Motel California
The Impala's headlights briefly illuminate assorted cactus and scrubby bushes zipping past on the side of the narrow highway. The dark road stretches endlessly into the horizon. Sam has dozed off in the passenger seat, face jammed against the window. Countless miles of excruciatingly boring California desert yawn before Dean.
Before dark they had seen a real, honest to god roadrunner. But the only interesting things since sunset have been passing long haul truckers every few miles and an occasional suicidal bunny to avoid in the road. About 200 miles ago Dean found a pretty sweet classic rock station, but it had gradually faded to static.
Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel and hums "Take It Easy" to himself absently. They have been on the road for ten tedious hours, trying to make it to Palm Springs without an overnight stop. Once they arrive they can look forward to hunting a prohibition-era bootlegger's phantom car that's been haphazardly running people off the road, the most recent a fatality that caught their attention. Dean hates resort communities filled with meddling old people almost as much as he hates phantom vehicles and their implied risk to his car. He is less than delighted about this job.
Dean's head tilts down slowly, eyes creeping closed, and then he jerks awake. He glances guiltily at Sam, who is still snoring away, and then rolls down his window, hoping the blast of cool night air will help keep him alert. He'll have to pull onto the side of the road to sleep if he can't find a place to stop soon.
A few more dull minutes later he squints into the horizon at a flickering light. In another minute he can make out the neon sign in the distance, "oltel" preceded by an occasional erratically flashing "m". Another minute and he slows the Impala down to pull into the motel's arcing, palm tree lined gravel driveway.
He idles the car in from of the motel lobby entrance and sizes the place up. The motel is mission style, all stucco, orange tiles and arches. It looks like it was classy enough once, but now it is crumbling and run down, landscaping all overgrown and weedy. The parking lot is almost empty, only a large charter bus and a couple other cars, all dusty from long desert drives. The neon "otel" sign that he saw from the road announces "Vacancy" and "Heated Pool" and a myriad of other desirable traits. Most importantly, there is nothing else around for 100 miles.
"Hey look, Sam," Dean hits the still-sleeping Sam on his arm, "look, color TVs! In every room!"
Sam wakes with a start, knocks his head into the window, swears loudly and glares bullets at Dean.
"You are not a morning person, Sammy," says Dean.
"It's not morning," growls Sam.
----------
They head in together from the parking lot, duffels already in tow. The lobby door swings open with a jingle, and the matronly woman at the desk looks up from her Soap Opera Digest.
"Howdy," says Dean cheerfully. Sam stifles a yawn.
"Welcome to The California," she greets them with a smile. "Two doubles?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Let's see what we have," she says, and turns to the wall behind her, where sets of keys hang quaintly on numbered hooks.
The lobby braches off into two hallways, but the back opens up to a courtyard, home of the much-ballyhooed heated pool, Dean imagines. There are voices and loud music drifting in from the courtyard, sounding like a party in fill swing.
"Seems crowded," says Dean as the desk clerk studies their room options.
"Tour bus broke down," she says as she grabs the two sets of keys to room 7 from the hook. "College kids, a sorority." She tsks and shakes her head. "They've been a little rowdy, but we don't get much business around here, so…"
She sets the keys on the counter. "That extra key is for the pool, but it's out of order. It's 29.99 a night. Check out at 11 am. Cash or credit?"
----------
The California is one of places that you can tell used to be nice, once. Tarnished brass sconces on the wall, peeling floral wallpaper, burgundy carpet that is worn threadbare down the center. There is even a cracked and no longer functioning chandelier hanging in the lobby.
Now the whole place seems dark, grime worked in to every possible surface, and it is lit like they are trying to save money on light bulbs. The hallway Sam and Dean are currently trooping down is actually dank, clammy and muggy. It reminds Sam for all the world of a sewer, which is impressive considering they are in the middle of the arid desert.
By the time they get inside their room, Sam is stiff and grouchy and exhausted, and he's getting a lump on his head from where he knocked it into the car window. He feels, to put it mildly, like shit.
Dean, however, is beside himself. "Sweet, Sammy, did you check out all the coeds in the courtyard?"
"'Coeds'? Nobody says that anymore, Dean."
Dean ignores him. "It's spring, isn't it? They must be spring breakers on their way to Palm Springs or somewhere."
"I dunno," Sam says, indifferent. He eyes the equally suspect beds and then flops into the nearest one in an exhausted heap.
"Sorority girls go crazy on spring break," Dean says, grinning. "This is going to be awesome."
Sam is unimpressed. He can hear the bass line of a crappy song pounding through the wall. He has been to plenty of parties with college girls. Smarter, cuter college girls. Stanford girls. Great, now he is thinking of Jessica. He has a headache, and backache, and a crick in his neck from sleeping awkwardly in the Impala. He does not want to get drunk, high, or laid. He wants to take some Vicodin and go to sleep.
"You have fun," he tells Dean. "I'm going to bed."
Dean gives him a look, a combination of shock, horror, and disappointment. Sam thinks he might even pick up a trace of scorn.
"Sammy, sometimes I think I don't even know you."
"I know it."
Dean shakes his head. "I'll just have to party for the both of us," he says, and digs out a clean shirt from his duffel bag.
Sam pulls a pillow over his head, which does nothing to dull the thumping bass of the music. He tries not to think about how the pillow smells like mold.
"You sure you don't wanna come, Sam?" Dean offers one last time on his way out the door, still sounding incredulous.
Sam waves Dean out of the room. "Go away, Dean," he grumbles from under the pillow.
"Your loss, little brother."
----------
The party is out back, spilling from the courtyard to the pool. Which, unsurprisingly, looks more like a slimy pond than a pool. Nobody is in the pool, but this has not stopped many of the women from wearing their bikinis, Dean notes happily.
Dean spots one other guy, older, scruffy looking, glassy-eyed and grinning. But damn are there girls. Clustered tightly around the narrow outdoor bar, lounging like cats on the dozen or so chairs scattered around the pool, packed onto the small square of concrete that has been appropriated as a dance floor, bodies gyrating, sweaty and anonymous. Dean feels like he wandered into a really low rent version of the playboy mansion. He is giddily overwhelmed with the abundance of riches.
The only downfall of the party is the booze—some girly, pink, bubbly crap that only a bus full of sorority girls would bring along. Dean considers retrieving something more masculine from the Impala. But with the current guy-to-girl ratio he feels like he can drink some of the pink stuff without too big of a hit to his masculinity. Besides, free drinks are free drinks. He only gags on it a little the first swallow, and after that it goes down like honey.
In about thirty minutes Dean has had three drinks and narrowed down the field of potential hook-ups significantly: He is currently bullshitting a stacked blond and her equally hot twin sister. Twenty minutes later and two more drinks down, one of the twins is on his lap, leaning into his chest and giggling, and he's got his hand half way up the short skirt of the one on chair next to him. They are both pretty wasted, in that highly suggestible phase where you maybe kinda might want to fool around with some guy and your identical twin sister at the same time. He is very optimistic about the direction of his evening.
"Well you get us more drinks, Dean?" coos Heidi.
"Absolutely," he says, although in truth he is reluctant to go.
Heidi wiggles off his lap and joins her sister.
"Hurry back," says Cindi.
"Oh, I will." He bestows upon them his most charming and suggestive grin. They giggle and he can hear them whispering about him as he heads over to the bar.
He is half way there when an even more promising prospect distracts him. The girl is lethally hot. Tall and blonde and all curves underneath her summer dress. She's not as suggestively dressed as most of the sorority types but Dean can appreciate leaving some things up to the imagination, and he knows that conservative when dressed does not necessarily mean conservative when undressed. Dean is far enough gone to have lost much of his finesse, and he just gawks at her from across the pool, look her up and down appreciatively.
She gives him a wicked smile, and he can tell she is one of those girls that knows she is hot and is not particularly shy about it. She meets his eyes, holds his stare for a moment, then shifts her gaze slowly to the double doors that lead back in to the lobby, and then back to him.
He raises his eyebrows questioningly. She smiles again, bites her bottom lip, nods slightly.
Oh heck yeah, Dean thinks, twins already forgotten.
She practically assaults him in the hallway, shoves him roughly against a wall before he even has a chance to try out his charms on her, and a few seconds later she is tugging him impatiently towards the nearest motel room door.
When they get inside she grins wickedly, pushes him backwards toward the bed. His head is fuzzy from the booze so he stumbles back a bit, falls into a sitting position when the bed catches him at the knees. She pounces on him in an instant, straddling him and pushing his shoulders down until he is lying on the bed. She presses her mouth to his, more bites than kisses.
"Fuck me, Walter," she growls into his ear.
Hell yes, Dean thinks.
---------
Sam wakes with a start, hears loud, laughing voices in the hall. He looks at the other bed, which is predictably vacant, then at the clock, three AM. The voices return, louder now, girls laughing and talking like there aren't people trying to sleep in a motel at three in the fucking morning and Sam is feeling just surly enough to get up and yell at whatever drunken college girls are waking him up in the middle of the night. He hoists himself up from bed and trudges to the door, slides open the deadbolt, glares out into the corridor. There is no one in sight, obnoxious drunks girls apparently having stumbled away.
Sam huffs out a breath, annoyed. He grabs the door handle, ready to give the door a good slam closed to vent his frustrations. Just before he closes the door the hall lights flicker, three times fast, then a slow fade to darkness before returning to their normal dingy yellow glow.
This gives Sam pause. He has a sudden, desperate fantasy that it is just a symptom of the motel's old, decrepit wiring. He leaves the door ajar and goes back into the room, rifles through Dean's duffle until he finds the EMF meter, clicks it on. A quick wave around the hall registers a faint but nonetheless very real blip.
"God fucking damn it, Dean," Sam says.
----------
Sam is pissed. He tries to call Dean's cell, but reception is nonexistent out here in the middle of the desert. He dresses quickly and heads for the courtyard. He does not want to be hunting around for his brother, who is probably off somewhere getting drunk, stoned, or laid. Actually, probably all three at once. And he really does not want to be hunting yet another pissed off hotel ghost. Haunted fucking hotels. Honestly, it is just getting to be a tired cliché at this point.
The courtyard is more subdued now, the party winding down. Some people seem to have chosen to pass out in lounge chairs or on the grass rather than complete the befuddling quest back to their rooms. A quick scan of the yard reveals no Dean, so Sam scans the yard again more slowly, trying to figure out who Dean was most likely to have hit on. When he sees the identical twins lounging by the pool he shakes his head a little and then heads over.
"Uh, hi," he says to the nearest and most coherent looking twin. He's not quite sure how to start this conversation.
She looks up at him through lazy eyelids. "You're cute," she informs him, and giggles.
"You ARE cute," the second twin agrees, also giggling sleepily.
Sam decides to ignore this line of conversation. "Did you see a guy around here earlier?"
"Oh. You're looking for a guy?" Twin One looks disappointed.
"My brother," says Sam.
"Oh, brothers!" says Twin Two. They both perk up a bit.
"He's shorter than me, brown hair, green eyes."
"Dean?" says One. "He went to get us drinks and didn't come back." She seems mournful about this.
"Did you see where he went?"
"He left with some other girl," Two says huffily. "We don't know her, she not a Delta."
"Whatever, his loss," says One.
"Where did they go?"
"Back inside." One waves a hand at the doors to the lobby.
"Thanks," Sam says, and turns to go.
"Wait," says Two. "You want to stay?" She smiles coyly.
"Er, I really have to find him."
"You're brothers, huh?" says One. "You find him, bring him back here with you, ok?"
Sam heads back inside and considers his options. Dean is somewhere inside the hotel. Something supernatural is somewhere inside the hotel. Based on prior experiences, he is pretty confident that one has found the other by now. He pulls out the EMF reader and a salt-loaded sawed-off and resigns himself to a door-to-door search.
----------
Dean starts awake from a restless doze when he hears a sharp knock on the door.
"Motel Staff. Anyone here?"
"Oh fuck, Sammy, thank god."
"Dean? Are you in there?"
"Yes! Open the fucking door." The door rattles as Sam tries the handle. Dean rolls his eyes. "Kick it fucking open, Sam." There is a pause and then a loud crash as Sam kicks in door.
The hall light floods the darkened room and Sam bursts into the room, gun drawn, blinking as his eyes adjust.
"Uh, Dean?"
"Yes, Sam?" Dean says wearily.
"Why are you tied to the bed, Dean?"
"Just untie me before that crazy bitch comes back."
Sam grins in spite of himself. "Evening didn't work out as well as you hoped?"
---------
Once Dean is untied and has regained some of his dignity and all of his clothing, weapons are gathered hastily from the Impala. Dean is pissed and taking this very personally.
"So you let her tie you to the bed?" Sam asks, incredulous.
"I don't really want to talk about this."
"Dean, I have to know what it is if you want me to help kill it."
"Well, it's a ghost."
"Then let's figure out who it was, whatever is keeping it here."
"Fuck that. Let's burn this whole place down, that should do it."
"C'mon, Dean."
"Fine." Dean crosses his arms and stares darkly at Sam.
They stand in silence for a moment.
"Seriously," Sam tries not to smirk. "How did you not notice?"
"You know spirits can be very convincing. I mean, she was pretty fucking corporal at the time."
"But still, Dean, there's always a tell. The drop in temperature, lights flickering, conversations that are repetitive or sound rehearsed…"
"I know the tells, Sam," Dean snaps. "I was kinda drunk. And we didn't do much talking."
Sam looks disgusted with him and shakes his head. Like Dean not being a gentleman is the worst part of the whole scenario.
"She was really hot, Sam," Dean says defensively.
"See, this is why you have to stop thinking with your dick all the time."
"Whatever." Dean frowns, "Anyways, I think she put the supernatural whammy on me."
"You were, like, enthralled?"
"Absolutely. I think. I don't know. I mean, come on, I went for this chick instead of a pair of hot identical twins. Identical twins!" Dean considers this for a second. "But she was really smoking."
Sam sighs and tries another angle. "Well, when did you finally figure out she was a spirit?"
"When she went all psycho and she pulled out the fucking 12 inch knife, is when."
"Okay, now we're getting somewhere. What happened, exactly?"
"Well, things were going along nice enough, and then she got crazy all of the sudden and said, 'You can't leave me, Walter.'" Dean acts the scene out, his voice rising a bit as he recites her lines, raising his hand above his head like he is holding a knife. Sam tries not to laugh. Dean shoots him a nasty look but continues, "and I said, 'Lady, I'm not Walter.' And she got kind of befuddled, I don't think she's very bright. Then she whooshed off, and left me tied to the fucking bed for TWO hours before you bothered to come looking for me." Dean ends his monolog with a glare at Sam, as if he has just come to the realization that the whole thing was Sam's fault.
"She called you 'Walter'?"
"Yeah. She called me that the whole time, actually."
"You were OK with that at first? It didn't tip you off that maybe something was wrong?"
He shrugs. "Dude, you didn't see her. She could call me whatever she wanted. I would've given her a fake name anyway.
Sam concedes him the point. "Did she take the knife when she 'whooshed'?"
"Yes, it whooshed off with her."
"The knife might be an object connecting her to this place."
"What a brilliant deduction, Sam!"
Sam ignores Dean. "And we should look into the Walter thing too."
----------
The motel's kitchen reveals lots of knives, but not the "giant, serrated, really pointy, fucking nasty looking," knife that Dean describes.
A brief search of the lobby is much more successful. They both feel shamefully unobservant for missing the cluttered assortment of old newspaper articles and reports of ghost sightings hanging prominently on display in the lobby. But when they first arrived Sam had been less than half awake, and for Dean there had been other, scantily clad distractions, so neither of them points out the other's failures.
It doesn't take them long to discover the spirit's identity. Answers come in the form of a framed, yellowing newspaper clipping, hanging just behind the front desk. According to the newspaper article, Karen Daily had followed her philandering husband Walter to the motel and caught him in the act with a woman identified only as "Vivian." Mrs. Daily did not take the discovery well, and used a very sharp and very long knife to kill her husband in an exceedingly emasculating way.
Dean is horrified by the revelation and rendered momentarily speechless. When he finds his voice again, he says, "She pulled a Lorena Bobbitt? Oh man, that bitch is so dead."
Sam grins but keeps reading. "It says she killed herself with the same knife."
"Oh, poor her."
"Don't you feel kind of sorry for her?"
"Not if she keeps going around confusing me for Walter."
"Says she was cremated."
"Really? That saves us a dig anyway."
The other postings talk about employee and guests' mysterious experiences at the motel. Dean scans the reported sightings for clues. They are all unexplained sounds, objects moving on their own volition, ghostly figures in hallways and bedrooms. The usual benign hotel haunting.
"This stuff's all really tame. Seems like she upgraded recently."
"Maybe she just likes you."
Dean considers this. "The ladies do find me hard to resist."
Sam makes a scoffing noise and wanders off to the read the plaque posted on the opposite wall. "Well here's some Motel history for you. This place has been around since the early 20's. Apparently, during prohibition they used to run a speakeasy from the restaurant."
"Ah yes, the roaring 20's: jazz, liquor, and organized crime."
Sam looks over at Dean, mildly impressed.
"What? I watch the History Channel," Dean shrugs. He ponders the picture of Karen Daily from the newspaper article. She was pretty hot. Stupid, cheating Walter. He skims the article again, and then squints at the dateline across the top.
"Hey, Sammy, guess what day she offed the husband."
"It was today, wasn't it?"
"Yep. Eighty years ago today."
"Of course it was."
----------
They decide to take a divide and conquer approach to searching the motel for Mrs. Daily and whatever might be keeping here around. Dean's primary logic behind the split had been "getting this shit done as soon as possible." He is still feeling resentful and violated, itching for revenge.
Dean takes the left wing of the motel, parting from Sam with the seriously intoned advice, "Careful, she's crazy."
"All ghosts are crazy."
"You just wait, Sam, you'll see."
So Sam walks warily along the right corridor, at first. But the adrenaline rush that was keeping him alert has faded and left him even more exhausted. Halfway down the hall he walks past his own motel room and looks longingly at the door, considers for a moment just dragging himself back to bed.
And then the hall lights flicker. Sam snaps into alertness, raises his shotgun, ready. A frigid blast of air hits him from behind, and he pivots to face it.
The spirit is beautiful, ethereal, and she glides down the hallway toward him, golden hair flowing behind her, pale skin glowing with a white light, her eyes dark pools of black. Light bulbs flicker and pop out as she drifts past them, and soon the only light in the hall is radiating from her translucent body.
Sam finds himself mesmerized, awestruck by her presence. The shotgun falls from his hand and clutters to the ground. He gasps out a breath and can see it fog in the air before him, illuminated by her light.
When she is five feet away, she seems to notice him for the first time, drifts to a stop. "Walter?" she asks softly, tilts her head to one side like a curious puppy. Her black, hollow eyes search his, unblinking.
He snaps out of his trance. "No Karen," he put his hands up defensively, backs away slowly. "Not Walter." He starts bends to reach for the fallen shotgun.
Her whole body shifts and jolts, she flickers off like a light and then snaps back into existence right in front of him, black eyes inches from his face.
"Walter," she says again, reaches forward with her delicate, translucent hand, runs her thin, cold fingers tenderly down the side of his face.
He flinches at her touch, and her pretty face shifts suddenly, ages and deteriorates, becomes animal. She snarls and bares rows of white, sharp little teeth.
"You can't leave me, Walter."
She grows stronger in her rage, and frighteningly corporal. She shoves him up and back against the wall and holds him there with her icy body. He fights to push her away, and she wraps bony fingers in his hair and jerks his head back. It hits the wall with a hard crack, and his world dims a bit, tilts.
With a sudden flash she brings a knife up to his throat. The knife, Sam notes dizzily, is giant and really fucking pointy.
"You can never leave," growls the spirit.
Then she grins nastily, drags the razor-sharp tip of the knife slowly from the hollow of his throat, down the center of his chest, past his navel, lower still.
Dawning horror flashes in Sam's eyes. "Jesus Christ!"
"I told you!" says Dean from somewhere to his left. "She's fucking crazy." And then Sam hears the welcome crack of a shotgun as Dean blasts her full of rock salt and she dissipates into nothingness.
Sam's knees buckle and his back slides down the wall until he is sitting on the ground. "What the hell did you wait for!? Shoot first, comment later."
Dean ignores him for the moment, stays alert, shotgun raised, watching for the spirit's return. But the lights flick back on and soon the hall is restored to its dingy yellow glow.
Dean crouches next to Sam, eyes him critically. "You're bleeding," he says, and Sam looks down at his chest, notices the long slit down the center of his shirt. The tip of the blade has cut through the fabric and into his skin like a cat scratch, shallow but oozing little droplets of blood. Still a bit disoriented, he touches at the blood, looks at his hand disbelievingly.
"That bitch ruined my shirt!"
Dean's concerned look shifts to a smile. "I know!" He commiserates. "She sucks."
"She cut me!"
"She's feisty." Dean rubs his wrists. "She gave me rope burns."
"Dean," Sam says, eyes wide and serious, "do you know what she was going to do with that knife?"
Dean nods soberly. " She was going to Walter you." He makes a none-too-helpful snipping motion with his fingers. "Make you into a eunuch."
"This is my least favorite ghost ever, Dean. Christ. It was a serrated knife!" Sam looks horrified.
Sam's voice has grown increasingly loud and more distraught. A door down the hall cracks open, and two startled college students peer out at them.
"Hey ladies," Dean smiles sunnily. "Nothing to see here. He's just had one too many, is all."
Dean hoists Sam up from the floor, claps him on he back. "You're all right, let's go." Sam takes a second to get his bearings, and they retreat to their room.
----------
Sam has cleaned up a bit and regained some of his poise. He sits on the sagging motel bed and rubs the back of his head gingerly. His previous feelings of appalled horror have shifted into a feeling of intense dislike. Stupid ghost whacking my head into the wall and wrecking my third-favorite shirt.
"You know what we should do about her?" grins Dean. He pulls a Bic from his pocket and flicks it on.
"We are not burning the whole building down, Dean."
"Sammy, c'mon, the place has a foot in the grave anyway." Dean gestures toward the ratty bed coverings and cracking walls. "It should be condemned. It's like doing them a favor."
"When did you turn in to such a pyro? And why am I the one being rational right now?"
"Sam, unless you know where in the hotel that giant fucking knife is, or if that is even the object we need to destroy to off the crazy old flapper, I really think a whole-building salt and burn is the way to go here." Dean flicks the lighter on again. "The kind that'll destroy every possibly ghost-bearing object in the place."
"Dean, this place is historic. It has a plaque!"
"Some hapless guy's gonna end up singing soprano, she keeps this up. Do you want that on your conscience, Sam? A crappy old building is worth more to you than Sammy Jr. there?"
"I can't believe we are having this conversation."
"C'mon, Sam. Let's burn the bitch. Lets' do it for Walter. For poor, dead, dickless Walter. "
Sam sighs. He doesn't like to encourage this reckless property-destroying arsonist side of Dean. But Dean does have a point about the ghost. That is really, really not cool.
Dean can sense Sam's crumbling resistance. "Relax, Sam." Dean grins, and the fire from the lighter dances in his eyes. "This is totally going to work."
----------
In the cool pre-dawn hours the California Motel burns brightly, glowing amber against the black desert sky. Billows of acrid smoke pour up into the heavens and the fire alarm blares incessantly.
The college girls, the whole busload of them, are standing in small, anxious clusters well away from the building, watching it burn in shocked silence. The grizzled bus driver seems least bothered by the scene; he is standing by his bus, casually smoking a cigarette
Sam and Dean come trotting around the back of the motel, smudged with soot and lugging their duffels. The fire is really blazing now. The building had proved more flammable than they expected, and their exit has been less than dignified.
There is a bit of a commotion at the sight of them, the only unaccounted for guests. Dean elbows Sam, nods towards two approaching girls and smirks.
Sam shakes his head. "Seriously, Dean?"
"Hey, Heidi, Cindi, you all OK?" Dean asks the twins cheerfully.
"Oh, Dean," says Cindi, eyes round at the sight of them. She grabs onto to Dean's arm, as if she needs to touch him to know he is really safe.
"We were afraid you were trapped," says Heidi, and she attached herself to Dean's other side. "We tried to call the fire department, but no one's cell phones work."
"Darn," says Dean. "Nothing we can do to stop the burning." Dean feels a little bad for the horrified woman from the front desk, who at the moment is sobbing uncontrollably in the arms of a member of the hotel staff. But really, the place was a piece of crap, and obviously was violating all sorts of fire codes.
"Where were you guys?" Cindi asks. "The alarm was going off for so long, and it looked like nothing was wrong. We were about to go back in the building. It's like someone pulled the alarm before the fire even started."
"Ah, well, I heard the alarm right away," Dean says. "But I was trying to get Sam here out safe. He's really hard to wake up." Dean lets his voice drop to a confidential whisper. "It's a medical condition. Necrophilia."
Sam shoots Dean a hateful look over the girls' heads and mouths "fuck you."
"That's so brave," says Heidi. The girls coo and fawn over Dean's heroics, and Dean basks in their affections like a cat in a sunbeam.
A shrill scream halts the hero-worship. The horrified desk clerk points a shaking hand toward the lobby entrance.
The ghost is standing in the doorway brandishing her trademark knife. Her face is contorted into a snarl, and she shrieks something at them, but the crackle of the fire and the crash of falling beams drown her out. The fire burns just at her back, and she looks really, really furious at Sam and Dean.
"God, I hope she can't leave the building," Dean says to Sam quietly.
"Why isn't she coming out?" Cindi wonders, panic creeping into her voice. She looks up at her new hero. "Go get her, Dean."
"Sweetheart, I think she's past saving."
The spirit is vibrating with rage now, and the whole building starts to shake along with her. She claws savagely at the invisible barrier trapping her in the building. In her rage she drops the knife and it lands tip first, sticking into the wood floor. Flames lick at her feet and engulf the knife, the blade and handle bending and contorting in the intense heat. Then flames consume her whole body and the lobby explodes in a violent burst of fire and debris. The startled crowd retreats further from the building as rubble and ashes shower down on them. Only Sam and Dean hold their ground.
"Well, that was dramatic," says Sam.
"She had good showmanship, I'll give her that." Dean agrees.
"Crazy, though."
"Fucking insane."
"Looks like it was the knife after all."
"Yep."
Sam brushes ash off himself disdainfully. "There's freaking ash everywhere. You know, I think this shirt is ruined too."
----------
As they walk to the Impala the sun is just starting to rise on the horizon, and the motel is still smoldering behind them.
They enter the parking lot and Dean stops suddenly. "Oh shit, my car!"
The rain of ash and debris had extended to the parking lot, and the Impala is covered with soot. Sam tosses his duffel to the ground and sits on a curb while Dean circles the Impala slowly, running a hand over her paint and chrome, dusting off ashes and checking for scratches.
"That fucking ghost, I swear."
"Dean," Sam says impatiently, "the car is fine, let's just go before the fire department finally shows up and starts asking questions."
Dean glares accusingly at the charred remains of the motel as they drive past it. They rattle along the gravel drive and back on to the highway.
"Next time I get to pick the motel," Sam says. They drive in silence for a while. Then Dean looks over at Sam with a sly smile.
"Hey, Sam," says Dean. "Looks like Mrs. Daily finally checked out."
Sam smiles and shakes his head. "Seriously? How long were you thinking that up? Because that's lame even for you, Dean."
"Whatever," Dean shrugs, but he is still grinning. "Lets go catch us that stupid phantom car and get the hell out of California."