A Very Supernatural Journey Chapter 8
A Birthday Story Written for Enkidu07, in appreciation for the work she and Onyx Moonbeam do and for the community they built
by womanofletters, mainegirlwrites, theymp and wynefred
Previous Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
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Chapter 8: Drowning In Tears
This chapter written by theymp
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Tyrone stood staring back at the three people in front of him. His mind was blank with shock; he just hoped they couldn't see how badly he was shaking. He'd seen terrible things in his life as a detective, but nothing that had so thrown his worldview into turmoil. He did what he always did when his life became complicated: stay focused on the job. The first thing was to get the victim to safety. Unfortunately for him, she wasn't so amenable.
Rachelle had argued that she didn't want to go back home, as she was sure her housemates would freak out even more. Sam and Dean, as they now introduced themselves, looked at each other and seemed to somehow silently agree that they'd go back to their motel.
"Not the 'Sleep Easy' over on 5th?" asked Tyrone, unable to hide his obvious distaste, and he chuckled when they nodded. "That ol' roach pit? Boy, they must have been overjoyed when you two pitched up to have a customer who doesn't pay by the hour!"
He decided he was going to have to take a chance with these people, plus he was reluctant to let them out of his sight. There was obviously more here than first met the eye. He sighed long and heavy in irritation. If mysterious murders and FBI impersonation was just the start, then what else was he going to find out when he started to dig a little deeper?
"Listen, it's not much, but you're welcome to come back to my place. I can loan you the use of a dryer, plus I'm not done with questioning you yet," he added.
X X X
Tyrone led the way from his car, his mind still spinning from the 'full and honest' explanation he'd got from his new companions, his wet shoes squelching up the path as he let them into his small, shabby looking house.
"You'll have to excuse the mess," he said, tipping a large, haphazard pile of papers onto the floor to make room on the sofa, "It's the maid's year off."
He left the others in the living room and returned a moment later with a pile of clothes and towels. "Here, I've got a guest robe," he said to Rachelle, handing her a large, blue cotton dressing gown.
"Don't worry, it is clean! I don't exactly do much entertaining, as you can probably see," he laughed at her expression, while gesturing to the poor standard of tidiness of the rest of the house.
He handed Dean a gray sweatshirt and pants, "These might be a little tight in the shoulder, but they should still fit."
He gave Sam a little embarrassed smile, "Sorry, I don't think I have anything in your size..."
He stood watching them as they each disappeared one-by-one into the bathroom to change, before he loaded their clothes into the dryer. He was a good study of human behavior; it was what made him a good cop. He noted with interest the way Dean and Rachelle seemed to dance around each other, there was a clear attraction there and he wondered if they were on their way to becoming an established couple. He'd determined the Winchesters had only recently blown into town, but there was a strange familiarity between Dean and Rachelle, as if they already knew each other well.
Tyrone noticed with slight indignation that Dean had already liberated a medkit from the bathroom and had motioned Rachelle to sit on the nearby sofa. With a look of absolute, focused concentration, Dean tenderly tucked a lock of Rachelle's long blonde hair behind her ears and started treating the minor burns on the side of her face. "There, all done," said Dean at last, in a voice that sounded rougher than usual. Rachelle mutely nodded her thanks, her cheeks almost scarlet. Ah, not a couple yet, thought Tyrone, feeling like he was intruding in his own living room.
He glanced over at Sam, mildly amused by the large man's apparent embarrassment to be sitting near-naked in a stranger's home. The towel draped around Sam's shoulders slipped and Tyrone couldn't help but notice how badly scarred the man's body was. He wondered what sort of life would lead to such markings on someone not that much younger than himself, but who still seemed so kind and gentle. Tyrone had appreciated how, during their journey, Sam had gone out of his way to explain things and to reassure him and make him feel comfortable, whereas he had a nasty feeling that Dean might just have slit his throat, and then felt guilty about, if it meant protecting his companions.
He accidentally caught eye contact as Sam looked up and Tyrone looked away suddenly, now embarrassed himself to have been caught staring. It all became crushingly real to him, and added weight to the brief summary the Winchesters had given him earlier in the car.
"This is real, isn't it? That thing killed those people, but no one's ever going to believe me. They'll think I've lost my mind. Hell, I think I've lost mind," said Tyrone slowly, as he tried to come to terms with this sudden epiphany.
"Now do you see why we're trying to keep it all on the down low? It's not exactly something you go about shouting from the rooftop, is it? People just think you're crazy, plus it tends to warn the bad things that we're coming for 'em. And seriously? They don't need the advantage," Dean ranted.
Tyrone started to interject, "But surely the authorities could intervene..."
Sam put his serious expression on, "People in the past who tried to go public have tended to have sudden and usually fatal accidents." He traded a significant look with his brother, "There's a common belief among hunters that there are some verypowerful things out there that most definitely want to keep the status quo."
"I'm more a Pink Floyd man myself," quipped Dean, grinning appreciatively at Rachelle who chuckled at the joke, while Sam just rolled his eyes.
"So what, you think this creature's after Rachelle's ring?" asked Tyrone.
"That certainly appears to be the case, and it all seems to make sense. The first killing was probably an accident, the creature got caught in the guy's line while it's swimming towards the campus just around the time Rachelle starts wearing the ring. Then the other two are people that Rachelle's been in recent contact with," Sam answered.
"So why don't we just let him have it?" suggested Tyrone, playing devil's advocate. He always liked to look at all the angles; he found that understanding a perp's motivation was usually the first step to catching them.
Dean blinked at him before cutting in with a harsh, sarcastic response, "I'm sorry, I must be confused. You know, the bit where your job was to stop crime and keep people safe."
"Dean," Sam called gently, pleading for a little more understanding, "It's a question that needs to be asked. What is the ring, and more importantly what's gonna happen if this thing does get its claws on it?"
Dean nodded, and cast an apologetic look toward Tyrone, "Okay, so it could be benign, but come on, let's face it, there's more things that eat other things than don't."
Rachelle could barely contain herself, "This creature's killed three people already, that we know about, and tonight it tried to kill me, too. Are you really willing to gamble on this thing's good intentions for something that it clearly wants so desperately?"
The room fell silent as that thought sank in.
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The creature stood outside in the rain, a lone figure watching from his hidden position. He rubbed absently at the cluster of small bruises on his chest that were the sum total of all the damage he had sustained from the gun fire earlier that afternoon. Although he hadn't suffered any lasting damage, it had still hurt. He'd never been shot at before and so, startled, he'd fled under the continuing barrage. It was just good fortune that he hadn't got hit in the eye. It's about time my luck should change, he thought.
He was close, so close now he could almost taste it. He had made many mistakes in going for the others, but he had forgotten himself in his overwhelming desperation for this to all be over - he had forgotten how strong he was and, for all their hideous ferociousness, what terribly fragile creatures humans were. But this time it was different, he'd seen this same human in several places he'd been now - it just had to be the right one this time, it had to be.
The men in the black car were becoming a problem. He didn't like the big one, truth was he was scared of him, if not outright terrified. It wasn't just the great height, the human had a taint of the ancient ones about him that seemed dormant, but could explode at any time. It reminded him of the time he'd swum past an underwater vent from an inactive volcano; there was hardly anything there to see to the eye, but the water still had an acrid taste that had stuck in the back of his gills nonetheless.
He decided he would come back once they had gone. Everyone goes, given enough time. He could wait, he was patient. It wasn't like he hadn't had the practice.
XXX
Ryba moved around her apartment with the confident movements of one long accustomed to her environment; she might be blind but she knew every inch of her surroundings. She heard her tenant come in through the backdoor, which in itself was unusual. Henri Fischer was such a considerate young man, a God-send to a lonely old woman, but he was a shy, quiet one and he didn't usually let the screen door bang like that that.
"Is that you, Henri?" she knew it was, but she could tell from the heaviness of his tread that something was bothering him.
"I have had a... bad day, Mrs. Bouřková," he said in his heavily accented English.
"Bah, how many times must I tell you to call me Ryba? Now tell me what is wrong, perhaps I can help?" Ryba knew she shouldn't interfere in her lodger's life, but her mothering instinct was only strengthened by the sound of the language of her long-ago childhood.
"Mrs... Ryba, it is complicated... there are things I must do for my family back home that... do not sit well with me."
"Well you must do as you see fit, Henri. You are a good boy, I'm sure you will do the right thing."
"I'm not so sure I deserve you to have such faith in me," Henri said in a quiet voice so full of sadness that Ryba could practically feel her heart break.
"You and I are of the old country, Henri; this land has been good to us, but their ways are not our ways," she smiled, wanting to reassure him, thinking fondly of how her head had been turned all those years ago by her young GI husband, and the culture shock that had awaited her when she'd first come to the United States after the end of the war.
"I know a kind soul when I meet one," she added, patting him in a gentle, reassuring manner on the shoulder.
"Goodness Henri, you're freezing! It's a wonder you don't catch your death of cold," she laughed.
"Now, please help a poor, old woman. I've put my comb down and can't find it anywhere..."
Henri's green scaled face stretched in a broad grin showing wickedly sharp teeth that his landlady couldn't see as he helped her look for her lost item. For a few brief moments he enjoyed being Henri the lodger and not Henri the 'Burning Waters' killer, but then the waves of guilt came crashing in and he despaired at how low he had been brought down from the great promise of his childhood...
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Henri the bagiennik was the eldest of his pod and, when the time came for him to swim into the waters of adulthood, by far the strongest. So when the summons came from the great Queen Wąda, the Lady of the Lakes, the pride for both him and his family was overwhelming and the anxiety to impress made his fins quiver with nervous anticipation.
That excitement faded, to be replaced with shock, when he swam through the underwater fields and meadows of sea grasses on the way to his ruler. He had not been back here since he'd been a hatchling. Much of the area he remembered as being of luscious green and blues were now yellowing with sickness or dark brown and dead.
He finally arrived in a series of intricately manicured lawns more in keeping with the lush green leaves that he recalled from his childhood. He was greeted by the phalanx of heavily armored crustacean guards, who were to escort him the final yards into the presence of the Queen of the Underwater Lawns.
He grinned with a mouthful of razor sharp teeth at the sight of the young ones fleeing from him in terror and hiding in among the grasses. When he arrived in Wąda's presence he felt that terror himself, and he was careful to keep his eyes averted from her magnificence. He willed himself to avoid making any sudden jerky motions, and he had to fight his body's impulse to emit protective oil from the glands in his nostrils. The last thing he needed was to project the image of prey; he was hoping to secure his future, not to end up as lunch for royalty.
"Come no further," the commanding voice of his Lady intoned, dismissing the guards in an unusual breach of protocol, "No male, even one as young as you, may come any further into the spawning grounds," she explained.
His body quivered as Wąda ran a long, dagger-like claw up his neck to lift his chin so she could inspect his face. "I remembered you were a beautiful child, you've grown even more handsome," she sighed, "Most pleasing for these old eyes."
Henri tried not to gasp at the sight of his queen as, like the sea grass fields surrounding her lair, Wąda's once beautiful, glittering scales were no longer the verdant green of her youth. Instead she appeared mottled, maybe even diseased.
"Yes," she hissed, "I am dying, like my domain around me. For all our sakes you must retrieve for me what once was mine."
She placed a necklace with a gem setting around his neck. "The more you wear it, the more you'll see," she intoned as her purple eyes burned into his mind with their intensity. "I dreamt that you would travel far, and that you are the only one who can save us all. All you need do is place the gems together and I will take care of the rest."
She turned, trying to hide her physical discomfort as her attendants returned, "Now go, quickly, the feeding frenzy is almost upon me."
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Henri was so miserable; he hated being alone.
He hated the humans with their casual destruction of their habitat, their poisons and effluent they unleashed in the water that sapped the oxygen and destroyed the wildlife. He hated the way they bred copiously despite the lack of effective predators.They're disgusting; they don't even eat their own young to weed out the weaklings.
Oh, and the smell! Their stench was truly indescribable with their weird warm bodies and bizarre patches of fur - in some ways the fact that they looked a little like bagiennik made it worse, like they were some sort of grotesque mockery.
As if the smell of one wasn't enough, they tended to congregate in great shoals, fighting and arguing and destroying everything around them. He hated having to be so near to them; every bagiennik hatchling was raised with the warning that human teeth might be ridiculously blunt, but they were disease-ridden and held deadly poison that could kill with a single bite.
He'd remembered watching in relief as the plague had swept through their ranks, as whole swathes of humanity perished due to their dirty water and bite of a tiny flea. But even that they had recovered from, like the unstoppable swarm they were.
Thanks to the companion ring Lady Wąda had given him, sometimes he could sense the faintest of impressions of the missing ring as it passed from hand to hand, but he could only really sense it when it was worn. A couple of times he got so close to where he knew it was, but when he arrived it was nowhere to be found. Often the location would be subtly different from the vision he had of it. It was a testimony to the strength of faith that Wąda's subjects had in her, that he continued to believe in what she had told him. But slowly, over time, doubt slipped in.
One day, after many years of fruitless searching without even a faintest ghost of a whisper of a sense of the ring, he felt a call from half a world away.
The journey would be a long one, the exact distance was well beyond his ability to comprehend and not one that he was confident that he would survive. He was certain that it was one he would not be coming back from.
Frankly, the thought of such a journey filled him with terror. Only his love for his people and devotion to his queen gave him the drive to attempt such a feat of swimming endurance. If this was going to be his final act, he needed to see his family one last time.
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Henri was shocked at his return to the land of the underwater lawns. This wasn't the first time he had traveled home for a brief rest, but the frequency had decreased and the time elapsed between each visit had increased when he saw the depth of desperation in the faces of his people and the dwindling size of the spawning grounds.
This time he returned to find his way blocked by Wąda's guards. "Focus, Henri," the Queen's words, sent psychically from a distance, pierced through his brain, causing him pain. "Seek what is lost!" she said in a gentler tone, although it still carried the weight of an order.
The guards had reluctantly relented only after he'd refused to leave before being granted an audience with the queen. "Please," he'd begged Lady Wąda, "just let me rest here for a little while. I miss my pod."
"You are not to return until you have the gem," she commanded, her voice as cold as the sea now surrounding them.
Henri wept bitter, oily tears of grief, but turned and left as he was ordered.
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Thinking that Henri was out of hearing range, Wąda turned to her advisor and they shared a look. "It's for the best," her advisor tried to reassure the queen.
"What, to make him think I would deny him the comfort of his family, or that I didn't tell him that they're already dead?" she snorted.
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Henri had given up a long time ago. He'd fled to the new world, an ocean away from his former life.
The going had been long and hard beyond anything even his worst fears had imagined. There were many times when he was sure he was going to die, and only the thought of his people and the memory of his family kept him going.
He couldn't face the prospect of having made the journey in error, or even of traveling back if he was successful.
All bagiennik had a sense of connection to Wąda - a sense of belonging, if not a method of communication. Henri had heard dark stories of Wąda using this like a leash to drag the recalcitrant back to her command, although he hoped they weren't true. But it seemed Wąda's influence simply didn't extend to the new world.
I'm so tired of this endless searching, he thought. By rights he should have maintained a hold on his own area of swampland, somewhere suitable for initiating the lengthy courtship rituals of his people.
Too late. He was well past his prime now.
Just as he was a day away from approaching land, he felt the slight trace of the ring fade and die. He could have wept a quantity of tears to rival the mighty ocean he swam through. He had to fight the overpowering temptation to just give up and sink to the bottom of the ocean forever.
As he'd swum into the harbor he'd looked up in awe at the gigantic statue that stood guard over this new land, guiding the lost and the disposed into the promise of a new life. This guardian had come from not so far away from his own homeland. Holding a mighty flaming torch defiantly above her head, with the array of spikes around her head and skin the color of sea grass she was a vision of a great protector. A great warrior-queen, fit for a new world, he thought, At last... I'm home.
Wandering from the water into the darkness of the evening it was a simple matter to avoid the guards posted around the port.
X X X
For a long time he searched, but he never sensed the ring again. For many long years he tracked across the huge land he found himself in. He marveled at the great wonders he saw, both natural and man-made. Humanity continued to grow in numbers and he found himself increasingly curious about them.
The gem he wore allowed him to confuse people's minds into thinking he was human for short periods, so long as they were distracted and didn't look at him too closely. Often he was mistaken for an immigrant fresh from the boat. He laughed long and loud the first time someone described him as 'wet behind the ears'. There were even some people from the old country here, although his command of English was already quite good, but in the main he shunned contact and kept to himself.
Then one day he felt the call of the ring. It was stronger and more immediate than it had ever been before. In his desperation to get to the source, he got snarled in a fishing line, an embarrassment to the very core of his bagiennik soul. As before, he couldn't locate the ring, but this time, at least, it seemed to stay in the same general area. In the end he found lodging with the odd, but kind Mrs. Bouřková, to be closer to the visions.
Then one night the vortex had appeared and he knew that his inevitable fate had finally found him. He would either retrieve the ring or he would die trying. It was as simple as that. Part of him didn't really care which, so long as it was finally over.
X X X
Tyrone breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the door behind Rachelle and the Winchesters. It felt a little bit like closing the door on the insanity of the last couple of hours, like he was getting his life back somehow.
All dried off, they'd decided that they needed to try to find some other way of locating the creature. Rachelle had insisted she stay close to her roommate, worried that the bagiennik, or whatever it was, seemed to be targeting those near to her.
Tyrone groaned when he realized that his shift started in just over an hour's time and he'd spent most of the night stalking the wrong people. He decided that trying to sleep now would only make him feel worse and that somehow he'd just have to muddle his way through the next seven hours. Still, it's not like I'm in any danger of actually apprehending a human suspect.His sleep-deprived brain did wonder what his colleagues would say if he revealed they really needed to be on the lookout for Swamp Thing.
Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he grimaced at the state of his haggard reflection. See, this is why you can never get yourself a date, he lectured, feeling sorry for himself. He actually felt so tired it was physically painful. He decided he definitely needed to wash or he'd run the risk of finding an anonymous can of deodorant on his desk at work. He headed for the bathroom, discarding clothes in all directions.
He stood for an age rinsing the soap from his body, and if he wasn't so tired he would have groaned in pleasure as the hot water helped unknot tight muscles. Okay, I really need to get a move on, he thought. He opened his eyes just in time to see a dark shape rise up from the water.
As the creature lunged for him, Tyrone tried to duck, but slipped. Instinctively, he grabbed hold of the shower curtain and it ripped down around him as he fell. He struggled against the creature, but, tangled in the plastic, there was little he could do. Within moments, he was pinned helplessly beneath its great weight and superior strength.
The creature - the bagiennik, his hysterical mind helpfully filled in for him - grabbed hold of his head and leaned right into him. Tyrone stared in horror into its inhuman, filmy white eyes. It was like all his remaining strength just drained away as the bagiennik dragged him around like a rag doll. It huffed in irritation, and Tyrone moaned in fear at the sight of the rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth in the creature's mouth. It's just realized I don't have the ring, he thought, fully expecting these to be his final moments on Earth. This isn't exactly the kind of date I had in mind earlier, the hysterical corner of his brain added.
The bagiennik gave him an unreadable look and lowered him gently to the floor, before turning and diving into the bathtub. It was gone.
Tyrone lay for a long while before he found the energy to crawl to his phone and search for the card the Winchesters had left him.
When the phone was answered, it took him several attempts to get his voice to work.
"Sam?" he croaked, "It's coming... for Rachelle..."
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Read Chapter 9: Treading Water