Same universe as stories "In This Town" and "Chiseled in Stone."

AU for season 3.

The Article

The article Sam ripped out of a magazine in a hospital waiting room didn't say much, just that there was some kind of closed community deep in the Appalachians, on a spot near the intersection of three state borders. It implied that they were Amish-like—in the sense of being isolated for religious reasons, not in the sense of being primitive, as one photo showed a very modern-looking computer lab—but that wasn't what had made him tear it out of the magazine (to the glaring disapproval of a seven-year-old waiting for X-rays). Sam's sharp eyes picked out unmistakable signs of old-school witchcraft in the accompanying photos.

Very old-school. Things that hadn't been seen in Europe in centuries, let alone in North America. Things only hinted at in the oldest books.

A little digging—a very little digging—uncovered the area's more colorful history: acrid dry fogs like smoke that settled on the local towns for days and often killed newborns and those with breathing problems; mysterious pillars of flame on the mountainsides; storms that went from pouring rain to hail to snow and back to rain in a matter of minutes, and in all seasons—all dating as far back as there were records, and all unexplained. Then there were the more minor things: local legends about secretive clans of witches, failed attempts at ethnological studies, an inability to pin the closed community to any specific cultural heritage, and a complete and total lack of intermarriage. Anybody who married into the community stayed in the community.

That was weird enough to kick Sam into full-fledged research mode, which only dug up more weirdness.

Before the age of child services, the community had taken in abandoned and orphaned children, like the Shakers had; it had not been uncommon for mountain families with too many mouths to feed to turn over their youngest—always the youngest, infants and toddlers, never children old enough to really remember anything. Very rarely an adult went in, usually a man and usually to marry one of the community women, but none of those adults ever came back out. If the numbers had been higher, if those adults hadn't remained in written contact with their families, the group would be on half a dozen cult watchlists.

Nobody ran from the group, either, which was just damned weird. No matter how controlling a cult got, no matter how strictly a group isolated itself, somebody always managed to leave. But these guys were so good that nobody was even sure what they called themselves. (The less-polite term bandied about by the locals was "witchfolk." The more PC of the neighboring towns referred to them geographically, the "people in Sister Valley.")

In the old days, when they still participated enough in society to allow their young men to be drafted, invariably one or two decided to stay outside. They didn't talk.

They also tended to spontaneously combust. One in Chicago in 1867, a guy who had spent the last days of the Civil War in a prison camp; one or two after every war since. Ten during Vietnam. In 1975, the community had registered itself, en masse, as conscientious objectors.

Four mountains hemmed in the community—the Four Sisters, which in a freak of geography aligned perfectly with the compass points. Three towns in three states formed the "normal" border, all of which were apparently named for those mountains: Blood Sister, Green Sister, Night Sister. (The fourth and tallest was Snow Sister, which was apparently not special enough to have its own town.)

None of this was enough to make Dean want the job, even if Sam was having geekboy fits about it. He was way more interested in a possible ghost ship on Lake Michigan. Not to mention, Michigan was closer.

No, what caught his eye—and his attention—was a photo on a website Sam found, an anti-witchfolk site run by someone in Blood Sister. This guy hated everything about his neighbors, from their isolation (only bad people need privacy) to their cars (mainly Fords) to their clothes (normal enough) to their audacity in visiting government offices (how dare they). It was obvious to the webmaster that deviants like them should be banned from renting post office boxes.

It was obvious to Dean that this guy needed a life.

The website required a lot of skepticism, which was why Dean quickly gave up reading the venomous text that accompanied the "surveillance" photos that this idiot posted. Any time one of the witchfolk came into town, this guy and his cronies apparently lined the route, cameras and cellphones at the ready. By the tolerant smiles of the witchfolk in question, Dean suspected they were not only fully aware of their stalkers, but found the whole thing amusing.

But one of the pictures caught his eye, that of a man carting Amazon packages out of the post office. More specifically, it was the man's ring that caught Dean's attention, a wide silver band like only one Dean had ever seen.

Sam, thankfully, was too absorbed in trying to track down a lineage for those symbols to notice. The rings were easy to overlook; they were plain, easily mistaken for wedding bands.

That was why Dean wore his on the right hand, so no one made that mistake.

He was able to identify seven different people—five men, two women—who wore identical rings. Four on the left hand, three on the right. More importantly, there were several—er—witchfolk in the pictures who didn't wear rings at all. Most of them didn't.

Which made the rings special.

Which made his ring special.

Dean didn't know how he knew, what detail had triggered his subconscious to make the link. He just knew that those silver rings had something to do with his.

But when Sam asked, he muttered something about ghost boats not being as much fun as they were rumored to be, and didn't even argue about the longer drive.