Chapter
One ~ "Nightmares and Victims"
"Woah, I know this
room. It's me and Sammy's room from that one motel in
Albuquerque
from when we were younger," Dean thought,
recognizing the fluffy red carpeting and the end
tables that were
littered with hotel candy wrappers - their dad's version of dessert
from the past
few nights. He saw his little brother, Sam, sitting
at the desk in the corner, drawing.
"Everything seems the
same, but something feels...off." Dean noticed while walking over
to peer
at whatever Sam was working on.
Silently, he
laughed at the brightly-colored rainbow and clouds his brother was
drawing.
"Ah, Sammy, six years old and already on your way to
wuss-dom."
The phone in the kitchen started to ring, "Must
be dad," Dean heard his younger self say while
putting out an
arm to stop his little brother already on his way to answer it
(Little? He had
forgotten how small Sam used to be before he had
that big growth spurt one summer.). "Wait,
Sammy," he ordered,
"Dad said to wait for two rings and then he'd call back,
remember?"
Little Sam frowned and returned to the desk while Dean went into the kitchen to get the phone.
He waited
for the next call and picked it up on the first ring.
"Hello?"
There was a buzz and some weird clicking noises.
"Dad?
Hello?" No response.
A sudden scream ripped through the eerie
slence.
"Sammy?!" Dean crossed the kitchen with three
long strides expecting to be in the door
frame and about to find
the monster causing his brother's fright, but finding himself back
at the
table instead, the phone still in his hand.
"This
isn't right," Dean thought, "this isn't what happened. I
think I would've
remembered Sammy getting hurt!"
The
screaming continued and Dean, throwing the phone to the ground,
walked faster and faster
to the point of running. Each time he
reached the doorway, he was back at the kitchen counter,
phone in
hand, filled with utter rage and panic.
"Sam! Sammy?!"
The floor continued to grow underneath Dean's feet as if
someone had put a treadmill there and
decided to turn it on at
just the wrong moment as some sort of sick joke. The screaming
seemed
to have stopped, making Dean panic further. He kept
running, cursing himself for ever making
fun of Sam's
high-pitched scream.
"There, there, Samantha, it's only a fake skeleton," he'd say, patting his brother on the back.
He
ran and ran to no avail, still panting his brother's name until he
felt a hand shove his
right shoulder, forcing him to fall and slam
his head against the tiled floor and awake in a
completely
different hotel room, Sam's hand shaking the same shoulder.
"Hey Dean!"
Big Sammy sat back on his bed after seeing that Dean
was finally awake, a concerned look on
his face.
"What was
that about, you okay?"
"What was what about man and why
the hell'd you wake me up? Need to catch up on my
beauty sleep,"
Dean said, rubbing his eyes.
"Dude, you were screaming like a little girl."
"I was?"
Sam rolled his eyes then jumped at the sound of his cell phone ringing.
"Oh come
on!," Dean complained, grabbing a pillow and shoving it over his
face, "Who
the hell calls at," he looked at the clock on the
wall, "9:30 in the morning?"
Sam got up from the bed and
answered his cell on the dresser. "Oh, hey Bobby."
Dean sat up
and waited.
"Another one?" Sam grabbed a pen and wrote
something on a yellow notepad that read "Country
Music Inn" at
the top of it. "Yeah, okay. Alright we'll check it out." He
flipped his phone closed.
"So another kid commit suicide?" Dean guessed.
"Yeah, there's definitely something going on
in this town. That's the fifth kid this month. Bobby
got the
address," Sam said, holding up the notepad.
"Well then,
let's go get our new aliases," Dean got up and added with a grin,
"You be
Bonnie, I'll be
Clyde."
*********************************
Slamming
down her searing knife into the cutting board, Mrs. Stokes sighed in
utter
annoyance at the sound of the doorbell ringing for the
umpteenth time. She took off her apron
and threw it down on the
counter top.
"Probably more visitors coming to 'mourn'
Julius," she thought as she walked over and
opened the door, "As
if casseroles will bring my son back." She was surprised, instead,
to find
two strange men at her doorstep.
The shorter of the two men, who also happened to be tan and handsome, smiled.
"Hello miss, I'm Officer Armstrong," he said, flashing
a badge. "This is Dr. Hill," he
indicated the taller brunette.
"Are you Mrs. Stokes?"
"Yes, I am," she replied, her
heart skipping a beat.
"How can I help you?"
"Well
Mrs. Stokes, we're investigating the recent suicides of the
children in this area
including your son, Julius. We're here to
ask you a few questions."
Mrs. Stokes nodded slowly and
motioned for them to come in, closing the door after they
had. She
took a seat on the chair in the living room; Dean and Sam, the couch
across from it.
"So what do you need to know?" she asked crossly.
"Well, first off, how exactly did your son kill himself?" Dean inquired. Sam elbowed his brother in the ribs, Dean was never good at being subtle.
Mrs. Stokes frowned in confusion, "I've already told the police that." she said.
"This is a separate investigation, ma'am," Sam cut in,
ignoring his brother's angry glare, "being run by social
services."
"Social services?!" she cried, "Why I never -
-"
"If you'll just answer a few questions, this'll all be
over a lot quicker," Sam said forcefully, but
not unkindly.
"Very well," she replied, sighing.
Mrs. Stokes suddenly
found it hard to keep eye contact and looked at her hands in her
lap
instead. "Well, that morning, I found him on the kitchen
floor. He seemed to have stabbed
himself in the chest with one of
my cooking knives," she looked up at the two men, tears
forming
in her eyes. "The other officers said there were no signs of
murder, no prints were
found. I think they said, from how deep the
wound was, that it could not have been an accident
either, but it
had to have been!" She looked back and forth from officer to
doctor. "An
eight-year-old doesn't commit suicide!"
"Were
there any signs before Julius died, Mrs. Stokes? Had he been acting
differently at
all?" Dean interjected.
"No," Mrs. Stokes shook her head. "He was his usual happy self."
Sam
noticed a little girl in the next room over quietly playing with her
dolls. "Is that Julius'
sister?" he asked.
"Yeah
that's Katherine."
"May I speak with her for a moment?"
When she nodded, he walked over to Katherine and spoke to her in
whispers.
Dean continued his conversation with Mrs.
Stokes.
"What was going on the day before Julius died?"
"It
was his and Katherine's birthday. We had a party." Tears started
to trail down her
cheeks, she looked at her daughter and Dean
followed her gaze. "I even had a magician come to
perform.
Julius loved magicians, he said he always wanted to meet one in
person." She turned
back to Dean and smiled a little, "He
really believed in magic."
"What was the magician's
name?" Dean inquired, wondering briefly why such a pretty
lady
was still single.
"Umm...Charles Hayworth, I think. Oh,
wait, I have his business card, I'll go get it." She got up
and
went into the next room.
A moment later, Mrs. Stokes was back
with a purse in one hand and the card in the other.
She handed the
card over. Dean took it as he stood, glancing over at Sam who was
just departing
from the little girl. He looked back at Mrs.
Stokes. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Stokes, I
think that's
all the information we need. Am I right, doctor?" Sam nodded and
added,
"We're sorry for your loss ma'am, if you think of
anything else, give us a call," he handed her a
piece of paper
with his cell phone number on it.
Mrs. Stokes had just closed
her front door when Dean asked, "Well doctor, have fun
playing
dolls with Katherine?"
"I was trying to find out if she
knew anything about Julius' death," Sam said as they
walked
down the front driveway. "Figured she might have seen something,
but came up with
nothing, you?"
"The day before Julius
killed himself, they had a birthday party and momma got him
a
magician. What do you think?"
"I don't know," Sam
said, scratching his head. "I've never heard of children this
young killing
themselves before."
"Well, according to
his business card," Dean said before getting into the Impala,
"this
Charles Hayworth guy doesn't live too far from here,
what do you say we go pay him a visit?"