Lawrence, Kansas
22 years ago
"Come on, let's say good night to your sister." Mary carried her eldest daughter into the nursery where her baby rested in a crib. She set her daughter down, and Deana leaned over the crib bars to kiss her little sister on the forehead. "Night Samantha," the four year old said, with her mother chiming in a "Good night, love." of her own.
"Hey Deana." John Winchester stood in the doorway, smiling. Deana ran to her father and was met with welcoming arms. "So whaddya think? You think Sammy's ready to toss around a football yet?"
"No Daddy!" Deana giggled, burying her face in her father's Marine Corps shirt.
"Sweet dreams Samantha," John said before turning out the light and carrying Deana to her own bed. The nursery lights did not begin to flicker until he was down the hallway.
Mary woke to static cries on the baby monitor. "John?" she asked but found that her husband wasn't in bed. With a tired sigh, she got up and headed down the hall. Standing in the nursery doorway, she found his silhouette leaning over the crib. "John? Is she hungry?"
"Shhh," he replied, and she turned out of the room. The hall light began to flicker as she rubbed her eyes. Tapping the glass shade, she thought of everything it could be, but when the light became steady again, she tossed aside any thoughts of oddities. Hearing the sound of a television, she walked down the stairs in the dark to find the living room of her home filled with the blue light of some old military movie. She also found her husband snoring on his recliner. Turning and running up the stairs, she found herself unable to say anything besides a repeated and worried "Sammy!" What she found in her daughter's nursery caused a scream that woke her husband downstairs.
John jumped out of the reclined chair and took the stairs two at a time until he reached the nursery. Flinging the door open, he found it empty of anyone besides his daughter. Regaining his ability to breathe, he leaned over the bars to ask her if she was okay, despite the fact that she was incapable of answering verbally. She was fine; beautiful blue eyes shining as she played with her blanket. The only thing out of place was a dark spot on the sheets below her. He reached to touch it, and two more drops of red liquid fell onto his hand. He looked up and found his wife lying on the ceiling, dark circles around her eyes and blood soaking her satin night gown. As John began to yell, Mary's body burst into flames and Samantha wailed. He grabbed his daughter and ran into the hallway, where he met Deana and put the baby into her arms.
"Take your sister outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now, Deana, go!" Deana tripped her way down the stairs while still keeping a tight grip on Samantha as her father ran back into the flame-engulfed room. She eventually found her bare feet on the grass of the front lawn.
"It's gonna be okay, Samantha," she said, staring up at the burning second floor. John ran over, picking Deana up from behind and carrying both girls to safety. As emergency workers rushed around in the night, John sat on the hood of his old car, Deana curled into his side and Samantha in his arms, and made a vow.
Stanford University
Present day
"Samantha? Get a move on, would ya? We were supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago. Sam, are you coming?"
"Do I have to?" Samantha Winchester asked, peaking her head around the doorway to offer her boyfriend the best puppy dog face she could manage.
"Yes! It'll be fun." Realizing her lost cause, Samantha stepped fully into the room to reveal jeans and a denim jacket over her t-shirt. "And where is your costume?" Jessie asked. He was wearing a nurse outfit, which fit his major well. The scrubs were revealingly tight and low cut, and he wore a traditional female nurse's headband around his blonde hair. Honestly, he was hot as hell.
Samantha laughed. "You know how I feel about Halloween."
"So here's to Sam and her awesome LSAT victory," Jessie said, raising a shot glass an hour later.
"Alright, alright, it's not that big of a deal." Nonetheless, she, Jessie, and their best friend all drank and discussed her great chances at getting a full ride to Stanford at her interview on Monday. She tried to dismiss it all, but Jessie refused to, insisting that she was going to do amazing things and that he was so proud of her. Samantha smiled. "What would I do without you?"
"Crash and burn." Jessie shrugged with a smirk as Samantha pulled him in for a kiss.
Samantha's eyes flicked open in response to a noise from the living room of their small apartment. Upon sitting up, she found Jessie beside her, sleeping as heavily and soundly as always. She stood up and slipped across the room in socked feet. Peeking around the doorway, all she saw in the darkness was an open window. She waited, staring at the half-open door into the living room until a shadow crossed the floor. She was quick moving into the room without a sound and tensing as the intruder stepped in as well. When they had their back to her, Samantha took a breath and jumped, grabbing the person's neck. She—the body type indicated a woman—turned Samantha's hand and body in response to the attack and threw her at the wall. Samantha bounced back to throw a few kicks at the intruder as they moved throughout the open floor plan, and the crook returned the favor, catching Samantha's left jaw just slightly. More strike attempts and avoidances were made until the intruder found a grip and turned smoothly. Samantha found herself lying with her back on the floor, a tight hand between her neck and shoulder, and her own pushing up against the assailant. Light from the window shined in to reveal the face leaning over her. "Woah, easy tiger," it said.
"Deana?" Samantha asked in between breaths, to which her sister smiled wide and offered a short laugh. "You scared the crap out of me!"
"That's cause you're out of practice." Deana was still smiling, and she continued to smile as her little sister grabbed hold and flipped everything around, putting her on the floor. "Or not…get off me."
Samantha helped her sister up and asked, "Deana, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Well," Deana said, smoothing her sister's night shirt, "I was looking for a beer."
"Sam?" Jessie asked from the doorway, rubbing his eyes. He flipped on the light to reveal skin tight boxers, a lack of shirt, and disheveled hair.
"Jessie-" Samantha said and looked from her sister to her boyfriend. "Deana, this is my boyfriend, Jessie."
"Wait, you're sister, Deana?" Jessie asked, fully awakened. Deana smiled and walked over to him. "Mhm. And let me tell ya, you are way out of my sister's league."
"Let me go put some clothes on," Jessie started with a glint in his eyes and a half smile.
"No, no, I wouldn't dream of it. Seriously. Anyway, I gotta borrow your girlfriend here to talk about some private family business, but, uh, nice meeting you." She pointed at the man and smiled.
"No," Samantha said, moving across the room to stand beside Jessie. "No. Whatever you wanna say, you can say it in front of him."
"Okay, uh," Deana hesitated for a second. "Dad hasn't been home in a few days."
"So he's working overtime on a miller time shaft. He'll stumble in sooner or later." Deana nodded, considering this.
"Dad's on a hunting trip, and he hasn't been home in a few days."
Samantha, oblivious of her boyfriend looking at her, stared hard at her sister. Finally, she spoke without moving her eyes. "Jessie, please excuse us."
"I mean, come on. You can't just break in in the middle of the night and expect me to hit the road with you," Samantha lectured her sister as they made their way down the stairs.
"You're not hearing me, Sammy," Deana said. "Dad's missing, and I need you to help me find him."
"Remember the poltergeist in Amherst or the devil's gates in Clifton? He was missing then too. He's always missing, and he's always fine."
Deana turned to block her sister's path. "Not for this long. Now are you gonna come with me or not?"
"I'm not."
"Why?"
"I swore I was done hunting for good."
"Come on." Deana continued leading her sister into the parking lot. "It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad."
"Oh yeah? When I was nine and scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a forty-five."
"Well what was he supposed to do?"
"I was nine years old. He was supposed to say 'don't be afraid of the dark'."
"Don't be afraid of the dark, what, are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what's out there!"
"Yeah, but still. The way we grew up-the way you two live-is bullshit."
"But we save a lot of people."
Samantha let out a tense breathe and shook her head. "You think Mom would have wanted this for us?" Deana pushed away and stomped into the deserted parking area.
"So that's why you ran away and chose this life? Because we grew up like warriors?"
"I choose the safe life, Deana. There's nothing wrong with that."
"Yeah, well now Dad's in real trouble, and I can't do this alone."
"Yes you can."
"Yeah, well, I don't want to."
The sisters stood facing each other. Deana stared at the pavement as Samantha's eyes lingered on the pendent around her neck. No. This was not going to happen. She huffed and ran a hand along her forehead. "What was he hunting?"
"So Dad was checkin' out this two lane black top just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy happened." Deana pointed to the missing person flier in Samantha's hand. "They found his car, but he was MIA. Here's another one in April, another one in December '04, '03, '02, '98. Ten of them over the past twenty years. Some men, some women, all same five mile stretch of road. Dad went to go dig around about three weeks ago. I haven't heard from him since, which is bad enough, then I get this voicemail yesterday."
Deana grabbed a tape recorder and pressed play before John's voice came barely audible over the static. "Deana. Something's happening here and I think it's….I need to try and get out before….no one knows…." the tape became filled with mechanical pitches, "….be very careful, Deana." Deana clicked the recorder and looked at Samantha.
"You know there's EVP on there?" the younger sister asked.
"Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like ridin' a bike, isn't it?" She clicked a few buttons and played another recording. "This was what I got from the background."
"I can never go home," a voice whispered on the device. Samantha looked up at her sister.
"You know," Deana started, "in almost two years, I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing. All I'm asking for is a couple of days."
"Fine. As long as I'm back on Monday."
"What's Monday?" Deana asked as Samantha started up the stairs.
"It's…an interview."
"Job interview? Skip it."
"No, Deana. It's a law school interview, and it's my entire future riding on a plate. Now wait here." She jogged upstairs and grabbed a duffel bag from the hall closet that was soon stuffed with a few clothes and a few knives.
"Hey, what's going on?" Jessie asked, leaning against the bed. "Your sister said your dad is on some kind of hunting trip? Is he okay?"
"Oh yeah. Deer hunting at the cabin. And he's probably got Jim, Jack, and Jose along with him. We've just gotta go up there and drag him home."
"What about the interview?" Jessie asked, brow furrowing in concern.
"I'll be back in time." She zipped up the bag and hooked it over her shoulder. "Don't worry." She wrapped her arms around Jessie and kissed his neck. He played with her hair a bit and gave her a good luck kiss before she walked out the door.
The light coming in through the windshield was irritating Samantha's skin, and her eyes were full of sand as she sat up, pain shooting through her cramped legs. She'd thought she had finally escaped the life of sleeping in front seats. Rolling down the window, she glanced outside to find them parked beside a gas pump. Deana came from the direction of a shack of a gas station. "Hey, you want breakfast?" Deana asked, holding up two bags of chips in one hand and a candy bar in the other.
"No thanks." Her nose wrinkled without her permission. "So how'd you pay for that stuff? You and Dad still running credit card scams?"
"Yeah," Deana unattached the gas hose from the car, "well hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career. Besides, all we do is apply; it's not our fault they send us the cards."
"Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?" Samantha asked while picking up a tin of music choices from the consul as Deana opened the driver side door.
"Uh, Bert Aframian. And his daughter Hannah. Scored two cards outta the deal."
"Sounds about right." Samantha nodded while thumbing through the tin. "I swear, dude, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection."
"Why?" Deana froze to give her sister a half offended, half puzzled look.
"Well for one, they're cassette tapes. And two, Black Sabbath? Motor Head? Metallica?" She held up one of each band's respective tapes with a questioning expression.
Deana shook her head and grabbed the Metallica tape before sticking it into the player. "House rules, Sammy. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts her cakehole." She put the car into ignition.
"And that too. Sammy is a twelve year old girl forcing herself to wear dresses and in serious need of braces. It's Samantha."
"Sorry, can't hear ya." Deana twisted the volume knob and smirked. "Music's too loud."
Jericho, California
"Alright, so there's no one matching Dad at the hospital or the morgue, so that's something, I guess." Deana nodded at her sister while guiding baby along a curve. The Impala was soon pulling up to a couple of police cars on a bridge bypassing the river below.
"Check it out," Deana said, pulling over to the side of the highway. She reached over and pulled a box out of the glove compartment. Shuffling through numerous badges and IDs, she grabbed two leather badge holders and smiled at her sister. With a sigh, Samantha followed her sister out of the Impala, under police tape, and over to the empty car that two sheriff's deputies were searching.
"You're daughter's dating this guy Troy, isn't she?" one deputy asked. The other nodded. "How's Amy doing?"
"She's putting up missing posters everywhere downtown."
"You fellas had another one of these just a few months ago, didn't you?" Deana asked, informing the officers of the sisters' presence.
"And who are you?" one of the deputies asked. Without batting an eyelash, Deana glanced at the other deputy and flashed her badge.
"Federal marshals."
"You're a little young for marshals, aren't you?" The deputy's tone was incredulous.
"Thanks," Deana said with a small laugh. "That's awfully kind of you." She half-smiled and walked past the uniform to see the car for herself. Samantha centered herself before following, aware of the eyes watching them more so than Deana seemed to be. "You did have another one just like this, correct?"
"Yeah, about a mile up the road. And there have been others before that."
"So what's the theory?" Samantha asked.
"Honestly, we don't know." The officer seemed to accept their presence. "Serial murder, kidnapping ring?"
"Well that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys," Deana said with a sharp smile and tilt of her head. She felt Samantha's foot come down hard on her own, and she coughed.
"Thanks for your time," the younger sister said and began to walk towards the car. Deana followed, biting her tongue and turning to make sure the officers were returning to their search. She stepped up closer to Samantha and slapped her hand across the back of her head. "Ow! What was that for?"
"Why do you gotta step on my foot?" Deana huffed as they neared the Impala.
"Why do you have to talk to police like that?"
"Come on, they don't really know what's going on. We're alone here, and if we wanna find Dad, we're gonna have to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves." Samantha cleared her throat and Deana stopped, turning around to find who she assumed was the sheriff and two large men with black sun glasses and FBI jackets.
"Can I help you girls?" the sheriff asked. Deana swallowed and glanced at the pavement.
"No Sir, we were just leaving." The two men nodded and walked past the sisters. "Agent Muller, Agent Scully," Deana nodded to each and led Samantha around the suspicious sheriff.
"That must be her." The Winchesters approached a 5'6 brunette hanging a ninth missing poster on a wall downtown. She looked up at them but didn't bother much attention. "Hey, are you Amy?" Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded. "Troy told us about you. We're his aunts. I'm Deana, and this is Sammy." Amy continued to walk down the sidewalk, away from the sisters.
"He never told me about you."
"Yeah," Deana continued, "well I guess that's Troy. We're up in Modesto, not around much."
"So," Samantha cut in, "we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around. Mind if we ask you a few questions?" She gave a guarded nod. "When's the last time you heard from Troy?"
"I was on the phone talking to him, and he said he would call me right back, but he never did."
"He didn't say anything strange?"
"No, not really."
"Here's the deal, Amy," Deana said. "The way Troy disappeared…something's not right. So if you've heard anything…?" Amy's eyes dulled and fell to the ground. "What is it?"
"Well, with so many missing persons, people talk.…it's kind of this local legend. This one girl got murdered out on Centennial, like, decades ago, and supposedly she's still out there hitchhiking. Whoever picks her up disappears forever."
"Female murder hitchhiking" was the first thing Deana typed into the newspaper database. The results were a whopping zero. Switching out "hitchhiking" with "Centennial Highway", the results were a similar zero. "Let me try." Samantha tried to grab the mouse but her hand was shoved away.
"I got it," Deana said confidently, to which Samantha pushed her chair away from the computer and began typing. "Such a control freak," Deana muttered.
"So angry spirits are born out of a violent death, right? Maybe it's not murder." Her altered search brought up an article from 1981 titled Suicide on Centennial. "Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in river."
"Does it say why she did it?" Deana asked.
"Yeah…an hour earlier she called 911. She left her two little kids in the bathtub for a minute, and they weren't breathing when she came back." Samantha pointed out the accompanying photo of Joseph Welch covering his face in grief over the loss of his entire family. Deana mentioned that the photo of the responding police officers was set on the same bridge they had been on earlier. Within half an hour, the sisters were standing on that bridge again, leaning over the water that Constance had died in.
"You think Dad would have been here?" Samantha asked.
"He's chasing the same story, and we're chasing him so…"
"So what? What now?"
"We dig deeper, we-" Deana stopped as soon as she turned away from the water. On the other side of the bridge, a woman with dark hair and a long, pure white dress was standing on the ledge. The sisters froze as the woman looked at them, the moonlight illuminating her soft face just as her body tipped over the edge and disappeared from sight. They ran to the side and searched the water below for any signs of the woman. They were distracted from their search by the sound of the Impala's engine igniting.
"What the…" Deana said as the headlights of her car were blasted onto them. She couldn't tear her eyes from the vehicle as Samantha asked who was driving it. Without a word, Deana pulled her keys out of the pocket of her blue jacket just as the Impala began speeding towards them. For a moment, the girls were stunned into standing still, but soon they were running desperately across the bridge, boots slamming against wooden boards barely heard over the Impala's engine. When the car inevitably came roaring up behind them, Samantha swerved and headed over the side of the bridge into the water. Deana did not hesitate, jumping in head first. The car slammed to a stop where the girls had jumped, headlights still burning into the night.
One hand on a metal bar perpendicular to the bridge and the other hanging from the ledge of a tin tube, Samantha pulled a few times to build momentum before heaving her body up onto safety, long legs curling away from the open fall. "Deana!" she yelled, staring down at the blue-black river. Where the small waves lapped up onto the bank to meet tall grass, a dark form surfaced. Deana crawled up out of the water, still trying to force some out of her throat. "Hey!" Samantha yelled, relieved. "Are you alright?" Now lying on her back, Deana's face was coated in a deep brown mud. She raised an arm, making a ring by connecting her index finger and thumb.
"I'm super," she said in between uneven breaths. Samantha couldn't help but laugh before pulling herself back up onto the bridge.
"One room please," Deana said while dropping a MasterCard onto the motel desk. Samantha tried to look sorry at the man behind it as she stood beside her mud and sewage-covered sister. Hair, face, neck, even her jacket had a thick coat of goop. The old man didn't seem to care.
"You guys having a reunion or somethin'?" he asked upon inspection of the card.
"Whaddya mean?" Samantha asked.
"I had a guy, Bert Aframian, check in the other day. He came in and bought out a room for a whole month." Deana made eye contact with her sister. Once checked in, they headed for room ten, and she stood guard while Samantha picked the lock.
The room was a mess. Books and clothes, not to mention trash, were all over the floor and furniture. The wall was littered with countless papers and drawings. Stepping over the thick ring of salt around the unmade bed, Deana picked up a half-eaten burger and sniffed it before drawing the conclusion that it was at least a few days old. She and Samantha stood in front of the back wall, which was plastered in papers of the Centennial Highway victims.
"I don't get it," Deana said as Samantha wandered across the room. "Different people, different jobs, ages, ethnicities; there's always a connection, right? What do they have in common?"
Samantha followed a visual trail of her father's thinking. The first column of papers on the wall was labeled devils and demons, the second mortis danse, and the third sirens witches and the possessed. Each column was connected with intertwined strands of thread and overlapping pieces of research. She followed it all to the last column, woman in white. Flipping on a table lamp revealed drawings of demonic women in white gowns and countless newspaper clippings. "Dad figured it out."
"What?" Deana said, turning to face her sister.
"He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."
"You sly dogs," Deana said to the missing persons posters behind her. "Alright, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it."
"She might have another weakness."
"Dad would want to make sure, dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?" Deana motioned to the article they had read earlier. There was no indication of a burial site. Samantha suggested they find her husband instead. "Alright, why don't you see if you can find an address; I'm gonna go get cleaned up." She started to head for the door.
"Hey Deana, about Stanford and everything-" She was interrupted by Deana's raised hand and dirt-covered expression.
"No chick flick moments," Deana said with a firm nod. Samantha laughed softly and responded, "Alright. Jerk."
"Bitch."
Samantha sat on the musty motel bed listening to Jessie's message on her voicemail. Deana emerged from the bathroom rid of all mud and in clean jeans and a blue button up over a gray t-shirt. Grabbing her jacket, she headed for the door. "Hey man, I'm starving. I'm gonna go get something to eat. Want anything?"
"No," Samantha said from her spot on the bed.
"You sure? Aframian's buyin'." Deana smiled at her sister, but Samantha just shook her head. "Alright," she shrugged, opening the door. Halfway across the parking lot, Deana noticed the old motel owner pointing at her. He stood with two sheriff's deputies beside a police car. As the officers started over, she turned and pulled a cell phone out of her pocket.
"What?" Samantha said when she picked up the other line.
"Dude, five-o, take off."
"What about you?"
"Ugh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad." Deana slipped the phone back into her jacket pocket and turned to face the deputies. "Problem, officers?" she asked with as big and charming a smile she could pull.
"Where's your partner?" one of them asked.
"Partner? What partner?" Deana said innocently. The deputy directed the other to the door Deana had just come from. She swallowed slowly and watched the man approach the motel room.
"So," Deana's attention was pulled back towards the officer. "Fake US Marshall. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?"
"My boobs," Deana said with a proud smile and a bobbing head.
"So you wanna give us your real name?" The sheriff asked as he entered the room and set a box down on the table across from where Deana sat.
"I told you, it's West. Sandy West."
"I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here."
"We talkin' misdemeanor kinda trouble, or squeal-like-a-pig trouble?" Deana asked, hands folded in front of her.
"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall, along with a whole lot of satanic mumbo-jumbo. Girl, you are officially a suspect."
"That makes sense," Deana countered. "Because when the first one went missing in '82, I was three."
"I know you got partners; one of em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing. So tell me, Deana, this his?" The sheriff threw a book down on the table top. A thick journal with a leather cover and numerous papers stuffed between the pages. Deana stared at the thing as the sheriff sat on the table and began to flip through it. "I thought that be your name," he said. "See, I leaf through this—what little I could make out, I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy—but I found this too." He stopped at a page with lines empty except for the word Deana and 35-111 circled in dark ink. Deana slowly leaned forward to stare at the pages. "Now, you're stayin' right here until you tell me exactly what the hell that means."
Samantha Winchester could hold her own in a fight, and she knew it. She had gone up against things much stronger than the average human, but that didn't make approaching and speaking to the man any more enjoyable. The first thing she noticed when he opened the door was that his face was not weighed down and flabby the way you would expect his amount of wrinkles to cause. He wore a stained tank top and a barely still wearable ball cap. He was about a foot shorter than Samantha, and his squinting eyes were the farthest thing from inviting.
"Hi, uh, are you Joseph Welch?" Samantha asked.
"Yeah," the old man said, the edges of his mouth curving upward just slightly.
"Um, I was wondering if you've seen this man at all." Samantha pulled out a photograph she'd found in the motel room of John, Deana, and herself when they were little. Mr. Welch took the photo tentatively and peered down at the image of her father. "Yeah, he's a little older, but that's him. Came by three or four days ago, said he was a reporter."
"That's right, we're workin' on a story together," Samantha said.
"Well I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on with the questions he asked me," he said, handing back the photo.
"About your late wife, Constance?"
"He asked me where she was buried," he said, looking up at Samantha with an irritated expression.
"And where was that again?"
"What, I gotta go through this twice?"
"It's fact checking," she explained. "If you don't mind…?"
"In a plot over behind my old place of Breckingvidge," he sighed.
"Why did you move?" Samantha asked gently.
"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died."
"Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?"
"No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."
"So you had a happy marriage."
Mr. Welch looked at her for a few moments before saying "Definitely," with just a slight shake of his head.
"Well that should do it. Thanks for your time." Samantha headed down the porch steps but paused at the bottom. Turning around again, she asked, "Mr. Welch, you ever hear of a woman in white?"
"A what?" he asked from behind the screen door.
"A woman in white. Or sometimes weeping woman. It's a ghost story, or more of a phenomenon, really. They're spirits who have been spotted for dozens of years in dozens of places. Usually Hawaii, Mexico, and lately in Arizona. All these are different women, but all share the same story."
"Girl, I don't care much for nonsense." He began to close the house door, but Samantha continued.
"You see, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them, and these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children." Mr. Welch paused to stare Samantha dead in the eye. "Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways, and if they find an unfaithful person, they kill them."
"No," Mr. Welch said, shaking. "That ain't got nothin' to do with my Constance. Now you get the hell out of here, and don't you ever come back."
"I don't know how many times I gotta tell you," Deana said, leaning forward in her seat. "It's my high school locker combo."
The sheriff sat in the seat kitty-corner to hers, the journal lying in front of them on the table. "We gonna do this all night long?" he asked.
A deputy stuck his head into the room. "We just got a 911. Shots fired over at Whiteford Road."
The sheriff looked over at Deana. "You gotta go to the bathroom?"
"No?" Deana's brow wrinkled and her shoulders shrugged.
"Good." He slapped one handcuff tightly around Deana's left wrist and attached the other to the table before leaving the interrogation room and locking the door. With a smile, Deana grabbed a paper clip out a page from her father's journal.
The phone began to ring as Samantha drove down the deserted highway in the impala. She picked it up to hear a staticy voice on the other line. "Fake 911 phone call, Sammy, I don't know that's pretty illegal." Samantha grinned.
"You're welcome."
"Listen, we gotta talk."
"Tell me about it. So listen, the husband was unfaithful; we are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should've been Dad's next stop."
"Sammy, would you shut up for a second? He's gone. Dad left Jericho."
"What? How do you know?"
"I've got his journal," Deana said.
"He doesn't go anywhere without that thing."
"Yeah, well he did this time."
"What's it say?"
"Ah, it's the same old ex-marine crap. When he wants to let us know where he's goin'-"
"Coordinates. Where to?"
"I'm not sure yet."
"Deana, what the hell is goin' on?"
Before she had a chance to hear her sister's response, Samantha looked up to see a pale white figure with inky dark locks standing five feet in front of the care. She dropped the phone and slammed on the breaks, not managing to avoid the woman, whose body the car glided through smoothly. Samantha gripped the steering wheel, breathing deeply.
"Take me home." She looked up to see the woman in white in the rearview mirror, sitting in the backseat. She stared with a pale face and dark eyes at Samantha. "Take. Me home," she repeated, angrier.
"No," Samantha said, after which the car doors all locked. While she tried unsuccessfully to pull them up, the gas pedal moved on its own, and the car accelerated forward. Samantha abandoned her fight to open a door as the impala pulled up to a massive, abandoned house. The windows were shattered, and the siding was falling off. The headlights shut off, and all Samantha could think to say to the spirit in her backseat was, "Don't do this."
"I can never go home," Constance whispered.
"You're scared to go home," Samantha said, turning to find the backseat empty. Constance wasn't in the passenger seat for long before crawling on top of Samantha, fighting against the Winchester's struggling hands to hold her down against the driver's seat. "You can't kill me," Samantha said, tilting her head back into the seat, "I'm not unfaithful. I've never been."
"You will be," Constance hissed, pushing her icy lips down onto Samantha's. Before Samantha had a chance to grab the car keys from ignition, Constance had disappeared. There was suddenly a fire tearing through Samantha's chest, as Constance flickered back on top of her, digging her dead fingers into her skin. Samantha screamed helplessly as five piercing shots rang out in the air, and Constance vanished again. Deana appeared at the window, gun in hand. Constance reappeared yet again to continue clawing at Samantha's chest, and Deana continued to release shot after shot at her flickering form. In a moment of absence, Samantha sat up and violently turned the keys into ignition.
"I'm taking you home," she said, barreling the impala through the half-fallen down fence, porch, and exterior wall, ending up in the middle of a long-empty living room. Deana ran into the house, abandoning her gun in the ruble to pull her sister out of the car. Constance glared at them with malice, and a sturdy credenza was flying towards them, behind which they were soon pinned. The girls struggled to move the table against Constance's will, but paused when the house began to flicker with decades-old lights. Humans and spirit all watched in awe as water began to trickle down the staircase, then pour as two small, dark figures appeared at the top of the steps.
"You've come home to us, Mommy," the figures said, holding each other's hand and appearing at the bottom of the staircase to wrap their arms around Constance. She began to shriek, her form melting into creature and flame as their energies filled the destroyed room before beginning to drain into the floorboards until all that was left was a tiny puddle of water. Samantha and Deana were able to easily push the table off of themselves and headed over to stare at the wet part of the floor.
"Nice work, Sammy." Deana slapped her sister lightly on the back, and Samantha laughed in pain.
"Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you. What were you thinkin' shooting Casper in the face, you freak?"
"Hey, it saved your ass. And I'll tell you another thing," she leaned down by the ruble-covered impala, "if you screwed up my car…I'll kill you."
"Okay," Samantha finished drawing another line on the road map by flashlight, "here's where Dad went. Blackwater Ridge, Colorado."
"How far?" Deana asked from the driver's seat.
"About six hundred miles," Samantha answered.
"We just bought gas; we can make it by morning."
"Deana, um, I…"
"You're not going…?" Deana questioned.
"The interview's in like ten hours; I gotta be there."
Deana turned to look outside the window before directing her attention straight ahead on the road. "Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I'll take ya home." She nodded and drove ahead with the guidance of a single headlight.
About a hundred and fifty miles later, Samantha grabbed her duffel bag from the backseat and got out of the impala to stand outside her apartment. She leaned in the window to look at her sister. "Maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?" she asked as Deana looked blankly at her, lips slightly pursed.
"Yeah, alright." Deana nodded. Samantha half-smiled and tapped the outside of the car door before heading towards the stairs. The car was put into ignition behind her.
"Samantha," she turned to see Deana leaning over the passenger seat. "You know, we made a hell of a team back there."
"Yeah," Samantha nodded, and Deana drove away.
The apartment was dark when Samantha unlocked the door. "Jessie?" she yelled, "You home?" In the kitchen she found a plate of cookies sitting on the table. The note on top read Missed you! Love you! In Jessie's familiar scrawl. Smiling, she grabbed one and headed towards the bedroom.
Half a mile away, Deana sat in the impala, head against the back of the seat, contemplating whether she was going to find a motel or just sleep in the car. Sighing, she finally decided that she might as well get a room and looked at her wrist to see who would still be open. The bright red second hand on her watch stood still. She'd just bought a battery a few weeks ago. She tapped the glass, nothing. She turned on the impala.
Samantha heard the shower running when she entered the bedroom and sat down on the bed to finish off her cookie, smiling. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes flopped down on the bed. The first flinch was a muscle spasm or some reflex to a breeze from some open window. The second was brought on by a wet droplet falling on her eyelid. She scrunched her eyes and wiped the liquid off, looking down to see bright red smeared across her fingers. She looked up at the ceiling and saw Jessie pinned there, crimson soaking the t-shirt covering his abdomen. Samantha gasped as her boyfriend burst into flames that instantly consumed the entire ceiling. "JESSIE!" she screamed as Deana burst in through the doorway and took one look at the ceiling before grabbing her sister and dragging her out of the room as the wild flames followed.
Deana stood with the rest of the bystanders, watching in the red and blue light as firefighters wrapped up hoses in front of the smoking apartment building. She turned away from the calmed chaos and found Samantha standing at the open trunk of the impala, a shotgun in hand. Deana surveyed the arsenal of hunting equipment within the trunk before looking up at her little sister. Samantha looked at her plainly, and there was a silent conversation. Inhaling deeply, Samantha tossed the gun into the rear of the car and stared at it as Deana's eyes flitted down to it.
"We've got work to do."