The Boys of Summer, Part 2 of 2
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“I don’t want to cut your damn hair,” Dean groaned. “Why can’t you go to the barber shop?”
“There’s not a barber shop or a Great Clips or anything for ten miles at least,” Sam held out the clippers. “Just do it, okay?”
“I can ‘borrow’ a car and drive you,” Dean countered, using finger-quotes.
Sam groaned with frustration. It was early afternoon. He’d eaten some leftover pizza and tried to find something on the television to watch but daytime TV just held no appeal for him. His entire body felt clammy and gross, and every time Sam turned his head he smelled sweaty hair. Then he’d remembered his dad had an old set of clippers and suddenly the long hair was no longer a problem, if he could convince his brother to help him out and just shave his head for him!
“Yeah, right, so you can get arrested? That’d make dad real happy. C’mon Dean. Just do it,” Sam thrust the old set of clippers their dad had been using on Dean for as long as Sam could remember in his brother’s face, waving them back and forth until his brother finally grabbed them from him.
“Jesus. Fine,” He growled, standing from the bed and tossing the Guns & Ammo magazine he was reading to the side.
“Go sit down,” Dean pushed Sam towards one of the straight-backed chairs at the small table, “and I won’t promise this’ll look good.”
“I don’t care, just cut it off,” Sam sat down obediently, taking off his t-shirt so the loose hair wouldn’t get stuck in it.
Dean sighed dramatically from behind, and Sam rolled his eyes. Finally, after about a minute, Sam felt a tug at his hair and then the clippers started buzzing. The sensation of it, at first, was strange, but quickly the buzzing and slight pulling of the clippers gave Sam immense relief. He really didn’t even care how bad it looked, he just wanted all that hair gone so his head could breathe again.
Ten minutes later there was a pile of brown hair on the floor around Sam and his head felt lighter, and most importantly, cooler.
“There,” Dean set the clippers on the table and moved to stand in front of Sam, staring at him silently.
“Well,” Dean nodded, head tilting slightly, “it’s cut anyway,” he smirked.
Sam replied with mock laughter before he stood and went into the bathroom to check it out. It was about as bad as he expected, shorter, and a little uneven but it didn’t look too terrible… not really. And in any case, at least it wouldn’t fall down his forehead or into his eyes any longer, or trap the heat either.
Staring at himself in the mirror, Sam suddenly thought about what Kade had told him that morning. Sam had been trying to figure out what he could do and was quickly realizing he would have to tell Dean and his dad if he had any hope of really helping.
“Hey, Dean?” Sam came out of the bathroom to find Dean half-heartedly “sweeping” Sam’s hair cuttings into a pile…using his booted foot.
“What,” he didn’t look up as he continued to ‘sweep’ the floor.
“I…uh…do you remember that kid I was with earlier?” Sam asked as he pulled his t-shirt back on.
“Yeah,” Dean grabbed a paper plate from the counter and tried to scoop up the pile of hair he’d formed, getting only about half onto the plate before cursing under his breath.
“He was…I mean he says he was attacked by a ghost,” Sam said and at that Dean paused, looking up at Sam with a curious expression.
“More than once,” Sam added.
Dean dropped the paper plate and straightened up, “Tell me everything.”
----
Sam and Dean were sitting at the table when their dad came through the door of the motel. It was just after 8pm.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
Sam looked between Dean and his dad as the latter kicked off his boots and sank into the third chair. He then reached out and grabbed the bottle of beer Dean had been nursing, taking a long swig.
“You shouldn’t drink this,” he said to Dean, but to Sam his tone lacked any real authoritativeness.
“Tell him,” Dean prompted, nudging Sam in the shoulder.
“Tell him what,” his dad said before he tipped the bottle up again, draining it.
“Sam found us a case right here! Well, not right here. In Omaha, actually…tell him Sammy,” Dean grinned and for a brief moment, Sam felt embarrassed by Dean’s apparent pride.
“A case, huh,” John stood and pulled another beer from the fridge.
“Yeah. Uh, I guess. See, this kid I met told me he’s been attacked by a ghost in his house,” Sam started, but the expression on his dad’s face, seemingly amused, gave him pause.
“And?” His dad prompted after a short silence, eyebrows lifted expectantly.
“Um,” Sam glanced to Dean briefly, “and it hurt him. The ghost. It, uh, it left all these bruises on him. His mom took him away from home because she thinks his dad is hurting him. But it’s this ghost. So…you know. We should go there. To Omaha. And kill it.”
“The ghost. We should kill the ghost I mean,” Sam finished, feeling completely frustrated. He’d had no problems relaying it all properly to Dean, why the hell couldn’t he properly tell his dad the same story?
Eyes flickering between his dad and Dean, Sam slowly realized he already knew what was going to happen. He could see it on his dad’s face. He could see that no matter what he’d said, no matter that Dean believed him, they would not be going to the house in Omaha and they would not be killing this ghost. The calm expression on his dad’s face was all Sam needed to see to know that.
“Sounds like a good story, but are you sure the kid isn’t lying?” his dad finally asked.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Sam replied evenly, trying to keep his frustration in check.
“How are you sure? Didn’t you just meet him?”
“Dad-,” Dean started but Sam cut him off.
“I believe him because it’s the truth and he needs help. Aren’t we supposed to help people? Isn’t that what we do?” Sam asked unable to disguise the anger and disappointment he felt, and he saw his dad’s amused expression fade.
It was frustrating, because his dad wanted him to be a hunter - was training him to be a hunter - and yet when Sam tells him of a real, honest to God case, his dad just dismisses it. Sam didn’t know what to do, or feel. Was he a hunter, or was he just a kid not to be taken seriously?
What did his dad see when he looked at him?, Sam wondered.
“I’ll be done with this job tomorrow. And then we’re out of here. Nothing more to say about it,” he drained the beer he’d just pulled from the fridge, then stood and started towards the bathroom, rubbing Sam’s head as he passed.
“Where’d all your hair go?” he said before he went into the bathroom and closed the door. Sam heard the shower come on a few minutes later.
“He never listens,” Sam grumbled, feeling disheartened and upset. Kade wanted to go home, and Sam wanted to help him. Wasn’t that what hunters were supposed to do? Help people who were in danger? Why couldn’t his dad understand that? Why couldn’t his dad believe him!
“I’ll talk to him, Sammy,” Dean said, his tone soft.
“Whatever,” Sam murmured, staring at the chipped and stained Formica tabletop. He really didn’t think it would make any difference.
----
Sam didn’t ask where or how Dean obtained the car. He only asked if it was going to be reported as stolen and get them in trouble. When Dean flashed him an exasperated look, Sam guessed the answer was no; at least he hoped the answer was no. They drove into Lincoln, headed to the public library to do some research. Their dad had left earlier that morning, leaving them with instructions to get their stuff packed up and ready to go because when he got back that evening he intended to hit the road immediately. Apparently Bobby had contacted him about a possible werewolf in Northern Michigan.
Of course as soon as their dad was gone, Dean was pulling Sam out the door and a little while later, just after 10am, they were pulling up to the library. Inside, they went straight to the Reference section where they both began pulling out microfiche records of old newspapers from in and around Omaha.
Sam desperately wanted to help Kade, and was glad he had Dean’s help (even if he wasn’t sure how strongly Dean believed him). He was relieved he had his brother to count on, and for a moment Sam felt a deep despairing sadness at the eventual loss - because when Sam left his dad it would mean leaving Dean, too. But Sam didn’t want to live his life as a hunter so he had to go, someday, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be hard to leave his brother…it was all too muddled and confusing! Sam shoved the thoughts away and focused on the task at hand; tracking down the potential spirit haunting Kade’s home.
“Got it, Sammy,” Dean called out a few minutes later, and Sam peered over his brother’s shoulder to read the fuzzy print of the archived article.
In 1976 a 16-year old kid who’d had an extensive record of violent and abusive behavior towards his parents, his brothers, and various schoolmates (all of it on record and laid out bare in the newspaper article), beat his youngest brother to death with a baseball bat. He’d gone into a fit of rage because when the teen had gotten home from baseball practice, the younger boy had left his bike in the driveway of the house and the teen had hit it with his car, denting the bumper. The young boy, Zach, had been reading Superman comics in his bedroom - what had likely been Kade’s bedroom more recently - when the attack had happened.
“I guess the good news is this ghost kid hasn’t become an actual killer. Yet,” Dean said after they’d read the story through.
“But we still gotta get rid of him. Who knows how many kids he’s already hurt, not counting Kade,” Sam replied and Dean nodded.
They found, in the same Omaha paper and published a few days after the initial news article, the obit which reported where Zach was to be interred. Thankfully, he had been buried locally, in a small cemetery just outside Omaha.
“How are we supposed to dig up a grave in the middle of the day?” Sam asked as they left the library and got back into the car, “you know dad isn’t gonna let us go do it tonight, after he gets back.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dean replied as he turned the car around to head back to their motel. “Let me figure it out.”
Hours later, Sam was pacing the motel room and Dean still didn’t have a plan, or at least not one he was telling Sam about.
“Dad will be back anytime,” Sam said, his anxiety levels rising with each passing minute.
Kade needed their help - hell, if another family moved into that house with kids the same thing would happen to them, Sam was sure of it! This wasn’t just about Kade anymore, and Sam felt an increasingly overwhelming need to just make sure the house was safe, and that meant finding the grave and digging up the bones so they could be salted and burned.
“I know, Sammy” Dean said in return, and Sam could hear exasperation in his voice.
Sam couldn’t really be angry with Dean - at least his brother had given him the benefit of the doubt. Their dad seemed to refuse to even consider the idea of a kid ghost; and Sam wasn’t sure if that was because it’d been him who’d told him about it, or because his dad didn’t think kid ghosts were real, or what. But that was dumb - and Sam had a hard time believing that in all the years his dad had been hunting, he’d never come across a vengeful spirit of a child. But then again, maybe he really hadn’t.
Sam continued to pace the room; it was nearing 6pm, and their dad would probably be back at any moment and he’d make them leave. Kade would never see his dad again, and some other kid, someday, would fall prey to the angry ghost boy and probably be killed, and that wasn’t an acceptable outcome for Sam.
It was a strange feeling, this urge to hunt. Sam had never felt it so strongly before and as much as he didn’t want to spend his life living like his dad hopping from motel-room to motel-room, he also needed to make sure they did this one hunt.
Just then, as if on cue, the telltale sound of the Impala’s exhaust reached Sam’s ears and he felt his spirits sink. Dad was back, which meant he’d make them pack up and leave.
“Shit!” Dean stood from the table and peered out the ratty curtain.
“Okay, just follow my lead,” Dean said over his shoulder as he backed up from the window and stood slightly ahead of Sam, facing the door.
A few minutes later their dad came through in. His clothes were dusty and he had a dried up, bloody gash on his forehead, but otherwise looked no worse for wear.
“You boys ready to go?” He asked without even closing the door or saying hello.
“No. Not just yet,” Dean replied slowly and Sam watched as their dad’s eyes narrowed and moved around the room. They’d done a little bit of packing, but everything was still mostly out and strewn about.
“I told you boys to be ready to go when I got back,” he closed the door and crossed his arms over his chest. “What have you been doing all day if not packing up?”
“Listen, Dad, Sammy was right about this ghost - and we really need to take care of it before we leave,” Dean persisted. Sam could hear a slight hint of desperate fear in his brother’s voice. Dean rarely, if ever, stood up to their dad and so Sam couldn’t blame him if he was feeling a bit of trepidation over it.
“Really,” their dad said, slightly condescendingly Sam thought.
“Yes,” Dean stated emphatically, “and Omaha is on the way to Michigan so I really don’t see what the problem is.”
Their dad stared at them, and Sam felt the strength of that gaze pierce through to his soul. But if Dean could stand up to him about this, then Sam could too.
“We went to the public library in Lincoln and found out that in seventy-six a little boy was beaten to death by his older brother. With a baseball bat. And the ghost that was hurting Kade used a bat,” Sam interjected.
“You went to the library? In Lincoln?” Their dad’s expression hardened and Sam regretted revealing that little tidbit. For whatever reason, their dad always got really angry when he found out Sam or Dean didn’t stay inside the motel the entire time he was out on whatever job he was working.
“Yes, but that’s not the point,” Dean moved a few steps forward. “We need to go burn this kid’s bones. We need to put this kid to rest before he actually starts killing people. We’re lucky we caught this one early; that Sam caught this one early.”
Sam felt his cheeks flush at Dean’s praise - even though he had done nothing but happen to befriend a kid who had felt safe enough to tell him something that most other people would have laughed at; it was heart-warming to know his brother was proud of him.
“No one has died yet,” Sam said, moving to stand next to Dean and imploring his dad with his eyes to just believe him, “we can make sure no one ever does die.”
The silence stretched out endlessly; or at least it felt that way to Sam. He could sense the tension in Dean’s body, matched only by his own, even as he stared at his dad - holding his gaze and willing him to just let them do this; willing him to believe him.
“Okay. Sure. Fine,” their dad said finally, looking between them.
Sam felt relief flood his body and he exhaled, offering a slight smile to his dad which was not returned. He didn’t seem angry - but his expression was hard to read. Still, Sam thought he saw something of pride in his look - though he couldn’t be sure. He’d never been that good at reading his dad.
A bit later, after they had packed most of their clothes and supplies back into the Impala, Sam headed over to the room Kade and his mother had been staying in. He didn’t see the beater minivan parked out front, but he hoped maybe Kade was in the room on his own. He knocked and waited several minutes but there was no answer.
Heading into the motel office, Sam smiled at the elderly man behind the counter. The old man returned the smile and Sam noticed he was missing several teeth.
“What can I do ya for, son?” he asked, his cadence and tone cheery and light.
“The people in room 5A, are they still here?” Sam asked and though there had been no other guests at the motel in the several days Sam and Dean and their dad had been there, the old man still drew his eyebrows together in apparent consideration of Sam’s question.
“Well now, let me think,” he said before he pulled a small box towards him, out from under the overhanging counter.
“Five A, five A,” he repeated over and over as he thumbed through the cards inside the small box. Some of them were so colored with age Sam wondered how long they’d been in there, and if they’d ever actually been white.
Finally the old man stopped and pulled out a crisp, white card. He brought it close to his face, peering over his thick glasses and squinting at whatever was written there. It was all Sam could do not to reach across the desk and grab it from the old man just so he could get the answer to his question that much faster.
“Looks like they checked out earlier today,” the old man lowered the card and looked at Sam, “sorry son. They’ve gone.”
Sam scrubbed his hands over his now short, badly cut hair in frustration. All he had wanted was to make it safe for Kade to go back home. But now…
“Do you have a piece of paper and an envelope?” Sam asked.
Sam decided not to tell Dean or his dad that Kade and his mother were gone. And before he went back to the room he wrote a letter to Kade’s dad explaining the ghost, and the bruises, and everything. He explained that after that very night - the date on the letter - it would be safe for Kade to return home. He wasn’t entirely sure the man would believe the things Sam wrote, but if the guy knew he hadn’t hurt his own kid, then he just might believe it had been a ghost.
The unknown factor of whether Kade and/or his mother would ever contact the dad again was what gave Sam the most anxiety. In conjunction with that was not knowing what the mother would do; even if she called Kade’s dad, would she believe what he might tell her? Would she believe that Sam, his older brother, and his dad had sought out and put to rest a tortured spirit of a little boy who been beaten horribly by someone he’d undoubtedly loved and trusted? Sam just couldn’t be sure.
He just had to hope she would believe, and she’d take Kade home.
----
Six hours later, as the clock neared midnight, Sam found himself standing in front of the headstone of one Zachary Christopher Walters, 1965 - 1976, “A loving son and brother” etched in stylized cursive beneath the dates.
The cemetery was old, and quiet, lined on three sides by rows of large, tall oaks, their leaves gently rustling in the slight, warm breeze that wafted through them. The fourth side, the entrance, faced the road they’d come in on and was unobstructed. Thankfully, Zach’s gravesite was behind a small rise and they were partially hidden from view should anyway come traveling down the dark two-lane highway.
“Well?”
Sam looked from the headstone to his dad, who was holding out a shovel and staring at him expectantly.
“This is your case, Sam, you get to do the honors,” his dad added and Sam nodded, reaching out and taking the shovel from him.
“I’ll help you, Sammy,” Dean said, picking up one of the shovels from the remaining two on the ground. They’d brought three shovels from the car - but it would seem his dad was intent on letting Sam do most of the work on this one.
It was his first grave; his first “salt and burn”. He felt a mixture of adrenaline and disgust. A desire to do the job as well as a desire to run screaming from the cemetery and his dad and his brother and the hunting life he knew he did not want. But the desire to help Kade was stronger - so Sam buried the other feelings and focused on that - on the “helping”.
It was harder than he’d imagined; the digging. He was thankful for Dean’s help, and that his hair was cut short. Between the two of them they managed to get the grave dug in two hours. When the casket was unearthed, Sam straddled it, barely managing to break it open. He could feel his dad’s eyes on him, watching him and God help him Sam wanted to impress him. So he grunted and groaned and muscled the crowbar into the casket with all his strength. When he heard the satisfying creak and the sound of the lock break, he sighed with relief.
The boy’s remains made him seem small, younger than the 12 years he would have been, and Sam tried not to took too closely as he sprinkled salt over his bones before dousing the interior of the casket with lighter fluid. Dean helped Sam out of the hole and his dad held out a book of matches to him.
Sam looked up to his dad as he took them, and for a moment he thought he saw a gentle smile play across his face, but then as quickly as it was there it was gone. His dad’s face once again a blank canvas.
Sam struck a match, using it to light up the entire book before tossing the flame into the grave. The heat from the instant conflagration warmed Sam’s already hot and sweaty skin and he took a step back instinctively.
The three of them - Sam, his brother, and his dad - stood in silence and watched the flames until they burned out. Sam couldn’t help but think about Zach, and the tragedy of his story; and then Kade, and the unfairness of his story; and then himself, and the trap he was caught in - a different type of tragedy for his story.
“Okay. Let’s fill it up and get going,” his dad said as the last few embers in the blackened casket burnt alternating red and orange. Picking up a shovel he sank it into the large pile and dropped the dirt back onto the grave; the casket still open. Sam exchanged a look with Dean, his brother winking and grinning at him before picking up his own shovel and joining his dad.
Filling in the grave went much quicker than emptying it, and in thirty minutes they had the hole filled up.
Sam rested against his shovel and wiped at his brow - feeling the dirt and grime that coated his face. He’d done it; he’d “killed” the ghost. It hadn’t been anything big, or dangerous, or complicated; but it had been his, and he felt a bit of pride for it. There was an immediate sense of relief, but also a sense of being driven, of being pointed towards a destination he didn’t wish to reach - feeling like he was travelling further down the road of life as a hunter; a life he knew he did not want for himself.
“Right. Let’s hit the road,” his dad said, slapping Sam on the back before picking up the duffel bag of supplies and two of the shovels and walking towards the shadowy husk of the Impala, parked on the narrow cemetery road a few hundred feet away.
“Good work, Sammy,” Dean grinned, rubbing his hand over Sam’s freshly shorn head.
Sam grinned back, but it felt forced. He was glad he’d helped out Kade, but not knowing if what they’d accomplished would actually improve Kade’s situation made it hard for Sam to celebrate.
“Boys! Let’s go!” their dad called from the car, and Sam, with one last look at the headstone, followed Dean back to the Impala.
Conflicting emotions flooded Sam’s head; would this be his life? Hunting? Or would he be able to get out like he so desperately wanted? Placing his shovel with the others in the trunk of the Impala, he sighed.
Only time would tell.