(Fic) Writer Picks the Music: Carry On
Billie said, “It’s over.”
Sam left his apartment and walked down the back stairwell to the selling floor, pausing for a second to glance around the quiet, dark space and breathe in the scent of old books and herbs that grounded him. Rosemary hung heavy in the air this morning, and he knew he was in for it today. There were days, weeks, that he lived his life not thinking about Billie’s last visit, now so long ago and far away, but today was apparently not going to be one of them. Whole months passed without his brother’s voice echoing from the corners of his memory, but this morning it was just a matter of time before he piped up.
He gathered his thoughts, tucking them away, and crossed the wood floor to the door, and turned the deadbolt that opened the door of his shop, Johnsons’ Books.
Billie said, “He didn’t suffer. And no, he’s not suffering now.” She held her hand out for the book.
Sam flipped on the lights, and unlocked the register before picking up his tablet to read the day’s news. For a moment, he itched to open a tab to the internet of the weird, but then he sighed and turned to the mainstream news feed instead. It had been years since the last time he’d trolled those murky waters for a case, for a sign--anything--
Billie said, “You can’t follow, Sam.”
“Watch me,” Sam muttered under his breath. He’d shot that comeback at Billie and she simply looked at him with an expression that did not quite reach pity. Now the words died in the empty air. He knew how far he had gone down his brother’s path, and where he had stopped. Now he only mocked himself.
There was a convex mirror up in the corner opposite the desk where he now sat, that gave him a view of the far shelves of books and oddities as well as his own tiny image. Were he to look up, he would only see the gray that streaked his hair and silvered the beard he scrubbed with an absent-minded hand. He did not look up.
Billie’s bemused and unblinking gaze did not waver until he reluctantly closed the book. His thumb ran over the silver embossed title on its spine, D. WINCHESTER in blocky letters, and he was caught for a moment in a memory, a thousand memories, of his brother testing the edge of a blade.
He placed the book in her outstretched hand.
News headlines exhausted, he turned to his texts and emails. Pretty quiet out there. No reports from the bunker in Lebanon or the newer one in upstate New York. An easy question about wraiths from Alan, one of the hunters who still called him “Chief”. A quick note from Jody, letting him know that she’d dropped his name to a kid who was heading his way, a girl who might be stopping by on her way to Phoenix, a green hunter who, in the sheriff’s opinion, ought not to be hunting at all--
The bell over the shop door let out a sharp warning and Sam startled upright. Somewhere deep in his mind, his brother’s voice snorted at him--”Gettin’ soft, there, Sammy--”
He blinked at the young man who’d broken the silence of the shop. There was nothing remarkable about the kid. He was a sketch with wavy brown hair, brown eyes, thin torso wrapped in an olive green army jacket. Some sort of medallion hung at his neck, and the black lines of a tattoo crept out of his left sleeve cuff and twined around his wrist. The early morning sun glowed behind him, and Sam wanted to rub his eyes and look again.
The kid met Sam’s look with a grin, stuffed his fingers in his coat pockets, and cocked his head at the plate glass window where the stenciled hunter’s symbols formed a border around the shop’s name. He spread the edges of his coat with his pocketed hands, revealing a faded Sgt Pepper’s t-shirt. He could almost be--
“Can I--” Sam’s voice was rusty, and he tried again. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. At least, I hope so.”
Sam nodded, and looked back down at his screen. He pushed the button that turned off the tablet, flipped the cover closed, and stood up.
The kid took a step back as if surprised at the shopkeeper’s height. Sam waved his hand in a vague welcome, beckoning him towards the counter. “What are you looking for, exactly? Information? Tools?” He gestured towards his shelves. “Books?” he asked with a slight smile.
“Well--I’ve been looking into this house outside of town, on Rigel Creek Road--”
“The Dawson place?”
“Yeah. How did you--”
Sam shook his head, once. “I hear the haunting’s been cleaned up on that one. You’ve come a long way, I’m afraid.”
“OK, but the thing is, I don’t think it’s a ghost problem. And yeah, I already checked old Alexander’s grave. His wife’s, too.” The boy approached the desk. Even though he was tall, he still had to lean his head back to keep looking Sam in the eye. He made the effort, though, and Sam thought he might like the kid. “So, no more ghosts. But there’s something. I’m going off a story that was posted two weeks ago by an eye witness who said something about some local kids getting pushed down stairs and locked in cellars.”
Sam frowned. He hadn’t heard any of this. Even staying away from the usual case-generating websites, he thought he would find out about weird things happening in his own town. Except, he thought with a twinge of chagrin, that he couldn’t remember the last time he had ventured out onto the sidewalk and down to the cafe for an afternoon coffee.
Billie said, “It’s time for you to live, Sam,” and he bit back his anger, looked down at the hem of her long skirt.
“It could be a couple of things, then,” Sam started. The boy watched him impassively. “You’ve swept the place?”
“Yep. EMF all over the place. No apparitions, but when I opened the door to leave, something yanked it out of my hand and slammed it shut. And then it--whatever it was--tried to drop the hall chandelier on my head.”
“Right.” He held out his hand. “I’m Sam,” he said, waving his hand towards the window. “Sam Johnson.”
After a moment the kid stepped up and took it. He had a good firm handshake, and he didn’t flinch when the silver ring on Sam’s finger brushed across his palm. “Ben,” he said.
Sam looked at his visitor with more interest as their handshake broke apart, staring long enough that the kid began to fidget. Another image flashed across his vision, and the younger man’s discomfort was lost in a memory of his brother’s voice.
He leaned against the bureau and tried to explain. “I know that Ben’s not mine. But I’m starting to feel like, yeah, he is.”
No last name, a cautious kid. Good. The right age, the right hair color, but Sam knew that practically all of his memories from that year were faulty. Even “Ben” might not be real, as far as that went. He glanced down at the silver disc that hung from the boy’s neck by a chain. It was a familiar pentagram, surrounded by a circle of stylized flames, their edges darkened with age and wear. His palm unconsciously drifted up to his own chest, towards his own hidden anti-possession tattoo, before he realized what he was doing. It doesn’t mean anything, he thought, and nodded.
“Right, Ben--let’s--I keep a few lore books back here--” He turned and walked to an alcove in the rear of the shop. He flipped the curtain covering its entrance to one side, taking a bit of pleasure in the kid’s stifled gasp as his action temporarily dispelled the concealing magic that hid the small room. As he looped the cloth in his hand over a hook mounted on the alcove wall, he heard Ben whistle softly.
And from the far corner of his mind, his brother whistled, too. “You know the kid five minutes and you let him into the inner sanctum?”
Shut up, Sam said, hoping he hadn’t said it out loud.
“A few books?” Ben stopped beneath the gathered curtain and gazed at Sam’s private library, as his host began pulling a tome from the shelves.
“Yeah.” Sam looked up briefly, scanning the shelves in front of him before turning briefly to his customer. “Never know what you’ll need, you know?”
Sam wanted to lash out at Billie, at Death, to yell, scream, shove at the placid figure that stood before him. Instead he swallowed, hard, and met her gaze with a glare.
“That’s it?” He managed through his stifling anger, pointing at the ground by Billie’s feet. “We gave everything--everything--and you give me a dead brother and a ‘have a nice life’?”
Billie tilted her head to the side, regarding him. Then she smiled. “You get the world, Sam.”
He began to scoff, before she added, “And your freedom in it.”
It didn’t take them long. Sam bet that the Dawson place was infected with a poltergeist, and a bit of research bore his theory out. He set the book describing the malevolent spirits on the table, spinning it over to Ben, and pointed at a few relevant passages.
Ben, to his credit, read the book without comment, nodding his agreement here and there. At the end of the page he glanced up with another grin. “Nasty.”
“They are, yeah. Luckily, this one picked a mostly empty house to take possession of.” Sam splayed his hand over the book page and ran his fingertips down the entry as he re-read it. “You have to purify the place, and it’ll, sort of, move on.”
“Purify? You mean, like, burn sage? Or do some Zelda Rubenstein routine?”
Sam laughed, just a little, then schooled his face into a thoughtful frown. “There’s no ritual involved for this job. You need hex bags, enough for each floor of the house, to put inside the walls. North, South, East, and West corners. So--” he tried to remember his own time casing the house, figuring out how many flights of stairs he had climbed. Ben beat him to it.
“Sixteen bags.”
“Right. Have a seat. I’m pretty sure I have what we need.”
The ingredients were not rare. Sam’s store was well stocked behind the counter, and soon enough they were both back at the library table in the alcove with a tray of Angelica Root and the other components between them, a little pile of softened leather beside it. Sam watched the kid carefully, watching as the young man helped him measure, bundle, and seal the hex bags. Ben’s fingers were nimble and sure, and it seemed he had some experience with hex bags.
Sam didn’t pry. They fell into a rhythm as the row of bags grew between them. Ben was not inclined much to talk, shrugging off his few questions--”Where are you from?” he heard himself say at one point, wincing as soon as the words were out of his mouth--with a shrug that was more polite than dismissive as he replied, “The Midwest.”
For his part, if Ben wondered why no one entered the shop for the entire time they were bent over the ingredients, he didn’t pry, either.
The last bag tied, Ben tossed it at the head of the row before standing and sweeping them all up into his hands. “Thanks, man--” he said. His face softened with pleasure at their work as he looked up, and his smile looked eager and young.
His big brother, who was now a half inch shorter than he was, tipped the silver bullet out of the form and looked up across the room with an excited grin. “Not bad, eh, Sammy?”
Sam, already fourteen, didn’t glance up from his book. “Yeah. It’s great.”
Sam felt his face sag at the memory, a litany of “It’s not him, it’s not him, don’t forget it’s not him--” circling through his brain until, from that dark warm corner a soft laugh stopped them cold.
Across the table Ben’s smile dimmed and the kid began to turn away. “So, uh, what do I owe you?”
Sam scrubbed his beard with his palm and stood, chagrined at the sudden coolness in the boy’s tone. “Here, let me get you a bag, or a box, for those.”
Ben was almost at the counter as Sam unhooked the curtain and let it fall over the alcove entrance and then hurried to his till. He retrieved a small paper bag from underneath the counter, snapped it open, and held it out to the kid, who obligingly tipped his handfuls of hex bags into the opening before reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a thin wallet.
He looked at Sam expectantly.
The older man, former hunter--former brother--turned shopkeeper rang up a bill for the ingredients, taking a discount off the top, charging just enough to allow him to replenish his supplies.
Ben paid without comment, but the little grin that returned to his lips suggested that he knew that Sam was giving him a bargain. He grabbed the bag and walked to the door, saying, “Thanks again. I’ll let you know how it goes,” without turning around.
He had pulled it open, the bell jingling over his head, before Sam said, “Ben--wait.”
The boy looked over his shoulder at him, and the question he was intending to ask died away. He shook himself, tried something else. “Do you--have help?” his voice faltered, but he pushed ahead, clearing his throat. “The poltergeist will try to stop you. You should have back-up.”
Ben grinned and turned back toward the shop, bracing the open door with his shoulders. “Don’t worry, Sam. I’ve got this.” A graceful pivot and step took him out the door, which brushed the bell softly as it closed.
Billie said, “It’s up to you, Sam. Choose your work.” And she was gone.
Sam huffed a laugh, “Is it really just that easy?” he asked himself, the eternal question of his too quiet life settling in the air and onto his shoulders.
He sighed, and wondered how long it would take Ben to drive out to the Dawson place. Wondered if anyone would notice if he closed the shop at five minutes to noon. He didn’t think anyone would care, and he knew.
He knew that if his brother--if Dean--could have been standing next to him now, he would clap him on the back, and laugh with anticipation. He could almost see his face, his boyish excited smile.
Because Sam had work to do.
A/N: For borgmama1of5, whose thoughts on "The Family Business" inspired this. I know it's a bit of a weird one--and my first try at Sam POV!--but I hope you like it.
Sam left his apartment and walked down the back stairwell to the selling floor, pausing for a second to glance around the quiet, dark space and breathe in the scent of old books and herbs that grounded him. Rosemary hung heavy in the air this morning, and he knew he was in for it today. There were days, weeks, that he lived his life not thinking about Billie’s last visit, now so long ago and far away, but today was apparently not going to be one of them. Whole months passed without his brother’s voice echoing from the corners of his memory, but this morning it was just a matter of time before he piped up.
He gathered his thoughts, tucking them away, and crossed the wood floor to the door, and turned the deadbolt that opened the door of his shop, Johnsons’ Books.
Billie said, “He didn’t suffer. And no, he’s not suffering now.” She held her hand out for the book.
Sam flipped on the lights, and unlocked the register before picking up his tablet to read the day’s news. For a moment, he itched to open a tab to the internet of the weird, but then he sighed and turned to the mainstream news feed instead. It had been years since the last time he’d trolled those murky waters for a case, for a sign--anything--
Billie said, “You can’t follow, Sam.”
“Watch me,” Sam muttered under his breath. He’d shot that comeback at Billie and she simply looked at him with an expression that did not quite reach pity. Now the words died in the empty air. He knew how far he had gone down his brother’s path, and where he had stopped. Now he only mocked himself.
There was a convex mirror up in the corner opposite the desk where he now sat, that gave him a view of the far shelves of books and oddities as well as his own tiny image. Were he to look up, he would only see the gray that streaked his hair and silvered the beard he scrubbed with an absent-minded hand. He did not look up.
Billie’s bemused and unblinking gaze did not waver until he reluctantly closed the book. His thumb ran over the silver embossed title on its spine, D. WINCHESTER in blocky letters, and he was caught for a moment in a memory, a thousand memories, of his brother testing the edge of a blade.
He placed the book in her outstretched hand.
News headlines exhausted, he turned to his texts and emails. Pretty quiet out there. No reports from the bunker in Lebanon or the newer one in upstate New York. An easy question about wraiths from Alan, one of the hunters who still called him “Chief”. A quick note from Jody, letting him know that she’d dropped his name to a kid who was heading his way, a girl who might be stopping by on her way to Phoenix, a green hunter who, in the sheriff’s opinion, ought not to be hunting at all--
The bell over the shop door let out a sharp warning and Sam startled upright. Somewhere deep in his mind, his brother’s voice snorted at him--”Gettin’ soft, there, Sammy--”
He blinked at the young man who’d broken the silence of the shop. There was nothing remarkable about the kid. He was a sketch with wavy brown hair, brown eyes, thin torso wrapped in an olive green army jacket. Some sort of medallion hung at his neck, and the black lines of a tattoo crept out of his left sleeve cuff and twined around his wrist. The early morning sun glowed behind him, and Sam wanted to rub his eyes and look again.
The kid met Sam’s look with a grin, stuffed his fingers in his coat pockets, and cocked his head at the plate glass window where the stenciled hunter’s symbols formed a border around the shop’s name. He spread the edges of his coat with his pocketed hands, revealing a faded Sgt Pepper’s t-shirt. He could almost be--
“Can I--” Sam’s voice was rusty, and he tried again. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. At least, I hope so.”
Sam nodded, and looked back down at his screen. He pushed the button that turned off the tablet, flipped the cover closed, and stood up.
The kid took a step back as if surprised at the shopkeeper’s height. Sam waved his hand in a vague welcome, beckoning him towards the counter. “What are you looking for, exactly? Information? Tools?” He gestured towards his shelves. “Books?” he asked with a slight smile.
“Well--I’ve been looking into this house outside of town, on Rigel Creek Road--”
“The Dawson place?”
“Yeah. How did you--”
Sam shook his head, once. “I hear the haunting’s been cleaned up on that one. You’ve come a long way, I’m afraid.”
“OK, but the thing is, I don’t think it’s a ghost problem. And yeah, I already checked old Alexander’s grave. His wife’s, too.” The boy approached the desk. Even though he was tall, he still had to lean his head back to keep looking Sam in the eye. He made the effort, though, and Sam thought he might like the kid. “So, no more ghosts. But there’s something. I’m going off a story that was posted two weeks ago by an eye witness who said something about some local kids getting pushed down stairs and locked in cellars.”
Sam frowned. He hadn’t heard any of this. Even staying away from the usual case-generating websites, he thought he would find out about weird things happening in his own town. Except, he thought with a twinge of chagrin, that he couldn’t remember the last time he had ventured out onto the sidewalk and down to the cafe for an afternoon coffee.
Billie said, “It’s time for you to live, Sam,” and he bit back his anger, looked down at the hem of her long skirt.
“It could be a couple of things, then,” Sam started. The boy watched him impassively. “You’ve swept the place?”
“Yep. EMF all over the place. No apparitions, but when I opened the door to leave, something yanked it out of my hand and slammed it shut. And then it--whatever it was--tried to drop the hall chandelier on my head.”
“Right.” He held out his hand. “I’m Sam,” he said, waving his hand towards the window. “Sam Johnson.”
After a moment the kid stepped up and took it. He had a good firm handshake, and he didn’t flinch when the silver ring on Sam’s finger brushed across his palm. “Ben,” he said.
Sam looked at his visitor with more interest as their handshake broke apart, staring long enough that the kid began to fidget. Another image flashed across his vision, and the younger man’s discomfort was lost in a memory of his brother’s voice.
He leaned against the bureau and tried to explain. “I know that Ben’s not mine. But I’m starting to feel like, yeah, he is.”
No last name, a cautious kid. Good. The right age, the right hair color, but Sam knew that practically all of his memories from that year were faulty. Even “Ben” might not be real, as far as that went. He glanced down at the silver disc that hung from the boy’s neck by a chain. It was a familiar pentagram, surrounded by a circle of stylized flames, their edges darkened with age and wear. His palm unconsciously drifted up to his own chest, towards his own hidden anti-possession tattoo, before he realized what he was doing. It doesn’t mean anything, he thought, and nodded.
“Right, Ben--let’s--I keep a few lore books back here--” He turned and walked to an alcove in the rear of the shop. He flipped the curtain covering its entrance to one side, taking a bit of pleasure in the kid’s stifled gasp as his action temporarily dispelled the concealing magic that hid the small room. As he looped the cloth in his hand over a hook mounted on the alcove wall, he heard Ben whistle softly.
And from the far corner of his mind, his brother whistled, too. “You know the kid five minutes and you let him into the inner sanctum?”
Shut up, Sam said, hoping he hadn’t said it out loud.
“A few books?” Ben stopped beneath the gathered curtain and gazed at Sam’s private library, as his host began pulling a tome from the shelves.
“Yeah.” Sam looked up briefly, scanning the shelves in front of him before turning briefly to his customer. “Never know what you’ll need, you know?”
Sam wanted to lash out at Billie, at Death, to yell, scream, shove at the placid figure that stood before him. Instead he swallowed, hard, and met her gaze with a glare.
“That’s it?” He managed through his stifling anger, pointing at the ground by Billie’s feet. “We gave everything--everything--and you give me a dead brother and a ‘have a nice life’?”
Billie tilted her head to the side, regarding him. Then she smiled. “You get the world, Sam.”
He began to scoff, before she added, “And your freedom in it.”
It didn’t take them long. Sam bet that the Dawson place was infected with a poltergeist, and a bit of research bore his theory out. He set the book describing the malevolent spirits on the table, spinning it over to Ben, and pointed at a few relevant passages.
Ben, to his credit, read the book without comment, nodding his agreement here and there. At the end of the page he glanced up with another grin. “Nasty.”
“They are, yeah. Luckily, this one picked a mostly empty house to take possession of.” Sam splayed his hand over the book page and ran his fingertips down the entry as he re-read it. “You have to purify the place, and it’ll, sort of, move on.”
“Purify? You mean, like, burn sage? Or do some Zelda Rubenstein routine?”
Sam laughed, just a little, then schooled his face into a thoughtful frown. “There’s no ritual involved for this job. You need hex bags, enough for each floor of the house, to put inside the walls. North, South, East, and West corners. So--” he tried to remember his own time casing the house, figuring out how many flights of stairs he had climbed. Ben beat him to it.
“Sixteen bags.”
“Right. Have a seat. I’m pretty sure I have what we need.”
The ingredients were not rare. Sam’s store was well stocked behind the counter, and soon enough they were both back at the library table in the alcove with a tray of Angelica Root and the other components between them, a little pile of softened leather beside it. Sam watched the kid carefully, watching as the young man helped him measure, bundle, and seal the hex bags. Ben’s fingers were nimble and sure, and it seemed he had some experience with hex bags.
Sam didn’t pry. They fell into a rhythm as the row of bags grew between them. Ben was not inclined much to talk, shrugging off his few questions--”Where are you from?” he heard himself say at one point, wincing as soon as the words were out of his mouth--with a shrug that was more polite than dismissive as he replied, “The Midwest.”
For his part, if Ben wondered why no one entered the shop for the entire time they were bent over the ingredients, he didn’t pry, either.
The last bag tied, Ben tossed it at the head of the row before standing and sweeping them all up into his hands. “Thanks, man--” he said. His face softened with pleasure at their work as he looked up, and his smile looked eager and young.
His big brother, who was now a half inch shorter than he was, tipped the silver bullet out of the form and looked up across the room with an excited grin. “Not bad, eh, Sammy?”
Sam, already fourteen, didn’t glance up from his book. “Yeah. It’s great.”
Sam felt his face sag at the memory, a litany of “It’s not him, it’s not him, don’t forget it’s not him--” circling through his brain until, from that dark warm corner a soft laugh stopped them cold.
Across the table Ben’s smile dimmed and the kid began to turn away. “So, uh, what do I owe you?”
Sam scrubbed his beard with his palm and stood, chagrined at the sudden coolness in the boy’s tone. “Here, let me get you a bag, or a box, for those.”
Ben was almost at the counter as Sam unhooked the curtain and let it fall over the alcove entrance and then hurried to his till. He retrieved a small paper bag from underneath the counter, snapped it open, and held it out to the kid, who obligingly tipped his handfuls of hex bags into the opening before reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a thin wallet.
He looked at Sam expectantly.
The older man, former hunter--former brother--turned shopkeeper rang up a bill for the ingredients, taking a discount off the top, charging just enough to allow him to replenish his supplies.
Ben paid without comment, but the little grin that returned to his lips suggested that he knew that Sam was giving him a bargain. He grabbed the bag and walked to the door, saying, “Thanks again. I’ll let you know how it goes,” without turning around.
He had pulled it open, the bell jingling over his head, before Sam said, “Ben--wait.”
The boy looked over his shoulder at him, and the question he was intending to ask died away. He shook himself, tried something else. “Do you--have help?” his voice faltered, but he pushed ahead, clearing his throat. “The poltergeist will try to stop you. You should have back-up.”
Ben grinned and turned back toward the shop, bracing the open door with his shoulders. “Don’t worry, Sam. I’ve got this.” A graceful pivot and step took him out the door, which brushed the bell softly as it closed.
Billie said, “It’s up to you, Sam. Choose your work.” And she was gone.
Sam huffed a laugh, “Is it really just that easy?” he asked himself, the eternal question of his too quiet life settling in the air and onto his shoulders.
He sighed, and wondered how long it would take Ben to drive out to the Dawson place. Wondered if anyone would notice if he closed the shop at five minutes to noon. He didn’t think anyone would care, and he knew.
He knew that if his brother--if Dean--could have been standing next to him now, he would clap him on the back, and laugh with anticipation. He could almost see his face, his boyish excited smile.
Because Sam had work to do.
A/N: For borgmama1of5, whose thoughts on "The Family Business" inspired this. I know it's a bit of a weird one--and my first try at Sam POV!--but I hope you like it.
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