Sick Days - Chapter 7
Title: Sick Days
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 4,518 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 6
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 2007
Sam followed Dean inside and tried to divide his attention equally between watching for any dangers Dean might not see right now and watching Dean himself. His brother was being strangely quiet as he shined his flashlight around what must have at one point been the main lobby.
“Anything look familiar?” Sam asked.
“All of it. Kind of...it was a long time ago.”
Sam wanted to press about what Dean was actually looking for, but his brother was already drowning in frustration. The only thing he could do was try to ease Dean’s mind with the fact that there was no way he could be responsible for the deaths happening in this town.
“I talked to the families of the original victims. None of them have even heard of this place. As far as I can tell you and the cops are the only ones who even know this place exists anymore.”
“Exactly why this is the perfect place for some dark and nasty to set up shop. We just gotta figure out how she’s choosing victims.”
Aside from the sound of glass crunching under their shoes there was nothing but silence inside the thick walls and the air was sickly stale. There obviously hadn’t been anyone alive in here for a very long time. If there was any connection to the apparently random families Sam seriously doubted they would find it in here.
“I think we’ve already established that these people have no connection to each other. They aren’t from the same parts of town - the computer guy wasn’t even from town - they don’t share a workplace, a church...as a matter of fact they’re probably the only people in this town that have never met.”
Dean shrugged. “That proves I’m right.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Mystical diseases don’t need some kid wiping his snotty nose on someone to spread. Normal diseases do. So there.”
“So there?” Sam repeated. “Man, I swear you never graduated from junior high.”
While Sam was expecting a snappy comeback he realized that Dean was scarcely listening to him anymore. At the rate he was flying through this place, if being sick wasn’t slowing his brother down, Dean probably would have left him in the dust. It wasn’t like Dean was trying to ditch him, but he was so focused that he seemed to have forgotten that Sam was there. His brother was on the trail of something.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Dean stopped walking and turned his flashlight back towards Sam. “What’s what?”
“Nothing...” Dean wasn’t searching the place to see what was here. He was looking for something in particular, but he obviously had no intention of telling Sam what that something was. “Dean, even if this is some super juiced spirit somehow turning people’s bodies against themselves there still has to be something connecting the victims.”
“They don’t have to be connected to each other. Maybe they just all have something in common. If we figure out how this spirit swings then we’ll at least have a better idea what we’re dealing with and who’s next.”
“Right now it looks like the whole town is next.”
“As near as Dad could figure, she only takes a dozen at a time. We’re eight down with only four left to go. Once all twelve are dead this thing takes another long nap and it’s another ten years before I can stop it.”
“Before we can stop it,” Sam corrected. He was tired of Dean acting like he was in this one alone.
“Whatever. I’m not planning on being around that long anyway. This is the only shot we’re going to get and I’m not going to screw it up again.”
Sam stopped walking as he stared after his brother. “You’re not planning on being around Oregon in ten years?” he asked hopefully even though he could tell full well from Dean’s tone what his brother meant. He just didn’t want to hear it now.
He had to admit that the last year and a half alone had seemed like a lifetime and Dean had never had the hiatus he’d had. This was all Dean had ever done and he was pretty sure it was all he wanted to do. But suddenly he wasn’t so sure. Maybe Dean just thought it was all he could do in which case even just ten more years of the same wasn’t exactly something to look forward to.
“Hunters don’t die of old age, Sammy. It’s for the best anyway. The retirement package sucks.”
The certainty with which Dean declared he was going to be dead in ten years and how little he sounded like he cared was enough to make Sam want to shake him. Not that it would help anything. Dean obviously already had irreparable brain damage.
“We need to head downstairs,” Dean told him.
“We’re on the ground floor.”
“There’s a basement.”
“You read floor plans now?”
“No, but I don’t need glasses like you obviously do.” Dean shone his flashlight down one of the corridors like he was proving a point, but it didn’t actually look different from any of the other empty hallways they had just walked through. “Maybe we should get your eyes checked.”
“Or your head. Talk about snot nosed kids. Seriously, Dean! Use a tissue already.”
He wasn’t sure how many times he’d seen Dean wipe his running nose on the cuff of his shirt, but it was about five times too many just since they’d broken into this place. Silently he made a note never to touch Dean’s clothing again.
“What?” Dean asked with a totally clueless expression. His tone turned indignant as he figured out what Sam was talking about. He motioned to himself as he replied, “Dude. Do I look like I carry ‘tissues’?”
Welcome to preschool. Shaking his head, Sam pulled a pack of Kleenex out of his pocket and threw it at Dean. His brother caught it but acted like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.
“Seriously?” He quirked a brow at Sam. “You do know you’re a total douchebag?”
Sam didn’t bother replying and instead just watched as Dean made a show of blowing his nose with one of the tissues before wadding it up and tossing it aside. His brother stuffed the rest of the pack in his pocket before continuing to the door.
Dean hesitated long enough that Sam thought he saw something, but then without a word, Dean stepped to the side and threw the door open. After it was open he just stood frozen in the doorway. Sam walked up behind and looked past him.
He didn’t see anything strange beyond the door. In the darkness all he could see was that Dean was right about where the door led. It did go to a basement, but it looked like just more creepy abandoned building.
“You okay?” Sam asked when Dean still didn’t budge.
“Fine,” Dean replied shortly before finally moving forward.
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 1987
Dean was starting to think that coming here had been a bad idea. So far he hadn’t found any sign of Dad. He was cold, hungry, tired and everything about this place was scary. He’d done a run through of most of three floors - literally running through a few spots - and was taking one last look around the main floor. As much as Dad wouldn’t want him to do this, it’s what Dad would do.
He suddenly froze as he heard a strange sound echoing chanting from down the hall. “Dad?” he asked cautiously.
While he received no reply he followed the sound into one of the back corridors. He gripped the pistol in his hand so tightly that his arm trembled. The sound was coming from behind the door at the end of the hall.
“Dad, is that you?”
He slipped the flashlight into his pocket to free up his hand to open the door. The knob barely turned before the door thrust itself open. A sweeping gust of energy easily flung his small body back down the hallway and sent his gun clattering away.
With a small whimper Dean turned onto his side. His eyes strained to find the weapon in the darkness even while he struggled to pull back in the air that had been forced from his lungs. As soon as everything stopped spinning he scrambled to his feet. His hands fumbled in his pocket to find his flashlight again.
He used the beam of light in a desperate search for the gleam of the gun’s barrel. Only after he’d recovered his weapon did he shine the flashlight to illuminate what had thrown him back.
His face wrinkled in confusion when he saw nothing there. Tentatively he approached the door again. Whatever had knocked him down should be trying to kill him now unless something had stopped it. Maybe Dad was here after all.
“Dad? Are you down here?” he called down into the dark.
He shined his flashlight down the cement stairs. There wasn’t enough power in the beam of light for him to see what lay beyond the last step and he couldn’t hear the chanting sound anymore. Another shiver ran through him as he tried to do decide what to do. His instinct told him to turn and ran, but something was here and so far it was the closest thing he had to a clue about where Dad might be.
Carefully he made his way down the steps, staying low incase something else tried to push him. His feet made it to solid ground, but as soon they did the door at the top of steps slammed closed behind him.
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 2007
D ean raised his shotgun as he got ready to head down the stairs. With as reluctant and weird as Dean was being about walking through the doorway, Sam was pretty sure that Dean shouldn’t be going down there at all. Just as he was about to suggest that Dean stay here, his brother spoke first.
“Stay here,” Dean ordered without looking back at Sam.
“Why would I do that?”
Dean halted a couple of steps down and finally looked back up at him. There was something off in his expression and even more so in the lack of explanation that followed.
“Because I told you to.”
“Since when is that a reason?”
“Since I’m your big brother.”
Oddly enough his brother wasn’t being a smart ass for once. The words he said made it seem like he was, but his tone was dead serious. Half the time Dean wanted Sam to be the grown up, half the time Dean wanted to be the grown up but Dean didn’t seem to think, regardless of their age, that they could ever be adults at the same time.
“If this really is something drawing you here then this is a trap and you’re not walking into it alone.” Dean didn’t look like he cared, but he knew what would convince his brother. “I told you, I need you to watch my back in here.”
It wasn’t fair of him to play off Dean’s fear that this thing might be after him, but his brother wasn’t leaving him with a lot to work with. Dean seemed to see what he was saying, but still looked nervous. Nervous wasn’t something he saw too often on Dean’s face and he didn’t like it.
“Someone needs to watch the door,” Dean replied.
He looked at Dean for a moment and realized his brother wasn’t just being practical. He was afraid. Dean thought that they were going to be trapped down there. All the more reason Dean wasn’t going alone. The last thing he needed was for Dean to end up isolated with anything that had him thrown this far off his game.
It wasn’t the time for it, but he was suddenly feeling guilty that he had ever thought about leaving Dean alone in this. If he was back at Stanford where he’d wanted so badly to be Dean would be here alone without anyone watching his back.
It had never seemed like a big deal when Dean was playing the infuriating, kill anything that looked at him funny tough guy. But sometimes Dean came off so strong it was deceptive because most of it was an act and now Dean didn’t look invincible. He looked young and vulnerable. He looked scared.
Dean was trying so hard to remember what had happened here before he was probably completely engulfed in the bits and pieces he did have. His brother had said earlier that he was more feeling emotions then remembering - feelings from the past that he could be applying to the here and now without even realizing it. Sam wasn’t sure how much the Dean he knew was here with him and how much he was instead standing here with the much younger Dean that had been here alone so many years earlier.
“If the door is going to close I’m going to be on the same side as you,” Sam told him. “We’re better off sticking together.”
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 1987
Dean jumped at the resounding thud of the door slamming close behind him. He sprinted back up the stairs and tugged as hard as he could on the doorknob. The door wouldn’t budged. He really shouldn’t have come here, but it was too late to go back now.
With worried eyes he turned back towards the basement that he was now locked in. If there was something here, he’d just have to kill it. If he was alone there at least had to be something down here he could use to open the door. Reluctantly he moved back down the steps.
“Dad, please be down here,” he whispered to himself.
With his faint light he could only make out bits and pieces of what was around him. From what he could see it was just a bunch of storage. Everything almost seemed normal until he saw strange glowing lights from behind one of the piles of stuff.
Clicking off his flashlight, he hunkered down and crawled towards a couple of piles of boxes. His muddy shoes were too squeaky on the slick floor for him to walk quietly. Silently he squatted down to keep hidden. He rested the pistol on his knee to try to keep it steady while his finger remained tightly cramped around the trigger. Trying to breath softly, he peered in between the opening between the two piles of boxes.
In a cleared area he could see an old lady standing in the middle of a lit circle of funny pictures that were glowing on the ground. She was like a ghost, but she didn’t look like the few ghosts he’d seen before. He could almost see through her, but she glowed in a funny way that was bright enough to make him squint. It was like she was there and she wasn’t at the same time.
He didn’t really know what she was but his heart sank as he realized how stupid he was. The gun he clutched so tightly wasn’t going to help him. Why had brought a gun to hunt ghosts? Really he’d just brought it to make himself feel better and that was no way to hunt. Dad was going to be really mad that he hadn’t thought this through better.
Urgently he tried to think of what Dad would do when another light appeared behind him. He squiggled in his hiding spot to turn to face it. This one wasn’t an old lady, it was a boy probably his height and maybe just a little older than him.
The boy didn’t glow like the old ghost lady but instead flickered faintly. The boy’s shirt was covered with blood just like Sammy had said. Even though he was looking his direction the boy didn’t seem to see him and he really did look scared. It didn’t do anything to comfort Dean’s own growing fears.
Ghosts were bad but he got why Sammy had wanted him to help this one. He was about to try to whisper something to the ghost boy when it flickered away. Instead of standing behind the boxes with him the ghost boy was suddenly standing in front of the nasty old ghost lady who was dragging the boy towards her without even touching him. The ghost boy tried to run, but couldn’t move. It tried to scream but no sound came out.
Dean stumbled back from what he saw as the ghost lady’s body contoured. Her human form twisted grotesquely and the formerly human looking mouth distended. It rapidly grew larger and longer until it was big enough to snap closed and swallow the ghost boy whole. Dean’s wide eyes blinked and as soon as he opened them again it just looked like an old lady standing in the circle again.
Dean didn’t know what to make of what he had saw, but he forgot about it entirely as he saw another figure coming towards the glowing circle the old ghost lady stood in. It only took him a moment to recognize the man as his dad. He wasn’t sure if Dad had seen what he had so he had to warn him.
“Dad!”
As soon as he ran from behind the boxes his relief was shattered. He froze on the far side of the circle when he realized that Dad couldn’t see him or hear him anymore than the ghost boy had been able to. All his dad seemed to see was the old ghost lady. His eyes went wide again as the reality sunk in that Dad was every bit as transparent as the little boy had been.
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 2007
The closest Dean had gotten to what he wanted was getting to go down the stairs first. Even that Sam wasn’t thrilled about. Dean seemed to be walking fine, but his brother was the type to force himself to walk steady until he collapsed and these were some pretty steep steps without railings.
While Dean might not think he needed to be around for much longer, Sam wasn’t about to let him check out by splitting his skull open on these concrete steps. Thankfully Dean was focused enough on what was ahead that he didn’t seem to notice the fact that Sam was close enough to grab him if he had to.
Dean made it down fine and as soon as he hit the bottom step he didn’t hesitate in heading across the room. Sam had thought that Dean was full of it earlier, but by the way he was walking Dean really had been here before and he looked like he knew exactly where he was going.
Whatever this basement floor had originally been it was large, but the piles of boxes and decades worth of accumulated junk made the place feel like a cramped maze. Sam stopped scanning the room and went to close the short distance between him and his brother. He didn’t move fast enough.
He momentarily lost track of Dean when Dean’s flashlight beam vanished. In nearly the same moment he heard his brother cry out followed by the sound of a body dropping.
“Dean? Dean! Where are you?”
While he received no answer from his brother, he could hear the panted breaths echoing through the room. He ran through the boxes before coming on an open area clean of any other clutter. In the center of the opening Dean was on his knees gasping with his hand pressed tightly to his back. Sam skidded to a stop beside him.
“What happened?”
He kneeled down beside his silent brother while he tried to simultaneously look for whatever it was that had attacked him. Dean was the only one he’d heard down here and he didn’t see anything now.
“I don’t know...something cut my back,” Dean finally told him.
“Let me see.”
His brother was wearing two layers of shirts underneath his leather jacket. Sam was almost afraid to look. There was plenty of random sharp things down here, but anything that had gotten through the layers must have done some serious damage.
Dean hissed as Sam pulled the layers of fabric up enough so that he could get a clear look at Dean’s back. When he didn’t find the stream of blood he had imagined he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He examined the area closely. The only thing that scared him was how hot the skin on Dean’s back felt. Shaking his head, he let Dean’s jacket fall back into place.
“There’s nothing there, Dean. It looks fine.”
“Well, look again. It sure doesn’t feel fine. It’s burning like a mother.”
He didn’t doubt that Dean was in real pain. His brother wasn’t one to let it show even
when he was actually hurt. He only doubted where the pain was coming from. To appease Dean, he checked again, but the skin wasn’t broken or so much as bruised anywhere Dean was complaining about.
“It’s probably the fever,” Sam replied.
“It’s no fever. I just remembered something...the floor.”
“What?”
“Check the damn floor, Sam.”
With an annoyed sigh, Sam looked down at the floor. All he saw was the dirty cement floor he’d expected to see. He was about to tell Dean he was loosing it when he finally saw what Dean had to be referring to. Moving the flashlight from Dean, he saw some kind of symbol marked on the floor.
Sam reached out to wipe the years worth of accumulated dust away and quickly realized that it was not one symbol but a complete ritual circle of some kind. He didn’t recognize the symbols specifically, but there was no mistaking what it was and Dean had collapsed in the dead center of it.
“We need to get you out of here. Where’s your flashlight?”
“It’s here. Just went out. Piece of crap.”
Sam stood up and pulled the EMF meter from his pocket. He clicked it on and scanned the area around them. The device lit up like a Christmas tree and filled the basement with a disconcerting buzz of confirmation. Dean wasn’t all wrong.
“Told you,” his brother grumbled as he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. “Where are you bitch?” Dean called out.
Dean loved taunting, but by his tone right now, he was obviously genuinely pissed and then some. Maybe he was mad himself or at this thing or at Dad for leaving him. Maybe he was just mad at the world in general. Sam couldn’t always tell, but he could tell that his brother was still spoiling for a fight that he couldn’t win.
“Knock it off, Dean” Sam warned him.
His brother could stand around and yell at ghosts that may or may not be here until he was hacking up his lungs again, but it wouldn’t help anything if the spirit didn’t want to be found. Not to mention the fact that Sam was more afraid that the spirit might actually answer.
They weren’t in any position to deal with it if it did respond. Right now Dean wasn’t playing bait. He just flat out was bait. As much as Dean made this sound simple, it wasn’t because this thing couldn’t just be a ghost. Either it wasn’t what was making the people in town sick or it was way out of the leagues of anything Dean was up to dealing with. Knowing their luck, it was probably both.
The smart thing to do would be to find out what the symbols were for, but Dean was stupidly intent on drawing this thing out here now. “You want me? I’m right here - come and get it!”
It was one ragged shout too many. Sam moved in as Dean doubled over. When the coughing fit passed, Sam grabbed a hold of the front of Dean’s jacket to force him to look at him before he could get started on some other totally stupid lack of plan.
“Dean, stop!”
“Get your hands off me,” Dean warned as he shoved Sam hard. But Dean wasn’t all there and it wasn’t hard enough to force Sam to loose his grip on his brother.
Sam gave Dean one hard shake to prove that he wasn’t going to let him go. “Just stop,” Sam repeated.
Dean’s rigid stance deflated in his grip. As the desperation returned to his brother’s eyes Sam suddenly wasn’t sure that he was helping anything. He knew Dean needed to deal with this, but not like this. With Dean obviously disarmed Sam released his grip and took a step back to give him some space and let him try to catch his breath.
It was time to go back to trying to reason with Dean. “Hacking your lungs out at shadows isn’t going to save anyone.”
Dean still wasn’t looking at him, but at least he was half listening now. “It was here. Still is.”
“What did you see?”
There was a long hesitation before Dean replied, “I didn’t see anything. Just felt it.”
Maybe that logical conversation wasn’t going to happen after all. “I know, you just know, but Dean, if this thing has been here for ten years then it will still be here when we get back.”
Dean’s chest was still heaving and he looked like he was ready to collapse without having an opponent coming at him. Sam wanted to save these people as much as Dean did, but there was no way he was willing to let his brother sacrifice himself to do it.
Sam put away the EMF meter that wasn’t helping anything. This whole basement was hot so it wasn’t going to help them pinpoint anything specific down here. Besides, the center of activity seemed pretty clear. He pulled his phone from his pocket and started snapping some shots of the symbols on the floor.
When he got down close enough to really look at them he realize that the circle wasn’t painted onto the floor. The cement almost seemed to be raised and indented with the marks as if they had been etched or maybe burned into it. He didn’t know how they would have been put there.
It was time to get Dean out of here before whatever had made this circle did decide to drop in. He glanced to his brother whose eyes were still searching the darkness around them. As he stood up again he better saw the distant look Dean wore. He wasn’t looking at anything that was here and now.
“We got what we need,” he told Dean. “Let’s get back to the hotel and check this out. Once we know what we’re dealing with we’ll come back and deal with it, okay?”
He moved closer to his brother when he didn’t reply. “Dean?”
“Sam, Dad was here.”
Continue to Chapter 8
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 4,518 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 6
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 2007
Sam followed Dean inside and tried to divide his attention equally between watching for any dangers Dean might not see right now and watching Dean himself. His brother was being strangely quiet as he shined his flashlight around what must have at one point been the main lobby.
“Anything look familiar?” Sam asked.
“All of it. Kind of...it was a long time ago.”
Sam wanted to press about what Dean was actually looking for, but his brother was already drowning in frustration. The only thing he could do was try to ease Dean’s mind with the fact that there was no way he could be responsible for the deaths happening in this town.
“I talked to the families of the original victims. None of them have even heard of this place. As far as I can tell you and the cops are the only ones who even know this place exists anymore.”
“Exactly why this is the perfect place for some dark and nasty to set up shop. We just gotta figure out how she’s choosing victims.”
Aside from the sound of glass crunching under their shoes there was nothing but silence inside the thick walls and the air was sickly stale. There obviously hadn’t been anyone alive in here for a very long time. If there was any connection to the apparently random families Sam seriously doubted they would find it in here.
“I think we’ve already established that these people have no connection to each other. They aren’t from the same parts of town - the computer guy wasn’t even from town - they don’t share a workplace, a church...as a matter of fact they’re probably the only people in this town that have never met.”
Dean shrugged. “That proves I’m right.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Mystical diseases don’t need some kid wiping his snotty nose on someone to spread. Normal diseases do. So there.”
“So there?” Sam repeated. “Man, I swear you never graduated from junior high.”
While Sam was expecting a snappy comeback he realized that Dean was scarcely listening to him anymore. At the rate he was flying through this place, if being sick wasn’t slowing his brother down, Dean probably would have left him in the dust. It wasn’t like Dean was trying to ditch him, but he was so focused that he seemed to have forgotten that Sam was there. His brother was on the trail of something.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Dean stopped walking and turned his flashlight back towards Sam. “What’s what?”
“Nothing...” Dean wasn’t searching the place to see what was here. He was looking for something in particular, but he obviously had no intention of telling Sam what that something was. “Dean, even if this is some super juiced spirit somehow turning people’s bodies against themselves there still has to be something connecting the victims.”
“They don’t have to be connected to each other. Maybe they just all have something in common. If we figure out how this spirit swings then we’ll at least have a better idea what we’re dealing with and who’s next.”
“Right now it looks like the whole town is next.”
“As near as Dad could figure, she only takes a dozen at a time. We’re eight down with only four left to go. Once all twelve are dead this thing takes another long nap and it’s another ten years before I can stop it.”
“Before we can stop it,” Sam corrected. He was tired of Dean acting like he was in this one alone.
“Whatever. I’m not planning on being around that long anyway. This is the only shot we’re going to get and I’m not going to screw it up again.”
Sam stopped walking as he stared after his brother. “You’re not planning on being around Oregon in ten years?” he asked hopefully even though he could tell full well from Dean’s tone what his brother meant. He just didn’t want to hear it now.
He had to admit that the last year and a half alone had seemed like a lifetime and Dean had never had the hiatus he’d had. This was all Dean had ever done and he was pretty sure it was all he wanted to do. But suddenly he wasn’t so sure. Maybe Dean just thought it was all he could do in which case even just ten more years of the same wasn’t exactly something to look forward to.
“Hunters don’t die of old age, Sammy. It’s for the best anyway. The retirement package sucks.”
The certainty with which Dean declared he was going to be dead in ten years and how little he sounded like he cared was enough to make Sam want to shake him. Not that it would help anything. Dean obviously already had irreparable brain damage.
“We need to head downstairs,” Dean told him.
“We’re on the ground floor.”
“There’s a basement.”
“You read floor plans now?”
“No, but I don’t need glasses like you obviously do.” Dean shone his flashlight down one of the corridors like he was proving a point, but it didn’t actually look different from any of the other empty hallways they had just walked through. “Maybe we should get your eyes checked.”
“Or your head. Talk about snot nosed kids. Seriously, Dean! Use a tissue already.”
He wasn’t sure how many times he’d seen Dean wipe his running nose on the cuff of his shirt, but it was about five times too many just since they’d broken into this place. Silently he made a note never to touch Dean’s clothing again.
“What?” Dean asked with a totally clueless expression. His tone turned indignant as he figured out what Sam was talking about. He motioned to himself as he replied, “Dude. Do I look like I carry ‘tissues’?”
Welcome to preschool. Shaking his head, Sam pulled a pack of Kleenex out of his pocket and threw it at Dean. His brother caught it but acted like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.
“Seriously?” He quirked a brow at Sam. “You do know you’re a total douchebag?”
Sam didn’t bother replying and instead just watched as Dean made a show of blowing his nose with one of the tissues before wadding it up and tossing it aside. His brother stuffed the rest of the pack in his pocket before continuing to the door.
Dean hesitated long enough that Sam thought he saw something, but then without a word, Dean stepped to the side and threw the door open. After it was open he just stood frozen in the doorway. Sam walked up behind and looked past him.
He didn’t see anything strange beyond the door. In the darkness all he could see was that Dean was right about where the door led. It did go to a basement, but it looked like just more creepy abandoned building.
“You okay?” Sam asked when Dean still didn’t budge.
“Fine,” Dean replied shortly before finally moving forward.
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 1987
Dean was starting to think that coming here had been a bad idea. So far he hadn’t found any sign of Dad. He was cold, hungry, tired and everything about this place was scary. He’d done a run through of most of three floors - literally running through a few spots - and was taking one last look around the main floor. As much as Dad wouldn’t want him to do this, it’s what Dad would do.
He suddenly froze as he heard a strange sound echoing chanting from down the hall. “Dad?” he asked cautiously.
While he received no reply he followed the sound into one of the back corridors. He gripped the pistol in his hand so tightly that his arm trembled. The sound was coming from behind the door at the end of the hall.
“Dad, is that you?”
He slipped the flashlight into his pocket to free up his hand to open the door. The knob barely turned before the door thrust itself open. A sweeping gust of energy easily flung his small body back down the hallway and sent his gun clattering away.
With a small whimper Dean turned onto his side. His eyes strained to find the weapon in the darkness even while he struggled to pull back in the air that had been forced from his lungs. As soon as everything stopped spinning he scrambled to his feet. His hands fumbled in his pocket to find his flashlight again.
He used the beam of light in a desperate search for the gleam of the gun’s barrel. Only after he’d recovered his weapon did he shine the flashlight to illuminate what had thrown him back.
His face wrinkled in confusion when he saw nothing there. Tentatively he approached the door again. Whatever had knocked him down should be trying to kill him now unless something had stopped it. Maybe Dad was here after all.
“Dad? Are you down here?” he called down into the dark.
He shined his flashlight down the cement stairs. There wasn’t enough power in the beam of light for him to see what lay beyond the last step and he couldn’t hear the chanting sound anymore. Another shiver ran through him as he tried to do decide what to do. His instinct told him to turn and ran, but something was here and so far it was the closest thing he had to a clue about where Dad might be.
Carefully he made his way down the steps, staying low incase something else tried to push him. His feet made it to solid ground, but as soon they did the door at the top of steps slammed closed behind him.
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 2007
D ean raised his shotgun as he got ready to head down the stairs. With as reluctant and weird as Dean was being about walking through the doorway, Sam was pretty sure that Dean shouldn’t be going down there at all. Just as he was about to suggest that Dean stay here, his brother spoke first.
“Stay here,” Dean ordered without looking back at Sam.
“Why would I do that?”
Dean halted a couple of steps down and finally looked back up at him. There was something off in his expression and even more so in the lack of explanation that followed.
“Because I told you to.”
“Since when is that a reason?”
“Since I’m your big brother.”
Oddly enough his brother wasn’t being a smart ass for once. The words he said made it seem like he was, but his tone was dead serious. Half the time Dean wanted Sam to be the grown up, half the time Dean wanted to be the grown up but Dean didn’t seem to think, regardless of their age, that they could ever be adults at the same time.
“If this really is something drawing you here then this is a trap and you’re not walking into it alone.” Dean didn’t look like he cared, but he knew what would convince his brother. “I told you, I need you to watch my back in here.”
It wasn’t fair of him to play off Dean’s fear that this thing might be after him, but his brother wasn’t leaving him with a lot to work with. Dean seemed to see what he was saying, but still looked nervous. Nervous wasn’t something he saw too often on Dean’s face and he didn’t like it.
“Someone needs to watch the door,” Dean replied.
He looked at Dean for a moment and realized his brother wasn’t just being practical. He was afraid. Dean thought that they were going to be trapped down there. All the more reason Dean wasn’t going alone. The last thing he needed was for Dean to end up isolated with anything that had him thrown this far off his game.
It wasn’t the time for it, but he was suddenly feeling guilty that he had ever thought about leaving Dean alone in this. If he was back at Stanford where he’d wanted so badly to be Dean would be here alone without anyone watching his back.
It had never seemed like a big deal when Dean was playing the infuriating, kill anything that looked at him funny tough guy. But sometimes Dean came off so strong it was deceptive because most of it was an act and now Dean didn’t look invincible. He looked young and vulnerable. He looked scared.
Dean was trying so hard to remember what had happened here before he was probably completely engulfed in the bits and pieces he did have. His brother had said earlier that he was more feeling emotions then remembering - feelings from the past that he could be applying to the here and now without even realizing it. Sam wasn’t sure how much the Dean he knew was here with him and how much he was instead standing here with the much younger Dean that had been here alone so many years earlier.
“If the door is going to close I’m going to be on the same side as you,” Sam told him. “We’re better off sticking together.”
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 1987
Dean jumped at the resounding thud of the door slamming close behind him. He sprinted back up the stairs and tugged as hard as he could on the doorknob. The door wouldn’t budged. He really shouldn’t have come here, but it was too late to go back now.
With worried eyes he turned back towards the basement that he was now locked in. If there was something here, he’d just have to kill it. If he was alone there at least had to be something down here he could use to open the door. Reluctantly he moved back down the steps.
“Dad, please be down here,” he whispered to himself.
With his faint light he could only make out bits and pieces of what was around him. From what he could see it was just a bunch of storage. Everything almost seemed normal until he saw strange glowing lights from behind one of the piles of stuff.
Clicking off his flashlight, he hunkered down and crawled towards a couple of piles of boxes. His muddy shoes were too squeaky on the slick floor for him to walk quietly. Silently he squatted down to keep hidden. He rested the pistol on his knee to try to keep it steady while his finger remained tightly cramped around the trigger. Trying to breath softly, he peered in between the opening between the two piles of boxes.
In a cleared area he could see an old lady standing in the middle of a lit circle of funny pictures that were glowing on the ground. She was like a ghost, but she didn’t look like the few ghosts he’d seen before. He could almost see through her, but she glowed in a funny way that was bright enough to make him squint. It was like she was there and she wasn’t at the same time.
He didn’t really know what she was but his heart sank as he realized how stupid he was. The gun he clutched so tightly wasn’t going to help him. Why had brought a gun to hunt ghosts? Really he’d just brought it to make himself feel better and that was no way to hunt. Dad was going to be really mad that he hadn’t thought this through better.
Urgently he tried to think of what Dad would do when another light appeared behind him. He squiggled in his hiding spot to turn to face it. This one wasn’t an old lady, it was a boy probably his height and maybe just a little older than him.
The boy didn’t glow like the old ghost lady but instead flickered faintly. The boy’s shirt was covered with blood just like Sammy had said. Even though he was looking his direction the boy didn’t seem to see him and he really did look scared. It didn’t do anything to comfort Dean’s own growing fears.
Ghosts were bad but he got why Sammy had wanted him to help this one. He was about to try to whisper something to the ghost boy when it flickered away. Instead of standing behind the boxes with him the ghost boy was suddenly standing in front of the nasty old ghost lady who was dragging the boy towards her without even touching him. The ghost boy tried to run, but couldn’t move. It tried to scream but no sound came out.
Dean stumbled back from what he saw as the ghost lady’s body contoured. Her human form twisted grotesquely and the formerly human looking mouth distended. It rapidly grew larger and longer until it was big enough to snap closed and swallow the ghost boy whole. Dean’s wide eyes blinked and as soon as he opened them again it just looked like an old lady standing in the circle again.
Dean didn’t know what to make of what he had saw, but he forgot about it entirely as he saw another figure coming towards the glowing circle the old ghost lady stood in. It only took him a moment to recognize the man as his dad. He wasn’t sure if Dad had seen what he had so he had to warn him.
“Dad!”
As soon as he ran from behind the boxes his relief was shattered. He froze on the far side of the circle when he realized that Dad couldn’t see him or hear him anymore than the ghost boy had been able to. All his dad seemed to see was the old ghost lady. His eyes went wide again as the reality sunk in that Dad was every bit as transparent as the little boy had been.
~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 2007
The closest Dean had gotten to what he wanted was getting to go down the stairs first. Even that Sam wasn’t thrilled about. Dean seemed to be walking fine, but his brother was the type to force himself to walk steady until he collapsed and these were some pretty steep steps without railings.
While Dean might not think he needed to be around for much longer, Sam wasn’t about to let him check out by splitting his skull open on these concrete steps. Thankfully Dean was focused enough on what was ahead that he didn’t seem to notice the fact that Sam was close enough to grab him if he had to.
Dean made it down fine and as soon as he hit the bottom step he didn’t hesitate in heading across the room. Sam had thought that Dean was full of it earlier, but by the way he was walking Dean really had been here before and he looked like he knew exactly where he was going.
Whatever this basement floor had originally been it was large, but the piles of boxes and decades worth of accumulated junk made the place feel like a cramped maze. Sam stopped scanning the room and went to close the short distance between him and his brother. He didn’t move fast enough.
He momentarily lost track of Dean when Dean’s flashlight beam vanished. In nearly the same moment he heard his brother cry out followed by the sound of a body dropping.
“Dean? Dean! Where are you?”
While he received no answer from his brother, he could hear the panted breaths echoing through the room. He ran through the boxes before coming on an open area clean of any other clutter. In the center of the opening Dean was on his knees gasping with his hand pressed tightly to his back. Sam skidded to a stop beside him.
“What happened?”
He kneeled down beside his silent brother while he tried to simultaneously look for whatever it was that had attacked him. Dean was the only one he’d heard down here and he didn’t see anything now.
“I don’t know...something cut my back,” Dean finally told him.
“Let me see.”
His brother was wearing two layers of shirts underneath his leather jacket. Sam was almost afraid to look. There was plenty of random sharp things down here, but anything that had gotten through the layers must have done some serious damage.
Dean hissed as Sam pulled the layers of fabric up enough so that he could get a clear look at Dean’s back. When he didn’t find the stream of blood he had imagined he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He examined the area closely. The only thing that scared him was how hot the skin on Dean’s back felt. Shaking his head, he let Dean’s jacket fall back into place.
“There’s nothing there, Dean. It looks fine.”
“Well, look again. It sure doesn’t feel fine. It’s burning like a mother.”
He didn’t doubt that Dean was in real pain. His brother wasn’t one to let it show even
when he was actually hurt. He only doubted where the pain was coming from. To appease Dean, he checked again, but the skin wasn’t broken or so much as bruised anywhere Dean was complaining about.
“It’s probably the fever,” Sam replied.
“It’s no fever. I just remembered something...the floor.”
“What?”
“Check the damn floor, Sam.”
With an annoyed sigh, Sam looked down at the floor. All he saw was the dirty cement floor he’d expected to see. He was about to tell Dean he was loosing it when he finally saw what Dean had to be referring to. Moving the flashlight from Dean, he saw some kind of symbol marked on the floor.
Sam reached out to wipe the years worth of accumulated dust away and quickly realized that it was not one symbol but a complete ritual circle of some kind. He didn’t recognize the symbols specifically, but there was no mistaking what it was and Dean had collapsed in the dead center of it.
“We need to get you out of here. Where’s your flashlight?”
“It’s here. Just went out. Piece of crap.”
Sam stood up and pulled the EMF meter from his pocket. He clicked it on and scanned the area around them. The device lit up like a Christmas tree and filled the basement with a disconcerting buzz of confirmation. Dean wasn’t all wrong.
“Told you,” his brother grumbled as he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. “Where are you bitch?” Dean called out.
Dean loved taunting, but by his tone right now, he was obviously genuinely pissed and then some. Maybe he was mad himself or at this thing or at Dad for leaving him. Maybe he was just mad at the world in general. Sam couldn’t always tell, but he could tell that his brother was still spoiling for a fight that he couldn’t win.
“Knock it off, Dean” Sam warned him.
His brother could stand around and yell at ghosts that may or may not be here until he was hacking up his lungs again, but it wouldn’t help anything if the spirit didn’t want to be found. Not to mention the fact that Sam was more afraid that the spirit might actually answer.
They weren’t in any position to deal with it if it did respond. Right now Dean wasn’t playing bait. He just flat out was bait. As much as Dean made this sound simple, it wasn’t because this thing couldn’t just be a ghost. Either it wasn’t what was making the people in town sick or it was way out of the leagues of anything Dean was up to dealing with. Knowing their luck, it was probably both.
The smart thing to do would be to find out what the symbols were for, but Dean was stupidly intent on drawing this thing out here now. “You want me? I’m right here - come and get it!”
It was one ragged shout too many. Sam moved in as Dean doubled over. When the coughing fit passed, Sam grabbed a hold of the front of Dean’s jacket to force him to look at him before he could get started on some other totally stupid lack of plan.
“Dean, stop!”
“Get your hands off me,” Dean warned as he shoved Sam hard. But Dean wasn’t all there and it wasn’t hard enough to force Sam to loose his grip on his brother.
Sam gave Dean one hard shake to prove that he wasn’t going to let him go. “Just stop,” Sam repeated.
Dean’s rigid stance deflated in his grip. As the desperation returned to his brother’s eyes Sam suddenly wasn’t sure that he was helping anything. He knew Dean needed to deal with this, but not like this. With Dean obviously disarmed Sam released his grip and took a step back to give him some space and let him try to catch his breath.
It was time to go back to trying to reason with Dean. “Hacking your lungs out at shadows isn’t going to save anyone.”
Dean still wasn’t looking at him, but at least he was half listening now. “It was here. Still is.”
“What did you see?”
There was a long hesitation before Dean replied, “I didn’t see anything. Just felt it.”
Maybe that logical conversation wasn’t going to happen after all. “I know, you just know, but Dean, if this thing has been here for ten years then it will still be here when we get back.”
Dean’s chest was still heaving and he looked like he was ready to collapse without having an opponent coming at him. Sam wanted to save these people as much as Dean did, but there was no way he was willing to let his brother sacrifice himself to do it.
Sam put away the EMF meter that wasn’t helping anything. This whole basement was hot so it wasn’t going to help them pinpoint anything specific down here. Besides, the center of activity seemed pretty clear. He pulled his phone from his pocket and started snapping some shots of the symbols on the floor.
When he got down close enough to really look at them he realize that the circle wasn’t painted onto the floor. The cement almost seemed to be raised and indented with the marks as if they had been etched or maybe burned into it. He didn’t know how they would have been put there.
It was time to get Dean out of here before whatever had made this circle did decide to drop in. He glanced to his brother whose eyes were still searching the darkness around them. As he stood up again he better saw the distant look Dean wore. He wasn’t looking at anything that was here and now.
“We got what we need,” he told Dean. “Let’s get back to the hotel and check this out. Once we know what we’re dealing with we’ll come back and deal with it, okay?”
He moved closer to his brother when he didn’t reply. “Dean?”
“Sam, Dad was here.”
Continue to Chapter 8