A/N:

The Barkley Marathons is a real race. Every strange bit of info here is true. Lazarus Lake (not his real name) is the real race director. Even the pit bull (named Big) is real. There's a documentary up about it on Netflix; you should watch it.

I follow the updates for this race on Twitter every April 1st. While I've actually run a 50-miler myself, the idea of doing this race fills me with horror. Saw briars, man. ::shudder::

One, maybe two, more chapters after this.

"Fucking ouch!"

Dean was more than fed up as he reached down to disentangle his pants leg from the insanely vicious briars that seemed to litter every surface in these God-forsaken woods. Navigating by flashlight made it even harder to avoid stumbling into them, and there were blood-edged holes in both legs of his jeans. He swore again as another briar pierced his fingers when he freed himself from the angry plant. "Sam, I'm getting more beat up by Mother Nature than I will be from this ghost. I'm about to just say that anybody stupid enough to be out here in the first place deserves whatever Casper gives them."

"Dean." Sam's face was shadowed behind the glow of his own flashlight, but Dean could hear the bitch-face in his voice.

"Yeah, whatever. But if we don't find it soon, we're going to have to start keeping watch for vampires, too. Gonna attract all sorts of monsters with the trail of blood I'm leaving."

At first he'd thought Sam had been playing an elaborate April Fool's Day prank on him, and he'd still be harboring suspicions about it if Sam wasn't taking nearly as much damage as he himself was. Something strange was roaming around Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg, Tennessee, which just happened to be right next to the former Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. The prison had actually shut down about the time Lucifer had emerged topside and started his campaign to win the heart and mind (and everything else) of his intended vessel, and with all the memories brought back along with that recollection, Dean squashed down his irritation again and found gratitude that they were alive and able to focus on something so mundane as hunting a ghost in a state park.

Well, he did for about three minutes. "Ow, damn it!"

Sam waited for Dean to disentangle himself, shining his flashlight idly around the bushes and trees. "Hey, what's that?" The light had briefly reflected off something about head-height in the trees nearby, flashing back as he swept the beam. Moving closer, he saw a hole in a tree trunk, in which a plastic bag was jammed, hanging partway out. Out of curiosity, Sam made his way to the tree and pulled at the bag. Inside was a book. "Death Walks the Woods? Seriously? A little on the nose, don't you think?"

"Ghost has a sense of humor, or somebody is messing with us." Dean grimaced. "Tell me again how many people have disappeared?"

"Five. Two were teenagers."

"Great," Dean muttered. He couldn't bring himself to write off kids, no matter how fed up he was feeling.

A sudden loud rustling of approaching footsteps made both brothers spin, drawing salt-loaded guns out of reflex reaction, even knowing that ghosts don't shuffle, trip, or curse under their breaths. A few moments later, a disheveled man wearing a headlamp appeared out of the trees. "Whoa, guns!" he grunted, eyes blowing wide. He raised his hands tentatively. "Are you…real? Like, real?"

Blinking in the light, Dean and Sam glanced quickly at each other, lowering the guns but not putting them away yet. "Why, are you seeing things that…aren't real?" Sam asked carefully. "Unusual things?"

Strangely, the man began to laugh, wheezing a bit as he did. "Seeing things. Yeah, you could say that. Heh." Apparently deciding that the other men were either not real or at least not going to shoot him, he lowered his hands and stumbled toward the Sam and the tree. "Here, gimme," he said, reaching for the book. Sam handed it to him, baffled, and the man began to page through it quickly.

Dean attempt to keep things moving. "What sort of things have you seen? Like, mist or fog? Weird people?" When the man didn't react, he shrugged at Sam and tried again. "Feel anything strange, like cold spots? Any strange smells?"

"Dude, how long have you been out here?" Standing closer to the man than Dean was, Sam could see that he was completely covered in scrapes and wounds. His torso was coated in dirt and mud, as though he'd fallen numerous times, and there were white rings around his neck and sleeves from salt and sweat. "Are you all right? Do you need any medical help?"

"Hmph, there. Page seventy-nine," was the only intelligible response, and the man promptly ripped the page free from the book. Turning to face Sam, he seemed to be trying to solve a puzzle. "You're not part of this, are you?"

For a moment, they all stood staring. Sam and Dean were rapidly reaching the conclusion that this man had either suffered a head injury or failed some sort of sanity check when he met the angry spirit, and they were going to have to do something about him. The man, on the other hand, seemed to be equally confused about the two men he'd only just accepted as physically real. It was almost a relief to hear more approaching footsteps from the same direction.

"Over here!" a voice called as another headlamp blinded the group. Two more men, one somewhat behind the other, came bursting into the small, increasingly crowded clearing. They were in similar states as the first man, bloodied and bruised. Dean quickly thrust his gun behind his back, noticing that Sam had already stowed his. "Hey, a party!"

"They're real," the first man said, nodding solemnly.

The two newcomers smirked a little at each other. "Uh, yeah, we can see that. Seeing things already, Bill? It's only lap two."

Struggling to make sense of anything at all, Sam suddenly noticed something he hadn't. "Are those…are those race numbers?" He pointed at the men's thighs, where paper numbers had been pinned.

The men stopped and stared at Sam. One of the two new arrivals, who had taken the book from the first man and was flipping through it, was first to speak. "Hang on," he said slowly. "It's the middle of the night, and we're in the literal middle of nowhere. If you're not racing, what the hell are you doing out here?"

After somehow managing to talk their way out of that conversation (aided by the less-than-firm grasp some of the racers were maintaining on reality), Sam and Dean were forced to declare the night's efforts a bust. Apparently, there was a small crowd of men and women sweeping over and across the mountains in the dark, and the ghost was either going to be in hiding or feasting, but no matter; the odds of Sam and Dean accidentally shooting an innocent bystander had now far exceeded the likelihood of their stumbling across the spirit they were hunting.

On the other hand, there was now a group of potential witnesses they could interview, whether or not the folks realized that what they might have seen was supernatural and not simply the product of dehydration and exhaustion.

They made their way to the fire road where they'd left the Impala, then drove down to the park entrance, where they found what looked like a tiny tent city. Men and women in various states of physical breakdown were groaning in lawn chairs, having destroyed feet tended to by friends and partners, drinking sports drinks by the gallon, or simply staring into space and looking shell-shocked.

Dean nudged Sam in the side. "Didn't you try to convince me that running was good for you?" Sam just rolled his eyes. Spotting a bearded man who looked smugly official, Sam strode over, putting on his very best "tell me everything you know" puppy-dog eyes. The large brown pit bull terrier lounging at the bearded man's feet grinned up at him as he approached, seeming to know exactly who and what he was and approving.

"So, it's called the Barkley Marathons," Sam said when he rejoined Dean. "It's a hundred mile race, broken into five loops of twenty miles, give or take. And get this: since they started in in 1986, only fourteen people have finished the whole thing."

"Well, it's a hundred miles, Sammy," Dean huffed. He'd spent the last hour trying to interview people who spluttered with laughter every time he asked if they'd smelled anything unusual. The entire camp smelled like dead goats.

"No, Dean, there are lots of hundred mile races, and lots of people actually do them. Back when I was at Stanford, one of my friends did the Headlands Hundred in Rodeo Beach. I mean, it took him almost thirty hours and he looked like death for days afterward, but…"

"So, like these guys." Dean waved a hand around him. "Sure, healthy."

"Dean, listen to me. Steve, my friend, did a hundred miles in thirty hours. The time limit for one loop of this race is twelve hours. That's more than half an hour to go one mile. And over a thousand people have tried, and less than fourteen managed it."

Dean studied his brother, wariness growing as he saw the thoughts forming behind his eyes. "You're into this. You're actually thinking about this. Sam!"

"Dean, don't give me that look."

"That witch last week hit you with something, didn't she?"

"It's just a race!"

"You want to race, Lance Armstrong, there are 5K runs all the time."

"You know, Lance has actually started running ultramarathons now, so I can't even argue that point with you anymore," Sam said, thoughtfully. "I don't think he does 5Ks, though."

"Don't try to change the subject!"

"Look," Sam said placatingly. "The things that make most of these guys stop are exhaustion and little physical problems that add up, like blisters. We're used to going hard for long periods of time, going without sleep. I know damn well how to tend to small injuries so I can keep going, too. I just think it might be a fun test!"

"And have you forgotten that there's a fucking ghost out there?" Dean hissed, trying to keep his voice low so as not to freak out the people around them.

"Dean, the race won't happen again until next April. We have a whole year to catch and end the thing."

"Yeah, well," Dean floundered, searching for another argument why this was a perfectly terrible idea. "How many guys you think died bloody in that prison over the years? Plus, you saw the historical markers on the way in; there were a bunch of Civil War battles here, too. This place is probably crawling with more ghosts than people, and you want to go running around in the woods all night."

Sam grinned and rolled his eyes. "Dean, you just described our lives."

"We don't wear stupid race numbers while we do it."

"Shut up." Sam stretched his arms over his head and twisted his back, yawning. "Anyway, Laz, the guy who runs the race, only takes a small amount of the people who apply to run it every year. Even if I apply, I probably won't get accepted."

"Yeah, because that's the way our luck rolls," Dean muttered.

They went out two days later, wearing multiple layers of thick canvas pants. It took almost all night, but the ghost found them as they were almost ready to give up for the night. Dean got tossed into a tree and rolled almost entirely down a steep, rocky slope before Sam got a shot off at it. Luckily, though, finding (or being found by) the ghost allowed them to narrow down the location of the unlucky escaped prisoner's bones, which were new enough to not have been buried by nature. Sam held off the ghost until Dean could burn the skeleton and send him on his way.

By June, Dean had forgotten about crazed runners in the woods. Sam's morning jogs had receded into the background of his awareness; he was usually back home and showered before Dean had finished his first cup of coffee.

In September, when Dean found a potential hunt in Colorado and proposed heading out on Saturday morning, Sam winced and suggested they either go Sunday or call in another hunter. Dean raised an eyebrow. "Got something else going on?"

"Got a trail marathon in Lawrence." His attempt at nonchalance was so bad that Dean almost thought he was joking. He wasn't.

"Why the hell are you doing that?"

"It's training."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

Sam returned to the bunker Saturday evening with a slight wince in his walk, a medal around his neck, and a glow on his face that nearly negated the need for lighting. Dean ignored all three things as best he could, so as not to encourage him further, but it was hard. When he gassed up for the next morning's trip, he happened to mention that the snacks he bought were for "my baby brother, who just ran a marathon" to the clerk, who smiled politely.

Winter in Kansas is a brutal season. Dean shuddered in horror when Sam returned home from long runs with icicles hanging from his hair. He grew a beard to help keep his face warm, and it grew icicles, too. Dean had never made so many "long-haired hippie" jokes in his life.

"I'm telling you, Jody, I think he's finally cracked. Lucifer and the cage couldn't do it, but something did. One of these days, he's gonna head out on some trail, and he won't stop going, and I'll find him a week later in some forest out west somewhere, eating berries and twigs and sleeping on the ground."

She laughed, the Skype image shaking when her knee must have banged the table under her computer. "He'll be fine, Dean. You know, I did a marathon once."

"No, not you, too!"

"Oh, it was a long time ago. Before I was even married. I did one of the Rock 'n Roll Marathons, with rock bands playing all along the course. It was pretty cool!"

"Led Zeppelin themselves could be playing at the finish line, and I wouldn't run. Probably."

On Christmas evening, Sam fidgeted in front of the computer. Dean was still rolling his eyes and muttering about the weirdness of it all; apparently, this bizarre race wouldn't even tell you outright how to get in. Sam had needed to join online groups of other "ultra runners" ("It's a real word, Dean; ultrarunning isn't a made-up term!") to find out what day he needed to send an email to a guy who went by a fake name ("We do, too, Dean!") with an actual essay about why he should be allowed to run the race. Which he probably wouldn't even finish.

"At least it's cheap," Dean cracked. "A dollar-sixty won't break the bank. And a license plate from our state? What the hell kind of guy is this?"

"Only forty people are getting in," Sam said, grimacing. "Most of these guys have been doing races like this for ages. My only real shot is being this year's sacrificial virgin."

Dean spun. "What, now?"

Sam snorted a laugh. "Every year, he picks one person who looks completely unprepared. It's a joke. Nobody expects them to finish, and they want to see just how bad they'll do."

Dean was suddenly incensed. "Well, fuck that! Sacrificial virgin, my ass! I saw those guys out there, whining over chafing! You were literally tortured in hell! They don't get to bring you in just to laugh!"

"Dean – "

"No, man, I'm serious. If they think you're gonna go down there, run a few miles and come back whimpering and begging to quit…Sam, you need to shove this down their throats. Fourteen finishers? Whatever. You send that essay. If they don't take it, we'll just hack their system and put you in anyway."

"Dean, it's not that kind of race. There's no system. Laz is working out of a spiral notebook. I think he prints out all the emails and puts them in a literal hat to draw the names."

"Then we'll get Cas to switch the names! I don't care, man! You're doing this race!"

Sam wondered when Dean would realize that he'd completely flipped positions on the event. No point in looking at it too closely, he decided, clicking "send."