Ogallala, for theatregirl7299
Title: Ogallala
Recipient: Theatregirl7299
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~6,000
Warnings: Vague references to bad experiences in Hell
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing in the sandbox for fun, not profit.
Author’s Note: Another year, another great set of prompts; so many, in fact, that the Muse couldn’t make up her mind and we kept starting stories and then discarding them. Finally, we settled on this one:
Prompt: [Spoiler (click to open)]Sam and Dean find a cursed object - Dean turns into a cat. As cracky as you want to make it!
Summary: In Ogallala, Nebraska, there are reports of a little girl who temporarily turned into a kitten. Is it werecats, shapeshifters, witchcraft or did her mom get stuck into the cooking sherry, like the local paper believes?
With no news on Amara, Sam and Dean decide to investigate. When Sam wakes up to find a large, grey cat in their motel room and no sign of his brother, he knows he needs to figure things out fast.
--
Dean wanders into the library wearing a dead man’s robes and an expression that tells Sam he’s slightly hung over. He’s got a beer in one hand and when Sam raises a pointed eyebrow Dean shrugs and says that they’re out of coffee. Again.
“How long have you been up anyway?” Dean says, looking longingly at Sam’s very large mug of coffee.
“A few hours,” Sam says vaguely.
He doesn’t have to explain, knows Dean gets it. They’ve both been to Hell and back and their recent foray into the Cage shook them both to the core. They’re soldiering on for the greater good and besides, there are some things there’s just no talking about.
Once, when Sam had been pushing Dean to let him in, to tell him about Hell, his brother had told him there were no words. Sam understands the truth of that now.
Long time, no spoon, Bunk Buddy.
Sam shudders.
Dean looks at him hard, but doesn’t comment. And he doesn’t ask him why he hasn’t been sleeping, doesn’t try to peel back the layers of his brother’s psyche like Sam used to do to Dean before he learned better, he simply slides into the seat opposite Sam and asks if he’s found anything.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “I think I did.”
“On Amara?” Dean looks equal parts hopeful and dismayed.
“Uh, no,” Sam says. “I think I found us a case.”
“It’s not more Cicada-monsters, is it?”
“They were called ‘Bisaan’, Dean, and no, it’s-”
Dean interrupts with a scowl. “Better not be werewolves again, because after last time-”
“Werecats, actually,” Sam says.
Dean stares at him. “Seriously?” he says. “Frigging, seriously?”
Sam shrugs. “Or maybe some kind of shifter. Or maybe witchcraft,” he spins his laptop toward Dean, shows him the article from The Keith County News website.
According to an article dated yesterday, Olivia Spencer of Ogallala, Nebraska, claimed that her little girl Bethany had turned into a kitten the previous Friday night and then spontaneously turned back into a human three days later. The tone of the article suggests that Olivia might’ve gotten stuck into the cooking sherry and maybe wasn’t fit to be a parent, despite ordinarily being President of the Prairie View School’s PTA and in charge of the St Luke’s annual bake sale.
“What d’you think?” Sam says when Dean finishes reading. “Could be our kind of thing?”
Dean shrugs. “We’ve gone further for less.”
Four hours later they’re standing on Olivia Spencer’s front porch pretending to be from the CDC.
Sam had suggested going in as social workers, but Dean had vetoed that on the grounds that if this was their kind of thing they wouldn’t get anything even remotely like the truth out of Olivia if she thought they might recommend the removal of her daughter.
He’s got that look in his eye, the one that reminds Sam that back when he was worrying about Debate Team, Mathletes and the Science Fair, Dean was worrying about putting food on the table and avoiding the attention of Children’s Services. Which isn’t to say Sam didn’t have his own hunting-related worries; he worried himself sick whenever Dean went on a hunt with Dad; but he’d never worried about social workers swooping in and breaking up his family the way Dean had.
Dean clears his throat loudly and Sam blinks and comes back to the present. Mrs Spencer is looking at him expectantly.
“Olivia was just wondering why nobody else in town was affected by the ergot,” Dean says. “I told her you’re our expert on hallucinogenic substances.”
Dean’s smile is wicked beneath its veneer of professionalism and Sam really wishes he hadn’t told his brother about that time in college when he and Jess dropped acid. Dean had given him so much shit about the marijuana-that-was-probably-oregano that he’d smoked his first year in the dorms that he’d decided not to mention his later experimentation with LSD. But then they’d gotten drunk one night and Dean had mentioned a time when he’d been in Colorado hunting a poltergeist by himself and he’d hooked up with some hippie chick who’d been into the whole ‘open your mind, let it fly free’ thing. They’d done ‘shrooms together and Dean had spent the rest of the night fighting little blue pixies which may or may not have actually been there.
“Never again, Sammy,” Dean said, raising his glass of whiskey. “I’ve got my poison of choice, right here.”
So Sam told him about his LSD trip and tried to explain how he’d felt like he was one with the entire universe, just one small part of infinity. Dean had shaken his head and called him a giant nerd. His brother hasn’t missed an opportunity to tease him since.
Sam produces his best ‘hallucinogenic substances expert’ expression and tells Olivia a bald-faced lie about a bad batch of bread, baked with ergot-infected flour, and how only the one affected loaf was delivered to Ogallala and she bought it.
Olivia frowns. “But why wasn’t Bethany affected then?”
“Maybe she was,” Dean says. “Kids have pretty vivid imaginations, she might’ve seen something and just thought she was imagining it, you know?”
“Dean’s our child psychology expert,” Sam says, getting a little pay back.
Only Olivia beams at Dean, impressed in a way she wasn’t by ‘hallucinogenic substances expert’.
“It’s so rare to meet a man who’s good with children,” she says, hand fluttering to her throat and eyelashes batting.
Dean gives her his panty-melting smile and Sam rolls his eyes.
“How about I have a talk with Bethany,” Dean says, “while Sam here takes a detailed statement about your experiences?”
Olivia agrees. She calls Bethany down to the living room and introduces her to Dean and then she and Sam go and sit at the kitchen table. Sam gets out his notebook. At one point Dean sticks his head around the door and asks if it’s okay if he goes up to Bethany’s room with her to see her new doll. Olivia frowns and then nods distractedly.
--
The impala’s front doors slam shut simultaneously and Sam and Dean turn to look at each other.
“What d’you think?” Sam asks.
Dean reaches into the inside pocket of his Fed suit and pulls out a weird looking little rag doll, covered in beads and glitter.
“Apparently Bethany found this under Mommy’s pillow last Friday and decided to play with it. She fell asleep with it in her bed and all she can really remember about the next few days is that everything seemed a lot bigger.”
“So witches, then,” Sam says.
Dean asks him if he got anything useful out of Olivia and Sam flicks through his notes, but nothing really jumps out at him. He is able to confirm that Olivia was at work on Friday and Bethany at school, so there was ample opportunity for someone to plant the doll in the house.
“Does Olivia have a partner?” Dean asks.
Sam nods and tells his brother that Olivia’s husband Ian does fly in/fly out work on an oil rig. He’s away at the moment and won’t be back for another month.
“So we can rule him out as a target. Did you ask her if she’s got any enemies?”
Sam shakes his head. It didn’t really fit in with the ergot story they’d concocted.
Dean sighs. “Come on then,” he gets out of the car and Sam follows him back up to Olivia’s front door.
“Sorry to disturb you again, Ma’am,” Dean says when Olivia opens the door with a puzzled frown. “But new evidence has just come to light which may affect this case. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt you or your daughter?”
Olivia’s hand flutters to her throat. “What? But you said ergot poisoning. In the bread.”
Sam steps in smoothly. “Our HQ has just passed along some information that suggests the delivery of this batch of loaves was deliberately targeted. Can you think of anyone who may want to hurt you? Or Bethany?”
“I…no. I. Well. I mean, Daphne Foxe doesn’t like me very much, but I can’t imagine her wanting to poison me!”
Sam gets out his notebook. “Daphne Foxe?”
Olivia nods. She gives him Daphne’s details and then shakes her head. “It’s all so horribly schoolyard. She’s uh, I guess you’d call her my rival, in the PTA. She’s wanted to be President of the PTA for the past three years, but everybody always votes for me. Last meeting she accused me of being spiteful, because I vetoed her suggestion that we run a make-up stall at the next school fair. I don’t think we should be encouraging our little girls to put make up on. Now, face painting I’m down with, but she wanted beauty queen make overs and…anyway, I guess that’s not the point. I used my veto to knock the idea back and she said I was being catty. She said somebody should get me a saucer of milk. But I can’t believe she’d try to poison me!”
She looks utterly perplexed and doesn’t seem to be connecting the dots. Sam dare not look at Dean because he can feel how desperately his brother is trying not to laugh.
“Thank you for your time,” Sam says politely. “We’ll be in touch.”
As they walk back to the car, Sam can practically see Dean vibrating.
His brother explodes as soon as they are safely in the car. “A saucer of milk! Catty! Well what d’you know, a witch with a sense of humor!”
--
Daphne Foxe is a statuesque blonde, half an inch taller than Dean. She examines them both coolly when she opens her front door and then turns toward Sam and thrusts her breasts in his direction.
“Yes, boys?” she says, painted lips pouting and tone sultry. “What can I do for you?”
Dean can think of a lot of answers to that question, but he’s smart enough to know that most of them would get him slapped.
Sam goes through the CDC, ergot poisoning spiel and Dean watches Daphne closely. She seems amused by them, but she invites them in, sits them down in a room she refers to as ‘the parlour’, because that’s not ominous at all, Dean thinks, trying not to imagine himself as the fly. She offers them tea and Dean turns down the offer before Sam can accept it, because Hell will freeze over before he drinks anything brewed by someone who may be a witch.
Dean lets his brother handle the interrogation. Sam’s good at getting people to spill their secrets to him, Dean knows that from experience. It’s the soulful eyes, the kind expression and the way he genuinely seems to care, the way he focuses on you when he’s talking to you, like you’re the only person in the room, the most important person on the planet. Dean concentrates on watching Daphne’s responses; her body language and her facial expressions. She’s supremely confident-arrogant even. Dean knows her type all too well. She’s a mean girl; head cheerleader and most popular girl in school. Not because everyone liked her, but because they were scared of her nastiness.
She’s busy right now telling Sam how hard it is being a woman, looking the way she does, which is a quote straight out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Dean can’t help snorting.
Daphne turns her icy blue eyes on him.
“Oh come on,” he says. “Being attractive ain’t exactly a burden, Sweetheart.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Of course it isn’t. If you’re male. You should try being a woman, Sweetheart.”
And Dean backpedals quickly, because if Daphne is the witch, she could actually make him try being a woman and…well…huh… if it only lasted three days he supposes it could be kind of interesting. He’d have tits. Awesome. He gets a little distracted thinking about soaping up in the shower. Still.
Dean glances briefly at Sam, whose brow is furrowed, his eyes wide as he silently implores Dean not to say something inappropriate. Dean presses his knee reassuringly against Sam’s.
“You’re right,” he tells Daphne. “Society has this whole sexist idea that a woman can’t be beautiful and smart. Which is obviously bullshit.”
Daphne smiles and tilts her head. “And a man with a beautiful woman on his arm treats her as little more than a pet. I’m sure your partner here values everything you have to say, despite the fact that you’re so pretty.”
Dean hasn’t been called pretty since he was twenty. Not to his face anyway. He pastes on a rueful smile and says, “I prefer the term ruggedly handsome myself.”
“And we’re just work partners,” Sam hurries to say. “He’s certainly not ‘on my arm’.”
Daphne smiles placidly. “If you say so.”
Sam clears his throat. “Well I think we’re done here, but, uh, do you think I could use your bathroom before we leave?”
Dean smiles and drums his fingers on the arm of the sofa. He searches for something to say. Some kind of small talk. He’s so freakin’ bad at small talk. “So,” he says finally, “have you lived here long?”
“All my life,” Daphne replies. She stares at him. “You know, you and your partner look really familiar. I just can’t put my finger on it. I can’t get a read on you either. The intensity of your feelings for each other is overwhelming, yet so complex. I think…hmm,” she trails off as Sam comes back into the room.
The take their leave and Daphne follows them to the front door, guiding them out with a hand on the small of Dean’s back.
“Find anything?” Dean asks as he starts up the Impala.
“Nada,” Sam says. “But I didn’t have much time. Just opened up a few drawers and cupboards. Looked under her bed. If she’s got witch-stuff, it’s well hidden.”
They manage to interview a few more members of the PTA that afternoon, as well as the Parish priest down at St Luke’s, Father Antony. Everyone seems relieved that Olivia might’ve been hallucinating due to ergot poisoning, rather than drug or alcohol abuse. Ogallala is obviously a close-knit community and people had been worried about Olivia’s out-of-character behavior.
Dean salts and burns the voodoo-esque doll in the trash can as soon as they get back to their motel room, just to be on the safe side.
“Well,” he says, throwing himself down on a bedspread featuring purple and green geometric shapes on a cream background. “We got a witch, but no proof who it is. My money’s still on Daphne. That whole ‘catty’ line; gotta be her. ”
He picks up the remote control for the television and switches it on, channel-hopping with a small frown on his face. “I say we wait to make sure the change was a once off. If Bethany doesn’t change again tomorrow night, we get outta here. I mean, it ain’t like Daphne-or whoever-is dropping bodies and we got more important stuff to worry about.”
Sam agrees with him. He sets up his laptop at the little round table near the window and spends some time cursing the hotel’s slow-ass free wifi, before finally giving in and using one of his hot-spot thingys. Sam has a bunch of them, all in different names, all paid for by different credit cards. Dean is embarrassed to admit that he’d thought Sammy had put some kind of everlasting wifi spell on his laptop, until his brother had explained what the little white dongles were for.
Sam browses the internet looking for anything that could give them a heads up on what Amara’s up to and Dean watches Cowboys and Aliens because it has Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig in it. As genre mash-ups go it’s patchy and Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig are definitely the best thing about it, but it’s entertaining enough to stop him from worrying whether Sam’s about to announce that he’s got a lead on Amara.
When it starts to get dark he goes out and finds a diner and gets them burgers for supper. He picks up a six pack of El Sol and an apple pie at the Quik Mart.
Back in the motel room, Sam has shut down his lap top and switched the TV station to CNN. He tells Dean that Amara is still maintaining radio silence and Dean nods gravely and tries really hard not to think about what she might be doing to Cas.
Stupid, stupid angel. Dean is furious with him. At the same time, he feels guilty as fuck, because it’s not like he doesn’t know where Cas picked up his kamikaze tendencies. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is a bone fide Winchester trait and if Dean needed any further proof that Cas has truly become a brother, this is it.
Doesn’t make him any less pissed. Or any less worried.
Dean’s not entirely sure what TV shows they watch that evening, just knows that he drinks his way steadily through half a bottle of Wild Turkey while he’s watching them. It’s gone midnight when he finally goes to bed and his last thought before he closes his eyes is that he feels dizzy and nauseated and he’s probably going to have a killer hangover in the morning. Again.
--
Sam wakes up just as it’s getting light because he needs to pee. He stumbles out of bed, eyes gritty with sleep, and staggers to the bathroom. He takes care of business and nearly hits the roof when a loud, imperious meow sounds from right behind him.
There’s a large grey cat sitting in the pile of towels near the shower. It has huge green eyes and, maybe Sam is being horribly anthropomorphic, but he thinks the cat looks slightly puzzled.
Sam hurries from the bathroom. “Hey Dean,” he says. “There’s a cat in-”
Dean’s bed is empty. Sam frowns. The cat meows again. It sounds impatient and a little pissed and Sam turns slowly to look at it.
“Dean?” he says, his voice shaded with uncertainty.
Sam doesn’t think he imagines the sarcastic tone of the cat’s reply.
“Well I didn’t expect you to be grey!” Sam says defensively. “I thought you’d be a sort of sandy brown, like your hair.”
The cat stares at him. Sam wonders how it manages to radiate so much distain without eyebrows to raise.
“Not that I actually expected you to be a cat,” Sam says hurriedly. “But if I had,” he trails off as the cat turns its back on him, tail straight up like the mast of a yacht, and stalks back into the bedroom.
Sam runs a hand through his hair and then takes off after it.
“Dean!” he calls.
The cat’s ears flick back, but it otherwise ignores him fairly pointedly. The cat jumps up onto Dean’s bed and then shoves its paws under the pillow, batting them around until a brightly-colored little rag doll comes flying out and lands on the floor.
Sam’s mouth falls open. “How the hell did that get there?”
The cat-Dean-Sam supposes he should face reality here-leaps from the bed and attacks the doll. He bats at it with his paws and chases it around the motel room floor. He pounces on it and viciously sinks his teeth into its neck, holding it down and shaking it, his tail puffed up and whipping back and forth furiously.
Sam sits down on his bed and watches Dean-cat viciously eviscerate the doll.
He looks incredibly pleased with himself when he finishes tearing it to pieces. He picks it up and trots over to Sam with it. He drops it at Sam’s feet and meows triumphantly and Sam can’t resist bending down to scratch him behind the ears and tell him what a fearsome hunter he is. Dean-cat preens. He watches closely as Sam picks up the doll and then salts and burns it in the motel room’s trash can.
When Sam finally sits back down on the edge of his bed, Dean-cat surprises the hell out of him by leaping up to sit on his lap.
“Dude,” Sam sits back and lifts his arms up, palms out. Dean-cat turns around in circles a few times and then curls up on Sam’s lap, nose on tail. His face is no more than an inch away from Sam’s groin. “Uh,” Sam says. “This is making me really uncomfortable, Dean.”
Dean-cat sinks his claws into Sam’s sweat pants and begins to knead. A deep satisfied rumble starts to reverberate from deep within him and Sam’s eyes widen.
“Are you purring?”
Dean-cat opens one eye and glares at Sam. Sam can almost hear his brother say, well spotted College Boy. He sighs and without really planning it, without really meaning to, he starts to stroke Dean-cat’s head, scratching behind his ears and then underneath his chin, when Dean-cat lifts his head and offers up his throat. The purring increases in volume and Dean-cat begins to knead at Sam’s thigh again. This time his claws graze Sam’s skin and Sam winces.
“Ow! Watch the claws, man,” Sam’s eyes widen. “I mean cat.”
He picks Dean-cat up and, despite his brother’s indignant yowl, deposits him on the floor. “I gotta take a shower,” he says. “And then I guess I’d better go and talk to Daphne again.”
Dean-cat hisses at her name, his tail whipping around angrily.
When Sam gets out of the shower he finds Dean-cat settled on top of his pillow, taking the cat version of a shower. He has one leg stretched out and the other stuck straight up in the air and he’s licking himself.
Sam wrinkles his nose. “Isn’t that kind of gross?”
Dean gives him a withering look and goes back to his tongue-bath.
“Oh, no, that’s,” Sam turns away as Dean-cat’s tongue drags over his asshole. “That’s just nasty.”
Sam tries to imagine what his brother would do in his shoes. He grins wickedly and pulls out his phone, quickly snapping a couple of pictures. Dean-cat looks startled and slightly put out.
“Okay, I’m heading out,” Sam says, picking up the car keys. “I’ll put up the Do Not Disturb sign. Make sure you stay hidden. Pretty sure the motel has a no pets policy.”
--
Daphne actually opens the door to him, which surprises Sam into blurting, “My brother’s a cat.”
Daphne blinks. “Brother?”
Sam huffs. “That’s the part that surprises you?”
Sam pushes past her and into the house. “Yeah, Dean’s my brother. And no, we’re not with the CDC. We’re Hunters.”
Daphne looks confused. “Like you shoot moose or ducks or something?”
“No. Hunters,” Sam emphasizes the word, inclining his head and raising his eyebrows.
Daphne frowns and then shakes her head, looking lost.
“Of the supernatural,” Sam clarifies. “You know, vampires, werewolves, witches.”
Daphne’s eyes widen. “Omigod!” she wrings her hands. “I knew I recognized you! You’re them! Those brothers! The spree killer ones. You shot up that bank and that diner a few years back. You’re supposed to be dead!”
Sam is surprised she remembers. Most people don’t seem to. In fact he and Dean had surmised that the angels-or maybe God-had put some kind of whammy on everyone, made them forget the whole Leviathan episode.
“That wasn’t us,” Sam says. “They were a kind of shapeshifting monster that made themselves look like us to cause us problems.”
Daphne looks downright scared now and she’s backing away slowly. Sam really doesn’t have time for this; he needs his brother back pronto.
“Just tell me how you did it,” he barks. “Are you a borrower? Are you getting your power from a demon, because I gotta tell you, Daphne, Hell is real.”
Daphne’s back is against the living room wall now and Sam is right in her face. She looks terrified.
“Tell me what you did, Daphne!” Sam demands.
Daphne starts to cry. “I don’t know, okay! I don’t know anything about demons. Yes, I’m into the whole New Age thing and I’ve got some crystals and a dream catcher and some Tarot cards and I bought a cabinet with weird symbols on it at a second hand store a couple weeks back, but I don’t think magic is real. Not really real. Tarot cards…spells…it’s just…a way for a person to feel like they’ve got some control over things.”
Sam backs off a step, because Daphne is genuinely freaked and this is sounding more like a case of an amateur accidentally blundering into something genuine, than a deliberate act of malicious witchcraft.
“Okay,” he says. “You better show me this cabinet you bought.”
Daphne points a shaking finger at the corner of the room, where something rectangular and about waist-high is standing covered by a long table cloth.
Sam removes the cloth and squats down to look at the small black lacquered cabinet with double doors. It’s painted with a plethora of red symbols and sigils and Sam swallows.
“Oh shit,” he says.
“What?” Daphne has gravitated to his side. “What is it?”
“It’s a curse box.”
--
Daphne found the cabinet in a second hand store in North Platte-a slightly larger town fifty or so miles east of Ogallala. She was immediately taken with its sleek black sheen, its clawed feet and the strange symbols painted here and there in the glistening bright red of a freshly bleeding cut. There was something about the cabinet. It called to her. Take me home, it seemed to be saying.
So she did. It would make a great home for the Wiccan stuff she’d started to collect.
The cabinet was locked, but there wasn’t a key. There seemed to be something inside of it too, if the rattling when she moved it was any indication.
Daphne wiggled a bobby pin around in the lock until it clicked open. The cabinet had three shelves, on which half a dozen small boxes were standing. Daphne lifted each in turn. All the boxes were decorated in a similar fashion to the cabinet. They were all locked too; all except for one, which had three strange looking dolls inside of it. Voodoo dolls, she thought, running the tips of her figures against the dolls, which were nestled inside a spongey, black-velvet lining.
“And then,” Daphne tells Sam, “it was the weirdest thing. I can’t believe I’m just remembering this now,” she frowns. “Anyway, the box sort of…jumped out of my hands and when I picked it up, the dolls had all disappeared. I thought they must’ve rolled under the sofa or something, but I looked everywhere and I couldn’t find them,” she frowns again. “And then I just forgot they even existed. Until just now.”
Sam borrows Daphne’s computer. He does some research. And then he does a summoning spell. A doll identical to the two that he and Dean salted and burned appears in the salt circle. It doesn’t move. Its eyes do flash red though.
Daphne shudders. “Is it possessed?” she asks. “Like Chucky?”
Sam side-eyes her. “Not exactly. I think that box contained a set of very old Spirit Dolls.”
Daphne’s eyes widen. “Spirit Dolls?”
Sam explains that Spirit Dolls are basically just vessels for powerful spirits; the spirits of the dead, familiar-spirits, divine entities and so on. Once the Spirit Doll is made, the witch or Hoodoo practitioner will perform a ritual to invite a Spirit to take up residence in the Doll. Once the Spirit is there, it’s just a question of the witch petitioning the Doll for help on various issues.
“I think these Dolls were picking up on your subconscious desires to punish various people,” he says, “and trying to make it happen for you. For example, you thought Olivia was being ‘catty’, so one of the dolls put itself under her pillow in order to turn her into a cat. Only her daughter found it and took it into her room to play with it, so the Spirit Doll got the wrong target.”
Daphne frowns. “Why did your brother turn into a cat then?”
Sam purses his lips and looks up at her. “Well you were pissed at him. For telling you it wasn’t hard being beautiful.”
“Oh,” Daphne colors slightly. “Sorry about that. I guess I’m still a little more pissed at my ex than I realized. He cheated on me, traded me in for a younger model, and he still got joint custody!” she stops abruptly. “Anyway, I thought your brother was your partner and when he made that comment I was thinking that it was all very well for him, that you obviously respected him and didn’t just treat him like some pretty little pet, because he was so pretty.”
Sam snorts. “And I’m guessing the Spirit Doll interpreted pet as ‘cat’.”
Daphne nods. “I’ve only ever had cats. Poor old Baron Samedi died just last Fall. He was a beautiful big grey cat, fifteen years old.”
Sam stares. “You called your cat Baron Samedi?”
Daphne looks a little sheepish. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Sam shakes his head. He wonders if Baron Samedi was the Spirit Dolls’ template for ‘cat’, because he really can’t understand why Dean would transform into a grey cat. He ponders the subject, wondering on the DNA changes required to transform from one species to another and how the transformation process determines things like skin and hair color. The only conclusion he comes to is that his life is weird.
Sam salts and burns the last remaining Spirit Doll, as well as the box that had been holding the Dolls. He loads the Curse Box cabinet into the back of the Impala, telling Daphne that he’ll take it somewhere safe to store, a place where no unsuspecting civilians might accidentally unleash its horrors on the world.
As Sam pulls up outside the motel, a fully human Dean comes barrelling out of their room carrying three duffel bags. He sprints toward the car, pulls open the rear door, and throws the bags into the back of the Impala, barely sparing the black cabinet a glance.
Before Sam has a chance to get out of the driver’s seat, Dean is sliding into the passenger seat, yelling go, go, go.
Sam puts his foot down and they speed out of the parking lot, spitting up gravel.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Dude,” Dean drags a hand through his hair. His eyes look wild. “After you left I decided to take a nap. I found this really nice patch of sunshine and curled up, but then all these birds started up, singing and twittering and I was up on the window sill before I knew it, making these really, really stupid noises,” Dean takes a deep breath. “And one of the housekeeping maids saw me.”
“And?” Sam prods when the silence lasts too long.
Dean is staring out the side window. “She said I was a good kitty,” he mumbles. “And she picked me up and started petting me. That bit was pretty awesome, actually. She had a really nice rack and I was nestled up against it, purring. And then,” Dean turns toward Sam with an indignant expression, “she groped me, Sammy, and she made this tutting noise and said that if my owners were gonna leave me unattended in motel rooms, the least they could do was have me neutered!” Dean crosses his legs. “She wanted to cut off my balls, Sammy!”
Given some of the love’em and leave’em stunts Dean’s pulled in the past, Sam doubts she’s the first woman in history to want to do that, but he doesn’t say anything, because his brother’s eyes are comically wide and his face is pale.
“So then what happened?” he says in his interviewing a traumatized civilian voice.
Dean’s eyes slide away. “I bit her and hid under the bed.”
“Poor Kitty,” Sam says, reaching out and petting his brother’s hair.
Dean leans into his touch for just a moment and then seems to realize what he’s doing. “Dude!” he says, and smacks Sam’s hand away.
Sam grins widely. “Was the maid still in the room when you turned back into a human?”
Dean nods. His eyes are wide and round and Sam doesn’t think he’s seen his brother look this spooked since that time he had Ghost Sickness.
“And?” he prompts.
Dean bites at his bottom lip. “She managed to drag me out from under the bed. I dug my claws into the carpet really deep, but she was too strong. Anyway she picked me up, said she was gonna put me in a box, take me to animal control, and then poof! We’re falling to the floor because she’s five foot nothing and she’s suddenly trying to hold up six foot of naked man. She screamed and tried to knee me in the balls and when I got up off of her she ran into the bathroom.”
Dean side-eyes his brother. “I got dressed, packed our stuff and ran out the room.”
Sam figures that given how much the local paper mocked Olivia for saying that her daughter had turned into a cat, the maid is very unlikely to tell anyone that she saw a cat turn into a human. And even if she does, no-one’s going to believe her.
“You okay?” he asks Dean.
Dean nods. “Yeah. Just. She was terrified. You know? Naked guy suddenly on top of her.”
Their eyes meet for a moment and then they turn away from each other, not willing to acknowledge their shared understanding of her terror.
They drive in silence for a while and when he’s sure he can speak without his voice shaking, Sam updates his brother on the Spirit Dolls and the Curse Box. He has to stop talking when Dean has a coughing fit.
“Pull over,” Dean wheezes and Sam veers onto the grass verge immediately.
Dean gets out of the car and the coughing and retching is so bad that Sam ends up holding him and rubbing his back, until, eventually, his brother brings up a clump of grey fur.
Sam stares. “Dude! You just coughed up a furball!”
“Shut up,” Dean rasps and climbs back into the passenger seat, a good indication that he’s still feeling shaken and unwell.
“I told you all that licking was gross,” Sam says as they pull back onto the road. He wrinkles his nose. “And don’t forget, you licked your-”
“Shut up!” Dean says.
“-asshole,” Sam concludes.
Dean shudders. He opens up the glove box and pulls out the flask of whiskey they keep in there for emergencies.
He takes a big gulp, swirls the liquid in his mouth and then winds down the window and spits. Rinse and repeat. And again. And then he drinks.
“Gonna have to disinfect my mouth,” he says mournfully. “I don’t even wanna think about how many germs I picked up doing that.”
Sam can’t help it; he throws back his head and laughs. He expects to get smacked again, but when he finally calms down and looks at his brother, Dean has a wistful smile on his face.
“Been a long time since I last heard you laugh like that,” Dean says.
“Yeah. Sorry. It’s just. Our lives are weird, man.”
“Yes they are,” Dean agrees. He looks straight ahead, eyes seeming to follow the road’s white line. “Thanks for figuring out how to turn me back into a human.”
Sam glances at his brother’s profile. “Always,” he says.
And even though the word is infused with meaning and emotion, Dean doesn’t mock him for it; he just nods and puts on a Led Zeppelin tape.
Sam doesn’t have the heart to remind him that driver picks the music. He’s too relieved to have his brother back.
The End
Recipient: Theatregirl7299
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~6,000
Warnings: Vague references to bad experiences in Hell
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing in the sandbox for fun, not profit.
Author’s Note: Another year, another great set of prompts; so many, in fact, that the Muse couldn’t make up her mind and we kept starting stories and then discarding them. Finally, we settled on this one:
Prompt: [Spoiler (click to open)]Sam and Dean find a cursed object - Dean turns into a cat. As cracky as you want to make it!
Summary: In Ogallala, Nebraska, there are reports of a little girl who temporarily turned into a kitten. Is it werecats, shapeshifters, witchcraft or did her mom get stuck into the cooking sherry, like the local paper believes?
With no news on Amara, Sam and Dean decide to investigate. When Sam wakes up to find a large, grey cat in their motel room and no sign of his brother, he knows he needs to figure things out fast.
--
Dean wanders into the library wearing a dead man’s robes and an expression that tells Sam he’s slightly hung over. He’s got a beer in one hand and when Sam raises a pointed eyebrow Dean shrugs and says that they’re out of coffee. Again.
“How long have you been up anyway?” Dean says, looking longingly at Sam’s very large mug of coffee.
“A few hours,” Sam says vaguely.
He doesn’t have to explain, knows Dean gets it. They’ve both been to Hell and back and their recent foray into the Cage shook them both to the core. They’re soldiering on for the greater good and besides, there are some things there’s just no talking about.
Once, when Sam had been pushing Dean to let him in, to tell him about Hell, his brother had told him there were no words. Sam understands the truth of that now.
Long time, no spoon, Bunk Buddy.
Sam shudders.
Dean looks at him hard, but doesn’t comment. And he doesn’t ask him why he hasn’t been sleeping, doesn’t try to peel back the layers of his brother’s psyche like Sam used to do to Dean before he learned better, he simply slides into the seat opposite Sam and asks if he’s found anything.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “I think I did.”
“On Amara?” Dean looks equal parts hopeful and dismayed.
“Uh, no,” Sam says. “I think I found us a case.”
“It’s not more Cicada-monsters, is it?”
“They were called ‘Bisaan’, Dean, and no, it’s-”
Dean interrupts with a scowl. “Better not be werewolves again, because after last time-”
“Werecats, actually,” Sam says.
Dean stares at him. “Seriously?” he says. “Frigging, seriously?”
Sam shrugs. “Or maybe some kind of shifter. Or maybe witchcraft,” he spins his laptop toward Dean, shows him the article from The Keith County News website.
According to an article dated yesterday, Olivia Spencer of Ogallala, Nebraska, claimed that her little girl Bethany had turned into a kitten the previous Friday night and then spontaneously turned back into a human three days later. The tone of the article suggests that Olivia might’ve gotten stuck into the cooking sherry and maybe wasn’t fit to be a parent, despite ordinarily being President of the Prairie View School’s PTA and in charge of the St Luke’s annual bake sale.
“What d’you think?” Sam says when Dean finishes reading. “Could be our kind of thing?”
Dean shrugs. “We’ve gone further for less.”
Four hours later they’re standing on Olivia Spencer’s front porch pretending to be from the CDC.
Sam had suggested going in as social workers, but Dean had vetoed that on the grounds that if this was their kind of thing they wouldn’t get anything even remotely like the truth out of Olivia if she thought they might recommend the removal of her daughter.
He’s got that look in his eye, the one that reminds Sam that back when he was worrying about Debate Team, Mathletes and the Science Fair, Dean was worrying about putting food on the table and avoiding the attention of Children’s Services. Which isn’t to say Sam didn’t have his own hunting-related worries; he worried himself sick whenever Dean went on a hunt with Dad; but he’d never worried about social workers swooping in and breaking up his family the way Dean had.
Dean clears his throat loudly and Sam blinks and comes back to the present. Mrs Spencer is looking at him expectantly.
“Olivia was just wondering why nobody else in town was affected by the ergot,” Dean says. “I told her you’re our expert on hallucinogenic substances.”
Dean’s smile is wicked beneath its veneer of professionalism and Sam really wishes he hadn’t told his brother about that time in college when he and Jess dropped acid. Dean had given him so much shit about the marijuana-that-was-probably-oregano that he’d smoked his first year in the dorms that he’d decided not to mention his later experimentation with LSD. But then they’d gotten drunk one night and Dean had mentioned a time when he’d been in Colorado hunting a poltergeist by himself and he’d hooked up with some hippie chick who’d been into the whole ‘open your mind, let it fly free’ thing. They’d done ‘shrooms together and Dean had spent the rest of the night fighting little blue pixies which may or may not have actually been there.
“Never again, Sammy,” Dean said, raising his glass of whiskey. “I’ve got my poison of choice, right here.”
So Sam told him about his LSD trip and tried to explain how he’d felt like he was one with the entire universe, just one small part of infinity. Dean had shaken his head and called him a giant nerd. His brother hasn’t missed an opportunity to tease him since.
Sam produces his best ‘hallucinogenic substances expert’ expression and tells Olivia a bald-faced lie about a bad batch of bread, baked with ergot-infected flour, and how only the one affected loaf was delivered to Ogallala and she bought it.
Olivia frowns. “But why wasn’t Bethany affected then?”
“Maybe she was,” Dean says. “Kids have pretty vivid imaginations, she might’ve seen something and just thought she was imagining it, you know?”
“Dean’s our child psychology expert,” Sam says, getting a little pay back.
Only Olivia beams at Dean, impressed in a way she wasn’t by ‘hallucinogenic substances expert’.
“It’s so rare to meet a man who’s good with children,” she says, hand fluttering to her throat and eyelashes batting.
Dean gives her his panty-melting smile and Sam rolls his eyes.
“How about I have a talk with Bethany,” Dean says, “while Sam here takes a detailed statement about your experiences?”
Olivia agrees. She calls Bethany down to the living room and introduces her to Dean and then she and Sam go and sit at the kitchen table. Sam gets out his notebook. At one point Dean sticks his head around the door and asks if it’s okay if he goes up to Bethany’s room with her to see her new doll. Olivia frowns and then nods distractedly.
--
The impala’s front doors slam shut simultaneously and Sam and Dean turn to look at each other.
“What d’you think?” Sam asks.
Dean reaches into the inside pocket of his Fed suit and pulls out a weird looking little rag doll, covered in beads and glitter.
“Apparently Bethany found this under Mommy’s pillow last Friday and decided to play with it. She fell asleep with it in her bed and all she can really remember about the next few days is that everything seemed a lot bigger.”
“So witches, then,” Sam says.
Dean asks him if he got anything useful out of Olivia and Sam flicks through his notes, but nothing really jumps out at him. He is able to confirm that Olivia was at work on Friday and Bethany at school, so there was ample opportunity for someone to plant the doll in the house.
“Does Olivia have a partner?” Dean asks.
Sam nods and tells his brother that Olivia’s husband Ian does fly in/fly out work on an oil rig. He’s away at the moment and won’t be back for another month.
“So we can rule him out as a target. Did you ask her if she’s got any enemies?”
Sam shakes his head. It didn’t really fit in with the ergot story they’d concocted.
Dean sighs. “Come on then,” he gets out of the car and Sam follows him back up to Olivia’s front door.
“Sorry to disturb you again, Ma’am,” Dean says when Olivia opens the door with a puzzled frown. “But new evidence has just come to light which may affect this case. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt you or your daughter?”
Olivia’s hand flutters to her throat. “What? But you said ergot poisoning. In the bread.”
Sam steps in smoothly. “Our HQ has just passed along some information that suggests the delivery of this batch of loaves was deliberately targeted. Can you think of anyone who may want to hurt you? Or Bethany?”
“I…no. I. Well. I mean, Daphne Foxe doesn’t like me very much, but I can’t imagine her wanting to poison me!”
Sam gets out his notebook. “Daphne Foxe?”
Olivia nods. She gives him Daphne’s details and then shakes her head. “It’s all so horribly schoolyard. She’s uh, I guess you’d call her my rival, in the PTA. She’s wanted to be President of the PTA for the past three years, but everybody always votes for me. Last meeting she accused me of being spiteful, because I vetoed her suggestion that we run a make-up stall at the next school fair. I don’t think we should be encouraging our little girls to put make up on. Now, face painting I’m down with, but she wanted beauty queen make overs and…anyway, I guess that’s not the point. I used my veto to knock the idea back and she said I was being catty. She said somebody should get me a saucer of milk. But I can’t believe she’d try to poison me!”
She looks utterly perplexed and doesn’t seem to be connecting the dots. Sam dare not look at Dean because he can feel how desperately his brother is trying not to laugh.
“Thank you for your time,” Sam says politely. “We’ll be in touch.”
As they walk back to the car, Sam can practically see Dean vibrating.
His brother explodes as soon as they are safely in the car. “A saucer of milk! Catty! Well what d’you know, a witch with a sense of humor!”
--
Daphne Foxe is a statuesque blonde, half an inch taller than Dean. She examines them both coolly when she opens her front door and then turns toward Sam and thrusts her breasts in his direction.
“Yes, boys?” she says, painted lips pouting and tone sultry. “What can I do for you?”
Dean can think of a lot of answers to that question, but he’s smart enough to know that most of them would get him slapped.
Sam goes through the CDC, ergot poisoning spiel and Dean watches Daphne closely. She seems amused by them, but she invites them in, sits them down in a room she refers to as ‘the parlour’, because that’s not ominous at all, Dean thinks, trying not to imagine himself as the fly. She offers them tea and Dean turns down the offer before Sam can accept it, because Hell will freeze over before he drinks anything brewed by someone who may be a witch.
Dean lets his brother handle the interrogation. Sam’s good at getting people to spill their secrets to him, Dean knows that from experience. It’s the soulful eyes, the kind expression and the way he genuinely seems to care, the way he focuses on you when he’s talking to you, like you’re the only person in the room, the most important person on the planet. Dean concentrates on watching Daphne’s responses; her body language and her facial expressions. She’s supremely confident-arrogant even. Dean knows her type all too well. She’s a mean girl; head cheerleader and most popular girl in school. Not because everyone liked her, but because they were scared of her nastiness.
She’s busy right now telling Sam how hard it is being a woman, looking the way she does, which is a quote straight out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Dean can’t help snorting.
Daphne turns her icy blue eyes on him.
“Oh come on,” he says. “Being attractive ain’t exactly a burden, Sweetheart.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Of course it isn’t. If you’re male. You should try being a woman, Sweetheart.”
And Dean backpedals quickly, because if Daphne is the witch, she could actually make him try being a woman and…well…huh… if it only lasted three days he supposes it could be kind of interesting. He’d have tits. Awesome. He gets a little distracted thinking about soaping up in the shower. Still.
Dean glances briefly at Sam, whose brow is furrowed, his eyes wide as he silently implores Dean not to say something inappropriate. Dean presses his knee reassuringly against Sam’s.
“You’re right,” he tells Daphne. “Society has this whole sexist idea that a woman can’t be beautiful and smart. Which is obviously bullshit.”
Daphne smiles and tilts her head. “And a man with a beautiful woman on his arm treats her as little more than a pet. I’m sure your partner here values everything you have to say, despite the fact that you’re so pretty.”
Dean hasn’t been called pretty since he was twenty. Not to his face anyway. He pastes on a rueful smile and says, “I prefer the term ruggedly handsome myself.”
“And we’re just work partners,” Sam hurries to say. “He’s certainly not ‘on my arm’.”
Daphne smiles placidly. “If you say so.”
Sam clears his throat. “Well I think we’re done here, but, uh, do you think I could use your bathroom before we leave?”
Dean smiles and drums his fingers on the arm of the sofa. He searches for something to say. Some kind of small talk. He’s so freakin’ bad at small talk. “So,” he says finally, “have you lived here long?”
“All my life,” Daphne replies. She stares at him. “You know, you and your partner look really familiar. I just can’t put my finger on it. I can’t get a read on you either. The intensity of your feelings for each other is overwhelming, yet so complex. I think…hmm,” she trails off as Sam comes back into the room.
The take their leave and Daphne follows them to the front door, guiding them out with a hand on the small of Dean’s back.
“Find anything?” Dean asks as he starts up the Impala.
“Nada,” Sam says. “But I didn’t have much time. Just opened up a few drawers and cupboards. Looked under her bed. If she’s got witch-stuff, it’s well hidden.”
They manage to interview a few more members of the PTA that afternoon, as well as the Parish priest down at St Luke’s, Father Antony. Everyone seems relieved that Olivia might’ve been hallucinating due to ergot poisoning, rather than drug or alcohol abuse. Ogallala is obviously a close-knit community and people had been worried about Olivia’s out-of-character behavior.
Dean salts and burns the voodoo-esque doll in the trash can as soon as they get back to their motel room, just to be on the safe side.
“Well,” he says, throwing himself down on a bedspread featuring purple and green geometric shapes on a cream background. “We got a witch, but no proof who it is. My money’s still on Daphne. That whole ‘catty’ line; gotta be her. ”
He picks up the remote control for the television and switches it on, channel-hopping with a small frown on his face. “I say we wait to make sure the change was a once off. If Bethany doesn’t change again tomorrow night, we get outta here. I mean, it ain’t like Daphne-or whoever-is dropping bodies and we got more important stuff to worry about.”
Sam agrees with him. He sets up his laptop at the little round table near the window and spends some time cursing the hotel’s slow-ass free wifi, before finally giving in and using one of his hot-spot thingys. Sam has a bunch of them, all in different names, all paid for by different credit cards. Dean is embarrassed to admit that he’d thought Sammy had put some kind of everlasting wifi spell on his laptop, until his brother had explained what the little white dongles were for.
Sam browses the internet looking for anything that could give them a heads up on what Amara’s up to and Dean watches Cowboys and Aliens because it has Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig in it. As genre mash-ups go it’s patchy and Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig are definitely the best thing about it, but it’s entertaining enough to stop him from worrying whether Sam’s about to announce that he’s got a lead on Amara.
When it starts to get dark he goes out and finds a diner and gets them burgers for supper. He picks up a six pack of El Sol and an apple pie at the Quik Mart.
Back in the motel room, Sam has shut down his lap top and switched the TV station to CNN. He tells Dean that Amara is still maintaining radio silence and Dean nods gravely and tries really hard not to think about what she might be doing to Cas.
Stupid, stupid angel. Dean is furious with him. At the same time, he feels guilty as fuck, because it’s not like he doesn’t know where Cas picked up his kamikaze tendencies. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is a bone fide Winchester trait and if Dean needed any further proof that Cas has truly become a brother, this is it.
Doesn’t make him any less pissed. Or any less worried.
Dean’s not entirely sure what TV shows they watch that evening, just knows that he drinks his way steadily through half a bottle of Wild Turkey while he’s watching them. It’s gone midnight when he finally goes to bed and his last thought before he closes his eyes is that he feels dizzy and nauseated and he’s probably going to have a killer hangover in the morning. Again.
--
Sam wakes up just as it’s getting light because he needs to pee. He stumbles out of bed, eyes gritty with sleep, and staggers to the bathroom. He takes care of business and nearly hits the roof when a loud, imperious meow sounds from right behind him.
There’s a large grey cat sitting in the pile of towels near the shower. It has huge green eyes and, maybe Sam is being horribly anthropomorphic, but he thinks the cat looks slightly puzzled.
Sam hurries from the bathroom. “Hey Dean,” he says. “There’s a cat in-”
Dean’s bed is empty. Sam frowns. The cat meows again. It sounds impatient and a little pissed and Sam turns slowly to look at it.
“Dean?” he says, his voice shaded with uncertainty.
Sam doesn’t think he imagines the sarcastic tone of the cat’s reply.
“Well I didn’t expect you to be grey!” Sam says defensively. “I thought you’d be a sort of sandy brown, like your hair.”
The cat stares at him. Sam wonders how it manages to radiate so much distain without eyebrows to raise.
“Not that I actually expected you to be a cat,” Sam says hurriedly. “But if I had,” he trails off as the cat turns its back on him, tail straight up like the mast of a yacht, and stalks back into the bedroom.
Sam runs a hand through his hair and then takes off after it.
“Dean!” he calls.
The cat’s ears flick back, but it otherwise ignores him fairly pointedly. The cat jumps up onto Dean’s bed and then shoves its paws under the pillow, batting them around until a brightly-colored little rag doll comes flying out and lands on the floor.
Sam’s mouth falls open. “How the hell did that get there?”
The cat-Dean-Sam supposes he should face reality here-leaps from the bed and attacks the doll. He bats at it with his paws and chases it around the motel room floor. He pounces on it and viciously sinks his teeth into its neck, holding it down and shaking it, his tail puffed up and whipping back and forth furiously.
Sam sits down on his bed and watches Dean-cat viciously eviscerate the doll.
He looks incredibly pleased with himself when he finishes tearing it to pieces. He picks it up and trots over to Sam with it. He drops it at Sam’s feet and meows triumphantly and Sam can’t resist bending down to scratch him behind the ears and tell him what a fearsome hunter he is. Dean-cat preens. He watches closely as Sam picks up the doll and then salts and burns it in the motel room’s trash can.
When Sam finally sits back down on the edge of his bed, Dean-cat surprises the hell out of him by leaping up to sit on his lap.
“Dude,” Sam sits back and lifts his arms up, palms out. Dean-cat turns around in circles a few times and then curls up on Sam’s lap, nose on tail. His face is no more than an inch away from Sam’s groin. “Uh,” Sam says. “This is making me really uncomfortable, Dean.”
Dean-cat sinks his claws into Sam’s sweat pants and begins to knead. A deep satisfied rumble starts to reverberate from deep within him and Sam’s eyes widen.
“Are you purring?”
Dean-cat opens one eye and glares at Sam. Sam can almost hear his brother say, well spotted College Boy. He sighs and without really planning it, without really meaning to, he starts to stroke Dean-cat’s head, scratching behind his ears and then underneath his chin, when Dean-cat lifts his head and offers up his throat. The purring increases in volume and Dean-cat begins to knead at Sam’s thigh again. This time his claws graze Sam’s skin and Sam winces.
“Ow! Watch the claws, man,” Sam’s eyes widen. “I mean cat.”
He picks Dean-cat up and, despite his brother’s indignant yowl, deposits him on the floor. “I gotta take a shower,” he says. “And then I guess I’d better go and talk to Daphne again.”
Dean-cat hisses at her name, his tail whipping around angrily.
When Sam gets out of the shower he finds Dean-cat settled on top of his pillow, taking the cat version of a shower. He has one leg stretched out and the other stuck straight up in the air and he’s licking himself.
Sam wrinkles his nose. “Isn’t that kind of gross?”
Dean gives him a withering look and goes back to his tongue-bath.
“Oh, no, that’s,” Sam turns away as Dean-cat’s tongue drags over his asshole. “That’s just nasty.”
Sam tries to imagine what his brother would do in his shoes. He grins wickedly and pulls out his phone, quickly snapping a couple of pictures. Dean-cat looks startled and slightly put out.
“Okay, I’m heading out,” Sam says, picking up the car keys. “I’ll put up the Do Not Disturb sign. Make sure you stay hidden. Pretty sure the motel has a no pets policy.”
--
Daphne actually opens the door to him, which surprises Sam into blurting, “My brother’s a cat.”
Daphne blinks. “Brother?”
Sam huffs. “That’s the part that surprises you?”
Sam pushes past her and into the house. “Yeah, Dean’s my brother. And no, we’re not with the CDC. We’re Hunters.”
Daphne looks confused. “Like you shoot moose or ducks or something?”
“No. Hunters,” Sam emphasizes the word, inclining his head and raising his eyebrows.
Daphne frowns and then shakes her head, looking lost.
“Of the supernatural,” Sam clarifies. “You know, vampires, werewolves, witches.”
Daphne’s eyes widen. “Omigod!” she wrings her hands. “I knew I recognized you! You’re them! Those brothers! The spree killer ones. You shot up that bank and that diner a few years back. You’re supposed to be dead!”
Sam is surprised she remembers. Most people don’t seem to. In fact he and Dean had surmised that the angels-or maybe God-had put some kind of whammy on everyone, made them forget the whole Leviathan episode.
“That wasn’t us,” Sam says. “They were a kind of shapeshifting monster that made themselves look like us to cause us problems.”
Daphne looks downright scared now and she’s backing away slowly. Sam really doesn’t have time for this; he needs his brother back pronto.
“Just tell me how you did it,” he barks. “Are you a borrower? Are you getting your power from a demon, because I gotta tell you, Daphne, Hell is real.”
Daphne’s back is against the living room wall now and Sam is right in her face. She looks terrified.
“Tell me what you did, Daphne!” Sam demands.
Daphne starts to cry. “I don’t know, okay! I don’t know anything about demons. Yes, I’m into the whole New Age thing and I’ve got some crystals and a dream catcher and some Tarot cards and I bought a cabinet with weird symbols on it at a second hand store a couple weeks back, but I don’t think magic is real. Not really real. Tarot cards…spells…it’s just…a way for a person to feel like they’ve got some control over things.”
Sam backs off a step, because Daphne is genuinely freaked and this is sounding more like a case of an amateur accidentally blundering into something genuine, than a deliberate act of malicious witchcraft.
“Okay,” he says. “You better show me this cabinet you bought.”
Daphne points a shaking finger at the corner of the room, where something rectangular and about waist-high is standing covered by a long table cloth.
Sam removes the cloth and squats down to look at the small black lacquered cabinet with double doors. It’s painted with a plethora of red symbols and sigils and Sam swallows.
“Oh shit,” he says.
“What?” Daphne has gravitated to his side. “What is it?”
“It’s a curse box.”
--
Daphne found the cabinet in a second hand store in North Platte-a slightly larger town fifty or so miles east of Ogallala. She was immediately taken with its sleek black sheen, its clawed feet and the strange symbols painted here and there in the glistening bright red of a freshly bleeding cut. There was something about the cabinet. It called to her. Take me home, it seemed to be saying.
So she did. It would make a great home for the Wiccan stuff she’d started to collect.
The cabinet was locked, but there wasn’t a key. There seemed to be something inside of it too, if the rattling when she moved it was any indication.
Daphne wiggled a bobby pin around in the lock until it clicked open. The cabinet had three shelves, on which half a dozen small boxes were standing. Daphne lifted each in turn. All the boxes were decorated in a similar fashion to the cabinet. They were all locked too; all except for one, which had three strange looking dolls inside of it. Voodoo dolls, she thought, running the tips of her figures against the dolls, which were nestled inside a spongey, black-velvet lining.
“And then,” Daphne tells Sam, “it was the weirdest thing. I can’t believe I’m just remembering this now,” she frowns. “Anyway, the box sort of…jumped out of my hands and when I picked it up, the dolls had all disappeared. I thought they must’ve rolled under the sofa or something, but I looked everywhere and I couldn’t find them,” she frowns again. “And then I just forgot they even existed. Until just now.”
Sam borrows Daphne’s computer. He does some research. And then he does a summoning spell. A doll identical to the two that he and Dean salted and burned appears in the salt circle. It doesn’t move. Its eyes do flash red though.
Daphne shudders. “Is it possessed?” she asks. “Like Chucky?”
Sam side-eyes her. “Not exactly. I think that box contained a set of very old Spirit Dolls.”
Daphne’s eyes widen. “Spirit Dolls?”
Sam explains that Spirit Dolls are basically just vessels for powerful spirits; the spirits of the dead, familiar-spirits, divine entities and so on. Once the Spirit Doll is made, the witch or Hoodoo practitioner will perform a ritual to invite a Spirit to take up residence in the Doll. Once the Spirit is there, it’s just a question of the witch petitioning the Doll for help on various issues.
“I think these Dolls were picking up on your subconscious desires to punish various people,” he says, “and trying to make it happen for you. For example, you thought Olivia was being ‘catty’, so one of the dolls put itself under her pillow in order to turn her into a cat. Only her daughter found it and took it into her room to play with it, so the Spirit Doll got the wrong target.”
Daphne frowns. “Why did your brother turn into a cat then?”
Sam purses his lips and looks up at her. “Well you were pissed at him. For telling you it wasn’t hard being beautiful.”
“Oh,” Daphne colors slightly. “Sorry about that. I guess I’m still a little more pissed at my ex than I realized. He cheated on me, traded me in for a younger model, and he still got joint custody!” she stops abruptly. “Anyway, I thought your brother was your partner and when he made that comment I was thinking that it was all very well for him, that you obviously respected him and didn’t just treat him like some pretty little pet, because he was so pretty.”
Sam snorts. “And I’m guessing the Spirit Doll interpreted pet as ‘cat’.”
Daphne nods. “I’ve only ever had cats. Poor old Baron Samedi died just last Fall. He was a beautiful big grey cat, fifteen years old.”
Sam stares. “You called your cat Baron Samedi?”
Daphne looks a little sheepish. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Sam shakes his head. He wonders if Baron Samedi was the Spirit Dolls’ template for ‘cat’, because he really can’t understand why Dean would transform into a grey cat. He ponders the subject, wondering on the DNA changes required to transform from one species to another and how the transformation process determines things like skin and hair color. The only conclusion he comes to is that his life is weird.
Sam salts and burns the last remaining Spirit Doll, as well as the box that had been holding the Dolls. He loads the Curse Box cabinet into the back of the Impala, telling Daphne that he’ll take it somewhere safe to store, a place where no unsuspecting civilians might accidentally unleash its horrors on the world.
As Sam pulls up outside the motel, a fully human Dean comes barrelling out of their room carrying three duffel bags. He sprints toward the car, pulls open the rear door, and throws the bags into the back of the Impala, barely sparing the black cabinet a glance.
Before Sam has a chance to get out of the driver’s seat, Dean is sliding into the passenger seat, yelling go, go, go.
Sam puts his foot down and they speed out of the parking lot, spitting up gravel.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Dude,” Dean drags a hand through his hair. His eyes look wild. “After you left I decided to take a nap. I found this really nice patch of sunshine and curled up, but then all these birds started up, singing and twittering and I was up on the window sill before I knew it, making these really, really stupid noises,” Dean takes a deep breath. “And one of the housekeeping maids saw me.”
“And?” Sam prods when the silence lasts too long.
Dean is staring out the side window. “She said I was a good kitty,” he mumbles. “And she picked me up and started petting me. That bit was pretty awesome, actually. She had a really nice rack and I was nestled up against it, purring. And then,” Dean turns toward Sam with an indignant expression, “she groped me, Sammy, and she made this tutting noise and said that if my owners were gonna leave me unattended in motel rooms, the least they could do was have me neutered!” Dean crosses his legs. “She wanted to cut off my balls, Sammy!”
Given some of the love’em and leave’em stunts Dean’s pulled in the past, Sam doubts she’s the first woman in history to want to do that, but he doesn’t say anything, because his brother’s eyes are comically wide and his face is pale.
“So then what happened?” he says in his interviewing a traumatized civilian voice.
Dean’s eyes slide away. “I bit her and hid under the bed.”
“Poor Kitty,” Sam says, reaching out and petting his brother’s hair.
Dean leans into his touch for just a moment and then seems to realize what he’s doing. “Dude!” he says, and smacks Sam’s hand away.
Sam grins widely. “Was the maid still in the room when you turned back into a human?”
Dean nods. His eyes are wide and round and Sam doesn’t think he’s seen his brother look this spooked since that time he had Ghost Sickness.
“And?” he prompts.
Dean bites at his bottom lip. “She managed to drag me out from under the bed. I dug my claws into the carpet really deep, but she was too strong. Anyway she picked me up, said she was gonna put me in a box, take me to animal control, and then poof! We’re falling to the floor because she’s five foot nothing and she’s suddenly trying to hold up six foot of naked man. She screamed and tried to knee me in the balls and when I got up off of her she ran into the bathroom.”
Dean side-eyes his brother. “I got dressed, packed our stuff and ran out the room.”
Sam figures that given how much the local paper mocked Olivia for saying that her daughter had turned into a cat, the maid is very unlikely to tell anyone that she saw a cat turn into a human. And even if she does, no-one’s going to believe her.
“You okay?” he asks Dean.
Dean nods. “Yeah. Just. She was terrified. You know? Naked guy suddenly on top of her.”
Their eyes meet for a moment and then they turn away from each other, not willing to acknowledge their shared understanding of her terror.
They drive in silence for a while and when he’s sure he can speak without his voice shaking, Sam updates his brother on the Spirit Dolls and the Curse Box. He has to stop talking when Dean has a coughing fit.
“Pull over,” Dean wheezes and Sam veers onto the grass verge immediately.
Dean gets out of the car and the coughing and retching is so bad that Sam ends up holding him and rubbing his back, until, eventually, his brother brings up a clump of grey fur.
Sam stares. “Dude! You just coughed up a furball!”
“Shut up,” Dean rasps and climbs back into the passenger seat, a good indication that he’s still feeling shaken and unwell.
“I told you all that licking was gross,” Sam says as they pull back onto the road. He wrinkles his nose. “And don’t forget, you licked your-”
“Shut up!” Dean says.
“-asshole,” Sam concludes.
Dean shudders. He opens up the glove box and pulls out the flask of whiskey they keep in there for emergencies.
He takes a big gulp, swirls the liquid in his mouth and then winds down the window and spits. Rinse and repeat. And again. And then he drinks.
“Gonna have to disinfect my mouth,” he says mournfully. “I don’t even wanna think about how many germs I picked up doing that.”
Sam can’t help it; he throws back his head and laughs. He expects to get smacked again, but when he finally calms down and looks at his brother, Dean has a wistful smile on his face.
“Been a long time since I last heard you laugh like that,” Dean says.
“Yeah. Sorry. It’s just. Our lives are weird, man.”
“Yes they are,” Dean agrees. He looks straight ahead, eyes seeming to follow the road’s white line. “Thanks for figuring out how to turn me back into a human.”
Sam glances at his brother’s profile. “Always,” he says.
And even though the word is infused with meaning and emotion, Dean doesn’t mock him for it; he just nods and puts on a Led Zeppelin tape.
Sam doesn’t have the heart to remind him that driver picks the music. He’s too relieved to have his brother back.
The End