[SPN BigBang] And God, I Know I'm One (2/6)
ii. It’s one foot on the platform and
the other foot on the train
The plume of smoke rises tall against a muddy dawn. “Jesus Christ,” Dean breathes. Nebraska stretches flat as a place setting in all directions, the inky column the only landmark against an endless field. When they finally reach the site, it’s cordoned off. One lone police car sits at the edge of the cracked concrete parking lot. Two officers share a tall thermos of coffee back and forth. The one leaning against the passenger door straightens and moves to intercept the Impala as it pulls in.
One look tells Dean that Sam is going to be no help. He rolls down the window and immediately chokes on the smell of the air. “What happened here?” he asks. Sam stares at the ruins, his jaw tight. The officer bends close.
“Sir, I have to ask that you keep moving. We’ve got the situation under control.”
Dean glances at the other officer, who’s speaking into a radio. “Any idea where we can get some gas?”
The policeman points. “Town’s eleven miles that way. You can fill up there.”
Dean thanks him and rolls up the window. He looks at Sam as they pull away from the fill station. “You smell that?”
“Sulfur,” Sam says tightly.
At the edge of the asphalt, a telephone booth stands by itself, the receiver hanging from its metal cord, the whole thing perfectly intact.
*
A bell rings as they walk into the one restaurant on Main Street. It seems to be the social nexus of town: a crowd of locals clusters around a table near the front door. “Lord’s honest truth, I saw them with my own two eyes, walking back from their car,” declares a sturdy woman with short, sensible hair. She accepts coffee from the harried waitress, who ignores Sam and Dean and heads back toward the kitchen. “He still can’t see a damn thing, bless him, but he’s alive,” the woman continues. “Doctors can’t find a thing wrong with him.”
“Hospital must have screwed up somehow,” scoffs a grizzled man in a John Deere hat. “What’re you gonna trust those doctors in Lincoln for anyway?”
“Docs sure didn’t help him, I’ll say that right now,” another woman pipes up. “Roy had something terrible wrong with him. It’s God’s work, every last inch.”
“Guess that job of his paid off, didn’t it?” one man says ruefully. A few chuckle into their mugs. Others nod and offer their own amens.
Dean elbows Sam, grabs two menus and walks past the Please Wait to Be Seated sign up front. The lone waitress bustles up to their table, carrying her twin pots of coffee like revolvers. “What can I get for you boys?” Dean gets the special, which so far as he can tell is a bottomless pile of hash browns, sausage and scrambled eggs, named after the local high school football team’s mascot. Sam orders pancakes without looking away from his hands.
Dean holds out both menus. “Sounds like you folks are having an exciting day,” he remarks.
The waitress sighs. “Looks like. The Arco out on 74 blew up, and that tent preacher doesn’t seem to have cancer anymore. We never get two pieces of news like that at once. Town’s just not big enough.”
“Good things come to good people,” announces the short-haired woman to the crowd. “Say what you like about her, but she’s been rewarded, and bless her for it.”
“They releasing him soon, then?” the cynic in the John Deere hat grunts.
“Oh, he’s home. He checked himself out.” She sips her coffee. “Sue-Ann said she’s say when they could take visitors.”
Dean listens for a few minutes more, then glances back at Sam. “Does any of this sound weird to you?”
Sam glowers at him. “Dean, stop.”
He frowns. “What?”
Sam shakes his head. “We don’t have time to look into a case.”
“You really think Jessica’s still here?” Dean leans closer. “Come on, this could be a lead staring us right in the face. We haven’t had squat all summer, and now a gas station blows up for no good reason and a guy gets cured of cancer, in the same place you traced her last call? Tell me that’s not weird.” Sam looks away. “Come on,” Dean wheedles. “You really think this place is big enough for more than one player?”
Sam leans back in the booth. “Fine. This couple. How are we going to talk to them?”
*
Sue-Ann Le Grange is a beautiful middle-aged woman with a wardrobe stalled at 1982. She frowns up at the fake policy document. “We just got out of the hospital yesterday,” she says, baffled but polite. “They said insurance wouldn’t be by for some time.”
“We were already in Broken Bow,” says Sam smoothly. “They thought they’d just send us over while we were close.” He wears his suit well. Dean tries not to fiddle with the buttons at his wrist.
“Oh,” says Sue-Ann, and glances over her shoulder. After a moment, she steps back and opens the front door all the way. “Well, Mr. Bonham, Mr. Jones. Please, come in.”
The house is old, and frontier-nice. The décor is a mixture of turn-of-the-century Sears-Roebuck furniture and religious art. Sue-Ann seats them on a couch in a parlor; an old upright piano stands against the wall, crowded with framed photographs. “Roy’s resting,” she says, crossing her ankles and folding her hands.
“We wouldn’t want to disturb him,” says Dean. “We can come back again, if there’s a more convenient time. We just wanted to ask a few questions.” She nods at him, then perches on her chair, patient and well-mannered.
“Now, Mrs. Le Grange,” begins Sam.
“Sue-Ann, please,” she says, with her preacher’s wife smile. Sam dips his head.
“Sue-Ann, your husband was diagnosed with a tumor on his optic nerve one month ago.”
She nods. “That’s right. Roy woke up stone blind one day. He’d been feeling fine beforehand. There was…” Her eyes drift. “No warning.”
Dean shifts on the cushion, and tries to avoid being swallowed. “What happened after that?”
“Well,” Sue-Ann says, and her voice hitches a little, but she remains composed. “The oncologists said it was too far along for them to help. They told us we should move Roy into hospice care, but Roy wouldn’t have any of it.” She clasps her hands. “He fell into a coma. That was two weeks ago. But we were praying, both of us. He told me…” She takes a deep breath, and then, inexplicably, smiles again. “He said God would send us an answer, either way, and one way or another, we shouldn’t worry.” Her eyes shine. “He woke up early on Thursday morning, before the sun was even up. I came back and there he was, sitting up and calling for me.”
Something in the story snags. Dean furrows his brow. “Came back?”
She lifts her chin. “I was praying.”
They stay for twenty more minutes, but Sue-Ann keeps her cards close, and they don’t learn much else. She sees them to the door, and Sam shakes her hand. Sue-Ann looks brittle for someone whose husband has come back from the brink. Her hand folds like a bird’s wing inside Dean’s as she thanks him.
The vision goes off in his head like a bomb. He feels it, sees it, tastes it - it’s sulfur and ragged crying and soft lips and dirt under his nails. His knees buckle. He’s aware of Sam catching him, and Sue-Ann gasping and trying to help, but the next he knows he’s in the back seat of the Impala, and then he just fades out into something else.
* * *
All her adult life, she’d had faith and she’d had him. College was at a state school, and she drank of ideas heady as stolen wine. But she came back home and the good word found her, and a husband, and though they were never blessed with children, she knew happiness.
She loved Roy more than prayers could forgive. They lived on their own land, and Roy preached in the field, close to God and close to Creation. Sue-Ann stood by him and worked and helped his church grow, until people were coming from two hours away, and how did the naysayers like that? His cancer was caught on a Friday; that Sunday, he led his flock, and the tent was packed. It never left her, the quiet and the weeping and the praises they all raised up to heaven for him.
Ten days he didn’t wake. She tried desperately to feel the angels propping her up, but her only answer was the wind, and the dull hue of the baked prairie. Sue-Ann had never spoken in tongues, but she began to lose certainty of the things she was saying. She wandered through their fields, through the still, silent house, alone with the great hush of a Name read but not spoken.
In the house, Roy wasted. The tent may not have been abandoned by God yet. Sue-Ann sank into one of the folding chairs, white and flimsy amid the speakers and the tarp. Without the fans on, the space was thick and still. She stared at the empty pulpit, her cheeks dry and her lips moving for hours on end.
Her breath caught in her throat when the girl appeared kneeling before her.
“You’re troubled,” the girl said, her hand warm on Sue-Ann’s knee.
Sue-Ann gasped. “How did you get in?”
The girl’s eyes were dark and concerned. “I heard you,” she said, and reached for Sue-Ann’s hand. “He’s going to die, you know.”
“Who are you?” she snarled. “Tell me at once or I’ll call the police!”
“Shh, shh shh.” The girl slid into the seat next to her. “He doesn’t have to. There are ways of saving him.”
Sue-Ann didn’t cry in front of people. Sobs clawed at her from under her ribs. “Who are you?” she whimpered, hating herself for it.
The girl stroked her hair. “An intercessor. Shh.” She drew Sue-Ann to her breast, and Sue-Ann pressed her cheek against that leather jacket, staring straight ahead. “You love him so much, don’t you,” murmured the girl, her fingers loosing Sue-Ann’s tight bun. “I know you’d do anything for him. Why would you stop for him now?”
“I wouldn’t,” she whispered. She felt the girl’s collarbone against her cheek; her knuckles brushed a taut stomach as she fisted her thin t-shirt.
“That’s right,” the girl said, and combed her fingers through Sue-Ann’s undone tresses. The tips of them brushed against a hot neck. “Love isn’t about putting on the brakes.”
Sue-Ann inhaled, hoping for a telltale hint of myrrh, or honey. The girl smelled like leather jacket, and the wind, and the baking prairie grass. “What can I do?” she asked, a stillness welling up inside her.
The girl’s hands traced under her jaw, and she tipped her chin so that their eyes met. “Listen close, Sue-Ann. I know someone who can help you. I’m going to give you a list.”
*
She walked on the gravel in bare feet. The roadside gave no shelter but the tall weeds. Sue-Ann drew her cardigan close to her shoulders and knelt at the center of the crossroads. She tore her nails digging, but the hole opened up, and she set the cookie tin at the bottom. The contents ran like a litany in her head. God forgive her so much, but she’d used a picture from a church bulletin inside.
“What have you learned, Dorothy?”
Sue-Ann jerked back a pace, and turned. A woman she didn’t recognize stood on the other side of the buried box, wearing nothing but a silky black negligee. She smiled, and took slow, deliberate steps toward her. “It’s that if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!” The woman stopped, and eyed Sue-Ann up and down. “Hello there, preacher’s wife,” she purred. “I like what you’ve done with your hair. Even with dear Mr. Le Grange dying back home, you do make certain you’re presentable.”
Sue-Ann swallowed, and balled her fists. “You can help me,” she said, forcing the tremble out of her voice.
The woman’s eyes flooded red as she grinned. “And straight to the point.” The dark silk rustled and bunched across her hips. “It’s true. I can. It depends, though.”
“On what?”
The woman laughed, and circled behind her. Sue-Ann tracked her with her eyes. “Whether you’re willing to give me what I want. But let’s keep this transparent. Tell me, sugar, what it is you want.”
Sue-Ann glared after her. “You know. I don’t know how, but you know.”
“True.” The woman came around and faced her again. “Humor me. We need to have a record of this, after all.”
She took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. “I want my husband.”
One of the woman’s perfectly tweezed eyebrow arced up. “You’ve got him, all laid out in your bed.”
“You know what I mean.” Sue-Ann fingered her wedding ring. “I want him to live. I want him to be healed.”
The woman leveled a canny look at her. “Isn’t that going against God’s will, Sue-Ann? Don’t you think that when a man’s time comes, he should joyously go and meet his maker?”
“It’s not his time,” she said fiercely. Then, more quietly, she added, “I can’t live without him.”
The woman closed the space between them, her mouth perilously close. “Yes you can. But you don’t want to play at being a widow in a tiny town like this. And what good is the Church of Roy Le Grange without its star attraction?” She smirked. “But you, I see you’re a regular rock of the community. All right.”
Sue-Ann looked at her. “All right what?”
She tilted forward, her breasts straining against the negligee. “Here are my terms. I’ll make him better. Nobody would ever know he had a thing wrong with him. Roy’ll go back to being healthy as an ox. But in ten years, you’re coming with me. No backing out, no outs period.” She flashed a smile, brilliant under the crescent moon. “What do you say?”
Sue-Ann swallowed. “How?”
The woman’s lips curled. “How what?”
“How do I say yes?”
The woman reached out and rested her hands on Sue-Ann’s hips, her bare legs pressed against her denim skirt. “I could let him have his eyes too, you know,” she sighed, breath skimming hot across Sue-Ann’s jaw. “If you’d just meet me in eight. One year for each, preacher’s wife. What do you say? Is he worth that much to you?” Sue-Ann stiffened. The woman waited, then laughed softly. “I didn’t think so.” Her fingers played over Sue-Ann’s waist. “Well?” she whispered. “What are you waiting for? Don’t feel bad, sugar, you’ve always wanted to try it anyway.”
* * *
“Bob Johnson,” Dean mumbles, his eyelids heavy. He squints down his chest, which is pressed close with blankets. “You tucked me in?”
Sam hovers over his bed, frowning at him. “Dude, what happened back there? You okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean says, before letting his head drop back against the pillow. “Like I got run over by a semi.”
Sam brings him water and Advil unprompted. “You were out, buddy. You’ve been asleep since four.”
“God, thank you.” Dean drains the glass. “Sam, I don’t think we can help Sue-Ann.”
Sam watches him carefully. “Why’s that?”
He closes his eyes. “It’s a crossroads demon. Goddamn unbreakable contract.”
Sam stares for a moment. “You think you’ll be okay for a few hours?” he asks, urgent.
Dean opens his eyes to frown at him. “What? Why?”
His brother is already picking up his jacket. “I need to find a library.”
Dean sighs and rolls face first into the pillow. “Typical.”
“Call my cell if you need something!”
The door shuts quickly behind him.
*
It’s not a long walk from the hotel to the fields. Nebraska is as empty as any medieval fief, and if the two cowpaths he finds crossing the expanse of corn are spindly and crooked, he’s sure this demon has made due with less. The dirt is loose and soft beneath his hands; half an hour and his work is done.
“Well, well, Sam Winchester,” coos a voice behind him. “So good to see you’re back in the business. Let me tell you, we’ve missed you out here.” He turns: the demon is tall, with curly black hair and full lips, just familiar enough. She smiles knowingly, watching for a flinch. “People don’t usually call me just to chat. What brings a boy like you to a place like this?”
Sam schools his face. “I need information,” he says, keeping his voice steady.
“Talk is cheap,” rejoins the demon. She tilts her head. “What do you need so bad that you’ll sell for it?”
He doesn’t look away. “I’ve got a few things on my mind.”
“So I’ve noticed.” She bites her lower lip, teeth gleaming. “You want to know where your father is. That’s your very first question, and you hate yourself for it. Mm, Samuel, do tell me more.” When he doesn’t answer, she closes the distance between them, and lifts herself on her toes to reach his ear. “We know where is he, by the way. And what he’s doing without you and Dean.”
Sam escapes, taking careful steps backward. “I’m not worried about my dad,” he lies. “He can take care of himself.”
“Can he?” The demon smiles. “We’ll see.” She matches him, step for step-until she stops, her expression ugly. “Sam,” she growls. She pushes forward against thin air. “Sam, what did you do?”
Sam takes another pace back. Salt glimmers on the ground, the devil’s trap weaving in and out of the rows of corn. “Talk is cheap. So’s freedom.” He slips both hands in his pockets. “I’m a believer in equal exchange rates.”
The crossroads demon glares daggers at him. “This is a foolish thing you’re doing.”
He shrugs. “Maybe. But I’m tired of waiting for answers.” He plants his feet. “What do you know about Jessica Moore?”
The demon laughs, a snap of amusement in the too-quiet field. “Is this what you summoned me for? Demonic GPS?”
He goes toe to toe with the line. “A demon took her and a demon brought her here and blew up that fill station. Why? Where is she now?”
The demon crosses her arms. The bottom of her lacy nightgown flutters in a breeze. “Law school made no impression, Sam,” she sighs. “You’re asking all the wrong questions.”
“Am I?” He cocks an eyebrow. “We can wait around all night while I think up the right ones.”
“Sammy, they didn’t tell me you were quite this adorable.” She simpers. “Should you really be out here all by yourself?”
He narrows his eyes. “I’m laughing on the inside.”
The demon grins. “I wasn’t making a joke.”
*
Dean comes to on his back, something hot and living hovering over him. “You bailed on me back in Lawrence, Dean,” a girl whispers, and nips at his ear. “A real man would have called if he didn’t want to see me again.”
Meg’s arms and legs are planted firmly on either side of him. When she holds him down, he feels the springs of the mattress bite into his muscles. Other things assault him too: glimpses of dead hunters, black smoke and bars. “What the hell,” he gasps. “Bitch, get off me!”
“Ah ah ah ah.” She grabs his jaw in one hand and forces him to look at her. Her fingers dig into his cheeks. “No need to get nasty, Dean. I’m only going to hurt you if you ask for it. You’re into that sometimes, aren’t you?”
“The hell are you doing here?” He thrashes ineffectually. “What do you want from me?”
“You know what your failing is? You don’t believe in foreplay.” She lowers herself so she straddles his waist, her weight heavy on his hips. He tries to buck, but she just smiles. “Always want to charge right in, don’t we.”
His eyes roll wildly trying to see around her. “Where’s Sam? What’ve you done with him?” For a moment, he searches past her, to the ceiling. Meg chuckles.
“Sammy left of his own accord. He’s gone to try and ask a friend of mine some questions. That’s all right. I was hoping we could get a little alone-time, just you and me.” Her lips curl. “You two are hunting the wrong thing, if you ask me.”
“Oh yeah?” he spits, breathing hard. “What’s that?”
She runs her eyes over his body, casual and calm. “You should give up on Sue-Ann Le Grange. She’s a done deal. Let her have her ten years. You’ve got other fish to fry.”
“What is this, a threat?” He finally manages a sneer of his own. “You couldn’t just leave a horse head on my pillow?”
“Not a threat. Advice.” She leans close, so her short, choppy haircut brushes against his face. “I’m trying to help you, Dean. You’ve got work to do.”
*
“You think your job is so simple, don’t you.” The crossroads demon holds court in the center of the sigil. “You’re on this like a pair of Keystone Cops.”
Sam prowls the perimeter. “Is that right?”
“Do you go after Leviathan with a flashlight and a pair of scuba fins? Sam, I can help you.”
“Yeah?” He reaches into an inside pocket, and retrieves a rosary and a folded piece of paper. “Tell me how that is.”
The demon eyes the paper in his hand. “What is that?”
Sam pauses, and lets the silence speak for itself. “I think you mentioned something about helping me.”
The demon licks her lips. “You think this is just a missing person search with some ghosts and ghouls thrown in for icing. You’re not asking the right questions.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Yeah, you said that already. Old news gets you nothing.”
“No more until you back off with that exorcism in your hand.” She hisses impatiently. “We had an arrangement.”
“Really?” He makes a show of studying the text. “I believe I said I would let you go if you answered my questions. So far you’ve just given me sass, and we didn’t actually agree on anything.”
“I can be reasonable. It’s what I do, isn’t it?” When she flashes that smile, he knows he’s got her. He spreads his arms.
“Fine. Let’s hear it.”
She looks up at him through endless eyelashes. “You wouldn’t have to, if you could just get the truth out of Dean.”
Sam freezes. “What?”
*
“They scare you, don’t they?” Meg murmurs. “The dreams and visions. They’re not your style, I can tell.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean grunts.
“No?” She rakes her fingers through his hair. “I’m disappointed, I have to say. You’re lying to me like an amateur. It’s discourteous, don’t you think? Show a demon a little respect.”
“I get it why you’re here now,” he says, crooking a smile. “You need Hell to freeze over. Sorry, lady, but I’m not in the A/C business.”
Meg laughs. “That’s not a bad theory, Sherlock. But here’s a free bit of advice: you need me.”
He lifts both eyebrows. “Like a hole in the head, sure.”
“Things are changing, Dean.” She sits back and traces one hand down his torso and over his thigh. “Do we need to talk about your changing body? I’m guessing Daddy never sat you down for that one like he should have.”
He grinds his teeth. “Aw, come on, isn’t this uncomfortable enough without bringing my dad into the mix?”
Meg’s eyes glint, even in the shadow of the unlit room. “He sure hasn’t brought you in. You know it as well as I do. Well.” She chuckles. “Maybe not as well as I do.”
He struggles beneath her. “What’re you talking about?”
*
The crossroads demon tsk!s at him. “Sam, Sam, Sam. You need to reframe your line of approach. They did teach you about that at Stanford, didn’t they?”
He smiles without showing his teeth. “You know, if I’d wanted to dance, I’d have brought a stereo.”
“Oo, zing.” She winks at him, like a black-and-white bombshell. Unimpressed, he lifts the rosary, beads clacking. The demon holds up her hands, palms pale. “Whoa now. Okay, cowboy. I’ll give you a question with a little meat on its bones. You wonder why things are going all to hell in this town?” A dimple appears at one corner of her mouth. “Haven’t you wondered why Dean came back into your life just in time for Jess to disappear?”
The expression on Sam’s face provokes a laugh. It doesn’t last long.
*
“Come on, Dean, work with me a little here, would you? Aren’t you curious? Aren’t you bugfuck terrified? Don’t you want to know what it all means? Or are you too comfortable being the good son? Do you like being so complacent and patient and dogged?”
He strains away, but Meg just keeps talking, and it’s like she’s everywhere, all over him, her voice inside him and her body heat seeping through him. “You thought it’d be better with Sam with you, but you can’t tell him, can you. Can’t face up to the thought of being different, of really being a freak. He already ran away from you once, what’s to stop him from doing it again? Of course, the more you worry him, the closer he stays with you, and you like that, don’t you. You like pretending you’ve got a family. If you can’t be normal, well, at least you’ve got that, right?”
He doesn’t know how it happens. His gorge rises and all of a sudden the bedside lamp flies across the room and smashes against her shoulder. She grunts as it knocks her off him and into the gap between his bed and Sam’s. Dean feels the force pinning him to the mattress disappear, just like that, and he rolls off the bed and onto his feet. Meg rises slowly, swiping at the blood leaking from the corner of her mouth. “Very good, Dean,” she says, her grin feral. “You get a cookie. How did that feel?”
“Fuck you,” he snarls, reaching for his gun.
She snorts. “Please.” She raises her hand, and Dean is trapped, pinned motionless against the ugly, fading wallpaper. Meg climbs over the bed and saunters toward him, blood still dribbling down her chin. “Think before you strike, Deano,” she purrs, inches away again. “What have you got that could possibly hurt me?”
*
The woman’s head snaps back, and Sam hears the loud crack of bone as the demon erupts from her open mouth. He rushes forward before he can think it through. His shoe scatters the salt line and the plume of black smoke barrels away. The host crumples to the dirt, limbs limp.
Sam begins running immediately.
[next]
the other foot on the train
The plume of smoke rises tall against a muddy dawn. “Jesus Christ,” Dean breathes. Nebraska stretches flat as a place setting in all directions, the inky column the only landmark against an endless field. When they finally reach the site, it’s cordoned off. One lone police car sits at the edge of the cracked concrete parking lot. Two officers share a tall thermos of coffee back and forth. The one leaning against the passenger door straightens and moves to intercept the Impala as it pulls in.
One look tells Dean that Sam is going to be no help. He rolls down the window and immediately chokes on the smell of the air. “What happened here?” he asks. Sam stares at the ruins, his jaw tight. The officer bends close.
“Sir, I have to ask that you keep moving. We’ve got the situation under control.”
Dean glances at the other officer, who’s speaking into a radio. “Any idea where we can get some gas?”
The policeman points. “Town’s eleven miles that way. You can fill up there.”
Dean thanks him and rolls up the window. He looks at Sam as they pull away from the fill station. “You smell that?”
“Sulfur,” Sam says tightly.
At the edge of the asphalt, a telephone booth stands by itself, the receiver hanging from its metal cord, the whole thing perfectly intact.
*
A bell rings as they walk into the one restaurant on Main Street. It seems to be the social nexus of town: a crowd of locals clusters around a table near the front door. “Lord’s honest truth, I saw them with my own two eyes, walking back from their car,” declares a sturdy woman with short, sensible hair. She accepts coffee from the harried waitress, who ignores Sam and Dean and heads back toward the kitchen. “He still can’t see a damn thing, bless him, but he’s alive,” the woman continues. “Doctors can’t find a thing wrong with him.”
“Hospital must have screwed up somehow,” scoffs a grizzled man in a John Deere hat. “What’re you gonna trust those doctors in Lincoln for anyway?”
“Docs sure didn’t help him, I’ll say that right now,” another woman pipes up. “Roy had something terrible wrong with him. It’s God’s work, every last inch.”
“Guess that job of his paid off, didn’t it?” one man says ruefully. A few chuckle into their mugs. Others nod and offer their own amens.
Dean elbows Sam, grabs two menus and walks past the Please Wait to Be Seated sign up front. The lone waitress bustles up to their table, carrying her twin pots of coffee like revolvers. “What can I get for you boys?” Dean gets the special, which so far as he can tell is a bottomless pile of hash browns, sausage and scrambled eggs, named after the local high school football team’s mascot. Sam orders pancakes without looking away from his hands.
Dean holds out both menus. “Sounds like you folks are having an exciting day,” he remarks.
The waitress sighs. “Looks like. The Arco out on 74 blew up, and that tent preacher doesn’t seem to have cancer anymore. We never get two pieces of news like that at once. Town’s just not big enough.”
“Good things come to good people,” announces the short-haired woman to the crowd. “Say what you like about her, but she’s been rewarded, and bless her for it.”
“They releasing him soon, then?” the cynic in the John Deere hat grunts.
“Oh, he’s home. He checked himself out.” She sips her coffee. “Sue-Ann said she’s say when they could take visitors.”
Dean listens for a few minutes more, then glances back at Sam. “Does any of this sound weird to you?”
Sam glowers at him. “Dean, stop.”
He frowns. “What?”
Sam shakes his head. “We don’t have time to look into a case.”
“You really think Jessica’s still here?” Dean leans closer. “Come on, this could be a lead staring us right in the face. We haven’t had squat all summer, and now a gas station blows up for no good reason and a guy gets cured of cancer, in the same place you traced her last call? Tell me that’s not weird.” Sam looks away. “Come on,” Dean wheedles. “You really think this place is big enough for more than one player?”
Sam leans back in the booth. “Fine. This couple. How are we going to talk to them?”
*
Sue-Ann Le Grange is a beautiful middle-aged woman with a wardrobe stalled at 1982. She frowns up at the fake policy document. “We just got out of the hospital yesterday,” she says, baffled but polite. “They said insurance wouldn’t be by for some time.”
“We were already in Broken Bow,” says Sam smoothly. “They thought they’d just send us over while we were close.” He wears his suit well. Dean tries not to fiddle with the buttons at his wrist.
“Oh,” says Sue-Ann, and glances over her shoulder. After a moment, she steps back and opens the front door all the way. “Well, Mr. Bonham, Mr. Jones. Please, come in.”
The house is old, and frontier-nice. The décor is a mixture of turn-of-the-century Sears-Roebuck furniture and religious art. Sue-Ann seats them on a couch in a parlor; an old upright piano stands against the wall, crowded with framed photographs. “Roy’s resting,” she says, crossing her ankles and folding her hands.
“We wouldn’t want to disturb him,” says Dean. “We can come back again, if there’s a more convenient time. We just wanted to ask a few questions.” She nods at him, then perches on her chair, patient and well-mannered.
“Now, Mrs. Le Grange,” begins Sam.
“Sue-Ann, please,” she says, with her preacher’s wife smile. Sam dips his head.
“Sue-Ann, your husband was diagnosed with a tumor on his optic nerve one month ago.”
She nods. “That’s right. Roy woke up stone blind one day. He’d been feeling fine beforehand. There was…” Her eyes drift. “No warning.”
Dean shifts on the cushion, and tries to avoid being swallowed. “What happened after that?”
“Well,” Sue-Ann says, and her voice hitches a little, but she remains composed. “The oncologists said it was too far along for them to help. They told us we should move Roy into hospice care, but Roy wouldn’t have any of it.” She clasps her hands. “He fell into a coma. That was two weeks ago. But we were praying, both of us. He told me…” She takes a deep breath, and then, inexplicably, smiles again. “He said God would send us an answer, either way, and one way or another, we shouldn’t worry.” Her eyes shine. “He woke up early on Thursday morning, before the sun was even up. I came back and there he was, sitting up and calling for me.”
Something in the story snags. Dean furrows his brow. “Came back?”
She lifts her chin. “I was praying.”
They stay for twenty more minutes, but Sue-Ann keeps her cards close, and they don’t learn much else. She sees them to the door, and Sam shakes her hand. Sue-Ann looks brittle for someone whose husband has come back from the brink. Her hand folds like a bird’s wing inside Dean’s as she thanks him.
The vision goes off in his head like a bomb. He feels it, sees it, tastes it - it’s sulfur and ragged crying and soft lips and dirt under his nails. His knees buckle. He’s aware of Sam catching him, and Sue-Ann gasping and trying to help, but the next he knows he’s in the back seat of the Impala, and then he just fades out into something else.
* * *
All her adult life, she’d had faith and she’d had him. College was at a state school, and she drank of ideas heady as stolen wine. But she came back home and the good word found her, and a husband, and though they were never blessed with children, she knew happiness.
She loved Roy more than prayers could forgive. They lived on their own land, and Roy preached in the field, close to God and close to Creation. Sue-Ann stood by him and worked and helped his church grow, until people were coming from two hours away, and how did the naysayers like that? His cancer was caught on a Friday; that Sunday, he led his flock, and the tent was packed. It never left her, the quiet and the weeping and the praises they all raised up to heaven for him.
Ten days he didn’t wake. She tried desperately to feel the angels propping her up, but her only answer was the wind, and the dull hue of the baked prairie. Sue-Ann had never spoken in tongues, but she began to lose certainty of the things she was saying. She wandered through their fields, through the still, silent house, alone with the great hush of a Name read but not spoken.
In the house, Roy wasted. The tent may not have been abandoned by God yet. Sue-Ann sank into one of the folding chairs, white and flimsy amid the speakers and the tarp. Without the fans on, the space was thick and still. She stared at the empty pulpit, her cheeks dry and her lips moving for hours on end.
Her breath caught in her throat when the girl appeared kneeling before her.
“You’re troubled,” the girl said, her hand warm on Sue-Ann’s knee.
Sue-Ann gasped. “How did you get in?”
The girl’s eyes were dark and concerned. “I heard you,” she said, and reached for Sue-Ann’s hand. “He’s going to die, you know.”
“Who are you?” she snarled. “Tell me at once or I’ll call the police!”
“Shh, shh shh.” The girl slid into the seat next to her. “He doesn’t have to. There are ways of saving him.”
Sue-Ann didn’t cry in front of people. Sobs clawed at her from under her ribs. “Who are you?” she whimpered, hating herself for it.
The girl stroked her hair. “An intercessor. Shh.” She drew Sue-Ann to her breast, and Sue-Ann pressed her cheek against that leather jacket, staring straight ahead. “You love him so much, don’t you,” murmured the girl, her fingers loosing Sue-Ann’s tight bun. “I know you’d do anything for him. Why would you stop for him now?”
“I wouldn’t,” she whispered. She felt the girl’s collarbone against her cheek; her knuckles brushed a taut stomach as she fisted her thin t-shirt.
“That’s right,” the girl said, and combed her fingers through Sue-Ann’s undone tresses. The tips of them brushed against a hot neck. “Love isn’t about putting on the brakes.”
Sue-Ann inhaled, hoping for a telltale hint of myrrh, or honey. The girl smelled like leather jacket, and the wind, and the baking prairie grass. “What can I do?” she asked, a stillness welling up inside her.
The girl’s hands traced under her jaw, and she tipped her chin so that their eyes met. “Listen close, Sue-Ann. I know someone who can help you. I’m going to give you a list.”
*
She walked on the gravel in bare feet. The roadside gave no shelter but the tall weeds. Sue-Ann drew her cardigan close to her shoulders and knelt at the center of the crossroads. She tore her nails digging, but the hole opened up, and she set the cookie tin at the bottom. The contents ran like a litany in her head. God forgive her so much, but she’d used a picture from a church bulletin inside.
“What have you learned, Dorothy?”
Sue-Ann jerked back a pace, and turned. A woman she didn’t recognize stood on the other side of the buried box, wearing nothing but a silky black negligee. She smiled, and took slow, deliberate steps toward her. “It’s that if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!” The woman stopped, and eyed Sue-Ann up and down. “Hello there, preacher’s wife,” she purred. “I like what you’ve done with your hair. Even with dear Mr. Le Grange dying back home, you do make certain you’re presentable.”
Sue-Ann swallowed, and balled her fists. “You can help me,” she said, forcing the tremble out of her voice.
The woman’s eyes flooded red as she grinned. “And straight to the point.” The dark silk rustled and bunched across her hips. “It’s true. I can. It depends, though.”
“On what?”
The woman laughed, and circled behind her. Sue-Ann tracked her with her eyes. “Whether you’re willing to give me what I want. But let’s keep this transparent. Tell me, sugar, what it is you want.”
Sue-Ann glared after her. “You know. I don’t know how, but you know.”
“True.” The woman came around and faced her again. “Humor me. We need to have a record of this, after all.”
She took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. “I want my husband.”
One of the woman’s perfectly tweezed eyebrow arced up. “You’ve got him, all laid out in your bed.”
“You know what I mean.” Sue-Ann fingered her wedding ring. “I want him to live. I want him to be healed.”
The woman leveled a canny look at her. “Isn’t that going against God’s will, Sue-Ann? Don’t you think that when a man’s time comes, he should joyously go and meet his maker?”
“It’s not his time,” she said fiercely. Then, more quietly, she added, “I can’t live without him.”
The woman closed the space between them, her mouth perilously close. “Yes you can. But you don’t want to play at being a widow in a tiny town like this. And what good is the Church of Roy Le Grange without its star attraction?” She smirked. “But you, I see you’re a regular rock of the community. All right.”
Sue-Ann looked at her. “All right what?”
She tilted forward, her breasts straining against the negligee. “Here are my terms. I’ll make him better. Nobody would ever know he had a thing wrong with him. Roy’ll go back to being healthy as an ox. But in ten years, you’re coming with me. No backing out, no outs period.” She flashed a smile, brilliant under the crescent moon. “What do you say?”
Sue-Ann swallowed. “How?”
The woman’s lips curled. “How what?”
“How do I say yes?”
The woman reached out and rested her hands on Sue-Ann’s hips, her bare legs pressed against her denim skirt. “I could let him have his eyes too, you know,” she sighed, breath skimming hot across Sue-Ann’s jaw. “If you’d just meet me in eight. One year for each, preacher’s wife. What do you say? Is he worth that much to you?” Sue-Ann stiffened. The woman waited, then laughed softly. “I didn’t think so.” Her fingers played over Sue-Ann’s waist. “Well?” she whispered. “What are you waiting for? Don’t feel bad, sugar, you’ve always wanted to try it anyway.”
* * *
“Bob Johnson,” Dean mumbles, his eyelids heavy. He squints down his chest, which is pressed close with blankets. “You tucked me in?”
Sam hovers over his bed, frowning at him. “Dude, what happened back there? You okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean says, before letting his head drop back against the pillow. “Like I got run over by a semi.”
Sam brings him water and Advil unprompted. “You were out, buddy. You’ve been asleep since four.”
“God, thank you.” Dean drains the glass. “Sam, I don’t think we can help Sue-Ann.”
Sam watches him carefully. “Why’s that?”
He closes his eyes. “It’s a crossroads demon. Goddamn unbreakable contract.”
Sam stares for a moment. “You think you’ll be okay for a few hours?” he asks, urgent.
Dean opens his eyes to frown at him. “What? Why?”
His brother is already picking up his jacket. “I need to find a library.”
Dean sighs and rolls face first into the pillow. “Typical.”
“Call my cell if you need something!”
The door shuts quickly behind him.
*
It’s not a long walk from the hotel to the fields. Nebraska is as empty as any medieval fief, and if the two cowpaths he finds crossing the expanse of corn are spindly and crooked, he’s sure this demon has made due with less. The dirt is loose and soft beneath his hands; half an hour and his work is done.
“Well, well, Sam Winchester,” coos a voice behind him. “So good to see you’re back in the business. Let me tell you, we’ve missed you out here.” He turns: the demon is tall, with curly black hair and full lips, just familiar enough. She smiles knowingly, watching for a flinch. “People don’t usually call me just to chat. What brings a boy like you to a place like this?”
Sam schools his face. “I need information,” he says, keeping his voice steady.
“Talk is cheap,” rejoins the demon. She tilts her head. “What do you need so bad that you’ll sell for it?”
He doesn’t look away. “I’ve got a few things on my mind.”
“So I’ve noticed.” She bites her lower lip, teeth gleaming. “You want to know where your father is. That’s your very first question, and you hate yourself for it. Mm, Samuel, do tell me more.” When he doesn’t answer, she closes the distance between them, and lifts herself on her toes to reach his ear. “We know where is he, by the way. And what he’s doing without you and Dean.”
Sam escapes, taking careful steps backward. “I’m not worried about my dad,” he lies. “He can take care of himself.”
“Can he?” The demon smiles. “We’ll see.” She matches him, step for step-until she stops, her expression ugly. “Sam,” she growls. She pushes forward against thin air. “Sam, what did you do?”
Sam takes another pace back. Salt glimmers on the ground, the devil’s trap weaving in and out of the rows of corn. “Talk is cheap. So’s freedom.” He slips both hands in his pockets. “I’m a believer in equal exchange rates.”
The crossroads demon glares daggers at him. “This is a foolish thing you’re doing.”
He shrugs. “Maybe. But I’m tired of waiting for answers.” He plants his feet. “What do you know about Jessica Moore?”
The demon laughs, a snap of amusement in the too-quiet field. “Is this what you summoned me for? Demonic GPS?”
He goes toe to toe with the line. “A demon took her and a demon brought her here and blew up that fill station. Why? Where is she now?”
The demon crosses her arms. The bottom of her lacy nightgown flutters in a breeze. “Law school made no impression, Sam,” she sighs. “You’re asking all the wrong questions.”
“Am I?” He cocks an eyebrow. “We can wait around all night while I think up the right ones.”
“Sammy, they didn’t tell me you were quite this adorable.” She simpers. “Should you really be out here all by yourself?”
He narrows his eyes. “I’m laughing on the inside.”
The demon grins. “I wasn’t making a joke.”
*
Dean comes to on his back, something hot and living hovering over him. “You bailed on me back in Lawrence, Dean,” a girl whispers, and nips at his ear. “A real man would have called if he didn’t want to see me again.”
Meg’s arms and legs are planted firmly on either side of him. When she holds him down, he feels the springs of the mattress bite into his muscles. Other things assault him too: glimpses of dead hunters, black smoke and bars. “What the hell,” he gasps. “Bitch, get off me!”
“Ah ah ah ah.” She grabs his jaw in one hand and forces him to look at her. Her fingers dig into his cheeks. “No need to get nasty, Dean. I’m only going to hurt you if you ask for it. You’re into that sometimes, aren’t you?”
“The hell are you doing here?” He thrashes ineffectually. “What do you want from me?”
“You know what your failing is? You don’t believe in foreplay.” She lowers herself so she straddles his waist, her weight heavy on his hips. He tries to buck, but she just smiles. “Always want to charge right in, don’t we.”
His eyes roll wildly trying to see around her. “Where’s Sam? What’ve you done with him?” For a moment, he searches past her, to the ceiling. Meg chuckles.
“Sammy left of his own accord. He’s gone to try and ask a friend of mine some questions. That’s all right. I was hoping we could get a little alone-time, just you and me.” Her lips curl. “You two are hunting the wrong thing, if you ask me.”
“Oh yeah?” he spits, breathing hard. “What’s that?”
She runs her eyes over his body, casual and calm. “You should give up on Sue-Ann Le Grange. She’s a done deal. Let her have her ten years. You’ve got other fish to fry.”
“What is this, a threat?” He finally manages a sneer of his own. “You couldn’t just leave a horse head on my pillow?”
“Not a threat. Advice.” She leans close, so her short, choppy haircut brushes against his face. “I’m trying to help you, Dean. You’ve got work to do.”
*
“You think your job is so simple, don’t you.” The crossroads demon holds court in the center of the sigil. “You’re on this like a pair of Keystone Cops.”
Sam prowls the perimeter. “Is that right?”
“Do you go after Leviathan with a flashlight and a pair of scuba fins? Sam, I can help you.”
“Yeah?” He reaches into an inside pocket, and retrieves a rosary and a folded piece of paper. “Tell me how that is.”
The demon eyes the paper in his hand. “What is that?”
Sam pauses, and lets the silence speak for itself. “I think you mentioned something about helping me.”
The demon licks her lips. “You think this is just a missing person search with some ghosts and ghouls thrown in for icing. You’re not asking the right questions.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Yeah, you said that already. Old news gets you nothing.”
“No more until you back off with that exorcism in your hand.” She hisses impatiently. “We had an arrangement.”
“Really?” He makes a show of studying the text. “I believe I said I would let you go if you answered my questions. So far you’ve just given me sass, and we didn’t actually agree on anything.”
“I can be reasonable. It’s what I do, isn’t it?” When she flashes that smile, he knows he’s got her. He spreads his arms.
“Fine. Let’s hear it.”
She looks up at him through endless eyelashes. “You wouldn’t have to, if you could just get the truth out of Dean.”
Sam freezes. “What?”
*
“They scare you, don’t they?” Meg murmurs. “The dreams and visions. They’re not your style, I can tell.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean grunts.
“No?” She rakes her fingers through his hair. “I’m disappointed, I have to say. You’re lying to me like an amateur. It’s discourteous, don’t you think? Show a demon a little respect.”
“I get it why you’re here now,” he says, crooking a smile. “You need Hell to freeze over. Sorry, lady, but I’m not in the A/C business.”
Meg laughs. “That’s not a bad theory, Sherlock. But here’s a free bit of advice: you need me.”
He lifts both eyebrows. “Like a hole in the head, sure.”
“Things are changing, Dean.” She sits back and traces one hand down his torso and over his thigh. “Do we need to talk about your changing body? I’m guessing Daddy never sat you down for that one like he should have.”
He grinds his teeth. “Aw, come on, isn’t this uncomfortable enough without bringing my dad into the mix?”
Meg’s eyes glint, even in the shadow of the unlit room. “He sure hasn’t brought you in. You know it as well as I do. Well.” She chuckles. “Maybe not as well as I do.”
He struggles beneath her. “What’re you talking about?”
*
The crossroads demon tsk!s at him. “Sam, Sam, Sam. You need to reframe your line of approach. They did teach you about that at Stanford, didn’t they?”
He smiles without showing his teeth. “You know, if I’d wanted to dance, I’d have brought a stereo.”
“Oo, zing.” She winks at him, like a black-and-white bombshell. Unimpressed, he lifts the rosary, beads clacking. The demon holds up her hands, palms pale. “Whoa now. Okay, cowboy. I’ll give you a question with a little meat on its bones. You wonder why things are going all to hell in this town?” A dimple appears at one corner of her mouth. “Haven’t you wondered why Dean came back into your life just in time for Jess to disappear?”
The expression on Sam’s face provokes a laugh. It doesn’t last long.
*
“Come on, Dean, work with me a little here, would you? Aren’t you curious? Aren’t you bugfuck terrified? Don’t you want to know what it all means? Or are you too comfortable being the good son? Do you like being so complacent and patient and dogged?”
He strains away, but Meg just keeps talking, and it’s like she’s everywhere, all over him, her voice inside him and her body heat seeping through him. “You thought it’d be better with Sam with you, but you can’t tell him, can you. Can’t face up to the thought of being different, of really being a freak. He already ran away from you once, what’s to stop him from doing it again? Of course, the more you worry him, the closer he stays with you, and you like that, don’t you. You like pretending you’ve got a family. If you can’t be normal, well, at least you’ve got that, right?”
He doesn’t know how it happens. His gorge rises and all of a sudden the bedside lamp flies across the room and smashes against her shoulder. She grunts as it knocks her off him and into the gap between his bed and Sam’s. Dean feels the force pinning him to the mattress disappear, just like that, and he rolls off the bed and onto his feet. Meg rises slowly, swiping at the blood leaking from the corner of her mouth. “Very good, Dean,” she says, her grin feral. “You get a cookie. How did that feel?”
“Fuck you,” he snarls, reaching for his gun.
She snorts. “Please.” She raises her hand, and Dean is trapped, pinned motionless against the ugly, fading wallpaper. Meg climbs over the bed and saunters toward him, blood still dribbling down her chin. “Think before you strike, Deano,” she purrs, inches away again. “What have you got that could possibly hurt me?”
*
The woman’s head snaps back, and Sam hears the loud crack of bone as the demon erupts from her open mouth. He rushes forward before he can think it through. His shoe scatters the salt line and the plume of black smoke barrels away. The host crumples to the dirt, limbs limp.
Sam begins running immediately.
[next]