Of Earth and Above
Chapter 1

"The only people for me are the mad ones-
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing , but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous Yellow Roman Candles, EXPLODING like spiders across the stars…"

- Jack Kerouac

Sam Winchester hadn't ever really understood why they had to move around so much, why they couldn't go to school like normal kids or why no house was ever good enough. Of course he knew it was because of the monsters, but he never saw why it had to be their dad, why they couldn't be a normal family with a normal life.

They had just moved into a new house, one story, cheap and tattered with boards on the broken windows. The grass in the yard was all dead and overgrown and there were bugs everywhere. There was a shed in the back made of wooden planks and sheet metal, and it was falling apart worse than the house. There were a grand total of three small trees by their house, and each of those was whithered down to nothing but the thin little trunks.

If Sam was being completely honest with himself, it wasn't really even a house. It was cheaper than any motel room in town, and more secluded, situated way out in the country. That was the only reason Dad had paid for it…

The man who sold it to them was sleazy and gross, his hair all wispy strands of grease sticking up from his head. "Look at this place!" the man had exclaimed with a too-wide smile and a look at Sam, "The yard's perfect for kids with a bit of trimming! And sure, the house looks like it's a little worse for the wear, but its been standing for fifty years! Sturdy as stone, I guarantee it!"

Sam disagreed. The shack was falling apart at the seams, the cracked wooden pillars that held it up creaked and groaned when the wind brushed them by through the vacancies in the windows. The shed was much the same, swaying in the slightest breeze.

Dean and their dad took to the shack-house like fish to water, making the most of the wide expanse of empty basement underneath the house from the moment they had arrived. Dean helped unpack the weapons and dangerous things that dad wouldn't let Sam touch, and Sam quickly tossed his ratty backpack onto one of the beds, frowning as a cloud of dust billowed up into the air above it.

They had just driven into town last week, a barely-there town in Idaho where everyone knew everybody else, where no one's business was a secret. The stores were all old, and some of them even made Dad start up on old stories from when he was their age.

The school was filled with kids of all ages, elementary and middle and high school all meshed together. Dean jumped right into it, tagging along after pretty girls, rubbing shoulders with the jocks. Sam had more of a hard time; he had just turned thirteen and entered a growth spurt that made him at least an inch or two taller than every other boy in his class. The upperclass bullies soon learned that just because Sam was their size, didn't mean that he wanted to be like them.

He got food dumped into his hair on Wednesday, Dean punched one of the bullies on Thursday, and they both got detention on Friday. And that was just the first week.

On the second, they still hadn't heard from their dad- he was hunting something in the woods outside of town, Dean said it might be a pack of werewolves- and Sam was bored. After school, he walked home. Dean had wanted to take him, but Sam saw how he was eyeing the cheerleader with shiny blonde hair, jumping up and down with her ribboned pompoms, and Sam said he'd be fine.

He had a book that he had borrowed from the school's library on the biology of birds, and he walked along the sides of the dirt road reading about how birds had hollow bones that let them fly, and how they breathed with their tiny lungs. His face was burried in that book even as he approached the small runoff that led to their shack-house. Sam pressed a hand to his chest as he closed the book and set it against the house, fishing in his pocket for the key, and wondering how fast his heart would beat if he was a bird…

Both of his pockets had been emptied and turned inside out, but there was no key inside. Dean must have it, he thought with a sigh as he sat down on the concrete step. He watched through the tall grass as their one neighbor, a widow woman with thin grey hair walked casually down the road with a plastic bag in her wrinkled hands. Her name was Mrs. Holson and she lived about a mile from them, all alone in a tiny shack-house just like theirs that was filled with cats. She had been the one to care for what was left of their house after its owner had died, closing it off with wooden planks after some roudy kids had thrown rocks through the windows. She turned her head and smiled crookedly at Sam before she continued walking.

He wondered if she ever got tired of walking everywhere, or if she had a car or any family. Sam didn't expect Dean to be back soon, and he could always creep into the house through the cellar, but that would mean breaking the heavy lock that held it in place, and that might or might not make Dad mad. Sam picked up the book again and leafed through the pages, tracing his fingers over the pictures of skeletal birds with their brittle wings.

His head turned quickly when a sound from the shed startled him. It was a loud thunk, like something inside of it had fallen over. Then came an answering thump, softer than the last noise, and it made him curious enough to stand up and walk over. Sam didn't move too close to the shed, but he could see where some of it had begun to sink into the earth, the cement foundation half-stuck in a patch of mud. The door was a rotted piece of wood, loosely hanging on a rusty hinge that looked like it would break if he touched it. Light filtered in through the bottom, shining a few feet inside the edifice and illuminating the floor up til a certain point where it vanished into shadow.

There might have just been a cat in there, God knew Mrs. Holson had enough of them and that they roamed everywhere. Sam leaned in closer, resting one of his hands gently on the top of the door to peer inside. Beyond the light, there was nothing more but dark shapes resting against darker patches of nothing. He jumped back with a gasp when something fell against the door loudly. The hinge snapped with a light clink and the door went down just before his feet. A broom with thick straw bristles had fallen into the door.

Sam rolled his eyes at his heart, beating hard in his chest at the scare. He picked up the broom, shaking his hands at the cobwebs covering it to get them off. He threw the broom back into the shed and wiped his hands on his jeans- they were getting too short again- and stepped back to pick up the door. It wasn't heavy at all and he shoved it into place sideways, leaving a small opening so that the cat could get out. He saw skid marks from where the door had scraped in and out from a long time ago, wood splintered imbedded in the concrete lines. There was soft, white fuzz stuck to some of those. It looked almost like cotton.

He heard a low rumble coming down the drive, and spared the shed one last look before running through the grass and back to the shack-house. Dean was back early, stepping out of the car with a scowl his school bag slung lazily over his shoulder. When his brother saw him, Sam got a small smile, "Hey, Sammy," Dean grinned, "Forgot something?"

Sam twisted his mouth, "Shut up, jerk."

He was met by an inflected, "Bitch," as Dean pulled the key out of his pocket and opened the door, swinging it open wide and throwing his arm out, "After you, princess."

Sam grabbed his book up off of the ground and swatted Dean's head with it, running inside with a laugh quickly afterwards, an indignant curse from Dean floating behind him…

Dad came home that night, his clothes dirty and torn in places, just like always. He'd brought home a greasy brown paper bag filled with hamburgers and set it on the table in their tiny kitchen. The grease soaked into the table, leaving a dark coloured stain, but the burgers were swiftly laid out on napkins and eaten with fervor. Dean's was dripping with ketchup, red globs of the sweetened tomato paste falling onto his napkin and into his lap.

Dad didn't use any condiments and insisted on taking out the tomato slices before eating. Sam simply torn off pieces of the burger and dipped them into the orange pile of ketchup and mustard, eating the messy thing as cleanly as he could, although his fingers were probably still going to smell of fast food for the next couple of days.

The leftover scraps were tossed outside into a metal garbage bin, and in the morning, Dad long gone ever since before daylight, Sam stepped outside and took notice of the garbage bin simply for the fact that it was missing its lid.

The wrappers from their food were shredded and made a trail of wax paper and food bits all the way to the garage, where they disappeared into the black nothingness.

All Sam thought as the car rumbled down the road was that the cat must have been a raccoon and that it must have been hungry. It never crossed his mind that it could possibly have been anything else.

A/N: So, yes, AU, hope you enjoyed chapter 1
FYI, the rating is subject to change due to possible future violence.
No, this does not focus on any particular romantic relationship, although there may be some later.
This is plot; pure, simple, lovely plot~

Black Rien