This story is set during Season 12 between Episode 6 Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox and Episode 7 Rock Never Dies.

Chapter 1 The Cabin

Norris, Tennessee 2016

The cabin had to be nearly a hundred years old. The logs that formed the walls were weathered to a soft gray, and the chinking between the wood was broken and missing in numerous places. The windows were small, and each was divided into six smaller panes of glass. All but two of the panes were busted or missing completely, and the two remaining had cracks spider-webbing across them. Nearby, a dilapidated barn was barely managing to hold itself together, and there was evidence of other outbuildings that must have once been part of the little homestead, now fallen to rubble or dismantled. Behind the cabin was a small plot marked out with stakes and a large pole which had probably held a scarecrow at some time in the past. A garden, no doubt, that had supplied the inhabitants with fresh food and provided grain for the livestock. Now, the surrounding woods were encroaching on the cleared land, the beaten-back trees and underbrush slowly creeping closer and closer to the cabin – returning to claim what had once been theirs.

Sam and Dean walked the area cautiously. The ground was rough and uneven, and neither of them relished the idea of stepping on a rusty tool or twisting an ankle in a hole. A full moon gave some welcome illumination, but it also seemed to make the shadows darker by comparison. Their flashlight beams wandered over the ruined buildings, highlighted stray and abandoned items – a trowel, a broken jug, a coil of rope – and occasionally caught tiny pinpricks of reflection as nocturnal creatures were caught unawares by the roaming lights.

"Just please don't be a skunk…" Dean mumbled under his breath. One startled skunk encounter was enough for a lifetime.

"Hey, Sam, remember the skunk?" He whispered loudly to his brother.

Sam was running his flashlight beam over the back of the cabin, the light shining through the missing chinks, and he grimaced when Dean asked the question, jerking back instinctively from the clumps of grass growing along the cabin's stone foundation.

"How am I going to forget that, dude?" He hissed in a quieter whisper. "I have never vomited so…hard." It was a rather inadequate statement, but Sam couldn't come up with any better way to describe the awfulness of being sprayed. He had certainly never forgotten the immediate pain in his eyes and nose and throat, or the violent reaction of his stomach.

Dean was chuckling to himself – "wouldn't even let us in the car, made us walk five miles back to the motel" – Sam heard him saying. There was nothing Dean enjoyed more than an old "war story", especially one involving their deceased father. Sam just sighed and shook his head.

"Let's go in," he said, nodding towards the front of the cabin. "I don't think we're going to find anything out here." Dean sobered quickly and jerked his chin up in agreement. He led the way back to the entrance, and they climbed onto the small, rickety front stoop of the cabin. As they stepped inside, Dean swept his flashlight beam around.

The entire cabin was one open room. The floors groaned as Sam and Dean walked across them. A musty scent hung in the air – a mixture of dust, weathered wood, and general disuse. A large, crumbling stone fireplace occupied much of the left-hand wall, many of the stones looking as though they were held in place by force of habit. A few wooden shelves still hung haphazardly on the back wall, and a small worktable stood next to the fireplace. Three chairs stood or lay at various points in the room, two of them with broken legs and all with gaping holes in the cane seats. There was little else left – the room had clearly been picked clean of anything usable. There was nothing on the walls either, no signs or symbols, no evidence of supernatural activity of any kind.

Then the light caught something in the far right-hand corner. It was a ladder built directly into the wall. Sam shone his flashlight over Dean's head, towards the ceiling. Above the ladder, a small opening was visible, barely two feet on each side. Apparently, the little cabin had a loft. The ceiling looked intact, which meant that the floor of the loft should be intact.

They walked over and Dean tugged on the boards that made up the ladder. All of them wobbled a little but seemed to be sturdy enough. He looked over at Sam and shrugged, raising his eyebrows in a way that plainly asked who was going first. Sam shrugged, too, and then nodded in a resigned way. He tucked the end of his flashlight under his arm and held out his hands in the international sign for Rock-Paper-Scissors. Dean gave him a look of disgust, but placed the end of his flashlight in his mouth and held his hands out. Three seconds later, he could practically feel Sam smirking behind him as he started his climb, but he chose to ignore it. Son of a bitch…I hate that damn game…

Dean quickly hoisted himself through the small opening in the ceiling. Where it came out at the corner of the cabin, he was forced to crouch to avoid the roof. He turned to survey the room just as his brother's head popped up through the floor. As Sam pulled himself into the loft also, Dean's flashlight shone around the room. The loft, like the room below, had no walls dividing it. The floorboards groaned even louder than the main level floor, causing both of them to wince a little. There was no reason to expect that they would be overheard by anyone, but the noise was still jarring in the silence of the night.

"What's that?" Sam asked as the light revealed some filthy material hanging from the ceiling. On closer inspection, they could see that it must have once been a quilt. It hung now in ragged shreds, the material moth-eaten and spattered with bird droppings. At least, Sam hoped they were bird droppings. He quickly shone his light upward to look for bats, while mentally acknowledging that, if there were any bats in the loft, his head would have probably already found them. Thankfully, the roof was clear of all but spider webs.

"I guess that was somebody's way of making two rooms," Dean said. He could see now that the tattered quilt had been draped over a piece of rope that stretched from one side of the sloping roof to the other. As he pushed past the bedraggled hanging to the far side of the loft, his light shone on the only piece of furniture. It was a wooden bedframe, low to the ground, still strung with sagging ropes that had once held a mattress. It was shoved into the far corner of the loft. Sam walked closer to the wooden structure. Dean continued to sweep his flashlight beam around the room, glancing down occasionally at his EMF meter. It hadn't budged or offered a peep throughout their inspection of the property.

"Look at this," Sam said, shining his flashlight along the inside edges of the bedframe. "It's scorched, like it's been on fire at some time – or like the mattress was on fire." He turned to look quizzically at Dean, but Dean just shrugged.

"I don't know, man," Dean answered the unspoken question. "But I'll tell you what, I'm not seeing anything that says demon or ghost or anything in our wheelhouse."

Sam wasn't really listening. His attention had been caught by something he had spotted behind the bed. He stepped gingerly over the side of the bedframe, placing his feet between the ropes, and crouched to pull the object from the very corner of the loft, where it had been wedged in behind the leg of the bed. It was a crucifix, small and wooden and oddly colored. Sam held it up so that Dean's flashlight illuminated it. They could see that it was elaborately carved, symbols etched over it in fine detail even though it was no more than four inches long. A thin ribbon was threaded through the bottom of the carving, so that when the object was held up the crucifix would be upside down.

"I think that weird color is blood," Sam said.

"Well, I guess I stand corrected then, don't I?" Dean replied. He reached over and took the crucifix, examining it closely. He grimaced. "I think you're right about the blood. You see anything else?"

Sam gave the bedframe and the entire area a thorough look but found nothing else of interest. He shook his head. Dean slipped the crucifix into his jacket pocket, and he and Sam headed back to the ladder. The best thing now would be to get back to the motel and examine the object in good light.

"I'm guessing that someone used…" Sam was saying as he followed Dean to the main floor again. His words were cut off abruptly as he turned to address his brother only to find him standing with his hands held in the air.

"You too, Hoss," the stranger standing in the cabin entrance instructed. He jerked the barrel of his shotgun upward to indicate what he expected of Sam. When both Dean and Sam were standing with their arms raised, the man with the shotgun nodded to himself.

"Now," he said, "I reckon you boys ought to explain what you're doin' here."