Set mid-season 4. Please read and review. Also, I have no Beta, so any errors are my own damned fault. Hope you enjoy!
He feels it before he sees it, feels the presence of an absence, the weight of a shadow. He can hear ragged, low breaths, the nearly silent rasping draw of air into nonexistent lungs. The chill in the air shows him his own breath.
No…
The darkness is so complete that it seems to suck in the light that glows from the crack beneath his bedroom door, to pull it in like a black hole pulls in everything before it.
He cannot look away.
Go away!
It comes closer, a creeping blackness in the dark, until he feels it beside his bed, looming over him, crowding around him.
Please! Mommy, please!
It prods at him, touch soft like whispers of wind on the skin, but jagged like tiny knives. The touch stings at his neck, and the sudden pain jabbing at his spine is so intense that he wants to scream, but he can't. His breath is gone, stolen. So he lays back and squeezes his eyes shut tight, praying in his child's mind for someone to help him.
Now I am become death. Destroyer of worlds.
They'd rolled into Copeland, Kansas at dusk the previous night, summoned by a rough-voiced phone call from Bobby, a grisly police report, and the near-cold trail of Pestilence. The streets were empty, the ramshackle houses battened down for the night as if a hurricane was imminent, shutters buttoned tight and doors double-locked. The only movement was the breeze that rocked a pair of shoes hanging from the telephone line like over-ripe fruit. The clerk at the town's only no-tell motel, a shaggy-haired hipster with more piercings than common sense, gave them a suspicious glare but handed over their keys without comment.
Neither brother made any mention of the vague discomfort each felt at being so near to Lawrence, hell, at being in Kansas at all. So instead they shared a meal of cold sandwiches and warm beer, and Sam fell asleep as the flickering light of the television bathed the room in a soft, electric-blue glow, while Dean crunched on potato chips and stared, half-drunk, at a wrestling program.
Now the brothers stood in the air conditioned cool of the Gray County Coroner's office, stiff and uncomfortable in their suits. Dean inserted a finger between his throat and his too-tight collar, grumbling inaudibly about his hangover, and Sam jabbed an irritated elbow into his ribs. "'S your own damn fault," he hissed.
The coroner, a large man both vertically and horizontally, emerged from his office, smelling of cheap wine and sweat, and looking decidedly disturbed at their request to see the body of Jared Mingo. "To be honest, while I don't often see the FBI here in Gray County, I'm quite glad you're here. This case really is beyond me." He scraped a doughy hand through his wire-bristle hair. "I don't know who could do that sort of thing to a child. To anyone." He blanched. "Frankly, I have no desire to take another look, so you'll have to be on your own."
He led Sam and Dean down a fluorescent-lit hallway and into the morgue. The smell of rot was clear above the formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde stink. The coroner took a deep, shaking breath before opening a morgue drawer and pulling out the sliding stretcher. The full extent of the smell struck them all at the same time, a stench of rotting meat, spoiling blood, and death. With a valiant and nearly futile effort, Dean swallowed back a monstrous gag and schooled his expression into one of professional disconnect. The coroner quickly stepped back from the open morgue drawer, nausea clear on his own face. In a voice barely audible he choked out, "It's all yours, gentlemen," and then he turned tail and scuttled out of the morgue.
"Amateur," muttered Sam, though the smell rising from the mound beneath the white sheet was turning his stomach. It was clear from the silhouette beneath the sheet that there wasn't a body laying there. Not a whole one, anyway. Turning away so Dean couldn't see him close his eyes to steal himself, Sam reached out and pulled the sheet away.
"Holy shit." Dean spoke from behind his hand, as though holding back the urge to vomit. On the shining steel there lay not a human form, but only a heap of flesh, macerated and oozing, the red of blood darkening to green and black with the creep of putrefaction. The white gleam of bone peeked here and there out of the gore, and Dean had to step back away from the carnage of it as the whiskey from the night before threatened to make a multi-colored reappearance.
Sam narrowed his eyes and his mouth curled as he bent closer, eying the pile of viscera and bones. He fished a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and pulled them on, snapping them against his wrist, and he gingerly pincered a tibia out of the mess. He smoothed the gore away to reveal what should have been the pearly smoothness of bone, but instead it was crisscrossed with a haphazard pattern of miniscule scrapes and scratches. Through his gloves he could feel tiny ridges, sharp striations where bone had been sheared away in deep gouges.
Dean mastered his rebellious stomach and leaned in to squint at the bone. "What the hell?" He ran his own gloved finger over the rough surface. "Dude. Those are teeth marks."
Sam nodded grimly. "Really fucking small teeth, but yeah. Teeth." He laid the bone on a clean section of the gurney and turned back to poke at the rest of the remains. "The flesh has been chewed too…"
"Well this is a new one." Dean slicked off his gloves and tossed them across the room toward a biohazard bin. "Theories?"
Sam's brow furrowed and he huffed a sigh. "Not a clue. I've never heard of anything like this, not in lore or superstition. Could be a creature, could be a spirit, could be a demon…I just don't know."
Dean eyed the bloody mass, still working hard to master his nausea. "Whatever it is, chomping up a little kid like that…we're gonna kill it. With extreme prejudice."
Sam stopped short and turned a baleful look on Dean. "Dude, this isn't Die Hard. Do we really need the hyperbole?"
Dean just flipped him the bird and pushed the stretcher back into the morgue drawer. "Regardless, whatever this thing is, it's pissed me right the fuck off." He scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. "Like I wasn't nauseous enough before." A cloud passed over his face and he muttered, "So research, then." Sam just nodded, and Dean groused, "Now I really am going to be sick."
Sam slipped off his own gloves and tossed them in the bin. "Bobby's already working some leads on his end. He's supposed to call in an hour or so."
Dean gave a glance backward, then gave the door to the morgue drawer a shove. It clicked close, the gleaming steel handle sliding home with a metallic sound that he would never admit sent shivers down his spine. But then the ring of his phone broke the silence and he snatched it from the pocket of his suit coat and glanced at the caller ID.
"Speak of the devil. Bobby?" Dean was silent for a moment, just listening, his mouth tightening. "Okay. Keep us updated." Dean hung up and rubbed a knuckle under his nose. "You know how Tim Sterling went off the grid a couple weeks ago, right?" Sam just nodded, choosing not to mention his last encounter with the other hunter. "Well, he's off the grid. Permanently."
Sam's stomach lurched. "Damn." His voice was husked with regret that he was vaguely surprised to feel. How many more? "What happened?"
"Bobby doesn't know yet." Dean stuffed the phone back in his pocket, his face pinched with weary anger. "The cops found him. What was left of him, anyway." His mouth tightened. "And there wasn't much."
Sam's brow furrowed. "So it's the same thing we've got going here."
"Yeah. Bobby said there wasn't enough of Tim left to fit in a bucket." Dean pulled a face that looked like he was aiming for nausea but reached only sad disgust. He drew his hand across his mouth again, trying to hide the little wobble in his chin. He had liked Tim, shady and sneaky as he was, and Dean found the whole thing to be a damn shame. "Poor guy didn't go out in a blaze of glory, he went out as a chew toy for god knows what."
"What the hell is this, Dean?"
Dean wouldn't meet his brother's eyes, staring instead at the closed drawer containing what remained of a little boy. "I don't know. But we're going to fucking kill it."