteemed brother once told me, “Sometimes, it is necessary for the pacifist to wield the bloodied sword.” This assertion disturbed me greatly and almost drove me from the order. I was new then, unconvinced of the great importance of our most sacred and holy mission. I could not immediately see how the actions of the order could isolate and destroy the adversaries of Christ-all I could see were the children.
I understand my brother now. My sword is my damned tool. I look upon it and despise it. I see the damage it has done. I watch them wake away from it, forever changed from the ordeal. It is horrible, it is heinous, but it is necessary. Without the tool, we would not be able to see evil for what it is. Without the tool, we would not be able to ascertain the success of our endeavors. We would not be able to see their sins or make proper judgments. We are too easily fooled.
Evil lies and every child-damned or innocent-looks exactly alike.
Father Gregory Thompson’s journal, September 9, 1988.
-----
The next time Sam opened his eyes, it was a little later in the day. Morning light streamed stubbornly through the cracks of Gabriel’s heavy curtains, throwing thin, gray shapes of light across the opposite wall and over the bed.
He rubbed the heel of his palm against his eyes, insanely groggy. He didn’t remember going to sleep at all, and he couldn’t remember what woke him up. He couldn’t remember why he should be blinking away spots right at that moment, but he was. He wanted so much to chalk it up to the residual hang over, but John Winchester didn’t raise a fool.
Sam froze as something shifted in the corner of his eye. He wasn’t alone. He turned his head slightly, squinting. There was a dark mass of something sitting on the bed next to him. The shitty light wasn’t helpful.
Sam held his breath as his eyes adjusted, giving the mass a form-a person-and then finally a name.
It was Gabriel. He was naked and sitting on top of the covers, seemingly unaware of the slight chill in the air. He had his knees pulled up to his chest and his toes were digging into the blanket.
He stared off into nothing, his mouth pulled into a frown. Sam couldn’t call it dazed boredom or anything of the like. Gabriel looked too intense, too aware-aware enough to know Sam was awake, even though Sam hadn’t moved much yet. Gabriel cocked his head to the side, as if listening to something Sam couldn’t hear.
When he spoke, his tone was distant. “You’re very annoying, you know that?”
“I’m annoying?” Sam echoed, sitting up just far enough to brace his elbows against the mattress.
Gabriel nodded, his eyebrows drawing together. “Oh, yes. Extremely. Don’t leave.”
Sam blinked at the tangential thought, too aware that Gabriel still wasn’t looking at him. “I have to,” he said patiently, carefully.
“No, you don’t. You could just… stay. Everything would turn out alright for you.” Gabriel finally looked at him. He was frowning. “Stay.”
Sam didn’t immediately respond. He could feel the every place Gabriel had touched him all of a sudden-his hands, his hips, his mouth. Every touched place throbbed like a bruise, but felt sweet like a stretch in the morning.
“I’m not concerned about me,” he said after a while. He had things to do, and while the night off had been nice, he needed to get back to them.
Gabriel flopped back down on the mattress. “Ugh, I know! Martyr.” He covered his face with his hands.
After a moment, Sam flipped on his stomach, resting his chin in his hand as he stared at Gabriel. “Only you can make that sound like a bad thing,” he said quietly.
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” Gabriel said, his voice muffled.
“So I’ve heard.”
Gabriel sighed, letting his hands fall back to the bed. He didn’t really seem to be listening, because he said, “If any of the priests try to corner you and tell you go to the sacristy, don’t go. And if they try to make you, well… you’re a big boy. Fight ‘em off.”
Several things occurred to Sam very quickly, but one took big, looming priority. “Something else you know that you’re not telling me?” Sam couldn’t help the edge in his tone.
“I don’t know. Just a feeling.” Gabriel got a good look at Sam’s still suspicious face and rolled his eyes dramatically. “Geez! I don’t know everything, okay?”
Somehow, Sam strongly doubted that. Gabriel grouchily told him to go back to sleep, which seemed like a good idea all of the sudden. Sleepily, Sam rolled on his arm until he was supine again. His eyes fluttered shut.
Sleep. Sleep sounded awesome. His eyes opened.
But, for some reason, Sam couldn’t stop staring at that damn mirror.
-----
Sam woke up again somewhere around noon. He pushed himself up half-way, squinting at the bedroom. He had to fight to keep himself from falling back on the bed and going back to sleep.
Feeling an odd sense of jittery nerves, Sam looked over at the other side of the bed. Gabriel’s back was to him, bare and vulnerable. Sam started reaching for him without thinking, but stopped, his hand hovering in the space between them for a moment before falling down to the sheets.
In the end, Sam rolled out of bed. He hunted down his clothes and got dressed slowly, thinking about how he was going to be received. He knew he wasn’t going to get away with it. He’d been gone way too long and he didn’t exactly hide the fact that he was leaving the night before. Someone would’ve told the staff by now. Sam didn’t care-with the length of his absence, they were going to ask questions anyway.
And, maybe, they’d ask him to the sacristy. Then, he considered grimly, he could finally see what his enemy was. He could see what terrorized Lily and Jake, what changed Ava and Ansem, and what made Gabriel, of all people, break his vow of silence.
Dread slid up his throat.
It was bad. It had to be bad.
They were waiting for him on the concrete paths, eyes narrowed on the gate like they expected him to come through at any moment. Swallowing harshly, too aware of the fact that his slacks were creased and his vest and tie were still missing, Sam walked up to them, approaching from the left. He attempted nonchalance, but his hands made fists in his pockets.
Bailey was the first to see him. When his gaze shifted, the entire group-one more priest, two nuns, and three staff people-shifted with him. Sam kept walking toward them, too nauseous from nerves to enjoy how startled they looked.
Sam stopped two feet shy of them. “Fathers,” he said blankly, inclining his head to the two men. He only spared a glance at the other priest.
O’Malley, his gray eyes flickering appraisingly over Sam from head to toe, looked pained. Bailey, on the other hand, seemed to gather himself up, like Sam had just given him his reason to be.
“Samuel, you’ve been called to the sacristy,” Bailey said, his voice booming unnecessarily in the quiet afternoon air.
Ignoring a renewed sense of dread, Sam nodded, looking at the property all around him. It was a nice day. And how normal everything seemed! A cool air stirred the top of the bright green grass, bringing with it the smell of moss and growing things. Birds tweeted brightly from somewhere around him. A black, white, and orange butterfly landed with delicate precision on a waving dandelion.
Sam had to force his gaze away, and he did so with a frown. Hell House seemed so unreal for a moment. Sam almost expected to wake up suddenly from a dream-still fifteen, still awkward looking, still crammed in the back of the Impala.
But this was real, whether he liked it or not.
“Sam,” O’Malley prompted quietly.
Sam sighed. “Yeah, I heard.”
Sorry, Gabriel. Sam didn’t fight-wouldn’t fight. He had to do this.
Keeping his hands in his pockets, Sam sighed and shifted his route from the student building to the chapel, passing by the tightly knit group. He was taller than all of them, he noticed, and he definitely didn’t imagine the way all of them edged away from him. He ignored them as best as he could.
As soon as he started walking to the church under his own steam, the group broke up. Some hurried to the church while others reluctantly went to classes. Two men flanked Sam immediately, one missing an eye and looking hateful-Eddie--while the other was O’Malley himself.
“Sam, it, uh…” O’Malley trailed off as they passed a group of nuns. Their feet clattered down the steps of the chapel loudly, drowning out the sounds of everything else. The trek up made by Sam and his escorts was much quieter in comparison.
“What.”
“It needn’t be rough on you,” he murmured as they entered the chapel. The one eyed man shot their bent heads a suspicious look. “Just… submit.”
Sam sought out O’Malley‘s face in the dark room. “To what?”
Candle light danced in the man’s gray eyes. “You’ll see.”
The door slammed shut behind them, and Sam realized that they had been followed by a few others-Sister Catherine, Father Bailey, and a few others who did not ever identify themselves.
Bailey was staring at O‘Malley, clearly disapproving. “The sacristy, not the lobby,” he said quietly to O’Malley, his tone censoring. O’Malley murmured something apologetic, bending his neck as Bailey pushed past down the aisle, cassock flaring around his thin, lanky body.
Sam hurried after the priest, disturbed by the dark look O’Malley shot toward Bailey’s retreating back.
-----
The sacristy was a room in the back of the church. Of all the rooms at Hell House, this room was the least accessible to students. A sacristy, according to his studies, was not a room opened to the public even in normally functioning churches, a thing that Hell House was not. In any case, it didn’t make sense to send students there for punishment.
But Hell House was as compatible with logic as oil was with water, so into the sacristy he went.
Initially, the room looked exactly how he expected it to look-a small, white walled room barely bigger than a closet. It held holy vestments and objects, an ambitious shelf and a tiny sink. But there was a door in the back too, and it was through that door Sam was guided.
The solid, wooden entryway opened to a medium sized room not much bigger than one of their classes. The typical religious paraphernalia littered the walls-a cross on the north wall and pictures of saints on the east wall. It looked like the room shared a wall with the old chapel too, because the smooth white suddenly shifted into pitted stone on the west.
Sam stared at it for a little too long, straining to hear the too high voice. He heard nothing, but he felt the thing nonetheless-present, watching. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
“Come, Samuel,” Sister Catherine murmured, pivoting sharply. There wasn't much room for her to move. Even if all the things in the room had been taken out, there still wouldn't have been enough room for Dean's Impala, and the car wasn't that big.
Sam tore his gaze away from the wall, noticing that everyone had filed in the room, crowding around the edges. He looked at them, eyes darting over every one of their faces. Some of them seem to shy away from eye contact while others stared right back at him, hateful.
Sam’s attention was pulled back to the west wall when he thought he heard his name. This seemed to disturb some of them. The previously quiet room was soon peppered with whispers.
“Same thing, every one of them,” Eddie hissed in a too loud voice. When Sam looked back at him, the man was nervously eyeing the west wall. “Why look there?” The man was elbowed into silence by the few surrounding him. Sullenly, he became quiet too.
The room was silent again, expectant. Sam found himself looking at Bailey.
Bailey seemed impatient now. “Enter the receptacle.” He waved a hand to the thing in the middle of the room.
Sam shifted his gaze to it, cocking his head as he tried to figure out what it was. It was tall, so tall that its domed top nearly scraped the ceiling. It looked like a golden toothed maw set sideways. Eyeing the broken edges of the thing, he stepped into it warily, turning when he heard metal scrape against metal. One of the nuns was carrying a multi-barred thing, and she placed it in the gap. All the broken ends snapped into place with a pull of a lever. The thing was sealed.
And then Sam realized what he was standing in. It was a goddamn cage. He grabbed the bars reflexively, testing the strength of it to no avail. He could feel things pressing into on his palms-letters, words. Momentarily distracted, Sam ran the pads of his fingers over them, mouthing what he could understand, frowning at what he could not. There was Latin etched on the inside of the bars, and symbols Sam had never seen. All the way around, on every bar.
His Latin was shaky, but he recognized at least one line. In nomine patre et fili et spiritus sancti. The holy trinity.
Sister Catherine met him at the bars. “It disappoints me, seeing you here.”
“Whatever it is, get it over with,” he said darkly, shifting his weight back and forth. His mind ran wild--what the hell was this? What was going to happen? He spun in a slow circle, searching for weaknesses in the cage.
When he found none, he tried to smother his panic. He could take this. He had to.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Catherine’s mouth thinned. “We had high hopes for you, Samuel,” she said quietly. “We thought you might be different. That we made a mistake.”
Thompson’s scribblings suddenly flashed vividly in Sam’s mind. He froze.
The devil’s greatest pleasure would no doubt come if our most sacred holy mission was perverted in such a way that, instead of ridding the world of true evil, we committed continuous, heinous acts toward the most innocent of God’s Children.
Sam whipped around, staring at her shadowed face. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded roughly, approaching her. His hands tightened around the bars. “Tell me.”
“Now is not the time for conversation,” she chided him darkly, taking a step back. “You have lost your chance for that.” She closed her eyes, lifting her hands in the air. She said into the stillness of the room, her voice powerful and command, “Oh, damned servant of this church. Serve your purpose, as Christ the Savior compels you!”
Sam stared at her, frozen in disbelief, but then his attention was snared by something more worrisome-a hissing murmur, like air being let out of a balloon. Sam pulled away from the bars, his head moving back and forth as he tried to find the source of the noise.
Then he found it-it was above him. Hanging from the top of the cage was some kind of bowl, and from that bowl came a dark cloud. It shifted sluggishly out of it, spilling over the side. It drifted one way and then the next in the air as it traveled inexorably downward.
Sam was almost memorized by the movement, right up until the thing lurched in his direction. It didn’t stop, not until it had seeped inside of him. He jerked away from it, throwing himself to the back of the cage, but it was too late. He didn’t have enough warning or enough room to evade.
Sam shuddered. The wall of bars burnt his shoulders. Grimacing, he pulled away from it, cautiously staying in the middle of the cage. He shifted his weight to his heels, eyes focusing first on the bars, then on the people just beyond them.
Sam felt his mouth twitch upward at the sight of the little people clutching their crosses.
Somewhere in his head, warning bells were going off, but he couldn’t quit put his finger on it.
Bailey approached the cage with a hesitating step. Sam’s eyes snapped toward him, and, for the first time, he could see the frailty of the man‘s form-the thin, pale skin, the fluttering pulse at his throat, the hitched slide of his Adam’s apple with his swallow.
And, yet, he dared to talk, command. “Tell us, damned servant,” he said, his voice the voice of a thousand tuned out lectures on faith. “Tell us of the wickedness that stains this one’s heart!”
Sam wasn’t going to tell them shit, but then his mouth opened, letting out the most horrifying chuckle he’d ever heard.
That was when he became aware that he wasn’t alone.
“Oh, Sammy Winchester,” Sam’s voice purred. Sam’s hands traveled possessively down his chest. “He’s my favorite.”
Sam knew true horror then when the thing in control now turned around in his mind and winked.
“Focus, fiend!” And then something was thrown at him-water, mere water. But it felt like acid flicking over his skin, burning burning burning… Sam writhed under the pain.
The thing sucked in a breath with Sam’s lungs, the sound pained and desperate. “Sins, yes, sins.” It made a quick, abrupt motion with Sam’s hand. “Take your pick, old man.”
“Start from the beginning,” Bailey commanded, eyes narrowing.
And so it did. It told the everything-everything and nothing-from his birth to his mother’s death and onward. It twisted everything too-his relationship with Dean, his friendships with his other year mates. It took much glee in spilling out how Sam felt about Andy, coaching the stupid, minor little crush in the worst terms, like they screwed in a bed made entirely of baby blood every night. And then it only got worse.
The thing didn’t lie. The cage kept him from outright spilling tall tales. But it didn’t tell the truth either.
It didn’t tell them anything important, like how his family hunted monsters for a living and saved people. It didn’t tell them about how he wanted a normal life doing normal things. It didn’t tell them Sam’s continued faith in God or his attempt to live life as a good, moral person. It didn’t tell them anything important at all.
Sam could feel the gaps in the story where the thing gleefully, purposefully skipped over it, just to make Sam look as bad as possible. And maybe the thing had a point-because none of what it was saying was really a lie, was it?
And then it moved on to Gabriel, and Sam was frightened, because if they could condone doing this to one of their charges, to kids, then what would they do to their one of their own employees?
Sam never noticed the confused stares people shot each other over the life and exploits of Gabriel Norse, church janitor.
Sam’s gaze turned totally inward. His mind raced. There was only one thing that Sam could think of that could do this, that could possess him and then lie so horribly.
Demon, Sam thought. It had to be a demon. His thoughts circling madly, he frantically tried to remember something, anything, that could help him. And then a page from his dad’s journal burned in his mind’s eye, and he knew what he had to do.
Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus…
The demon suddenly stopped talking. It twisted and writhed, slamming into him with all the subtlety of a bulldozer to make him stop. Sam, momentarily paralyzed with pain, nevertheless picked up the exorcism again, needing to believe it would work.
He fell to his knees, hard ground hitting bone. His nails gouged deep in his arms. In his head, the demon pounded at him, roaring with pain and anger.
Still, he continued, fighting and pushing and reciting until he had control over his own mouth again.
“Benedictus deus. Gloria patri,” he said in a sigh. His eyes flew open. It didn’t work. It was still inside of him, ripping and tearing and churning like a storm.
Bailey’s enraged face was inches from the bars. “Do not taint the Lord with those damned lips, abomination!” And then he threw holy water at Sam.
The demon laughed before it started screaming-the pain! And then the rage-because, didn’t he see? Didn’t he see what he was doing was wrong? He didn’t, he didn’t care, and damn him for it. Damn him for it all.
Sam’s wrath bled and intertwined with the demon’s own fury. For a moment, there was perfect, damned harmony between the two of them-Sam and that the horrible thing inside of him.
All around him, the cage rattled ominously back and forth. The flames of the many candles went out before the candles themselves bent under unknown pressure. The Bibles in their weak willed hands exploded in a flurry of papers and dust, and for a moment? Sam reveled in their fear.
Suffer, he thought vengefully. The glass over the saints’ pictures shattered inward, like a fist hit each one simultaneously.
The demon celebrated too. Die, die, destroy-
Something familiar in the mantra startled Sam out of his rage-the whispers in the old chapel, that sickening pressure. Sam looked at the west wall reflexively, almost seeing a shadow in the corner-watching, approving.
Sam clenched his eyes shut and started shaking his head. No. Nonono. He wasn’t this… this thing.
He wrenched himself from the demon and the moving air in the sacristy was at once still. The only movement in that small room was from Sam, who slowly rocked on his knees. He trembled.
“Get it out, get it out,” he whispered, clenching at his hair. Sweat made even that handhold precarious. The demon cackled, curling up around Sam with venomous affection, somehow both angry and pleased that Sam wasn’t destroying things any more.
Sam clenched his eyes shut, trying to will the thing away, but it never moved. It felt engrained in him, a part of him. It was a cancer he could never, ever carve out. Then the cancer suddenly surged forward, wresting control back, proving that what little Sam thought he gained was an illusion the demon gave him just for kicks.
If Sam could, he would have cried.
When he opened his eyes again-seconds, minutes, hours later-the sacristy was mostly empty, littered with the remains of broken, wrecked things. But gone were those accusing, heartless eyes. Gone were those twisted preachers and those pseudo-sisters.
All of them-except for two.
“Sam, if you can hear me…” O’Malley was on his hands and knees, looking Sam straight in the eye. His voice was hoarse and, for the first time, Sam could see the age in the priest’s face. It hung heavily around his eyes and his mouth and weakened the line of his hair. “Denounce your wickedness, and we shall give you mercy.”
Behind him, Bailey stood like a pillar of disapproval, his hands tucked behind his back as he stared at Sam with the worst kind of emotion-indifference.
There was silence, because they expected him to speak.
To Sam’s surprise, the demon shuffled off a bit, allowing him to respond, but Sam didn’t know what to say. The force of those vital but unspoken, needed but without voice words swelled in his chest suddenly.
He stared back at O’Malley, his mind racing under the sharp fingered pet of the demon. He shifted his eyes up, including Bailey in his sight.
Just… who were these people? Who were these people who played at being religious figures while decimating everything good about it-the hope, the charity, the love for thy neighbor?
The hate he felt for them now made his earlier rage look pitiful. Quick on the emotion’s heels was a sudden awareness of how sore he was, like the demon had battered him from the inside and out.
Sam rocked forward, laying on his stomach. He pressed his heated cheek to the ground. “Admit to your own failings first,” he said hoarsely. “Then we’ll negotiate about mine.”
O’Malley bowed his head for a moment, but he might as well have faded completely out of the picture, because Bailey was suddenly up again the bars of the cage, righteous glee replacing the disdain.
“You prefer the presence of a demon. I am not surprised,” he said. He cocked his head to the side, a smirk twisting his thin lips. “Perhaps you will discover that a demon is not as warm of a bedfellow once you’ve been with him, oh, about a day?”
“Fuck you,” Sam muttered, swiveling his head away so he wasn’t looking at them.
He kept up his rigid posture until the door behind him closed. Soon enough, he was alone.
But not alone enough.
The demon laughed, long and loud. Oh, cutie pie, don’t think I’m going to make this easy for you. And it slammed its claws into him and twisted.
It didn’t stop twisting the entire night through.
Chapter Twelve