Crystal Park

Chapter 1

The cold mountain air blew loose snow across the hood of the Impala. The wind whistled softly through the trees surrounding the small clearing. Winter had not set in just yet, but the frigid bite of the thin atmosphere hinted that it was close.

Dean stirred slightly, fading in and out of semi-consciousness. He lay sprawled across the front seat of the car, blood dripping down his arm into the dark carpet. Sam was curled up in the back seat, bruises forming across his shoulder and right cheek. The icy chill of the mountain was quickly seeping through their thin clothing into their bones, leaving their skin pale and cold. If they didn't wake soon, they wouldn't make it through the night.

All was silent, save for the sound of drifting snow and dripping blood.

Three days earlier…

The mountains in the distance never seemed to get closer. Sam and Dean had been driving across eastern Montana all morning through countryside that never changed, awakening memories of the miles of open farmland near Lawrence, Kansas.

They had received the call for help earlier that week. It was supposed to be a simple salt and burn case; a ghost was causing problems with the tourists near a campground in the Montana mountains. It had reportedly attacked several groups of campers and killed at least two individuals. The boys had been driving through North Dakota and turned out to be the closest available hunters.

Dean was looking forward to the simple job. It would be nice to finally have a basic case of "find the bones, salt the bones, burn the bones, and go out for a cheeseburger and beer to celebrate". Even Sam had to admit he liked the prospect of a straightforward job as well.

The road across the Great Plains region of Montana was straight, smooth, and boring as all get out. Sam was getting sick of listening to Kansas and was tempted to throw all of Dean's music out the window. Dean, on the other hand, was enjoying the feeling of tires on tarmac. He had a purpose, a set of good tunes, and an open road. It was good to ignore all the usual chaos and to focus on something he could solve.

The road fell away behind them, and nightfall brought them to Butte. Dean maneuvered down the streets to an inexpensive downtown hotel. As they walked into the historic, albeit run-down, building, Dean smiled at his brother. "Hey, we finally get to say we stayed in a butthole."

"7 minutes, 23 seconds," came his brother's short reply.

"What?"

"I knew it was only a matter of time before you just had to start with the Butte jokes and comments," Sam sighed, although a slightly smug grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Well, how can I help it? Come on, they even have pictures of a giant hole," Dean protested defensively, pointing out a postcard showing a picture of Berkely Pit, a flooded strip mine near town.

"Please tell me we can get out of here early tomorrow. I don't think I can stand much more of this," groaned Sam.

"I bet they even have a bar called the Butte Hole somewhere. We are going to do this right, Sammy boy. It's a once in a lifetime chance," Dean laughed as they walked up to the front desk. The hotel clerk gave them a resigned look, clearly used to these sorts of comments. He even managed a slight smile as he gave them their room keys.

They trudged up the stairs to a typically small hotel room. It was different in its layout and design from all the other rooms they had been in over the years, but still had all the typical characteristics of a cheap hotel—musty smelling wallpaper, two beds with comforters that came right out of the 1960's, and a bathroom with a shower six inches too short even for Dean. As usual, Sam would need to shower on his knees or bend nearly in half to wash his shaggy hair.

Their usual arrival routine was a habit now. It hadn't changed much since they were kids, constantly dragged around by their father from town to town, crappy motel to crappy motel. They tossed their bags on their beds, took turns splashing water from the faucet on their faces, ran fingers through their hair and headed out for dinner and beers. Sam would never admit it to Dean, but he had somewhat missed the routine while he was at Stanford. There was a comfort in the rituals of this life.

They headed out of the hotel and found a small dive bar and grill a few blocks, a small, dingy place tucked in between a closed-down factory and a nearly-empty furniture store. Dean smirked as he pointed out the name of the bar— the Hole. Sam merely shook his head and sighed as they entered. He hated when his brother was right about little things like butt jokes and toilet humor. He also knew that anyplace with a name like "The Hole" in a town like Butte, MT, would have all sorts of ridiculous names for their food and drinks.

Sure enough, the special was the "Butte Burger", made from freshly ground rump roast and topped with cheddar cheese and barbecue sauce. This was served with "short and curly" fries. He desperately wanted to simply walk out, but he knew his brother would never let him live it down. Instead, he settled into a booth near the pool tables and pulled out his laptop, figuring he could get some research in and hopefully be able to ignore his brother's wisecracks about the Hole.

Other than the ridiculous name and silly menu items, the Hole was pretty much a carbon copy of every other bar they usually patronized. The floors were sticky with spilled drinks, and the heavy air stank of burnt-out cigarettes, rank cigars, and stale beer, all mixed together with an aura of something Sam liked to think was despair. The place was fairly crowded for a Tuesday night, with several young men playing darts in one corner and a few more gathered around the pool tables. The majority were at the counter, slowly drinking their way into depressed oblivion. This wasn't a tourist bar, despite the efforts of the establishment's name and menu to lure tourists in. This was a working man's bar, frequented primarily by men, but also by a few women who came here after their shifts in the mine, from behind the wheel of a truck, or from any number of other basic blue collar jobs.

Sam always wondered why he never felt as comfortable in these places as Dean did. They had both grown up in the same blue collar lifestyle as these people, but somehow Sam had never really fit in as well as Dean. Then again, being a misfit was the story of his life. He didn't fit in at home, didn't fit in at Stanford, and he didn't even fit in at a neighborhood bar. His gloomy outlook only grew worse as he watched his brother chat with the other guys at the pool tables and flirt with one of the waitresses. Even while Dean took money from the guys he was playing against, they still seemed to like him. As for the girls, women had always fallen all over his brother. Dean was confident and dangerous. It was what so many women seemed to want, at least in short-term relationships.

Sam shook his head to clear some of his depressed thoughts and bent over his laptop again, focusing on his research of the area they were headed to. Bannack State Park was an abandoned mining town in the mountains south of Dillon. It had been in operation as a mining town from around 1862 until the mid-1950s, when it was finally shut down and turned into a state park. There were two campgrounds near the ghost town. The ghost town itself was only open during the day, but quite a few people had slipped in after hours, some of whom were the groups that had been attacked by something. Most of them swore it was the ghost of someone named Henry Plummer. The local police had assumed it was some transient, or at worst one of the local militia trying to scare off the tourists.

Sam started searching for stories about Henry Plummer as Dean continued to drink and chat with the locals while replenishing their ever shrinking cash supply.

Dean felt alive in a way he hadn't for some time. This was what he needed: a simple hunt. He was glad to have a few days where things could be like they used to be. He missed the old, carefree days when he and Sam were young and had traveled the country with their dad, hopping from one town to another, hunting creatures and saving lives. This was the closest he could have to that, a return to the days after he had picked up Sam from Stanford and they had headed out to look for their missing father.

Every so often he would glance over at Sammy; his brother was focused on his laptop and sipping a cold beer. He knew at some level his baby brother was old enough— and certainly big enough—to take care of himself, but Dean always felt better when he could be there to watch over Sam. It had been his job for longer than he could remember, and after all, Sam was all he really had left.

He took a quick swig of whiskey from the shot glass in his hand, grinning and watching one of the men line up his shot at the pool table, his aim just crooked enough to assure Dean that he'd miss. The whiskey was rough and tasted harsh, but it was cheap and the pretty little waitress kept it flowing. The pool tables were running hot and the crowd stayed pleasant. All in all, it was a perfect night.

Around eleven Sam tapped his shoulder and told him he was heading back to the room. Dean decided to stay, asking the waitress to drive him home after her shift.

Six hours later, he stumbled back into the hotel room, dropped onto the empty bead and fell into a deep and, for once, dreamless sleep. Sam stirred a little as his brother came in before drifting back to sleep; he would need to get as much sleep as possible for the rough day ahead that would likely require an early start.

However, dawn came and passed before the boys stirred. Grumbles emanated from under the covers for some time before they eventually dragged themselves out of bed, Sam's hair a rat's nest of tangles, Dean cursing and shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight that lit the room and did nothing to ease his pounding headache.

They both stood staring at the bathroom for a few moments, taking in the cramped, dripping shower and tatty bathmat. They turned to looked at each other for a split second before making a mad scramble for the bathroom. Sam's long legs got him there just ahead of Dean, a feat that he had only been able to accomplish as they had gotten older and Sam had slowly, but surely, overtaken Dean in height. The joy of getting to take a shower while the water was still hot was well worth the crazed rush to the bathroom. Still, Sam wasn't mean enough to extend his time in the shower too much, despite the temptation to get back at his brother for all the years Dean had taken his sweet time in the shower, all but exhausting the coveted supply of hot water.

Instead, he rushed through his shower, bent nearly in half to stay under the flow of water, and hurriedly got dressed. He ended up nicking himself shaving and walked out of the bathroom with a piece of toilet paper held against the cut.

Dean noticed immediately and smirked. "Sammy, do I need to start helping you shave again?"

"Very funny, Dean."

Dean took his time in the bathroom, thankful that this hotel seemed to have a larger supply of hot water than most of the motels they'd stayed in. After picking on Sam's clumsiness, he took extra care shaving his own face. He knew his kid brother would never let him live it down if he nicked himself, especially after razzing Sam for the same mistake.

When he stepped out of the still-steamy bathroom, Sam was sitting at the laptop and taking notes in a small hardbound notebook. Dean finished drying off his chest and dug out a t-shirt from his bag, hanging the towel up in the bathroom to dry. Fifteen minutes later, they were back on the road, heading south toward Dillon.

Author's Note: This is an updated version that has turned out so much better with the help of ArwnisWholocked. Their help was invaluable and has really improved everything. I still don't own nor claim to own any of the SPN characters. he locations in this story are all quite real and many of the legends and the history behind many of the ghosts or legends included are based on historical people. Any advice or methods used by the characters to protect themselves from wild animals is not meant to be advice for a real world situation. The author takes no responsibility and will accept no liability if you decide to try these methods to survive alone in the wilderness. This story could be any time after season one. I really wanted to just come up with a little adventure for the brothers without worrying about trying to stick to every little bit of the canon.