Riptide for madebyme_x
Title: Riptide
Recipient: madebyme_x
Rating: PG-13
Word Count or Media: 10k
Warnings: Canon-typical violence
Author's Notes: The prompt was about Sam finding a hunt he couldn't ignore during the Stanford Era and I love me some Stanford Sam.
Summary: Sam just wants to be a normal college student and normal college students go on spring break.
Of course, that’s when bodies begin washing up on the beach.
Now
Sam wakes face down in the sand.
It’s dark, but the moon illuminates the beach as it stretches away from where he lies prone.
The quiet whisper of the surf grows into a roar as the water tumbles over his legs, surges all the way up to his chest.
The tide is coming in.
He drags his hands in and levers himself up. His chest twinges with the movement. The side of his face aches. Sand and salt sting in raw, open nail beds.
His head is fuzzy, but instinct and training take over. He must be on a hunt. He needs to get up, get moving, stop the monster.
Sam coughs wetly, throat raw.
As he pushes himself into a sitting position his hand catches on something hard and sharp. There’s just enough light to make out the knife lying in the sand. He grabs it up. It’s familiar.
It’s Brady’s.
A memory comes back. Jessica. She had been out here. And so was a monster.
It's enough to give him the energy to stumble to his feet, left arm clutched tight around his battered ribs.
There’s a dark stain on the sand. Blood, a trail of it.
If it bleeds, you can kill it.
Strange footprints in the sand. As he follows the memories return in fits and starts.
Spring break really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Several Days Earlier
Zach pulls into the brick driveway and Jess digs an elbow into Sam’s ribs. When he turns she gives him the incredulous look that he’s been studiously keeping off his own face. He grins in return, glad to not be the only one stupefied by casual wealth of the Warrens. Zach and Becky had reassured everyone that their parents wouldn’t be around at their Hilton Head vacation home because they “live in Paris half the year”, so they’d have the place all to themselves. When Sam had admitted that he couldn’t swing a plane ticket, the siblings had paid out of pocket for his flight into Savannah without batting an eye.
Sam’s still losing out on the potential income he could be earning at the coffee shop, but Brady had made a compelling case that spring break was an essential college experience that Sam shouldn’t miss out on.
Also, you know. Jess was going.
They all pile out of the Range Rover. Brady had grabbed shotgun when Zach picked them up from Savannah. Of course, behind everyone’s backs he’d given Sam a knowing grin with a look towards Jess. Ever since this past Fall Break Brady had become increasingly more obvious. Sam wanted to be annoyed, but chatting with Jess on the ride over about her family’s previous vacations to the South had been worth the lack of leg room.
“I can’t believe that’s all you brought,” Jessica says as Sam grabs his duffel from the back of the truck. She has an oversized purse slung over one shoulder as she grabs for her massive roller suitcase. Sam waves her aside and grabs the handle, lifting it down for her.
She gives him a brilliant smile and wheels off towards the house, just in time to reveal Brady giving him another exaggerated grin. Sam rolls his eyes and follows Jess and Zach up the steps to the front door.
It’s a relief to step into the air-conditioned interior, out of the humid morning air of South Carolina. The foyer rises up the full two stories, disrupted up by an archway into the living room straight ahead. The wainscoting and trim are all rich, dark woods.
“Okay, so, I can show you guys to your rooms and you can drop your stuff off,” Zach says.
He leads them off to the right and back the way they came. Sam’s been in a lot of houses, but his experience with mansions tend to be of the old, haunted Victorian kind. This one is odd in that it seems designed to be long and narrow. The neighbors houses are crowded close, maximizing the number of properties with access to the beach. At the far end of the house is a wide staircase that turns back on itself.
“That’s the elevator,” Zach says, pointing to a wooden door. “In case any of your drunk asses can’t make it up the stairs.”
‘Elevator,’ Jess mouths at him, eyes wide.
Sam grins back and grabs Jess’ suitcase to carry it up the stairs. Brady is shunted off to a side room, and they make their way across the second floor all the way back until Zach directs them over a walkway atop the wooden arch over the foyer. He points them into a set of bedrooms with an en-suite.
“You two are good sharing, right?”
“Better than with Brady,” Jess says with a laugh, rolling her suitcase into a corner.
“I think everyone else is already swimming in the pool, so I’ll leave you to get changed.”
“This place is crazy,” Jess says, once Zach’s wandered off.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees as he digs through his duffel. “Doesn’t seem real.”
“Listen,” Jess says with mock seriousness, hands on her hips. “Don’t get too enamored with all this.”
“Oh yeah?” Sam asks. “Why’s that?”
“Well, I know you have plans to be a big, rich lawyer with his own fancy vacation homes.”
“I don’t know about all that.”
“Good,” Jess says. “Because I want you to know that when the revolution comes, I’m siding with the proletariat.”
It surprises a bark of laughter out of Sam.
“I mean it! I will let the angry mob straight in, pitchforks and torches and all.”
“Noted.” Sam grabs his swim trunks out of his bag before pausing. “Uh, I’ll just go in here and change,” he says, gesturing to the bathroom.
They’ve gone on a couple of dates and fooled around a bit, but it’s still a little early to be sharing a room-sharing a bed. Sam had thought that a lifetime of living in cramped motel rooms and shabby one-room apartments would have left him without any body consciousness, but he finds himself oddly shy around Jess.
When he gets back out of the bathroom Jess has also changed into her swimsuit, a bikini. His face heats and he ducks his head as he shoves his clothes into his duffel. Jess laughs at him and grabs his arm. “C’mon, Sam!”
The house has an inground pool and hot tub and next to it a patio filled with wicker couches and plastic furniture. Sam knows some of the people-Brady, of course, and Zach’s sister Becky, and Luis and his girlfriend-but others are friends of Zach’s or Becky’s that he doesn’t recognize. There’s a table near the door that’s covered with bottles of liquor of all kinds along with a wide selection of mixers and next to it a keg is chilling in a bucket of ice.
Jess is drawn away into a gaggle of girls and Sam has an awkward moment with no direction before he spots Brady at the makeshift bar, helping himself.
“Hey,” Sam says as he approaches, somewhat cautiously. Brady has been volatile for a few months. He dropped out of pre-med and is doing some sort of business major now.
“Sammy!” Brady says, rounding on him. Sam suppresses the urge to correct him, to tell him that it’s ‘Sam’, because lately that’s more likely to egg Brady on. “What do you want me to make you?”
“I’m good.”
“Nonsense,” Brady says. “It’s still morning. Ish. How about a Bloody Mary?”
“No thanks.”
“Wait, no, I have just the thing,” Brady says, turning back to the table and grabbing several different bottles of liquor. Sam rolls his eyes as he waits. He’s learned to pick his battles.
“Here you are!” Brady says as he garnishes the red plastic solo cup with an orange slice. “The perfect drink for a beach vacation: a zombie.”
Sam frowns, but takes a sip. It’s sweet, fruity, and heavy on the rum. He’d been relieved at the end of freshman year when Brady had suggested they room together again for sophomore year. They got along well and the pre-med student had been a great study partner. But ever since Fall Break he’s been different. Sam’s tried to help, but he doesn’t know what he can do. It’s putting him on edge, like living with a time bomb. For someone who has no idea about Sam’s family or history, he also has an uncanny knack for pushing all of Sam’s buttons.
Sam wanders away, over to the seats next to the pool, where Becky is sitting.
“Sam!” she says, hopping up to give him a hug.
“Little Becky,” he laughs.
“Oh, shove it.”
“So what’s new?” he asks, taking a seat in one of the loungers.
“Ugh, Angela is just being morbid,” Becky says, shooting a look at the brunette on her other side.
“Hi Angela, I’m Sam.” They shake hands.
Angela smiles politely. “I was just telling Becky about the body they found.”
Old instincts take over. “The body?”
“It was a drowning,” Becky says. “Body washed up on shore a couple days ago. It’s sad, but it happens.”
“Yeah, but how do you explain all the other stuff?” Angela snaps.
“Other stuff?” Sam queries.
Angela turns to him, clearly happy to have someone share her interest. “The body was all bruised up. And, get this: it was missing its eyes and teeth and nails. Creepy, right?”
Sam nods absently. “Yeah.” He’s running through monsters in his head, but can’t think of anything that matches that M.O. Missing hearts, sure. But missing eyes and teeth? That’s weird.
“You’re gross,” Becky tells Angela.
“Actually, it’s not that unusual,” Sam says, thinking back to lessons from John. “After death a lot of animals will eat the softer tissues, like eyes. Of course, that doesn’t explain the teeth.”
He looks up to find matched horrified and disgusted looks on both girls faces. It appears there was a limit to Angela’s morbid curiosity. He ducks his head as his face heats. He makes a dumb excuse before excusing himself.
Stupid, Winchester. What’s next, was he going to talk about digging up graves? This wasn’t the first time it had happened, not the first time he’d said something he considered innocuous only to realize that it marked him out as weird. It was especially bad the first few months. He’s better now, after a year and a half of living like a normal person, better at pretending to be one of them. It’s getting more natural, fitting in. But then something like this happens and he’s back to feeling like he’ll never escape.
Except he will. Because he was right, bodies missing their eyes or fingernails aren’t that out of the norm. And even if it was, it’s someone else’s problem. Sam is a college student on spring break. He’s not a hunter.
Not anymore.
He knocks back his drink and goes to find Jessica.
About half of the group eventually migrates their way down the private boardwalk to the beach. The house is on the side of the island that looks out over open ocean. They walk along the wide strip of sand at low tide, weaving from pushing each other into the surf to kicking sand at each other. The girls stop to pick up seashells for souvenirs. Most of the group have plastic water bottles filled with conspicuously colorful mixed drinks.
Sam is walking next to Jessica, who is complaining alternately about her course load next quarter and her exams from last term. Sam is trying to commiserate, but he has a hard time dredging up the same casual annoyance at his studies that his peers feel. He’s got a good sense of perspective. It could be worse.
“Heads up!”
Sam glances up in time to catch the football sailing at his head. He tosses it back to Luis, who’s been trading passes with Brady. How Brady has that much hand-eye coordination given the alcohol he’s downed is anyone’s guess.
“I took that poli sci class,” Sam tells Jess. “I could give you my notes.”
“That’d be awesome,” Jess says. “Your notes-”
A woman’s scream rends the air.
Sam steps forward, pushing Jess slightly behind him as he scans the beach. Adrenaline tingles down his arms and legs and he instinctively loosens his stance for the fight.
But the only thing he sees are a couple of the girls staring at something on the sand near the surf. Jess pushes past him and Sam gives chase.
It turns out one of the girls is Angela, and she’s hugging a sobbing girl to her. Sam meets Angela’s eyes briefly-her tanned face is pale with horror-before moving past them.
It’s a body.
“Anyone have a phone?” he asks. Sam’s is back at the house with the rest of his stuff.
Heads shake all around. “I’ll go flag someone down,” Luis says before heading inland.
Most of the group is hanging back. Jess is rubbing her hand up and down the crying girl’s back and avoiding the scene, her mouth set in a grim line.
“That’s messed up.”
Sam looks to find Brady standing on the other side of the corpse. Brady is staring down at the body dispassionately. For a moment Sam wants to yell at him, question his callousness, until he remembers that Brady had been pre-med, at least for a while. He used to volunteer in hospitals, trying to beef up his resume for med school. He’s probably seen bodies.
Sam looks back at the body. It’s female, dressed in running shorts and a tank top. The skin of her legs and arms is mottled with bruises, darker purple against the blue tint of her skin. The gaping holes where her eyes should be stare straight into the sky.
Crouching down, Sam looks at one of her out flung arms. Her hand is curled in and he can see that most of her fingernails are missing, the nailbeds raw and bloody. There are scrapes along her fingers and knuckles, small ones. Her mouth is almost completely closed and he doesn’t want to touch the body, so he can’t be sure, but he’d be willing to bet that she was missing some teeth as well.
“So, what do you think?” Brady asks.
Sam looks up to find his friend staring right at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s weird, right?”
“It’s a dead body,” Sam deadpans. “Yeah, that’s weird.”
Brady gives him an indecipherable look, but Sam ignores it in favor of glancing over the body for any other clues. He doesn’t want to touch or move her, but this is going to be Sam’s best chance at getting a look at any of the bodies. His experiences with dead bodies have been pretty fleeting in the past; usually a quick glance at a desiccated corpse before they got salted and burned. Or freshly dead in the course of a hunt. Sam’s never had to study one; his dad was the one who conned his way into morgues.
But now Sam needs to make sure he doesn’t miss any clues. Because this is a hunt. Sam knows it.
For as grisly as the eyeless body is, there isn’t any obvious outward cause of death. Lots of contusions and abrasions, no lacerations. Probably drowning, but he’ll have to wait for the medical examiner’s report, if he can get his hands on it.
The police eventually arrive and ask them a few questions. Sam uses the opportunity to play concerned tourist and ask about the previous body. Luckily the young cop is a bit of a gossip. He spills to Sam that the other body had been found about a mile farther north on the beach. Other than apparent cause of death, the two victims don’t seem to share much in common. This woman was young and white, the first body was an older black male. She worked part time as a yoga instructor on the island, the man was a wealthy tourist.
It’s only midafternoon, but the group has sobered up. They head back along the beach much more directly, a more subdued group.
Sam considers his options. He still remembers John’s cell phone number, the ten digits burned into his brain. He could call his dad, try to pass the hunt along. But John and him didn’t exactly leave things on the best terms.
He could call one of their other contacts. He has the numbers for Bobby and Pastor Jim. But both of them are nearly a full day away. And if Sam’s honest with himself, he doesn’t trust them not to report back to John. Or Dean. He has a new life. He likes his new life. He doesn’t want to mix the two.
Even if that means he has to do the hunt himself.
Well, it makes sense in his head.
Sam takes Zach aside as they reach the house. “Hey, can I borrow a car?”
Zach gives him a confused look.
“I swear I’m sober,” Sam says with the most reassuring smile he can manage, the kind that has calmed nervous motel managers and suspicious teachers across the lower forty-eight.
“Where are you going?”
“I just wanted to pick something up,” Sam says. “For Jess.”
Whatever Zach reads into that gives him a grin to match Brady. The Warrens are generous, Becky and Zach almost incautiously so. Zach shows him to the three car garage, each section of which has a different luxury car waiting. He gives Sam the keys to a BMW. He's not sure what it says that Zach doesn't trust him with the Porsche.
Sam’s driven the Impala a couple dozen times, long enough to get a legitimate driver’s license. He’s driven a couple of stolen cars when things got really bad. But he’s never driven a car this nice.
Dean would kill him for saying that.
He pushes that thought away. Hard.
The police officer had told Sam that the public library was near the mall, on the other end of the island. The acceleration is smooth, the car quiet in a way that the Impala never was.
Sam finds the library and it’s fortunately still open, though only for another couple of hours. Beautiful weekday like today, it’s pretty dead inside. Sam commandeers the microfiche reader and skims through as many articles as he can. The librarian who helps get him started mentions that if he can’t find what he’s looking for there’s also a private library on the island dedicated to historical information about the Low Country. Sam thanks her for her help, insists what she’s given him is more than enough. Inwardly he scoffs. A private library. Typical.
He begins to skim the archived papers. Hilton Head is a small community and well-off. There’s not a lot of crime so any strange deaths end up front page news.
There is the occasional death of a prominent member of the community that rises to the front page. Most of them are from natural causes. There are a couple more mundane murders: gun violence, crimes of passion, all the usual. There are some drownings that Sam makes note of. The articles don’t mention missing eyes or teeth or nails, but that’s probably too gory for the Beaufort Gazette. None of the drownings are temporally clustered like the ones this week. Any one of them could’ve given birth to a vengeful spirit, but they’re all thought to be accidental, not the stereotypical violent end.
He makes it as far back as 1989 when he hits paydirt.
Stephanie Olson, 19, was tagging along on her father’s business trip and staying at the Westin Resort. She left the hotel in the early hours of March 30, 1989 and disappeared. She was found later that morning on the beach, beaten to death. No mention of eyes or teeth or nails, but it matches the bruising and being found on the beach. When he checks up on her name in the computerized archives he finds that the murder is still unsolved. Plenty of vengeful ghost material.
After that it’s relatively easy to call around and make up a sob story about being a distant relative and wanting to visit her grave. The articles had said she was a Georgia resident, and as it turns out she’s buried outside Savannah, maybe only an hour drive.
The library is closing down.
Sam should head back. The group is grilling out tonight. The two deaths so far have come a couple days apart, so there’s no rush, but Sam just wants this over with.
He calls Zach and makes an excuse about getting a call from an old family friend in Savannah. Zach seems confused, but Sam talks over him, the old Winchester bluster rolling off his tongue. You just keep talking and people often cave under the weight of all the words. It's easy with Zach. He knows Sam, trusts him.
Sam tries not to think about how he's betraying that trust.
He stops at the first hardware store he passes, just off the island. Drops more cash than he’s comfortable with on a shovel, lighter fluid, some road salt. He wouldn’t say no to a weapon of some kind, but they’re pricey and hunting is risky enough without compounding it by stealing.
Sam drives into the sunset and across the South Carolina/Georgia border. He parks several blocks away from the cemetery just as the sun is setting, makes sure it’s a legal parking spot. He doesn’t want to deal with getting the Warrens’ car towed.
The cemetery is surrounded by only a standard chain link fence. He throws over his supplies and clambers up in a couple quick steps.
It’s a newer cemetery and Sam already has the grave location. It only takes a few moments to get himself oriented. Sam knows graveyards like other people his age might know malls.
Digging is slow. Sam’s bigger and stronger than the last time he helped dig a grave, but last time he had help.
For a moment he considers whether he could’ve asked for help with this one. This hunt has been pretty open and shut, so he hasn’t been tempted. But here with nothing but the dirt crunching under his shovel he has plenty of time to think. He could have called John. He would have probably picked, he always picked up his phone, but would he have listened to what Sam has to say? In the battle between hunting evil and listening to his son, Sam’s not entirely sure where John would land.
Hours pass. The night is cooler, but not by much. Sam’s long since shed his flannel and is down to just his undershirt, but he regrets wearing jeans instead of the khaki shorts he packed. Better for scaling fences, less optimal for hours of heavy labor.
It’s just past three in the morning when his shovel thunks against coffin. He tosses out the last few shovelfuls of dirt and uses the edge of the shovel to pry open the coffin lid. Stephanie’s corpse is old, decayed. Sam averts his eyes, senses on high alert. This is usually the part when the ghost shows up to throw him into a headstone-though in this part of the cemetery most of the markers are flat plaques and flush with the ground.
He climbs back out of the hole and douses the corpse liberally with salt. No point in conserving it, he’s probably going to have to toss the rest of it anyway. No good way to explain why he’s carrying around road salt in South Carolina in March. He only holds back a bit, for self-protection.
The lighter fluid is next. That he saves some of-the party might be able to use it for a bonfire.
He strikes up a match, lets it burn down for a second so it doesn’t flame out, and tosses it down.
The heat rises up, dry in contrast to the muggy Georgia night. He steps back, already dripping with sweat, running in rivulets that make tracks through the dirt caked onto his forearms.
When the fire burns down he pushes dirt back into the hole as quickly as he can. By the time the ground is mostly leveled out the sky to the east is fading into a light gray. He hops the fence again and is back on the road, squinting against the glare as he again heads into the sun.
He stops at a gas station and rinses all the visible dirt from his arms and face, but still feels grimy. It’s early by the time he pulls back into the driveway. He hasn’t even been on vacation for 24 hours and he’s running on fumes.
The house is quiet when he enters. He imagines they won’t be getting up particularly early.
Which is why he’s surprised when he opens the door to his shared bedroom with Jess and finds her standing in front of the dresser mirror, pulling her hair into a ponytail. She’s plenty surprised, too.
“Sam!”
“Uh. Hi.”
“Where the hell were you?”
Sam isn’t sure if she’s mad or concerned. Possibly both. “Uh, a friend of the family called me. He lives in Savannah.”
“So you just took off?”
Sam reaches for the standard Winchester claptrap and finds… nothing. He doesn’t want to lie like this to her. He looks down at his feet. His sneakers are still coated in a layer of grave dirt.
Jess sighs. “A family friend?”
“Yeah.” He glances up.
“You never talk about your family.”
“Right. I know. I’m sorry.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s fine, Sam." In a tone that says how not fine it was. She sighs heavily. "I know there are things you’re not telling me. But I was worried. You could’ve called.”
He doesn’t really know how to answer to that. The silence between them stretches out in the dawn light. The windows in their room look out east over the ocean, but the sun is rising somewhere out if sight to the south.
Jess sighs again. “Becky set up a beach yoga session. Do you want to come?”
Honestly, Sam wants to take a shower and collapse into bed for the next fourteen hours. But he didn’t come on vacation to sleep and he can’t say no to the hopeful smile on Jessica’s face. Besides, he’s pretty used to long nights and little sleep, even before he went to college, so he nods and goes to change into his running gear.
Downstairs Becky has decided to become Sam’s personal hero by brewing up a large pot of strong, good coffee. The rest of the group-mostly female-seem to be drinking it to stave off their hangovers. The yoga instructor shows up a couple minutes later and she’s brought a big carafe of some sort of green health juice. Some of the girls side eye it a bit, but Sam gives it a shot and it’s actually pretty good. If Dean saw him drinking it he’d never hear the end of it.
He must be more tired than he thought.
They chat for another few minutes and then make their way back down the narrow wooden boardwalk to the beach. They’ve brought beach towels in place of yoga mats-the house has a ready supply of them. The tide is high, but there’s just enough clear beach to spread the towels out next to each other with some leftover room for the instructor to walk along the receding surf.
The group is still half hungover and sleep deprived, so it’s not the most rigorous workout. Sam’s thankful; his shoulders and arms are still tight from moving all that dirt. Half of the girls can’t even hold downward-facing dog pose for more than a few seconds without collapsing into giggles.
Sam stakes out a spot on the end, next to Jess, and he mostly ignores their antics, focusing instead on the calm pulse of the waves. The sun is still low, so it’s not hot, but it’s muggy and he’s instantly covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
Twenty minutes in the instructor has them pair up to do partner yoga poses. The laughter increases as the girls try to balance while propped up against each other.
Sam tries to wave Jess off.
“C’mon, you can’t leave me stuck with these short people, Sam!”
The girl on the other side of Jess, who probably tops out at 5’ 2”, laughs and gives her the finger. “We can’t all be Amazons.”
“See, Sam? You’re my only hope.”
The instructor pulls Becky to the front of the group to demonstrate poses with her. They start simple, pressed back to back. Sam glances over his shoulder. “Sorry about all the sweat.” With her back pressed up against his he can feel himself soaking through his shirt.
“Oh, yeah, because I’m really smelling like roses right now.”
He smiles.
Sam’s not the horn dog his brother is, but there’s something strangely intimate about the simple poses, even if the only point of contact are the soles of their feet pressed together as they grasp each other’s wrists. Sam counts himself fortunate that his face is probably already red with exertion.
Afterwards a bunch of them run into the surf to cool off quick. Jess hangs back, only wading in knee high, until Sam manages to sneak up behind her and sweep her over his shoulder. He tosses her, shrieking with laughter, into the waves.
When she comes up sputtering he lets her push him over in retaliation. It’s only fair.
By the time they all make it back to the house the rest of the gang is awake. Luis is frying up pancakes. He offers Sam a stack, but Sam waves him off. He’s running on fumes at this point. He needs at least a couple hours of sleep.
He showers on autopilot, changes into the first thing that comes to hand, and falls into bed.
Sam wakes up to the distant sound of laughter. He squints his eyes open against the bright sunlight streaming in through the balcony doors. Now that he is listening he can hear the murmur of people talking, probably on the back patio.
The small clock radio on the nightstand says it’s almost one in the afternoon. More than enough sleep for a Winchester.
He sits up, runs an absent hand through his hair to smooth it down. After catching another burst of laughter he ambles over to the large French doors that lead to the balcony outside his room. He cracks them and immediately the damp heat leeches in. He steps out and up to the railing, looking out over the back patio, which is filled with people swimming and sitting around and drinking.
“Sam!” That’s Zach. “About time!”
“You’re one to talk,” Sam shoots back. He can’t count the number of times Zach’s stood up early study dates because he overslept.
Jess smiles up at him from the pool. “Get down here!”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
The pool feels sublime compared to the heat of the day. Sam swims a couple very short, quick laps. Jess is floating on an inflatable that looks like a donut in the deep end. When he paddles his way over she tries to dunk his head, so he feels justified when he upends her tube and dumps her into the water. Jess was on the swim team in high school and is actually a much better swimmer. Sam swam in a couple of high school gym classes and the occasional motel pool or Midwestern lake. He’d fallen into a river fully clothed, once. Sam swims like he fights, anything goes as long it works. Jess, on the other hand, swims like she’s part mermaid. She comes up sputtering and Sam makes a strategic retreat towards the shallow end, where he has the advantage, and she yells threats at him but doesn’t give chase.
They spend the afternoon lazing around. Occasionally small groups trek down the boardwalk to the beach. Jess brought a book and sets up shop on the beach for a while. Sam didn’t bring a book, hasn’t bought any novels since high school stopped forcing him to for English class. His textbooks are expensive enough. Sam doesn’t have a lot of spare cash and what he does have he tends to save for dates with Jess.
But there’s a decently well-stocked bookshelf in the house, so he pokes through it. It was clearly curated by Zach’s mom, is full of chick lit titles in pastel covers. Dotted here and there are outliers-a bunch of Bret Easton Ellis, Ayn Rand, and Hemingway. Sam selects one of the latter, A Farewell to Arms.
He stretches out next to Jess as she slathers on another layer of sunscreen. Sam’s always been lucky to tan instead of burn, unlike Dean, who tended up end up extra crispy in the beginning of summer every year.
“Fun beach read?” Jess teases after catching the cover on his book.
“You’ve got some sunscreen right here,” Sam says, rubbing his nose with his middle finger. She laughs. “Aren’t you a little old for those books?” he asks.
Jess is reading one of the Harry Potter books. Sam doesn’t know which one.
“They’re good,” she defends. “And this one is thick enough that I hopefully won’t finish it before we head back.”
Sam can’t argue with that.
That night the gang grills out again. Sam helps Zach at the grill, stays sober enough that all the chicken skewers get cooked sufficiently. Brady stumbles in halfway through dinner, still in his clothes from the previous day. He pours himself a pint glass of whiskey, drinks most of it, and disappears upstairs.
“I have no idea how his liver is still functioning,” Zach admits. Sam, being Brady’s roommate, is more than familiar with his friend’s burgeoning alcoholism. “What happened at Fall Break?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, because it’s the truth. Zach left after Fall Quarter as a confident-but-hard-working pre-med student and came back from the week off changed. Most of their friends have chalked it up to stress, helped along by the fact that he changed majors.
He’s tried to help, but Brady hasn’t been interested in talking it out.
Brady had been his first friend at Stanford. Sam owes him a lot.
So he follows his roommate into the house and knocks cautiously on the door to Brady’s suite.
The door swings open an instant later.
“Sam!” Brady says, all smiles. For as much as he drank, he seems remarkably sober.
“Hey, Brady,” Sam says. “What’s up?”
“I was just gonna crash, dude. Been a long night,” he says with a grin so lecherous that even Dean would find it over-the-top.
“You were gone a long time,” Sam tries.
Brady rolls his eyes. “What, only Sam Winchester is allowed to vanish all night?”
It’s a valid point, but Sam doesn’t let it deter him. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. That you’re safe.”
“You asking if I used protection?” Brady asks with a smirk.
Sam pulls a face. “Dude. That’s your business, but nobody knew where you were. You were gone almost a full day. What if something happened?”
“I can take care of myself, Sam,” he drawls. “And if anyone tried anything?” He reaches into his pocket and before Sam can see what it is the blade flips outward. It’s a switchblade, good sized.
“Holy crap, where’d you get that?”
“Brought it in my checked bag,” Brady says, turning the blade side to side, before locking it back down.
A queasy feeling surges through Sam’s stomach. He’d always hid his weapons from Brady, but freshman year Sam broke his nose and Brady almost fainted at the sight of all the blood. Now he’s carrying a questionably legal knife?
“So, see?” Brady continues. “No reason to worry.” He retreats back into his room and slams the door shut.
Sam retreats back downstairs. He has no idea what to do for his friend. He wants to do something to help before Brady gets himself hurt. But he’s also starting to worry for himself. Brady’s his roommate. He’d assumed that they’d live together next year, but now he’s not so sure.
Sam tries to put it out of his mind. This is a vacation. He grabs a beer and Luis pulls him into a discussion about the next presidential election that fortunately doesn’t end with anyone screaming obscenities. Jess joins quickly, drawn as if with a sixth sense to any political discussion.
The party goes until the early hours of the morning, but Jess and Sam sneak away just before midnight.
There’s no beach yoga the next day, so Sam and Jess wake slowly and spend a lazy morning together before getting ready and heading downstairs just before lunch. Becky has planned lunch at a restaurant on the leeward side of the island before they take a Dolphin Nature Cruise.
Becky assures them all that the lunch is being covered by her parents, so Sam is able to appreciate the upscale restaurant without doing a panicked calculation of his bank account. He hasn’t had seafood too often, and certainly never from a place like this, so he doesn’t have much to compare to.
After taking his first bite of the lobster tail he leans over to Jess. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” She asks around a mouth of pasta.
“For my inevitable betrayal of the proletariat,” he replies solemnly and watches her choke on a laugh and a biscuit. “This is delicious.”
“That’s all it takes to betray the working class?” Jess chides.
“Apparently.”
About halfway through lunch Jess and Angela leave to find the bathroom and when they come back Jess’s face is grim, while Angela seems to be buzzing with excitement.
Sam’s about to ask what happened, but Angela beats him to the punch. “They found another body.”
Jess shoots her an affronted glare and one of the girls turns a little green.
Sam feels his stomach drop.
Angela sits down and leans forward eagerly. “Do you think it’s a serial killer or something?”
“A serial killer who pokes out eyes?” Brady scoffs.
“Oh my God, guys, stop it!” one of the girls says.
Sam leans across Jess towards Angela. “Did you hear where they found it?”
“By some Bed and Breakfast. Royal something.”
Something in that registers to Becky. “What? That’s right by the house.”
Sam gets what he can out of Angela and begs off of the cruise, citing an upset stomach. Becky gives him back the keys to the BMW they'd driven over in. Jess offers to stay behind with him, but he insists he's fine.
He finds his way to the private library he’d heard about. It’s run by the Mormon church, which makes sense. Mormons are very invested in genealogy and ancestry, which makes them useful resources on hunts. Sam’s still offended on a visceral level at the idea of a private library-he has to pay a $10 entrance fee to use the facilities-but he has to admit that it’s got much better resources than the public library farther north.
He’s found a tourist map of the island and marked off the approximate locations of the bodies. They’re in a descending line along the beach on the ocean-facing side of the island, starting at the island’s halfway point and trailing down towards the Warrens’ beach house.
This time he skips the newspapers and goes straight to EBSCOhost. If there’s one advantage to attending Stanford, it’s that it’s improved his research skills. He’s fluent in regular expressions.
The wide geographic variance is making him question his assumption that it was a vengeful spirit, so instead he starts by searching the commonalities: bodies with missing eyes, teeth, and fingernails. And after paging through some entries about serial killers, he finds something that works.
It’s a description of a creature from a 16th century ethnographic study of Mesoamerica by a Franciscan friar. The creature was called an “ahuizotl” in the native language and it’s described as vaguely dog shaped. Apparently the creatures grab unsuspecting victims and drown them while munching on their eyes and crunchy bits like the teeth and fingernails. Ahuizotl victims are often bruised as if they’ve been battered, but otherwise unblemished. It sometimes lures its victims to the water with a cry that mimics the sound of a baby or small child weeping.
It’s enough to convince Sam. Unfortunately, the good friar didn’t mention how to kill the damn thing. But if it’s corporeal Sam should be able to kill it with enough effort.
If it bleeds, you can kill it.
There’s another disturbing pattern emerging. There were three days between the first death and the second, but only two between the second and third. It’s too few data points to form a definitive pattern, but it means that there’s a chance the next murder might be tonight. And if the creature follows its current path, it’ll be attacking near the Warrens’ house next.
That’s as far as he gets before Becky calls him up and tells him they’re back from the cruise. He picks them up and everyone makes their way back to the beach house. Jess asks him if something is wrong when Sam’s quiet in the car, but he blames it on his stomach. In reality, he’s busy trying to figure out how to finish this hunt.
He needs supplies. A gun would be preferable, but he has no way to get one right now. He needs salt, which hopefully the Warrens have. He’s still got the lighter fluid from the salt and burn and another couple books of matches.
When they arrive back at the house Sam looks through the pantry, which is a room long enough that Sam could lie down inside it. He finds a large canister of salt, enough to salt a body, if not enough to put down any substantial salt lines. That’s fine. Even if he could be sure it’d work against the ahuizotl, this house has so many doors and windows that it’d be pointless to try. Not to mention the questions it’d lead to from his fellow spring breakers.
With as much forced casualness as he can, Sam carries his supplies out of the house, down towards the beach. Thankfully no one notices. He hides them under the boardwalk. From what he can gather, each of the victims has disappeared at night-the first from a beachfront party, the second a night jog, and the third was among another spring break group swimming at night.
So Sam still has a couple of hours to kill before he needs to be on the hunt.
Enough time for second thoughts.
He should really call for back-up. He’s never done a hunt solo before. Heck, even Dean didn’t hunt alone. John warned them against it-granted, he then did it anyway, but Dad’s always been a bit of the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ type.
He should at least let someone know what he’s found. Just in case.
He scrolls through the contact list in his phone, but he can’t make himself dial. He’s not exactly sure what’s stopping him. It just feels too much like going back and Sam can’t do anything but move forward. He has to. He just needs to get through this hunt and then it’ll be over and he can go back to his life.
But first, he needs a weapon. His first thought is to grab one of the kitchen knives, but they generally don’t hold up to well in a fight. He also doesn’t want to ruin the Warrens’ nice cutlery.
He’s heading back up to his room when the obvious answer strikes him.
Brady.
He’s standing outside the door to Brady’s suite.
It’s his best bet. He’s got two options: steal the knife somehow and hope Brady doesn’t miss it or try and convince him to let Sam borrow it.
He has no idea what he’d say to explain why he suddenly needs a switchblade.
So pickpocketing it is.
The group orders pizza. Someone had made a booze run, so their makeshift bar is freshly restocked, and they don’t wait for an invitation. It’s only March, so the sun doesn’t set particularly late, but Sam has some time to kill before he assumes the ahuizotl will be hunting.
Sam’s a halfway decent pickpocket, but he wants to wait as long as possible, hoping that his roommate might get drunk enough that he won’t notice. Brady’s certainly giving it his all.
And he isn’t alone. The group had bonded pretty well in the past few days and were clearly intent on getting rowdy that night. They set up a table for beer pong and another one for flip cup, which taps the keg early, so the group moves onto the liquor. Sam missed when Becky raided the houses’ wine cellar-which wasn’t an actual cellar, but more of a wine closet off the kitchen, but still. A wine cellar. Jess was right about this house. Not that Jess seems to mind the existence of a wine cellar as she’s currently getting blitzed on chardonnay.
Sam makes himself some virgin drinks as camouflage and plays along with the crowd.
The last rays of sunlight have just vanished and Sam’s trying to figure out how to make his escape when it all goes to hell.
Predictably, it’s Brady’s fault.
Sam’s roommate climbs onto the abandoned beer pong table and screams “skinny dipping!”
A few roll their eyes, but plenty seem into the idea. Brady starts stripping off his clothes while still standing on the table.
“Get off, Brady!” Zach yells, throwing a hand in front of his face theatrically.
“Oh, I’m trying to, Warren!”
Most of the girls strip down only to their underwear, but they start running through the short yard and down the boardwalk. Brady, fully nude, gives chase.
Well, at least that solves one problem.
Sam rifles through the pockets of Brady’s abandoned shorts and finds the switchblade. He pockets it before taking off after the group. By the time he makes it down to the shore people are already running into the pounding waves. The tide is low and there’s an eternity of sandy beach revealed.
Fuck.
Angela is standing on the berm at the edge of the beach, rubbing her upper arms nervously.
“You okay?” Sam asks, still keeping an eye on the group crashing around the surf.
“I don’t think we should be out here. What with the murders, you know?”
She’s probably afraid of a serial killer and not a Mesoamerican monster, but Sam can work with that. “I think you’re right. I’m going to try and get them back to the house.”
She nods.
Sam heads down the beach. He counted seven people when they first left the house and he still counts that many heads splashing around in the surf. He can see Jess’s blonde curls.
He doesn’t really want to draw attention to himself, since he was hoping to slip away to take care of the monster himself. And after more than a year at college-and several months of dealing with Brady-he’s also more than familiar with the process of wrangling drunk friends, which requires a little reverse psychology. Telling them to get out of the water is likely to do more harm than good.
There’s also the small matter of not being entirely sure how to track a creature that spends most of its time underwater.
He’s not using his friends as bait.
He’s not.
Fortunately the group tires themselves out quickly and begins to retreat back to the house. Jess and Brady are some of the last to stagger up the wide expanse of beach.
“C’mon Jess, looks like your boyfriend is being a little bitch,” Brady says to her in a stage whisper that’s closer to a shout.
“Sa-am,” Jess whines theatrically as she stumbles a little. She’s drunker than Sam thought.
Sam tries for a grin, hoping to deflect any attention.
“Come on, guys,” Angela says nervously, casting hesitant looks up and down the beach. Sam’s not entirely sure what she’s afraid of-the beach and backshore are both flat, with only a few sparse palm trees to break up the view. There’s little chance that any attacker would be able to sneak up on them-at least on land.
Of course, Angela probably hasn’t analyzed the terrain with a tactical eye because that’s not a thing normal college students do. Sam’s torn between envy and annoyance. Sometimes he wonders if he’ll eventually be like them, oblivious to the world around them. He wonders if that’s even possible or if he’ll always have John Winchester’s lessons carved into his psyche.
Nights like this, he’s not sure which he’d prefer.
Sam is leading Jess up the beach with a hand at the small of her back, pressed up against her wet t-shirt, when he hears it.
A sharp, high wail. It sounds like a child, a baby.
Jess and Brady turn towards the ocean.
“What was that?” Jess asks.
“It’s nothing,” Sam replies, but he’s cut off from saying more by another piercing cry. It’s the kind of scream that pings a person’s lizard brain, an alarm that says that Something is Wrong.
Jess tears her arm out of Brady’s grip, dodges Sam’s reach, and heads back towards the sound. Back towards the water.
“What’s going on, what is that?” Angela asks.
“It’s okay,” Sam says, sparing a moment to reassure her before chasing after Jess.
Jess is standing ankle-deep in the surf, staring out into the night. Her water-dark hair is plastered to her back.
Sam’s only feet away when a larger wave crests, surging up and over her knees and that’s when he sees it. A dark shape, solid where the ocean is fluid.
Jess’ legs go out from under her as she’s pulled forward, disappearing beneath the waves with only a gasp.
“Jess!” Sam screams, diving forward.
He reaches out and his hands close in on something solid, clothes. He drags himself forward, hooks his arms around Jess’s body. They’re both being pulled forward by whatever has a hold of Jess, deeper into the water. Sam drags his feet along the sandy ocean floor, trying to slow them down.
He kicks at the monster blindly. After a few swipes he connects with something furry, but the drag of the water killed all the momentum and it’s more of a nudge than a kick. But he knows where it is now, so he pulls a leg up and drives it down hard.
There’s a jerk as it lets go and Sam kicks against the floor, striving for the surface. They break into the warm air an instant later, Sam holding Jess up against him. She gasps and flails, elbow catching Sam’s cheek, but he manages to keep hold of her as his head spins. He manages to catch sight of the shore, the bright lights of the beach houses, and propels them in that direction. They hadn’t been pulled that deep and manage to get their feet under them quickly, staggering out of the surf.
Brady and Angela are there instantly, arms around them, helping them up to the shore.
“Get her back to the house,” Sam tells them, disentangling himself from Jess’ long limbs. She’s dazed and out of it. Sam’s not sure if she hit her head or the alcohol has caught up with her or what.
“What was that?” Angela asks, bordering on hysteria.
“Just get back to the house,” Sam says wearily. His brief underwater battle tired him out and he’s ready to end this.
Angela looks ready to argue, but Brady moves forward and she’s pulled along, helping Jess across the sand.
Sam reaches into the pockets of his now soaked shorts and is relieved to find Brady’s knife still there. He pulls it out, flicks it open. He watches the silhouettes of Jess and Brady and Angela disappear up the boardwalk and takes a deep breath.
Before he can move a wave crashes over his feet and something has a hold of his ankle and it pulls.
Sam falls forward, twisting so he doesn’t land on the knife. The monster pulls him back out with the wave.
The grip on his ankle is tight and unforgiving, but it gives him a point of reference in the pitch black water. He scrunches up his body and grabs for the beast’s body, catches hold of fur. He can feel as it stops pulling and then something connects with his ribs, a foot or something, and he loses half his stored air to the gasp it knocks out of him.
He brings the knife up and plunges it into the creature’s body, near where his other hand still has a grip in its fur. The ahuizotl screeches, the sound low and distorted through the water, but it hasn’t given up its grip on Sam’s ankle and his lungs are burning. He needs air soon.
He takes another blow to the chest as he withdraws the knife and stabs it in again. The monster is thrashing. It releases hold on his ankle and he kicks at the sandy ocean floor but the water is churning with limbs and something connects sharply with his temple-
Now
Sam wakes face down in the sand.
The tide is coming in.
He collects Brady’s knife and stands. His ribs ache.
There’s a trail of blood in the sand.
If it bleeds, you can kill it.
The footprints look like those of human hands, with long fingers.
He expects them to veer off into the surf, escaping deep into the ocean where he can’t follow. But instead they trail blood along the berm at the edge of the beach.
When they eventually turn deeper into the scrub brush of the backshore Sam follows slowly. His head is clearing. He listens carefully for any sign of the ahuizotl.
He finds it in a low depression, under a sparse bush.
Sam approaches cautiously. The beast sees him coming and raises its head in a growl before flopping back down.
It’s lying on its side, gasping harshly. The sand beneath it is thick with blood.
What few illustrations existed of the ahuizotl were inexpertly done, conveying little more than that it had four legs and fur. In real life it looks like a dog with a pointier, almost possum-like face. Its fur stands up in tufts and is pitch black, making it hard to see the blood it’s shedding. Each of its paws are black, but with long fingers, similar to raccoon paws, but larger. Another ‘hand’ is present at the end of its long tail, which flops weakly against the ground. It smells like wet dog.
It whimpers as he approaches and his stomach turns.
He reminds himself that this creature has killed at least three people. That it tried to kill Jess. That it tried to kill him.
But it’s just an animal. It’s not a vengeful spirit or a werewolf or a demon. It’s not evil.
Beneath the ahuizotl’s wheezing death rattle is another sound, a softer whimper.
Sam drops to his knees beside the creature. There’s movement against the blood-stained sand, between the monster’s legs.
It had babies.
The puppies are small, their eyes still shut. There are two of them. Their fur is several shades lighter than their mother, but they’re both stained dark with her blood.
It might suggest something about the ahuizotl, about why the information about it is so sparse. About why it probably doesn’t hunt humans normally and therefore doesn’t make it onto the radar of hunters.
Sam wipes the back of a hand across his face, feels grains of sand from them stick to his damp cheeks.
This is hunting.
There was a moment, having saved Jess from a monster, where he’d remembered the adrenaline, the satisfaction of saving lives.
But now he remembers the rest.
He grips Brady’s knife tight and does what the job requires.
It’s a relatively short trek back to where he stashed the salt and lighter fluid and matches. He digs a small pit halfway up the beach and deposits the ahuizotl corpses in it. Stacks dry scrub grasses on top. They burn quickly, the way that so many supernatural creatures do. Sam sits beside the pit as the tide rushes in and fills it. The water churns away the ashes.
By the time he returns up the boardwalk the sun is threatening to rise and the house is quiet and dark. Steam rises softly off the heated pool into the cooler night air as he makes his way past.
“Sam.”
He startles. Angela is sitting in one of the large wicker couches. She has a beach wrap pulled around her shoulders.
“Is it…” she trails off. “Did you get it?”
He pauses before nodding.
“What was it?”
He strains for some sort of ‘normal’ explanation. Something that would allow Angela to keep her innocence.
She must see some of the hesitation in his face because she speaks up before he has a chance. “Don’t try to say it was nothing or, or, or a shark or something. There was something in the water. Something grabbed Jess.”
“There was,” he admits.
“You knew,” she says. “You knew it would be out there.”
He shrugs.
“How?”
He’s only just met Angela a few days ago, so she likely doesn’t know much about Sam. Doesn’t know about that he doesn’t go home for break. He’s been so successful at deflecting questions about his past or his family that his friends don’t ask anymore. She thought he was just a normal guy, if maybe a little weird.
“My dad taught me,” he says, as simply as he can.
She clearly wants to ask more, but just as clearly is afraid of getting an answer. “It’s gone?”
“It’s dead,” Sam says.
She nods and stands, heading back into the house. Sam holds the door open for her. He replaces the salt in the Warren’s pantry.
Jess is passed out in the massive king bed, snoring softly. Sam changes, brushing sand from his body, before climbing under the covers. The house is air conditioned enough that the bed has a thick comforter on top of the sheets.
Sam tries to tell himself that the heavy weight is comforting, not restricting. Tells himself that he’s safe here, in this massive house with a thousand windows and not a single one of them with salt across the sill.
Jess wakes with the hangover from hell and no memory past running down to the beach that night. Sam figures that’s a good thing. He doesn’t want Jess to know about monsters, doesn’t want her to live scared.
Sam gives Brady back his knife, makes up a story about finding it on the back patio after the skinny dipping adventure.
The vacation lasts another three days. No more bodies are found.
Angela avoids Sam like he has the plague. It’s noticeable enough that Becky tries to apologize for her, but Sam waves her off.
It never felt real, that Sam could escape hunting. Before he’d left he pictured Dean dragging him back for hunts at summer vacation. He wasn’t really looking forward to it, but not all hunts were horrible and if it meant keeping his family in his life he was willing to put in the work.
Of course, that all changed when John found out about Sam’s plan.
When he’d salted and burned the body a few days ago it had been hard, tiring, gross work, but he’d felt accomplished. He was saving people.
Killing the ahuizotl didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like a win. It felt like finding the monster and having it turn out to be Amy, the girl he was crushing on.
On their last day Zach drives them to catch an early plane back down in Savannah. The Range Rover is full: Sam and Jess, Luis and his girlfriend, Zach and Brady up front, and Angela wedged into the back. She’s still giving Sam the cold shoulder. He doesn’t blame her.
They’re on the highway off the island, a tall narrow bridge over the swampy marshes and rivers that separate Hilton Head from the mainland. Sam’s dozing, head against the glass, when he hears it. It’s a throaty rumble that’s more familiar to him than his own heartbeat.
He turns and thinks he catches a glimpse of shining black and chrome as it disappears over the other side of the bridge they just crested. His heart hammers in his throat.
“Sam?”
Jess looks concerned. For good reason, given that Sam’s just bolted upright for no apparent reason. She’s glancing over at him, her blonde curls catching the early morning light.
He settles back into the leather seat, in the car taking him to the airport, back to Stanford. Back to his life.
“I’m fine,” he says, smiling. “I’m great.”
Recipient: madebyme_x
Rating: PG-13
Word Count or Media: 10k
Warnings: Canon-typical violence
Author's Notes: The prompt was about Sam finding a hunt he couldn't ignore during the Stanford Era and I love me some Stanford Sam.
Summary: Sam just wants to be a normal college student and normal college students go on spring break.
Of course, that’s when bodies begin washing up on the beach.
Now
Sam wakes face down in the sand.
It’s dark, but the moon illuminates the beach as it stretches away from where he lies prone.
The quiet whisper of the surf grows into a roar as the water tumbles over his legs, surges all the way up to his chest.
The tide is coming in.
He drags his hands in and levers himself up. His chest twinges with the movement. The side of his face aches. Sand and salt sting in raw, open nail beds.
His head is fuzzy, but instinct and training take over. He must be on a hunt. He needs to get up, get moving, stop the monster.
Sam coughs wetly, throat raw.
As he pushes himself into a sitting position his hand catches on something hard and sharp. There’s just enough light to make out the knife lying in the sand. He grabs it up. It’s familiar.
It’s Brady’s.
A memory comes back. Jessica. She had been out here. And so was a monster.
It's enough to give him the energy to stumble to his feet, left arm clutched tight around his battered ribs.
There’s a dark stain on the sand. Blood, a trail of it.
If it bleeds, you can kill it.
Strange footprints in the sand. As he follows the memories return in fits and starts.
Spring break really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Several Days Earlier
Zach pulls into the brick driveway and Jess digs an elbow into Sam’s ribs. When he turns she gives him the incredulous look that he’s been studiously keeping off his own face. He grins in return, glad to not be the only one stupefied by casual wealth of the Warrens. Zach and Becky had reassured everyone that their parents wouldn’t be around at their Hilton Head vacation home because they “live in Paris half the year”, so they’d have the place all to themselves. When Sam had admitted that he couldn’t swing a plane ticket, the siblings had paid out of pocket for his flight into Savannah without batting an eye.
Sam’s still losing out on the potential income he could be earning at the coffee shop, but Brady had made a compelling case that spring break was an essential college experience that Sam shouldn’t miss out on.
Also, you know. Jess was going.
They all pile out of the Range Rover. Brady had grabbed shotgun when Zach picked them up from Savannah. Of course, behind everyone’s backs he’d given Sam a knowing grin with a look towards Jess. Ever since this past Fall Break Brady had become increasingly more obvious. Sam wanted to be annoyed, but chatting with Jess on the ride over about her family’s previous vacations to the South had been worth the lack of leg room.
“I can’t believe that’s all you brought,” Jessica says as Sam grabs his duffel from the back of the truck. She has an oversized purse slung over one shoulder as she grabs for her massive roller suitcase. Sam waves her aside and grabs the handle, lifting it down for her.
She gives him a brilliant smile and wheels off towards the house, just in time to reveal Brady giving him another exaggerated grin. Sam rolls his eyes and follows Jess and Zach up the steps to the front door.
It’s a relief to step into the air-conditioned interior, out of the humid morning air of South Carolina. The foyer rises up the full two stories, disrupted up by an archway into the living room straight ahead. The wainscoting and trim are all rich, dark woods.
“Okay, so, I can show you guys to your rooms and you can drop your stuff off,” Zach says.
He leads them off to the right and back the way they came. Sam’s been in a lot of houses, but his experience with mansions tend to be of the old, haunted Victorian kind. This one is odd in that it seems designed to be long and narrow. The neighbors houses are crowded close, maximizing the number of properties with access to the beach. At the far end of the house is a wide staircase that turns back on itself.
“That’s the elevator,” Zach says, pointing to a wooden door. “In case any of your drunk asses can’t make it up the stairs.”
‘Elevator,’ Jess mouths at him, eyes wide.
Sam grins back and grabs Jess’ suitcase to carry it up the stairs. Brady is shunted off to a side room, and they make their way across the second floor all the way back until Zach directs them over a walkway atop the wooden arch over the foyer. He points them into a set of bedrooms with an en-suite.
“You two are good sharing, right?”
“Better than with Brady,” Jess says with a laugh, rolling her suitcase into a corner.
“I think everyone else is already swimming in the pool, so I’ll leave you to get changed.”
“This place is crazy,” Jess says, once Zach’s wandered off.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees as he digs through his duffel. “Doesn’t seem real.”
“Listen,” Jess says with mock seriousness, hands on her hips. “Don’t get too enamored with all this.”
“Oh yeah?” Sam asks. “Why’s that?”
“Well, I know you have plans to be a big, rich lawyer with his own fancy vacation homes.”
“I don’t know about all that.”
“Good,” Jess says. “Because I want you to know that when the revolution comes, I’m siding with the proletariat.”
It surprises a bark of laughter out of Sam.
“I mean it! I will let the angry mob straight in, pitchforks and torches and all.”
“Noted.” Sam grabs his swim trunks out of his bag before pausing. “Uh, I’ll just go in here and change,” he says, gesturing to the bathroom.
They’ve gone on a couple of dates and fooled around a bit, but it’s still a little early to be sharing a room-sharing a bed. Sam had thought that a lifetime of living in cramped motel rooms and shabby one-room apartments would have left him without any body consciousness, but he finds himself oddly shy around Jess.
When he gets back out of the bathroom Jess has also changed into her swimsuit, a bikini. His face heats and he ducks his head as he shoves his clothes into his duffel. Jess laughs at him and grabs his arm. “C’mon, Sam!”
The house has an inground pool and hot tub and next to it a patio filled with wicker couches and plastic furniture. Sam knows some of the people-Brady, of course, and Zach’s sister Becky, and Luis and his girlfriend-but others are friends of Zach’s or Becky’s that he doesn’t recognize. There’s a table near the door that’s covered with bottles of liquor of all kinds along with a wide selection of mixers and next to it a keg is chilling in a bucket of ice.
Jess is drawn away into a gaggle of girls and Sam has an awkward moment with no direction before he spots Brady at the makeshift bar, helping himself.
“Hey,” Sam says as he approaches, somewhat cautiously. Brady has been volatile for a few months. He dropped out of pre-med and is doing some sort of business major now.
“Sammy!” Brady says, rounding on him. Sam suppresses the urge to correct him, to tell him that it’s ‘Sam’, because lately that’s more likely to egg Brady on. “What do you want me to make you?”
“I’m good.”
“Nonsense,” Brady says. “It’s still morning. Ish. How about a Bloody Mary?”
“No thanks.”
“Wait, no, I have just the thing,” Brady says, turning back to the table and grabbing several different bottles of liquor. Sam rolls his eyes as he waits. He’s learned to pick his battles.
“Here you are!” Brady says as he garnishes the red plastic solo cup with an orange slice. “The perfect drink for a beach vacation: a zombie.”
Sam frowns, but takes a sip. It’s sweet, fruity, and heavy on the rum. He’d been relieved at the end of freshman year when Brady had suggested they room together again for sophomore year. They got along well and the pre-med student had been a great study partner. But ever since Fall Break he’s been different. Sam’s tried to help, but he doesn’t know what he can do. It’s putting him on edge, like living with a time bomb. For someone who has no idea about Sam’s family or history, he also has an uncanny knack for pushing all of Sam’s buttons.
Sam wanders away, over to the seats next to the pool, where Becky is sitting.
“Sam!” she says, hopping up to give him a hug.
“Little Becky,” he laughs.
“Oh, shove it.”
“So what’s new?” he asks, taking a seat in one of the loungers.
“Ugh, Angela is just being morbid,” Becky says, shooting a look at the brunette on her other side.
“Hi Angela, I’m Sam.” They shake hands.
Angela smiles politely. “I was just telling Becky about the body they found.”
Old instincts take over. “The body?”
“It was a drowning,” Becky says. “Body washed up on shore a couple days ago. It’s sad, but it happens.”
“Yeah, but how do you explain all the other stuff?” Angela snaps.
“Other stuff?” Sam queries.
Angela turns to him, clearly happy to have someone share her interest. “The body was all bruised up. And, get this: it was missing its eyes and teeth and nails. Creepy, right?”
Sam nods absently. “Yeah.” He’s running through monsters in his head, but can’t think of anything that matches that M.O. Missing hearts, sure. But missing eyes and teeth? That’s weird.
“You’re gross,” Becky tells Angela.
“Actually, it’s not that unusual,” Sam says, thinking back to lessons from John. “After death a lot of animals will eat the softer tissues, like eyes. Of course, that doesn’t explain the teeth.”
He looks up to find matched horrified and disgusted looks on both girls faces. It appears there was a limit to Angela’s morbid curiosity. He ducks his head as his face heats. He makes a dumb excuse before excusing himself.
Stupid, Winchester. What’s next, was he going to talk about digging up graves? This wasn’t the first time it had happened, not the first time he’d said something he considered innocuous only to realize that it marked him out as weird. It was especially bad the first few months. He’s better now, after a year and a half of living like a normal person, better at pretending to be one of them. It’s getting more natural, fitting in. But then something like this happens and he’s back to feeling like he’ll never escape.
Except he will. Because he was right, bodies missing their eyes or fingernails aren’t that out of the norm. And even if it was, it’s someone else’s problem. Sam is a college student on spring break. He’s not a hunter.
Not anymore.
He knocks back his drink and goes to find Jessica.
About half of the group eventually migrates their way down the private boardwalk to the beach. The house is on the side of the island that looks out over open ocean. They walk along the wide strip of sand at low tide, weaving from pushing each other into the surf to kicking sand at each other. The girls stop to pick up seashells for souvenirs. Most of the group have plastic water bottles filled with conspicuously colorful mixed drinks.
Sam is walking next to Jessica, who is complaining alternately about her course load next quarter and her exams from last term. Sam is trying to commiserate, but he has a hard time dredging up the same casual annoyance at his studies that his peers feel. He’s got a good sense of perspective. It could be worse.
“Heads up!”
Sam glances up in time to catch the football sailing at his head. He tosses it back to Luis, who’s been trading passes with Brady. How Brady has that much hand-eye coordination given the alcohol he’s downed is anyone’s guess.
“I took that poli sci class,” Sam tells Jess. “I could give you my notes.”
“That’d be awesome,” Jess says. “Your notes-”
A woman’s scream rends the air.
Sam steps forward, pushing Jess slightly behind him as he scans the beach. Adrenaline tingles down his arms and legs and he instinctively loosens his stance for the fight.
But the only thing he sees are a couple of the girls staring at something on the sand near the surf. Jess pushes past him and Sam gives chase.
It turns out one of the girls is Angela, and she’s hugging a sobbing girl to her. Sam meets Angela’s eyes briefly-her tanned face is pale with horror-before moving past them.
It’s a body.
“Anyone have a phone?” he asks. Sam’s is back at the house with the rest of his stuff.
Heads shake all around. “I’ll go flag someone down,” Luis says before heading inland.
Most of the group is hanging back. Jess is rubbing her hand up and down the crying girl’s back and avoiding the scene, her mouth set in a grim line.
“That’s messed up.”
Sam looks to find Brady standing on the other side of the corpse. Brady is staring down at the body dispassionately. For a moment Sam wants to yell at him, question his callousness, until he remembers that Brady had been pre-med, at least for a while. He used to volunteer in hospitals, trying to beef up his resume for med school. He’s probably seen bodies.
Sam looks back at the body. It’s female, dressed in running shorts and a tank top. The skin of her legs and arms is mottled with bruises, darker purple against the blue tint of her skin. The gaping holes where her eyes should be stare straight into the sky.
Crouching down, Sam looks at one of her out flung arms. Her hand is curled in and he can see that most of her fingernails are missing, the nailbeds raw and bloody. There are scrapes along her fingers and knuckles, small ones. Her mouth is almost completely closed and he doesn’t want to touch the body, so he can’t be sure, but he’d be willing to bet that she was missing some teeth as well.
“So, what do you think?” Brady asks.
Sam looks up to find his friend staring right at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s weird, right?”
“It’s a dead body,” Sam deadpans. “Yeah, that’s weird.”
Brady gives him an indecipherable look, but Sam ignores it in favor of glancing over the body for any other clues. He doesn’t want to touch or move her, but this is going to be Sam’s best chance at getting a look at any of the bodies. His experiences with dead bodies have been pretty fleeting in the past; usually a quick glance at a desiccated corpse before they got salted and burned. Or freshly dead in the course of a hunt. Sam’s never had to study one; his dad was the one who conned his way into morgues.
But now Sam needs to make sure he doesn’t miss any clues. Because this is a hunt. Sam knows it.
For as grisly as the eyeless body is, there isn’t any obvious outward cause of death. Lots of contusions and abrasions, no lacerations. Probably drowning, but he’ll have to wait for the medical examiner’s report, if he can get his hands on it.
The police eventually arrive and ask them a few questions. Sam uses the opportunity to play concerned tourist and ask about the previous body. Luckily the young cop is a bit of a gossip. He spills to Sam that the other body had been found about a mile farther north on the beach. Other than apparent cause of death, the two victims don’t seem to share much in common. This woman was young and white, the first body was an older black male. She worked part time as a yoga instructor on the island, the man was a wealthy tourist.
It’s only midafternoon, but the group has sobered up. They head back along the beach much more directly, a more subdued group.
Sam considers his options. He still remembers John’s cell phone number, the ten digits burned into his brain. He could call his dad, try to pass the hunt along. But John and him didn’t exactly leave things on the best terms.
He could call one of their other contacts. He has the numbers for Bobby and Pastor Jim. But both of them are nearly a full day away. And if Sam’s honest with himself, he doesn’t trust them not to report back to John. Or Dean. He has a new life. He likes his new life. He doesn’t want to mix the two.
Even if that means he has to do the hunt himself.
Well, it makes sense in his head.
Sam takes Zach aside as they reach the house. “Hey, can I borrow a car?”
Zach gives him a confused look.
“I swear I’m sober,” Sam says with the most reassuring smile he can manage, the kind that has calmed nervous motel managers and suspicious teachers across the lower forty-eight.
“Where are you going?”
“I just wanted to pick something up,” Sam says. “For Jess.”
Whatever Zach reads into that gives him a grin to match Brady. The Warrens are generous, Becky and Zach almost incautiously so. Zach shows him to the three car garage, each section of which has a different luxury car waiting. He gives Sam the keys to a BMW. He's not sure what it says that Zach doesn't trust him with the Porsche.
Sam’s driven the Impala a couple dozen times, long enough to get a legitimate driver’s license. He’s driven a couple of stolen cars when things got really bad. But he’s never driven a car this nice.
Dean would kill him for saying that.
He pushes that thought away. Hard.
The police officer had told Sam that the public library was near the mall, on the other end of the island. The acceleration is smooth, the car quiet in a way that the Impala never was.
Sam finds the library and it’s fortunately still open, though only for another couple of hours. Beautiful weekday like today, it’s pretty dead inside. Sam commandeers the microfiche reader and skims through as many articles as he can. The librarian who helps get him started mentions that if he can’t find what he’s looking for there’s also a private library on the island dedicated to historical information about the Low Country. Sam thanks her for her help, insists what she’s given him is more than enough. Inwardly he scoffs. A private library. Typical.
He begins to skim the archived papers. Hilton Head is a small community and well-off. There’s not a lot of crime so any strange deaths end up front page news.
There is the occasional death of a prominent member of the community that rises to the front page. Most of them are from natural causes. There are a couple more mundane murders: gun violence, crimes of passion, all the usual. There are some drownings that Sam makes note of. The articles don’t mention missing eyes or teeth or nails, but that’s probably too gory for the Beaufort Gazette. None of the drownings are temporally clustered like the ones this week. Any one of them could’ve given birth to a vengeful spirit, but they’re all thought to be accidental, not the stereotypical violent end.
He makes it as far back as 1989 when he hits paydirt.
Stephanie Olson, 19, was tagging along on her father’s business trip and staying at the Westin Resort. She left the hotel in the early hours of March 30, 1989 and disappeared. She was found later that morning on the beach, beaten to death. No mention of eyes or teeth or nails, but it matches the bruising and being found on the beach. When he checks up on her name in the computerized archives he finds that the murder is still unsolved. Plenty of vengeful ghost material.
After that it’s relatively easy to call around and make up a sob story about being a distant relative and wanting to visit her grave. The articles had said she was a Georgia resident, and as it turns out she’s buried outside Savannah, maybe only an hour drive.
The library is closing down.
Sam should head back. The group is grilling out tonight. The two deaths so far have come a couple days apart, so there’s no rush, but Sam just wants this over with.
He calls Zach and makes an excuse about getting a call from an old family friend in Savannah. Zach seems confused, but Sam talks over him, the old Winchester bluster rolling off his tongue. You just keep talking and people often cave under the weight of all the words. It's easy with Zach. He knows Sam, trusts him.
Sam tries not to think about how he's betraying that trust.
He stops at the first hardware store he passes, just off the island. Drops more cash than he’s comfortable with on a shovel, lighter fluid, some road salt. He wouldn’t say no to a weapon of some kind, but they’re pricey and hunting is risky enough without compounding it by stealing.
Sam drives into the sunset and across the South Carolina/Georgia border. He parks several blocks away from the cemetery just as the sun is setting, makes sure it’s a legal parking spot. He doesn’t want to deal with getting the Warrens’ car towed.
The cemetery is surrounded by only a standard chain link fence. He throws over his supplies and clambers up in a couple quick steps.
It’s a newer cemetery and Sam already has the grave location. It only takes a few moments to get himself oriented. Sam knows graveyards like other people his age might know malls.
Digging is slow. Sam’s bigger and stronger than the last time he helped dig a grave, but last time he had help.
For a moment he considers whether he could’ve asked for help with this one. This hunt has been pretty open and shut, so he hasn’t been tempted. But here with nothing but the dirt crunching under his shovel he has plenty of time to think. He could have called John. He would have probably picked, he always picked up his phone, but would he have listened to what Sam has to say? In the battle between hunting evil and listening to his son, Sam’s not entirely sure where John would land.
Hours pass. The night is cooler, but not by much. Sam’s long since shed his flannel and is down to just his undershirt, but he regrets wearing jeans instead of the khaki shorts he packed. Better for scaling fences, less optimal for hours of heavy labor.
It’s just past three in the morning when his shovel thunks against coffin. He tosses out the last few shovelfuls of dirt and uses the edge of the shovel to pry open the coffin lid. Stephanie’s corpse is old, decayed. Sam averts his eyes, senses on high alert. This is usually the part when the ghost shows up to throw him into a headstone-though in this part of the cemetery most of the markers are flat plaques and flush with the ground.
He climbs back out of the hole and douses the corpse liberally with salt. No point in conserving it, he’s probably going to have to toss the rest of it anyway. No good way to explain why he’s carrying around road salt in South Carolina in March. He only holds back a bit, for self-protection.
The lighter fluid is next. That he saves some of-the party might be able to use it for a bonfire.
He strikes up a match, lets it burn down for a second so it doesn’t flame out, and tosses it down.
The heat rises up, dry in contrast to the muggy Georgia night. He steps back, already dripping with sweat, running in rivulets that make tracks through the dirt caked onto his forearms.
When the fire burns down he pushes dirt back into the hole as quickly as he can. By the time the ground is mostly leveled out the sky to the east is fading into a light gray. He hops the fence again and is back on the road, squinting against the glare as he again heads into the sun.
He stops at a gas station and rinses all the visible dirt from his arms and face, but still feels grimy. It’s early by the time he pulls back into the driveway. He hasn’t even been on vacation for 24 hours and he’s running on fumes.
The house is quiet when he enters. He imagines they won’t be getting up particularly early.
Which is why he’s surprised when he opens the door to his shared bedroom with Jess and finds her standing in front of the dresser mirror, pulling her hair into a ponytail. She’s plenty surprised, too.
“Sam!”
“Uh. Hi.”
“Where the hell were you?”
Sam isn’t sure if she’s mad or concerned. Possibly both. “Uh, a friend of the family called me. He lives in Savannah.”
“So you just took off?”
Sam reaches for the standard Winchester claptrap and finds… nothing. He doesn’t want to lie like this to her. He looks down at his feet. His sneakers are still coated in a layer of grave dirt.
Jess sighs. “A family friend?”
“Yeah.” He glances up.
“You never talk about your family.”
“Right. I know. I’m sorry.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s fine, Sam." In a tone that says how not fine it was. She sighs heavily. "I know there are things you’re not telling me. But I was worried. You could’ve called.”
He doesn’t really know how to answer to that. The silence between them stretches out in the dawn light. The windows in their room look out east over the ocean, but the sun is rising somewhere out if sight to the south.
Jess sighs again. “Becky set up a beach yoga session. Do you want to come?”
Honestly, Sam wants to take a shower and collapse into bed for the next fourteen hours. But he didn’t come on vacation to sleep and he can’t say no to the hopeful smile on Jessica’s face. Besides, he’s pretty used to long nights and little sleep, even before he went to college, so he nods and goes to change into his running gear.
Downstairs Becky has decided to become Sam’s personal hero by brewing up a large pot of strong, good coffee. The rest of the group-mostly female-seem to be drinking it to stave off their hangovers. The yoga instructor shows up a couple minutes later and she’s brought a big carafe of some sort of green health juice. Some of the girls side eye it a bit, but Sam gives it a shot and it’s actually pretty good. If Dean saw him drinking it he’d never hear the end of it.
He must be more tired than he thought.
They chat for another few minutes and then make their way back down the narrow wooden boardwalk to the beach. They’ve brought beach towels in place of yoga mats-the house has a ready supply of them. The tide is high, but there’s just enough clear beach to spread the towels out next to each other with some leftover room for the instructor to walk along the receding surf.
The group is still half hungover and sleep deprived, so it’s not the most rigorous workout. Sam’s thankful; his shoulders and arms are still tight from moving all that dirt. Half of the girls can’t even hold downward-facing dog pose for more than a few seconds without collapsing into giggles.
Sam stakes out a spot on the end, next to Jess, and he mostly ignores their antics, focusing instead on the calm pulse of the waves. The sun is still low, so it’s not hot, but it’s muggy and he’s instantly covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
Twenty minutes in the instructor has them pair up to do partner yoga poses. The laughter increases as the girls try to balance while propped up against each other.
Sam tries to wave Jess off.
“C’mon, you can’t leave me stuck with these short people, Sam!”
The girl on the other side of Jess, who probably tops out at 5’ 2”, laughs and gives her the finger. “We can’t all be Amazons.”
“See, Sam? You’re my only hope.”
The instructor pulls Becky to the front of the group to demonstrate poses with her. They start simple, pressed back to back. Sam glances over his shoulder. “Sorry about all the sweat.” With her back pressed up against his he can feel himself soaking through his shirt.
“Oh, yeah, because I’m really smelling like roses right now.”
He smiles.
Sam’s not the horn dog his brother is, but there’s something strangely intimate about the simple poses, even if the only point of contact are the soles of their feet pressed together as they grasp each other’s wrists. Sam counts himself fortunate that his face is probably already red with exertion.
Afterwards a bunch of them run into the surf to cool off quick. Jess hangs back, only wading in knee high, until Sam manages to sneak up behind her and sweep her over his shoulder. He tosses her, shrieking with laughter, into the waves.
When she comes up sputtering he lets her push him over in retaliation. It’s only fair.
By the time they all make it back to the house the rest of the gang is awake. Luis is frying up pancakes. He offers Sam a stack, but Sam waves him off. He’s running on fumes at this point. He needs at least a couple hours of sleep.
He showers on autopilot, changes into the first thing that comes to hand, and falls into bed.
Sam wakes up to the distant sound of laughter. He squints his eyes open against the bright sunlight streaming in through the balcony doors. Now that he is listening he can hear the murmur of people talking, probably on the back patio.
The small clock radio on the nightstand says it’s almost one in the afternoon. More than enough sleep for a Winchester.
He sits up, runs an absent hand through his hair to smooth it down. After catching another burst of laughter he ambles over to the large French doors that lead to the balcony outside his room. He cracks them and immediately the damp heat leeches in. He steps out and up to the railing, looking out over the back patio, which is filled with people swimming and sitting around and drinking.
“Sam!” That’s Zach. “About time!”
“You’re one to talk,” Sam shoots back. He can’t count the number of times Zach’s stood up early study dates because he overslept.
Jess smiles up at him from the pool. “Get down here!”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
The pool feels sublime compared to the heat of the day. Sam swims a couple very short, quick laps. Jess is floating on an inflatable that looks like a donut in the deep end. When he paddles his way over she tries to dunk his head, so he feels justified when he upends her tube and dumps her into the water. Jess was on the swim team in high school and is actually a much better swimmer. Sam swam in a couple of high school gym classes and the occasional motel pool or Midwestern lake. He’d fallen into a river fully clothed, once. Sam swims like he fights, anything goes as long it works. Jess, on the other hand, swims like she’s part mermaid. She comes up sputtering and Sam makes a strategic retreat towards the shallow end, where he has the advantage, and she yells threats at him but doesn’t give chase.
They spend the afternoon lazing around. Occasionally small groups trek down the boardwalk to the beach. Jess brought a book and sets up shop on the beach for a while. Sam didn’t bring a book, hasn’t bought any novels since high school stopped forcing him to for English class. His textbooks are expensive enough. Sam doesn’t have a lot of spare cash and what he does have he tends to save for dates with Jess.
But there’s a decently well-stocked bookshelf in the house, so he pokes through it. It was clearly curated by Zach’s mom, is full of chick lit titles in pastel covers. Dotted here and there are outliers-a bunch of Bret Easton Ellis, Ayn Rand, and Hemingway. Sam selects one of the latter, A Farewell to Arms.
He stretches out next to Jess as she slathers on another layer of sunscreen. Sam’s always been lucky to tan instead of burn, unlike Dean, who tended up end up extra crispy in the beginning of summer every year.
“Fun beach read?” Jess teases after catching the cover on his book.
“You’ve got some sunscreen right here,” Sam says, rubbing his nose with his middle finger. She laughs. “Aren’t you a little old for those books?” he asks.
Jess is reading one of the Harry Potter books. Sam doesn’t know which one.
“They’re good,” she defends. “And this one is thick enough that I hopefully won’t finish it before we head back.”
Sam can’t argue with that.
That night the gang grills out again. Sam helps Zach at the grill, stays sober enough that all the chicken skewers get cooked sufficiently. Brady stumbles in halfway through dinner, still in his clothes from the previous day. He pours himself a pint glass of whiskey, drinks most of it, and disappears upstairs.
“I have no idea how his liver is still functioning,” Zach admits. Sam, being Brady’s roommate, is more than familiar with his friend’s burgeoning alcoholism. “What happened at Fall Break?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says, because it’s the truth. Zach left after Fall Quarter as a confident-but-hard-working pre-med student and came back from the week off changed. Most of their friends have chalked it up to stress, helped along by the fact that he changed majors.
He’s tried to help, but Brady hasn’t been interested in talking it out.
Brady had been his first friend at Stanford. Sam owes him a lot.
So he follows his roommate into the house and knocks cautiously on the door to Brady’s suite.
The door swings open an instant later.
“Sam!” Brady says, all smiles. For as much as he drank, he seems remarkably sober.
“Hey, Brady,” Sam says. “What’s up?”
“I was just gonna crash, dude. Been a long night,” he says with a grin so lecherous that even Dean would find it over-the-top.
“You were gone a long time,” Sam tries.
Brady rolls his eyes. “What, only Sam Winchester is allowed to vanish all night?”
It’s a valid point, but Sam doesn’t let it deter him. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. That you’re safe.”
“You asking if I used protection?” Brady asks with a smirk.
Sam pulls a face. “Dude. That’s your business, but nobody knew where you were. You were gone almost a full day. What if something happened?”
“I can take care of myself, Sam,” he drawls. “And if anyone tried anything?” He reaches into his pocket and before Sam can see what it is the blade flips outward. It’s a switchblade, good sized.
“Holy crap, where’d you get that?”
“Brought it in my checked bag,” Brady says, turning the blade side to side, before locking it back down.
A queasy feeling surges through Sam’s stomach. He’d always hid his weapons from Brady, but freshman year Sam broke his nose and Brady almost fainted at the sight of all the blood. Now he’s carrying a questionably legal knife?
“So, see?” Brady continues. “No reason to worry.” He retreats back into his room and slams the door shut.
Sam retreats back downstairs. He has no idea what to do for his friend. He wants to do something to help before Brady gets himself hurt. But he’s also starting to worry for himself. Brady’s his roommate. He’d assumed that they’d live together next year, but now he’s not so sure.
Sam tries to put it out of his mind. This is a vacation. He grabs a beer and Luis pulls him into a discussion about the next presidential election that fortunately doesn’t end with anyone screaming obscenities. Jess joins quickly, drawn as if with a sixth sense to any political discussion.
The party goes until the early hours of the morning, but Jess and Sam sneak away just before midnight.
There’s no beach yoga the next day, so Sam and Jess wake slowly and spend a lazy morning together before getting ready and heading downstairs just before lunch. Becky has planned lunch at a restaurant on the leeward side of the island before they take a Dolphin Nature Cruise.
Becky assures them all that the lunch is being covered by her parents, so Sam is able to appreciate the upscale restaurant without doing a panicked calculation of his bank account. He hasn’t had seafood too often, and certainly never from a place like this, so he doesn’t have much to compare to.
After taking his first bite of the lobster tail he leans over to Jess. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” She asks around a mouth of pasta.
“For my inevitable betrayal of the proletariat,” he replies solemnly and watches her choke on a laugh and a biscuit. “This is delicious.”
“That’s all it takes to betray the working class?” Jess chides.
“Apparently.”
About halfway through lunch Jess and Angela leave to find the bathroom and when they come back Jess’s face is grim, while Angela seems to be buzzing with excitement.
Sam’s about to ask what happened, but Angela beats him to the punch. “They found another body.”
Jess shoots her an affronted glare and one of the girls turns a little green.
Sam feels his stomach drop.
Angela sits down and leans forward eagerly. “Do you think it’s a serial killer or something?”
“A serial killer who pokes out eyes?” Brady scoffs.
“Oh my God, guys, stop it!” one of the girls says.
Sam leans across Jess towards Angela. “Did you hear where they found it?”
“By some Bed and Breakfast. Royal something.”
Something in that registers to Becky. “What? That’s right by the house.”
Sam gets what he can out of Angela and begs off of the cruise, citing an upset stomach. Becky gives him back the keys to the BMW they'd driven over in. Jess offers to stay behind with him, but he insists he's fine.
He finds his way to the private library he’d heard about. It’s run by the Mormon church, which makes sense. Mormons are very invested in genealogy and ancestry, which makes them useful resources on hunts. Sam’s still offended on a visceral level at the idea of a private library-he has to pay a $10 entrance fee to use the facilities-but he has to admit that it’s got much better resources than the public library farther north.
He’s found a tourist map of the island and marked off the approximate locations of the bodies. They’re in a descending line along the beach on the ocean-facing side of the island, starting at the island’s halfway point and trailing down towards the Warrens’ beach house.
This time he skips the newspapers and goes straight to EBSCOhost. If there’s one advantage to attending Stanford, it’s that it’s improved his research skills. He’s fluent in regular expressions.
The wide geographic variance is making him question his assumption that it was a vengeful spirit, so instead he starts by searching the commonalities: bodies with missing eyes, teeth, and fingernails. And after paging through some entries about serial killers, he finds something that works.
It’s a description of a creature from a 16th century ethnographic study of Mesoamerica by a Franciscan friar. The creature was called an “ahuizotl” in the native language and it’s described as vaguely dog shaped. Apparently the creatures grab unsuspecting victims and drown them while munching on their eyes and crunchy bits like the teeth and fingernails. Ahuizotl victims are often bruised as if they’ve been battered, but otherwise unblemished. It sometimes lures its victims to the water with a cry that mimics the sound of a baby or small child weeping.
It’s enough to convince Sam. Unfortunately, the good friar didn’t mention how to kill the damn thing. But if it’s corporeal Sam should be able to kill it with enough effort.
If it bleeds, you can kill it.
There’s another disturbing pattern emerging. There were three days between the first death and the second, but only two between the second and third. It’s too few data points to form a definitive pattern, but it means that there’s a chance the next murder might be tonight. And if the creature follows its current path, it’ll be attacking near the Warrens’ house next.
That’s as far as he gets before Becky calls him up and tells him they’re back from the cruise. He picks them up and everyone makes their way back to the beach house. Jess asks him if something is wrong when Sam’s quiet in the car, but he blames it on his stomach. In reality, he’s busy trying to figure out how to finish this hunt.
He needs supplies. A gun would be preferable, but he has no way to get one right now. He needs salt, which hopefully the Warrens have. He’s still got the lighter fluid from the salt and burn and another couple books of matches.
When they arrive back at the house Sam looks through the pantry, which is a room long enough that Sam could lie down inside it. He finds a large canister of salt, enough to salt a body, if not enough to put down any substantial salt lines. That’s fine. Even if he could be sure it’d work against the ahuizotl, this house has so many doors and windows that it’d be pointless to try. Not to mention the questions it’d lead to from his fellow spring breakers.
With as much forced casualness as he can, Sam carries his supplies out of the house, down towards the beach. Thankfully no one notices. He hides them under the boardwalk. From what he can gather, each of the victims has disappeared at night-the first from a beachfront party, the second a night jog, and the third was among another spring break group swimming at night.
So Sam still has a couple of hours to kill before he needs to be on the hunt.
Enough time for second thoughts.
He should really call for back-up. He’s never done a hunt solo before. Heck, even Dean didn’t hunt alone. John warned them against it-granted, he then did it anyway, but Dad’s always been a bit of the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ type.
He should at least let someone know what he’s found. Just in case.
He scrolls through the contact list in his phone, but he can’t make himself dial. He’s not exactly sure what’s stopping him. It just feels too much like going back and Sam can’t do anything but move forward. He has to. He just needs to get through this hunt and then it’ll be over and he can go back to his life.
But first, he needs a weapon. His first thought is to grab one of the kitchen knives, but they generally don’t hold up to well in a fight. He also doesn’t want to ruin the Warrens’ nice cutlery.
He’s heading back up to his room when the obvious answer strikes him.
Brady.
He’s standing outside the door to Brady’s suite.
It’s his best bet. He’s got two options: steal the knife somehow and hope Brady doesn’t miss it or try and convince him to let Sam borrow it.
He has no idea what he’d say to explain why he suddenly needs a switchblade.
So pickpocketing it is.
The group orders pizza. Someone had made a booze run, so their makeshift bar is freshly restocked, and they don’t wait for an invitation. It’s only March, so the sun doesn’t set particularly late, but Sam has some time to kill before he assumes the ahuizotl will be hunting.
Sam’s a halfway decent pickpocket, but he wants to wait as long as possible, hoping that his roommate might get drunk enough that he won’t notice. Brady’s certainly giving it his all.
And he isn’t alone. The group had bonded pretty well in the past few days and were clearly intent on getting rowdy that night. They set up a table for beer pong and another one for flip cup, which taps the keg early, so the group moves onto the liquor. Sam missed when Becky raided the houses’ wine cellar-which wasn’t an actual cellar, but more of a wine closet off the kitchen, but still. A wine cellar. Jess was right about this house. Not that Jess seems to mind the existence of a wine cellar as she’s currently getting blitzed on chardonnay.
Sam makes himself some virgin drinks as camouflage and plays along with the crowd.
The last rays of sunlight have just vanished and Sam’s trying to figure out how to make his escape when it all goes to hell.
Predictably, it’s Brady’s fault.
Sam’s roommate climbs onto the abandoned beer pong table and screams “skinny dipping!”
A few roll their eyes, but plenty seem into the idea. Brady starts stripping off his clothes while still standing on the table.
“Get off, Brady!” Zach yells, throwing a hand in front of his face theatrically.
“Oh, I’m trying to, Warren!”
Most of the girls strip down only to their underwear, but they start running through the short yard and down the boardwalk. Brady, fully nude, gives chase.
Well, at least that solves one problem.
Sam rifles through the pockets of Brady’s abandoned shorts and finds the switchblade. He pockets it before taking off after the group. By the time he makes it down to the shore people are already running into the pounding waves. The tide is low and there’s an eternity of sandy beach revealed.
Fuck.
Angela is standing on the berm at the edge of the beach, rubbing her upper arms nervously.
“You okay?” Sam asks, still keeping an eye on the group crashing around the surf.
“I don’t think we should be out here. What with the murders, you know?”
She’s probably afraid of a serial killer and not a Mesoamerican monster, but Sam can work with that. “I think you’re right. I’m going to try and get them back to the house.”
She nods.
Sam heads down the beach. He counted seven people when they first left the house and he still counts that many heads splashing around in the surf. He can see Jess’s blonde curls.
He doesn’t really want to draw attention to himself, since he was hoping to slip away to take care of the monster himself. And after more than a year at college-and several months of dealing with Brady-he’s also more than familiar with the process of wrangling drunk friends, which requires a little reverse psychology. Telling them to get out of the water is likely to do more harm than good.
There’s also the small matter of not being entirely sure how to track a creature that spends most of its time underwater.
He’s not using his friends as bait.
He’s not.
Fortunately the group tires themselves out quickly and begins to retreat back to the house. Jess and Brady are some of the last to stagger up the wide expanse of beach.
“C’mon Jess, looks like your boyfriend is being a little bitch,” Brady says to her in a stage whisper that’s closer to a shout.
“Sa-am,” Jess whines theatrically as she stumbles a little. She’s drunker than Sam thought.
Sam tries for a grin, hoping to deflect any attention.
“Come on, guys,” Angela says nervously, casting hesitant looks up and down the beach. Sam’s not entirely sure what she’s afraid of-the beach and backshore are both flat, with only a few sparse palm trees to break up the view. There’s little chance that any attacker would be able to sneak up on them-at least on land.
Of course, Angela probably hasn’t analyzed the terrain with a tactical eye because that’s not a thing normal college students do. Sam’s torn between envy and annoyance. Sometimes he wonders if he’ll eventually be like them, oblivious to the world around them. He wonders if that’s even possible or if he’ll always have John Winchester’s lessons carved into his psyche.
Nights like this, he’s not sure which he’d prefer.
Sam is leading Jess up the beach with a hand at the small of her back, pressed up against her wet t-shirt, when he hears it.
A sharp, high wail. It sounds like a child, a baby.
Jess and Brady turn towards the ocean.
“What was that?” Jess asks.
“It’s nothing,” Sam replies, but he’s cut off from saying more by another piercing cry. It’s the kind of scream that pings a person’s lizard brain, an alarm that says that Something is Wrong.
Jess tears her arm out of Brady’s grip, dodges Sam’s reach, and heads back towards the sound. Back towards the water.
“What’s going on, what is that?” Angela asks.
“It’s okay,” Sam says, sparing a moment to reassure her before chasing after Jess.
Jess is standing ankle-deep in the surf, staring out into the night. Her water-dark hair is plastered to her back.
Sam’s only feet away when a larger wave crests, surging up and over her knees and that’s when he sees it. A dark shape, solid where the ocean is fluid.
Jess’ legs go out from under her as she’s pulled forward, disappearing beneath the waves with only a gasp.
“Jess!” Sam screams, diving forward.
He reaches out and his hands close in on something solid, clothes. He drags himself forward, hooks his arms around Jess’s body. They’re both being pulled forward by whatever has a hold of Jess, deeper into the water. Sam drags his feet along the sandy ocean floor, trying to slow them down.
He kicks at the monster blindly. After a few swipes he connects with something furry, but the drag of the water killed all the momentum and it’s more of a nudge than a kick. But he knows where it is now, so he pulls a leg up and drives it down hard.
There’s a jerk as it lets go and Sam kicks against the floor, striving for the surface. They break into the warm air an instant later, Sam holding Jess up against him. She gasps and flails, elbow catching Sam’s cheek, but he manages to keep hold of her as his head spins. He manages to catch sight of the shore, the bright lights of the beach houses, and propels them in that direction. They hadn’t been pulled that deep and manage to get their feet under them quickly, staggering out of the surf.
Brady and Angela are there instantly, arms around them, helping them up to the shore.
“Get her back to the house,” Sam tells them, disentangling himself from Jess’ long limbs. She’s dazed and out of it. Sam’s not sure if she hit her head or the alcohol has caught up with her or what.
“What was that?” Angela asks, bordering on hysteria.
“Just get back to the house,” Sam says wearily. His brief underwater battle tired him out and he’s ready to end this.
Angela looks ready to argue, but Brady moves forward and she’s pulled along, helping Jess across the sand.
Sam reaches into the pockets of his now soaked shorts and is relieved to find Brady’s knife still there. He pulls it out, flicks it open. He watches the silhouettes of Jess and Brady and Angela disappear up the boardwalk and takes a deep breath.
Before he can move a wave crashes over his feet and something has a hold of his ankle and it pulls.
Sam falls forward, twisting so he doesn’t land on the knife. The monster pulls him back out with the wave.
The grip on his ankle is tight and unforgiving, but it gives him a point of reference in the pitch black water. He scrunches up his body and grabs for the beast’s body, catches hold of fur. He can feel as it stops pulling and then something connects with his ribs, a foot or something, and he loses half his stored air to the gasp it knocks out of him.
He brings the knife up and plunges it into the creature’s body, near where his other hand still has a grip in its fur. The ahuizotl screeches, the sound low and distorted through the water, but it hasn’t given up its grip on Sam’s ankle and his lungs are burning. He needs air soon.
He takes another blow to the chest as he withdraws the knife and stabs it in again. The monster is thrashing. It releases hold on his ankle and he kicks at the sandy ocean floor but the water is churning with limbs and something connects sharply with his temple-
Now
Sam wakes face down in the sand.
The tide is coming in.
He collects Brady’s knife and stands. His ribs ache.
There’s a trail of blood in the sand.
If it bleeds, you can kill it.
The footprints look like those of human hands, with long fingers.
He expects them to veer off into the surf, escaping deep into the ocean where he can’t follow. But instead they trail blood along the berm at the edge of the beach.
When they eventually turn deeper into the scrub brush of the backshore Sam follows slowly. His head is clearing. He listens carefully for any sign of the ahuizotl.
He finds it in a low depression, under a sparse bush.
Sam approaches cautiously. The beast sees him coming and raises its head in a growl before flopping back down.
It’s lying on its side, gasping harshly. The sand beneath it is thick with blood.
What few illustrations existed of the ahuizotl were inexpertly done, conveying little more than that it had four legs and fur. In real life it looks like a dog with a pointier, almost possum-like face. Its fur stands up in tufts and is pitch black, making it hard to see the blood it’s shedding. Each of its paws are black, but with long fingers, similar to raccoon paws, but larger. Another ‘hand’ is present at the end of its long tail, which flops weakly against the ground. It smells like wet dog.
It whimpers as he approaches and his stomach turns.
He reminds himself that this creature has killed at least three people. That it tried to kill Jess. That it tried to kill him.
But it’s just an animal. It’s not a vengeful spirit or a werewolf or a demon. It’s not evil.
Beneath the ahuizotl’s wheezing death rattle is another sound, a softer whimper.
Sam drops to his knees beside the creature. There’s movement against the blood-stained sand, between the monster’s legs.
It had babies.
The puppies are small, their eyes still shut. There are two of them. Their fur is several shades lighter than their mother, but they’re both stained dark with her blood.
It might suggest something about the ahuizotl, about why the information about it is so sparse. About why it probably doesn’t hunt humans normally and therefore doesn’t make it onto the radar of hunters.
Sam wipes the back of a hand across his face, feels grains of sand from them stick to his damp cheeks.
This is hunting.
There was a moment, having saved Jess from a monster, where he’d remembered the adrenaline, the satisfaction of saving lives.
But now he remembers the rest.
He grips Brady’s knife tight and does what the job requires.
It’s a relatively short trek back to where he stashed the salt and lighter fluid and matches. He digs a small pit halfway up the beach and deposits the ahuizotl corpses in it. Stacks dry scrub grasses on top. They burn quickly, the way that so many supernatural creatures do. Sam sits beside the pit as the tide rushes in and fills it. The water churns away the ashes.
By the time he returns up the boardwalk the sun is threatening to rise and the house is quiet and dark. Steam rises softly off the heated pool into the cooler night air as he makes his way past.
“Sam.”
He startles. Angela is sitting in one of the large wicker couches. She has a beach wrap pulled around her shoulders.
“Is it…” she trails off. “Did you get it?”
He pauses before nodding.
“What was it?”
He strains for some sort of ‘normal’ explanation. Something that would allow Angela to keep her innocence.
She must see some of the hesitation in his face because she speaks up before he has a chance. “Don’t try to say it was nothing or, or, or a shark or something. There was something in the water. Something grabbed Jess.”
“There was,” he admits.
“You knew,” she says. “You knew it would be out there.”
He shrugs.
“How?”
He’s only just met Angela a few days ago, so she likely doesn’t know much about Sam. Doesn’t know about that he doesn’t go home for break. He’s been so successful at deflecting questions about his past or his family that his friends don’t ask anymore. She thought he was just a normal guy, if maybe a little weird.
“My dad taught me,” he says, as simply as he can.
She clearly wants to ask more, but just as clearly is afraid of getting an answer. “It’s gone?”
“It’s dead,” Sam says.
She nods and stands, heading back into the house. Sam holds the door open for her. He replaces the salt in the Warren’s pantry.
Jess is passed out in the massive king bed, snoring softly. Sam changes, brushing sand from his body, before climbing under the covers. The house is air conditioned enough that the bed has a thick comforter on top of the sheets.
Sam tries to tell himself that the heavy weight is comforting, not restricting. Tells himself that he’s safe here, in this massive house with a thousand windows and not a single one of them with salt across the sill.
Jess wakes with the hangover from hell and no memory past running down to the beach that night. Sam figures that’s a good thing. He doesn’t want Jess to know about monsters, doesn’t want her to live scared.
Sam gives Brady back his knife, makes up a story about finding it on the back patio after the skinny dipping adventure.
The vacation lasts another three days. No more bodies are found.
Angela avoids Sam like he has the plague. It’s noticeable enough that Becky tries to apologize for her, but Sam waves her off.
It never felt real, that Sam could escape hunting. Before he’d left he pictured Dean dragging him back for hunts at summer vacation. He wasn’t really looking forward to it, but not all hunts were horrible and if it meant keeping his family in his life he was willing to put in the work.
Of course, that all changed when John found out about Sam’s plan.
When he’d salted and burned the body a few days ago it had been hard, tiring, gross work, but he’d felt accomplished. He was saving people.
Killing the ahuizotl didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like a win. It felt like finding the monster and having it turn out to be Amy, the girl he was crushing on.
On their last day Zach drives them to catch an early plane back down in Savannah. The Range Rover is full: Sam and Jess, Luis and his girlfriend, Zach and Brady up front, and Angela wedged into the back. She’s still giving Sam the cold shoulder. He doesn’t blame her.
They’re on the highway off the island, a tall narrow bridge over the swampy marshes and rivers that separate Hilton Head from the mainland. Sam’s dozing, head against the glass, when he hears it. It’s a throaty rumble that’s more familiar to him than his own heartbeat.
He turns and thinks he catches a glimpse of shining black and chrome as it disappears over the other side of the bridge they just crested. His heart hammers in his throat.
“Sam?”
Jess looks concerned. For good reason, given that Sam’s just bolted upright for no apparent reason. She’s glancing over at him, her blonde curls catching the early morning light.
He settles back into the leather seat, in the car taking him to the airport, back to Stanford. Back to his life.
“I’m fine,” he says, smiling. “I’m great.”