Haunted Chapter 6/5
Title: Haunted-Deleted Scenes
Author: tyranusfan
Characters: Dean, Sam, Adam, Bobby, OCs
Genre: Horror, hurt/comfort
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,745
Spoilers: Up through Season 5 finale Swan Song, AU for season 6 and later
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All characters property of Warner Bros.
Summary: Deleted Scenes for “Haunted.” These were originally in chapter 2, right after they search the house for the first time, and before they settled on burning the dead husband’s bones. They were cut because, while fun, they didn’t contribute much to the overall story. Nevertheless, they were fun, so I’ve included them here as a bonus chapter.
A/N: I want to thank everyone who read and reviewed. I hope you had as much fun reading as I had writing. Thanks to Jeanne, Phx, and geminigrl11 for editing last year. This would never have gotten printed had it not been for them.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Even with the three of them splitting up, it was still well after lunch when they finished scanning the enormous house-some four hours after they started. After that, they separated. Dean was checking with the house’s previous owner, a local landlord. Sam had gone to the County Registrar to research the house itself. That left Adam interviewing the neighbors.
He wished he could switch with Sam or Dean. Adam was starting to think his brothers had taken the sweet jobs.
The first two neighbors were busts. They had just moved in, and only one of them had even met the Flemings. Neither had been inside the house. Which led to Neighbor Number Three, an 85-year-old man.
“And the university pays you to do this?” Walter McCarthy asked incredulously, eyeing Adam critically over thick, wire-rimmed glasses.
Adam smiled thinly. “Enough to keep the lights on, at least.”
It wasn’t so much that McCarthy doubted his story, just the wisdom of his career choice. If you only knew, mister….
The old man harrumphed. “You remind me of my grandson. Straight As all through high school, and he goes into show business. Wants to be on TV, for God’s sake.”
“Something…um, wrong with that?” Adam inquired quietly.
“Have you seen what’s on television lately, son? Bunch of horse shit.”
“Oh. O-okay.”
“Spends thirty thousand dollars on an education, and he’s stuck working as an intern for some reality TV show.”
Adam opened his mouth to try to get the conversation back on track, but Mr. McCarthy beat him to it.
“Could have been anything he wanted, a doctor, like the rest of our family, but nooo…he got ‘the bug.’ Whatever that means!”
“Uh, well,” Adam stammered, pointing up the street from where they stood on the large porch. “About the Flemings-”
“I never met them. Seen the cops over there a few times though,” McCarthy interrupted gruffly.
Adam blinked. “Okay. Well, like I said, we’re doing this study-”
“Son, I’ve been around the world twice. I was an Army surgeon in Korea and Vietnam, and I’ve never seen a ghost, goblin, or spirit that wasn’t brought on by cheap, low-grade alcohol. Whatever’s happening in that house isn’t supernatural!”
“Right,” Adam replied softly. “Well, thanks for your time.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
“What address was that again?” the clerk asked with a definite sigh.
He had his back to Sam, flipping through files in a long cabinet. The Registrar’s office was nicely adorned, and almost completely deserted, save the clerk and a secretary sitting across the room.
Sam frowned. He’d given the address three times already. “Two-two-oh-six Maplewood.”
“And how far back?”
“As far back as you have.” Sam replied calmly.
The portly clerk turned to him, frowning over his wire-rimmed glasses and not bothering to hide his obvious boredom. “That’ll take at least a few days, sir.”
“What?” Sam was incredulous, “You’re kidding!”
“There are a lot of files to go through, sir.”
Sam stared at him for a moment. “Look…I need this for a very important project for the university. I need to look through those files today. Please.”
The man stared back, unaffected by Sam’s polite explanation. He cocked one eyebrow. “There are a lot of files to go through, sir. And we are very busy.”
Sam turned, scanning the completely empty foyer behind him, then turned back to the clerk, who was still staring, one eyebrow higher than the other. It took Sam a moment to decipher the look, though he should have caught it sooner. He’d seen it before.
“I don’t believe this,” Sam muttered darkly. He reached into his pocket for his wallet, took out a hundred dollar bill, placed it on the counter, and slid it to the clerk.
The clerk eyed the bill. “I’d say it’ll still take at least two days, sir.”
Sam glowered at him, and slapped a fifty on top of the hundred. The clerk’s expression brightened as he casually slid the bills over and into his own pocket. “Why don’t you have a seat, sir, I’ll be right out.”
Sam pinched his lips together and tried to refrain from the response he wanted to give. “Thank you.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
“Are you Mr. Tulley?”
“Yes.”
Dean eyed the owner of the modest one-story house before him. Mark Tulley was an inch or two shorter than him, but broad shouldered and muscular. With his shaved head and stern expression, he appeared somewhat intimidating at first glance. Looks a little like Vin Diesel. Dean swallowed his frown at that thought.
“Hello, my name is Dean Stantz. I’m a researcher over at Wake Forest University.”
Tulley’s face lit up with a grin. “Oh, I got my computer science degree there. Go Deacons!”
Dean smiled at his enthusiasm. “Uh, right. Go-go Deacons.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Well, Mr. Tulley-”
“Mark, please.”
“Mark. Okay. We-my colleagues and I-are doing some research on the house that the Fleming family bought from you a few years back, and I was hoping you could help us out. Give us some background?”
“What kind of research are you doing?”
“We look into local legends, myths, pretty much anything related to the paranormal history of the city and its surrounding areas. We try to find the factual basis of local lore, stuff like that.”
Mark looked skeptical. “You got funding for that?”
“It’s a constant battle, every year.” Dean’s smile tightened.
“Well, what would you like to know?”
“We understand you were the last owner.
“Yeah, I dabble in real estate-or, I did, until the housing bubble burst. I was lucky to sell that one at all. Took a loss, but I was happy to just have it off my plate. The place creeped me out.”
Dean’s eyebrows raised, his interest piqued. “How so?”
“I dunno, it was just…spooky. Especially at night. I didn’t have the utilities hooked up, and that place is pretty dark inside without lights. But, really, I was only inside a few times. I tried to clean it up a little, but….” Tulley shook his head.
“You ever see anything inside? Hear noises? Smell anything unusual?”
“No. Not really.”
“How about any atmospheric changes?”
Tulley frowned. “Like what?”
“You know, did the air ever get really cold, or the air pressure suddenly change?”
“Uh…well, yeah, actually. There were several places that were a lot colder than the rest of the house, and that basement was crazy. Freezing one minute, then baking the next.”
“Interesting,” Dean nodded as he jotted a note on his pad.
Tulley crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. “So, you guys really get money to look into this stuff?”
Dean grinned ruefully. “We’ve got a good advisor.”
“Really? Who?”
“Doctor Singer,” Dean replied absently.
“No kidding! Tim Singer? History 371? I loved him, he was a great guy.”
Dean looked up at him. What are the chances there’d be a real Doctor Singer? “No kidding. Small world, eh? But, uh, I thought you were a computer guy….”
Tulley nodded excitedly. “Yeah, but one of my minors was in history. I used to talk to Singer all the time. You remember how he used to talk all the time about how hard it was to teach history when the students never saw or touched what they were reading about?”
Dean blinked. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, all the time.”
“Yeah! Well, something he and I used to talk about was using computers to immerse people in historical events, give them something they could look at, pick up, you know?”
“Right,” Dean nodded. Tulley didn’t seem to notice. He was on a roll.
“Well, I’ve finally found a way to make the project work. Open-source virtual reality. Took a long time for this to come around, but I think it could really change the way we teach people. I mean, the possibilities are endless. Want to see?”
Not really. Dean stared for a moment, startled by the seething excitement that seemed to have overcome Tulley. “Sure. Why not?”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
“The Flemings? No, I can’t say I’ve seen anything too strange over there.” Alison Aldridge lived four doors down from the house. A reasonably attractive woman of about forty-five, with long blonde hair, she seemed to know just about everyone in the neighborhood. She was in the midst of baking for a school bake sale when Adam arrived on her doorstep
“They’ve been having some trouble.” He explained while she cooked, eyeing the array of treats on her counter. He hadn’t seen so many cookies in his life. “Strange noises, sudden temperature changes…we’re trying to help them get to the bottom of it.”
“That is so sweet,” Aldridge cooed. She turned to him and held out a wooden spoon covered in nearly molten goo of No Bake fudge. “Here, taste this.”
Adam held up his hand. “Oh, no, really-”
Smiling expectantly, she pushed the spoon to his lips, not taking no for an answer. “Careful, dear, don’t burn yourself.”
Okay, he had to admit the chocolate was pretty good. “It’s…sweet.”
Aldridge eyed him skeptically. “It needs more butter, doesn’t it?”
“Um, maybe-”
She tasted the spoon herself. “Mmm. Yes, definitely more butter.”
“Mrs. Aldridge, about the Flemings’ house-”
“Oh, right! Well, I wish I could help, but I haven’t seen anything strange going on over there. Though, I do think it was a little odd that Annette married her late husband’s brother. I wouldn’t have done that. Of course, Mike’s brother is a sleazebag anyway….”
“Mike?”
“Oh, my husband, Michael. He’s a nice man, when he wants to be, but he’s never home…and he doesn’t appreciate good cooking one bit.”
Adam felt a shudder run down his spine at the name. He knew it was common enough, but having been possessed by the Archangel Michael, Adam would just as rather forget it altogether. He forced himself back to the conversation at hand, just in time to see an odd look come over Alison’s face.
“You, on the other hand, have good taste.”
Adam wasn’t sure what had changed, but he was suddenly getting a weird vibe from the woman. Alison reached out and touched his shoulder, then slid her hand down his arm.
“Very good taste. I can tell.”
Oh, that vibe. Adam blinked and just stared at her until she started squeezing his upper arm. WHOA! That vibe.
He immediately lurched backward, ramming his hip painfully into the island in the center of the kitchen. “Uh…wow. I, uh, I think that’s about all I have to ask right now-”
“You’re a very handsome man, Adam….”
Smiling, he smoothed out his sleeve where she’d rumpled the dark green fabric. “It’s the shirt. Girls love it. H-happens every time.”
He hastily handed her his card. “Call me if, uh…if you think of anything else. About the case. Not about- I mean- Uh…okay, bye!”
Adam double-timed it out to the street, more thankful than ever for Sam’s running regimen. He smacked himself in the forehead. “Radar’s getting rusty, Adam.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Mark sat Dean down in his home office, in front of a computer monitor. Text was flashing by on the screen in mind-boggling number and letter combinations faster than Dean could read it.
“Right now,” Tulley explained, oblivious to Dean’s confused frown. “C is the only language they have a fully developed API for. I mean, C++ will work, too, but there aren’t any extra features for it, yet.”
Dean nodded slightly. “That’s…yeah, I can see how that’d be a problem.”
“But, we can still use this library with C++, and those applications can interface with other libraries that have C++ only APIs, you know, like OSG and ODE.”
“Naturally.”
Mark grinned broadly, obviously thrilled to have someone to show off his work to. “So, you ready?”
Dean blinked, unsure if no would be an acceptable answer at this point. “Yeah. Sure.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
The next house on Adam’s list was an old Colonial-style, with a garage in back and two cars parked behind, just out of sight of the street. It took four knocks before anyone stirred inside. A middle-aged man’s stern face and mildly discomforting glare greeted him at the door.
“Yes?” It sounded more like what.
“Hello, I’m Doctor Peck, I work over at Wake Forest-”
“For the last time, no! We don’t want any damned magazines!” The shout was punctuated by the slamming of the door, which almost caught the fingers on Adam’s left hand.
He sighed and hung his head. “Right. Thanks.”
This was already making for a long day.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Dean felt like an idiot wearing the bulky headset, but he had to admit what he was seeing was kinda cool. Tulley had designed a 3-D recreation of the old Roanoke colony, complete with English colonists.
His geek brother-brothers-would love this.
“The people are pretty low-res, of course, but they’re only placeholders. Once I got the environment debugged, I’ll work on making the people look better, move, all that.” Mark explained. “The command shell takes forever to print, even slower than in C-”
Dean didn’t have any idea what Mark was talking about, so he ignored him. “Hey, can I walk around?”
“A little. I don’t have much of the terrain mapped out, yet, but here,” he guided Dean’s hand to the keyboard and had him hold down the arrow keys.
Inside the headset, Dean began moving forward. “Awesome!”
He “stopped” in front of a large tree, and even with the incomplete graphics, the word CROATOAN was carved out in large letters. It was just like Sam had described to him once. Bookworm. “You even have the tree!”
He heard Mark pause where he’d been typing on the computer. “Heh, I know. The textures are no where near finished, but I had to put that in. That’s the part everyone remembers about this story. There are so many theories floating around, but I’ve always suspected the truth was a lot crazier than what everyone thinks.”
Dean huffed, his mind flashing back to Pestilence and Brady’s barely averted viral outbreak. “If you only knew.”
“What?”
“Uh…I said, if only we knew. For certain, you know?” Dean stammered.
Mark laughed and went back to typing. “Yeah. Um, where were we? Oh, right, the inputs. I’m using a 6-sensor form of input since with that two different coordinate systems can be requested, the real world and the virtual world….”
The sound of Mark’s voice was quickly starting to remind Dean of the teacher on Charlie Brown, so he just hit the arrow key and started moving around the little village again. This would make an awesome video game.
Maybe he could get Mark to add in some demons to shoot…
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Adam was walking up the street, back toward the Flemings’ when Dean left Tulley’s house.
“Tell Doctor Singer I said hello!” Tulley called from the door, waving.
Dean grinned. “Will do!”
“Who is that?” Adam asked quietly as Dean fell into step beside him.
“Mark Tulley, the last owner of the house.”
“He know anything?”
“A little too much,” Dean murmured. “It was like freakin’ TRON in there.”
Adam looked at him quizzically. “Huh?”
Dean blinked, and seemed to snap out of whatever he was thinking about. “Um, he didn’t know much, but he did back up what the Flemings told us, and he said there were weird signs in the basement, too.”
“Sam got an EMF spike in the basement, but I thought you said it was that transformer outside?”
“Might have been.” Dean shrugged. “But Mrs. Fleming mentioned the basement, too. Her husband spent a lot of time down there. We should probably look again to be sure. What did you find?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “A bunch of grouchy neighbors who keep to themselves.” He purposefully left out the desperate housewife. The less said about that, the better.
Dean grunted. “Well, let’s get back and check out the basement. Sam should be back soon.”
END
(For Real this Time!)