Technically, I don't even own the computer this was typed on.
AN: "Totentanz" is a poem by Johann Wolfgang Goethe; literally translated, it means "Dance of the Dead".
Totentanz
"Grave desecrations," Sam says as you drop into the booth opposite him. "Three of 'em. Pretty gruesome ones, too."
No decent quip comes to mind, so you settle for a confused look. The last time you got arrested for grave desecration, you were eighteen. To the best of your knowledge, Sam never was.
Sneaky little bastard.
"Here? In town? Over the last three weeks?" he adds.
"I thought we were here for disappearances along the road outta town?" you ask.
"They're connected, I think," Sam replies.
"Not a mass haunting, and a hunter already in town?" you offer hopefully, but Sam shakes his head.
"Gruesome, Dean. Think bodies torn apart and scattered across the whole cemetery. Every Friday for the last three weeks. Fairly recent bodies, too. They were gnawed on."
Not many things make that much of a mess of their food and attack unwary travelers in the desert. Must be a ghoul. But the morning's been so damn boring so far you just have to make a play for Irritated Sam before getting down to business.
"Well, all the really classy zombies eat living human flesh only, so we're probably dealing with some lesser breed or other. Shouldn't be too hard to kill."
"Way too many Romero flicks," Sammy huffs. "It's a ghoul, Dean!"
Bingo.
"I know that," you declare, mock-affronted, and reach for the coffee pot again. Sam rolls his eyes.
"Sammy, if you do that eye-roll thing much more they'll get so loose they'll fall out in the middle of a hunt, and then where will I be?"
"Your concern for my eyesight is too touching for words, Dean."
"But of course. If it weren't for you I'd have to do the research myself. Take up all my precious time."
"That would be a great loss to all of womankind, no doubt."
"Damn straight!"
"Not to mention that it's my job to keep your ass alive," he adds, a throwaway comment of no real importance except you already told him if he tried messing with that deal you'd make his life a living hell, but before you can snap at him the waitress arrives.
"More coffee, boys?"
"No, thank you," Sam says politely, but you hold out your mug for a third – or is it fourth? – dose. When you turn your attention back to your brother and away from her curves, he's pulling a paper from the stack scattered across the table and ensures the subject stays changed by saying, "I looked into the records at the cemetery, and it looks like we've got a candidate for it's next dinner."
You blink in surprise. You weren't in the shower that long.
"How'd you figure that out? And when?"
Sam shrugs. "Last night, mostly. And it's simple. All the other… victims, for lack of a better word, had been buried at least a week. Give 'em time to rot, you know? Anyway. This is remote unpopulated Arizona, so there haven't been too many deaths over the last month. And only two burials in Fairview cemetery."
"OK. We gather there on the appointed night and conceal ourselves, armed with a flamethrower each, and our courage, and –"
"Dude. What have you been reading?"
"There was some dumbass melodramatic fantasy film on last night," you shrug. "I think they're catching."
Aaand… the eye-roll!
"I thought I told you not to do that anymore?"
"I'll leave you to get the check," Sam retorts, standing up and looking for the men's room.
Fairview cemetery is on the outskirts of town, a sprawling, untidy place dotted with headstones in no particular arrangement. There's a mausoleum or three, a couple trees and a small chapel squeezed in at the edge of the land, bang up against the fence. The only colour in the whole place is the yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the side-gate in front of you.
It's the most uninviting, dusty, grim-looking cemetery you've ever seen outside of Wyoming.
"Man. You couldn't pay me to be buried here," you quip.
"And even if they did – what would you do with the money in the underworld?" Sam enquired.
"You know what I meant," you say, exasperated. "This has gotta be the most depressing boneyard I've ever laid eyes on. There's not even grass. Just… stubble."
Not even Sammy can argue with that.
"The cops are round the front," he says instead, peering through the gate bars and across the cemetery. Lights flicker and flash through the fence and cast long, ominous shadows over the front half of the graveyard.
"They should be doing continuous rounds," you sniff. "Idiots."
"Idiots who've made our job much easier by picking the most obvious stakeout spot and sticking to it," Sam says drily.
"Oh, well, excuse me for being offended by stupidity no matter where it crops up," you snap back. Then you stop, and turn to look at him. "I didn't just say that, did I?"
Sam's grinning. "Yeah, you did. Classic John Winchester. The voice and everything. No wonder Dad was so proud of you."
He's being mocking, but not, and it brings a small sad smile to your face before you can stop it, but then the cops' flashlights turn away for a minute or two, and it's up and over the gate with practiced ease and a brief clatter of iron bars.
There's something ridiculously cool about scaling a seven-foot gate like that, reminiscent of action heroes and spy movies and Sunday afternoons in the backseat of the car, arguing with Dad about the outcome of a pitched battle between James Bond and Ethan Hunt.
Anyway.
The desecrated graves aren't hard to spot: they're now in better condition than any of the others. There's even flowers on one, which can't be said for most other graves. They tend to dry out pretty quickly in the Arizona heat.
Sam leads the way to the two recent graves with quick silent strides. Luckily, they're on the opposite side of the graveyard to the main gates, with a mausoleum in between, so there's hope that the cops won't notice anything till it's all over. Improvised flamethrowers are still flamethrowers, and will get noticed fairly quickly. If you get caught, they'll probably blame you for all the desecrations.
And, you know, Hendrickson. Damn him.
You end up crouching in the shadow of one of the mausoleums, backs to the cool stone, with a nice unimpeded view of the two graves. Again and again the cops sweep the entrance to the graveyard with their flashlights, making the shadows around you grow and shrink and grow again. Occasionally you hear the scuffle of an animal beyond the fence, but nothing big enough to be a ghoul.
Other than that, the only sound you hear is Sam's steady breathing. He's on your right, stance loose and relaxed, eyes narrowed as he peers into the darkness.
Needs another haircut, your mind notes out of old habit.
There are dark circles under his eyes, too, and new lines of worry – over you, you're sure. He called you selfish, and he was probably right, but quite frankly, since leaving Wyoming, life's been more fun than it has since you were a teenager.
And maybe that's wrong, considering that you can predict the hour of your death down to the second, and you'll be spending eternity in Hell after that, but you always did have a talent for shutting out the things you didn't want to think about.
Sam's up to something. You're sure of it. Hiding things from you, things to do with Cold Oak, you suspect, but then, after last year, you figure you owe him some slack in the keeping-secrets department.
He senses your scrutiny eventually, turns his head to look at you. He can probably tell what you're thinking about, but all he does is quirk and eyebrow at you with the hint of a smile.
"You need a haircut," you tell him.
He grins. "And you need to get off my case. You've been telling me that once every month since I was about ten."
"Much earlier than that. You needed weekly haircuts at six."
"I used to get ice cream for my trouble, too."
"Shows how spoiled and unmanageable you were, that I had to resort to rank bribery."
Sam smothers a laugh. "You've only got yourself to blame for that one," he points out, but before you can respond to that, there's a shattering crash from the front of the cemetery, and a man screams.
Looks like the cops picked the best spot after all. Maybe they found a trail that didn't make it into the local rag.
You're on your feet and running before you realise it, Sam beside you. Out from the maze of headstones onto the gravel walk between the chapel and the front gates, and something drops over them and pauses, crouching on the ground for an instant. In the road behind it, you can see the cops, one still and unmoving on the hood of the squad car, the other on the ground, clutching at the bleeding scratches across his chest and right arm.
In the bright silver moonlight, the ghoul, as it straightens up, is all too visible.
It's tall and gaunt as a Wendigo, but saggier, somehow. Instead of the skin being stretched tight over its skeletal frame, it hangs off it in folds and creases like a too-big t-shirt.
As if the flesh were melting off its bones.
You only get a brief glimpse of a vaguely humanoid face filled with teeth before it comes at you, and damn, that thing can move.
Sam gets a shot off, but the cigarette lighter falls useless to the ground as it knocks you down with a strangely wolf-like howl; its breath smells like an open grave. For an instant, it leans over you, but as you're not dead, you're not a viable food source, so it settles for raking claws over your shoulder and lunging to its feet –
-only to get a face full of bullets. The shots are deafening in the silence of the night, and you give some serious thought to silencers before rolling away and grabbing the lighter, just in time to send a billow of flame at the ghoul as it staggers back from Sam's attack. It shrieks as the fire engulfs it, twists and turns, writhing in agony.
But when the flames die away, it's completely unharmed.
"Holy crap," Sam breathes, staring. "Since when are they immune to fire?"
"They're not!" you yell in pure indignation. How are you supposed to win anything if the other side keeps changing the rules when you're not looking?
The ghoul shakes off the effects of the fire in an unnaturally short time, and lunges swiftly forwards. Food isn't the question now, it wants the men who've hurt it dead. It knocks Sam off his feet into a headstone, and you drop the flamethrower, can't use it while the thing's so close to Sammy, and go for the gun in your pants.
You don't reach it.
The ghoul's momentum sends you flying, gagging at its breath. Long hands claw at your shoulders and neck, but your heavy, lined denim jacket does its job and protects you from the worst damage. Somehow, you get a handful of wet, squishy, rotting flesh – eeew – and manage to buck it off you; it lashes out at you, at your legs, trying to regain its hold on you.
You kick it squarely in the face and roll to your feet, but it trips you up again with a hand clenched in the leg of your jeans, and then you're scuffling with it again, scrambling away on your back, using your elbows to move back, trying desperately to shake it off long enough to go for your gun again.
It's relentless, always catching at you, claws tearing at your clothes, all you can do to keep moving –
And then, like an answer to a prayer, your shoulder bumps against a tree-trunk.
One last, ferocious kick at the ghoul and you're on your feet long enough to catch hold of a branch and heave yourself up into the tree.
Ghouls can move fast when they want to, but they don't have the motor control for climbing.
It creeps around the bottom of the tree, scratching at the trunk and howling, obviously furious. You tuck yourself in between two sturdy branches and pull out your cell – partly because you need to make sure Sammy's OK, and partly because you've just remembered something.
He's just over there, getting to his feet, and you see the display of his phone light up as he answers the call.
"Dean, where are you? Are you OK?" He sounds almost panicked, turning this way and that, trying to spot you.
"I'm good, Sam, you?" There's a definite note of sarcasm in your voice as you grimace down at the ghoul below you.
"Bruised," he says drily. "Dean, how can we-"
"Shut up and listen, Sammy. There're some legends about ghouls – from Persia I think – that say the things can shapeshift when they're not actually in a feeding frenzy."
A beat of silence, and then – "Silver bullets!" Sam exclaims and hangs up before you can even tell him to hurry.
Crane your neck past that branch and you can just see him scaling the gate again, running for the Impala. Then the ghoul takes up all your attention.
You get in a few rounds – ordinary bullets – but they don't really bother it, it's too angry for that. It just wants you dead, and then for dinner. The tree is getting more uncomfortable by the second, and every time you move you've acutely aware that the slightest slip of hand or boot on the smooth bark will drop you seven or eight feet into the jaws of a flesh-eating monster.
It's reaching up to scratch at the tree again when Sam gets back. He takes a moment to stare in surprise at the sight of Dean Winchester stuck up a tree, and you just know you'll never hear the end of this one, but then the ghoul smells him, turns whiplash-fast, and gets three silver bullets in the heart for its trouble.
And without further ado, it collapses like a rag doll and lies still.
"God, what a stench," you quip, dropping out of the tree. Sam's trying very hard to keep a straight face and it's not because of your remark. "Get the bag, quick. Gotta burn it, then call an ambulance for the cops."
Later on, in the motel room, you're sitting on the edge of the bathtub while Sam cleans out your scratches with more antiseptic than you knew existed in the whole world.
"Just hold still," he says when you hiss and pull back at the sting. "Or these'll get infected. Imagine where its claws have been."
"My boot's going to be up your ass if you don't stop poking!" you snarl.
Sammy just grins. "The cops are both gonna be fine, in case you were wondering."
"I wasn't."
"Wish I'd gotten a picture of you up that tree, though."
Sadistic little bastard.