AN: So this will be my third multi-chapter story and I hope you'll like it! Constructive criticism is appreciated and I think I'll try to respond to your reviews this time (if I can figure it out). Also, I'd like to thank one of my closest friends, Grimmjow5580, who helped me with some of the finer details of this story. This story could also be slightly creepier than my previous ones, nothing too bad but please read with discretion.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Everything belongs to the creators of Supernatural.
Beware the Jester
Her heart pounded in her chest. A dim light shone in front of her, cutting through the inky gloom of the moonless night, and her heart leapt with the idea that she had almost reached freedom. However, a branch shifted slightly to her right, and her heart fell right back down to her shoes again. It's just the wind. Don't be so stupid, she told herself. She couldn't quite convince herself it was nothing, though, and pulled herself close to her boyfriend's chest. "I-I don't like this," she muttered.
He laughed, "Ah come on. There's nothing to be scared of!" He shook his head, obviously believing her to be just a fragile girl.
"No I'm serious," she said, tugging on his arm. "There's something out there."
Her boyfriend just scoffed. He turned to her, probably about to make some teasing comment, when the sound of a chainsaw ripped through the night air. She screamed and curled herself farther into his chest, her fight or flight instincts abandoning her completely. However, he seemed just as scared and several curse words colored the night air.
"Come on!" her boyfriend shouted at her. He grabbed her arm tightly and dragged her along behind him as he began to run. Maniacal laughter mixed with the chainsaw sound as they burst into the clearing.
Bright lights hit the teens' eyes as soon as they cleared the woods. Sounds of people conversing mixed with the muffled screams of people still in the woods. The teens stood for a minute, catching their breath after their mad dash, before the girl turned to her boyfriend quickly.
"Steven, you jerk!" she yelled. "You were going to run away and leave me in there!" Her eyes flashed with mock defiance.
"Ah, come on, Stace," the tow-headed boy said with an easy grin. "I was protecting you!"
"By running?" she demanded. "I don't think I can forgive you for this." She began to walk away.
"What if I buy you an ice cream cone?" Steven called after her. He watched as her brunette ponytail stopped bouncing as she paused.
"Well," she turned around, "alright, but just this once." The young couple joined hands again and started walking to their car.
"Besides," Steven said as he opened the door for Stacey, "it isn't like any of it was real in the first place."
Their car pulled out of the drive, and just as they passed underneath the "Jester's Park" sign, the neon lights flicked and died out.
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Ricky sighed. His last idea of fun was chasing ditzy young couples out of the last part of Jester's Park, but it helped to pay the bills. Silently, he tugged at his collar. It had been driving him crazy the entire night and the fake blood splattered on his face was itching horribly. He was so preoccupied with his uncomfortableness that he didn't notice it was taking the next couple an unusually long time to get out of the woods. When he did notice, he glanced down at the watch carefully concealed on his wrist. It read 9:46. We should definitely still be getting customers, he thought. Slowly, he made it to the end of the trail through the woods and carefully peaked his head out. There was still a line of people and the witch sitting at the entrance was still letting people in. That's weird.
He pulled out his walkie-talkie, the standard one issued to all Jester's Park employees to be used in an emergency, and pressed down the call button. "Uh, this is Saw Three," he spoke into it, "and I think we might have a problem here."
There was almost 30 seconds of silence before he got an answer back. "This is the boss, Saw Three. What's the problem?"
He hesitated for a moment. Maybe he was overreacting and the next group was just walking slowly. However, his gut told him that something was not right. "I've been waiting for almost seven minutes and the next group hasn't reached me yet."
"Alright Saw Three, well maybe they ran into some trouble before you. We'll call the guys in front of you and see if they have had any problems."
"Okay," he responded and tucked the walkie-talkie back into his vest again. He waited for almost another five minutes before the walkie-talkie crackled to life again. The sudden noise made him jump, and he had to chuckle to himself. The fact that he worked in a place designed to scare people and that he was afraid of a little radio buzz was ironic. However, something felt off about the place tonight.
"Saw Three?" the voice came over the static. "You are the only one not seeing the customers. We're stopping people coming in and we're going to take a walk back your way to see if we can find our wayward customers. We'll meet up with you in two minutes."
"Sounds good boss."
Two minutes later, George Smith walked up with two other workers. George rested his meaty hand on Ricky's shoulder. "Let's take a walk, shall we?" Ricky simply nodded and followed George deeper into the woods.
They walked for almost 300 yards down the twisting paths, when George suddenly stopped. Ricky had been scanning the woods to the right and left of him and therefore ran right into George's broad back. He quickly muttered an apology and sidestepped his boss, wanting to see what had stopped the big man so cold.
As he saw it, he felt his breath freeze in his chest. There in front of them, lay ten bodies. Now, this wasn't unnecessarily an unusual sight in a haunted attraction, except for one thing. These ten bodies were real. They were the customers that Ricky hadn't seen come back out. That wasn't even the most disturbing part, though. The worst part was that they were laid out in grotesque positions in a semicircle surrounding a jester doll. The jester was where the park got its name. He sat in a wooden chair, his head tilted to one side with a blood-red smile painted across his face. In his hand, he held a knife. And above his head, nailed to a post, was a sign. Beware the jester.
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(Dean's POV)
The morning was going perfectly. Of course, he never would have said that out loud. It was such a Sam thing to say. However, that didn't take away from the fact that it was true. He and Sam had been hunting again for almost six months now. They had just walked away from a simple salt-and-burn with surprisingly no scratches to speak of. There was no hunt lined up and currently he was on his second helping of the best bacon and eggs he'd ever tasted. He would definitely be content to stay just like this for a while.
However, with a brother like Sam, there was no way that was happening. Sam slid his mammoth-like bulk into the booth across from him. "Dean, so get this," he started. Before he could continue, though, Dean interrupted him with a groan.
"Seriously, Sam? I was just starting to like it here," Dean intentionally allowed his voice to whine.
Sam drew his eyebrows together. "What?"
"Whenever you start a conversation with 'so get this' it means that you have a case for us to solve."
"So?" Sam asked. "I thought you were the whole 'saving people, hunting things, the family business' guy." Dean glared at Sam as he watched his little brother's mouth quirk up into a little grin. Playing along, he threw his hands up into the air.
"Fine," he said, "what have you got?"
"Okay," Sam suddenly had the laptop in his hands, and Dean took a brief moment to wonder where he had had it before because he was certain Sam hadn't had it when he sat down, and opened it up. "So apparently, there was this huge murder in a haunted forest two states over."
"Okay?" Dean asked, his mouth now full of eggs. "Some psycho in a costume snapped. Sounds more like the police's deal, Sammy."
"It's Sam," he corrected, off-handedly, "but the police have no leads. No one heard anything. Who doesn't hear anything when ten people are murdered? And also they would have only had about 20 minutes to kill everyone and that just doesn't make a lot of sense. And then there's the fact that all the actors were accounted for…"
"Woah, woah, woah, hold up there, Sammy," Dean cut off Sam's nerd ramble. "Did you say ten people were killed?"
Sam nodded, still engrossed in the computer screen. "And apparently, to go with all the hype, a lot of people are saying that the place really is haunted. That it's not all fake."
Dean scoffed. "Well, there's always going to be crackpots that show up with cases like these. I'm still not convinced it's our kind of gig."
Sam finally looked up from the screen. "Well it can't hurt to go check it out."
Dean sighed and motioned for the computer. Sam turned it over and looked at his own breakfast. Dean scanned the article. Then, he looked up at his brother again. "So, you wanna go check this out even though the victims were," he paused to look down at the article again, "'strangely posed around the attraction's iconic jester'?" he looked at Sam. "You know that a jester is basically the same thing as a clown, right?"
Stilling immediately, Sam appeared to be thinking it over. After a few silent moments, he looked up at Dean with the huge puppy eyes he'd had ever since he was a baby. "Come on, Dean. Please?"
Now it was Dean's turn to go still. The smirk dropped from his face. His brother hardly ever pleaded for anything. What was it about this case? Sighing, Dean knew he was beaten. He looked at Sam. "So, when do we leave for lovely Missouri?"
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(Sam's POV)
"So," Sam looked up from his notepad at the police officer, "you have no leads?"
"No, sir," the young man said. "As I said, all the actors were accounted for. Every single place with actors has to be manned by at least two people and all the partners checked each other out."
"And isn't it possible that they're just covering for each other?" Sam asked, wondering if Dean might be right about this not being their kind of thing.
The officer shook his head. "We don't believe so. The only two that could have done it without being spotted were standing right before Ricky, and those two really don't like each other. I don't think they would have covered for each other."
Sam started to respond when a rustling came from the woods behind him. He tensed, half expecting a killer jester to burst from the woods. However, a familiar voice burst from the leaves.
"God, I hate nature!" Dean growled as he became visible, picking leaves and twigs from his hair. Sam grinned slightly as he watched his older brother's professional façade slipped for just a moment. It was rare that his brother was ever himself in front of people that he didn't know.
"Find anything, Agent Harris?" Sam said while concealing another smile.
Dean paused a moment to glare at him before regaining his professional composure. "Besides a lot of leaves and one creepy ass jester? Not much."
Sam unintentionally flinched at the image of a creepy clown-like thing sitting in a haunted woods. The place where the bodies were found was definitely one of the reasons why Sam had chosen the interview and not the investigation of the crime scene. He closed his notepad and looked back to the officer. "Well, Officer Hernandez, I think we have all that we need for right now."
The young man nodded quickly and walked back to his car. Sam turned to Dean. "Really? You didn't get anything?"
Dean shook his head. "Nope. Nothing. Not even a blip on the EMF machine. I really don't know if this is our kind of gig, Sam"
Sam hung his head. He was starting to agree with Dean. "Yeah I think you're right."
"Well that's a first," Dean flashed his shit-eating grin. "Let's go back to the motel. We can leave tomorrow."
Sam nodded and followed Dean back to the Impala. However, he couldn't quite shake the creepy feeling that had his "spidey senses" tingling. He couldn't help looking over his shoulder one more time. He stopped walking as he swore he saw something flash just out of the corner of his eye. When he didn't see anything else, he convinced himself that he was making something out of nothing. Clowns, he thought to himself. Get over yourself.
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Coming into existence. Sleeping for years was hard, but now he was hungry. The other night felt good. Silent screams echoed in his ears. Crimson lips pulled away from his jagged teeth. It had been glorious. But he wasn't satisfied.
The men that came earlier. They were a threat. Threats were eliminated. He was unstoppable. They wouldn't be a threat for long.
AN: So how did I do? Please leave a review and give me your thoughts!