Title: Halloween

Rating: T

Summary: It's October, and Dean and Sam drive to Massachusetts to check out a series of strange deaths. But when these deaths seem to revolve around the time of year and the spooky holiday just around the corner, can they figure it out before someone else dies?

Setting: Just after All Hell Breaks Loose Parts I and II. For purposes of this story I'm going to assume that the events in the Season Finale took place a few months before October. Therefore, Dean hasn't lost too much time.

Disclaimer: I don't own 'em.

Prologue

A shriek, earsplitting and terrified, ripped through the quiet darkness and filled the cavernous room with its petrified echoes. Eventually the sound faded into a thick, strangely deafening silence that crept into every crack and crevice.

"David!" Finally, another scream followed the first, although this one was filled with exasperation and just a hint of anger; the terror had vanished.

Margaret King stared at the life-sized statue she'd inadvertently run into while groping for the garage light, her heart still beating frantically at the sight of the clown's twisted yellow eyes and malicious smile. He—it was just a few feet taller than her, with plastic hands that gripped a gigantic and realistic-looking knife as if poised to strike.

"I told you not to leave these things lying around!" She continued heatedly, hands moving from her chest to rest agitatedly on her hips. She was confident that he'd heard her no matter where he stood inside their tiny townhouse.

"What, honey?" The man in question sauntered down the hallway, poking his head over her shoulder to get a look at what she was complaining about. "Oh, I didn't know I'd left Billy in here." He said sheepishly, his tone apologetic and almost a little afraid—with good reason.

"Billy? You named this… this thing?" She demanded, pointing a stiff finger at the grimacing clown statue.

"Well, see I bought Bil—uh, it awhile ago off of this guy—,"

"I don't care!" She broke in, recognizing a long reminiscence when she saw one; her husband was fond of those. "You know how I feel about these things, and to have it here in the garage, just staring at me—," She broke off with a deep shudder that made her entire body quake.

"Sorry, hun," Dave said again, wrapping an affectionate arm around her waist. Despite her anger, she leaned her head into his shoulder to escape the sight of the perverse clown. "I guess I'd forgotten about him with all the unpacking we've been doing lately."

"The move did happen fast," She conceded finally, sparing a glance at the small, sparkling diamond he had placed permanently on her left ring finger just two months before. "I just couldn't pass up this house; it's not much but—,"

"I know," He said, smiling fondly and steering them away from the garage and its creepy inhabitant. "I should have warned you that I'd put him in there."

"You should have warned me that you were a fanatic about Halloween," She said, a small hint of distaste back in her tone. "Honestly, the entire front yard is now a graveyard scene; skeletons are draped all over the house; and It is now taking up residence in our garage."

"I thought you hated Steven King," He said inconsequently, probably to avoid a topic they had discussed at length already.

"I saw the movie." She replied, a hint of defensiveness in her tone.

"Aw, well that doesn't really count; the movie was a big disappointment. You should have read the book, there was this chapter—,"

"I know, I know," She said, waving him off—her husband liked recounting scary stories almost as much as he liked reminiscing. "I'm a wimp. But please, just keep the creepy decorations to a minimum inside the house? I've given you free rein everywhere else."

"It looks amazing, doesn't it?" He asked, his eyes shining in an excited, childlike way that made her heart hum. "I can't believe I found the stuff at my mother's house; I thought she'd thrown it all out after dad died."

"How lucky for us," She said wryly, although she couldn't quite hold onto her anger as he stood there beaming at her like that. "Just remember what I said, please?"

"I promise," He replied, grasping her hand lightly between two of his and raising it to his lips. She smiled, her anger shrinking away completely.

"That's not fair," She said ruefully, halfheartedly tugging her fingers away.

"I know," He grinned wickedly then, the kind of smile he hardly ever used, but when he did—wow. "I'll go move Billy right now, alright?"

"Sure," She said, nodding appreciatively. Then she spared a glance at her wristwatch, noting the time. "Just don't spend too long in there; we've got reservations for eight o'clock."

Half an hour later, Margaret placed the slender, dangling earring in her left ear and added the finishing touches to her makeup. Once satisfied with her red satin dress and matching jewelry, she walked down the hall in search of David.

"Honey?" She called lightly, and then waited for a response. When she received none, she ventured further into the house.

Her heels clicked lightly on the wooden floors as she walked. After sweeping past the kitchen, living room and bathroom, she frowned and became more detailed in her search.

"David?" She called again, a little louder this time. She heard a slight shuffling at the other end of the house, toward the garage. She glanced at her watch, realized that they needed to leave in five minutes if they were to make their reservation, and started back the other way.

A trickle of foreboding ran down along her spine and caused the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She shook herself slightly and rolled her shoulders to dispel the sudden chill; the clown really wasn't that scary and she needed to get used to these kinds of things if she was going to spend her life with David. Still, the unwanted feeling seemed to double and intensify with every step until she felt almost ready to jump out of her skin.

As if to top off this cheesy Hollywood scene, the lights began to flicker. They went out once, plunging the entire house into darkness, and then began to waver erratically.

She closed her eyes briefly and then opened them again. After a moment in which she gathered her wits together, she continued toward the door that opened into the garage. She thought of all the junk that had accumulated in that room and how she needed to go through it and divide the items based on necessity and clutter; the plans helped her frazzled nerves settle a little and reminded her that the world was a safe, orderly place. She opened the garage door.

"David, are you still in—," She froze, hand still on the handle as she struggled to take in the scene using the small sliver of light the open door offered. The clown figure was leaning strangely against the far wall, a good few feet away from its original position as if it had been moved, and at its feet, amid the mountains of brown boxes and unknown junk was—

"David!" Forgetting her dress and her heels and her fear, she flew toward his slumped figure. Her shoes caught on something; the ground slid beneath her and she landed hard on her back. The floor felt strangely slick and her hands had definitely fallen into something wet.

She sat up, ignoring the pain as she continued to scramble toward David. Her hair fell from its elegant bun and drifted into her face, and she impatiently shoved it back with her hand—a flash of red glinted from the corner of her eye.

She yanked her hand away from her face, felt the liquid it had left there, and held her fingers into the small beam of light from the open door. With a sense of growing horror she realized that something red and gluttonous coated her hands; she looked down at her body and realized her dress was covered in it as well.

Blood.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound made it past her lips—the world would never be sane or orderly again.

"Dean!"

The eldest Winchester jolted up in bed, his heart pulsing in his ears at the sound of Sam's urgent shout. "Sammy?" He rasped, his eyes instinctively squinting at the bright light that had abruptly filled the hotel room.

"I've been trying to wake you up for the last five minutes," Sam groused, moving from the single window to sit on his own bed, elbows on knees, body facing Dean. "What's up with you?"

Dean's brain slowly tried to decipher the question, still sluggish from sleep. He reached up a hand to rub his eyes. "What's up with me?" He repeated, unable to decode Sam's query. He glanced briefly at the clock, which informed him it was almost one in the afternoon.

"You've been sleeping later and later the past couple weeks," Sam replied, and there was a deeper statement there, a hidden meaning, as there always was when it came to Sam.

The answer to that was pretty simple, too; he was waking up later because sleep had been evading him steadily for the past couple of weeks.

He had never been one to dwell on things; tortured, all-night worry sessions were more his anguished—aka pansy—brother's thing. But lately he'd found himself sitting and wondering and maybe even waiting—although for what, he didn't know. For the demon to collect? For death? For Hell?

"Dean?"

Great, Sam was worried. More worried than usual, anyway, because he had been nothing but worried since the day they'd killed The Demon—the day he'd found out that Dean had sold his soul.

"Dude, are you monitoring my sleeping habits now?" He asked, shifting in bed and throwing his legs over the side.

Sam was not deterred. "Should I be?"

"No."

That was it; Dean gave no other answer or reaction. He stayed facing the wall and waited his brother out. There was a sigh and a shifting of bedsprings from Sammy's end; then he heard the telltale sign of a laptop being booted up.

That'a boy.

Dean stood, grabbed a few clothes, and walked to the bathroom. After doing the routine morning thing, which included brushing his teeth, taking a shower and finding clothes that smelled halfway decent, he waited at the threshold and watched his brother work on finding a new case.

There were frown-lines between Sam's eyebrows, crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and an air of weariness that seemed to permeate from the tips of his toes all the way up to that ridiculous mop of hair. If Dean were anyone else, he would say that Sam was simply tired; tired of one hunt after another, tired of research, just tired. But Dean was Dean and Sam was Sam, and because of that Dean knew this went much deeper.

Sam was running himself into the ground worrying about Dean. And Dean had no idea how to convince him to stop.

Shaking his head, Dean banished the thoughts, refusing to dwell on them. He was still around, and that meant he could make sure his idiot kid-brother kept himself healthy. The problem would be when he wasn't around anymore, an idea that had never seemed like a possibility before but now loomed in the horizon with dark, deadly certainty.

That was something he didn't want to think about, either.

"Found anything worth checking out?" He asked, a little loudly so that his voice carried across the room. Not that it would take much in a hotel room the size of a prison cell.

Sam stayed silent for just long enough that Dean wondered whether or not he'd been too absorbed in his research to hear the question. Then he looked up unexpectedly and caught Dean's gaze.

"Possibly."

A/N: Reviews would be greatly appreciated! Expect another update soon!