A/N: I was purchased by the amazingly generous, wonderful and just plain awesome Supernaturalbuffy, at the KazCon fic auction. The auction raised money for a fabulous cause and gave me this opportunity to write for her (and all of you!) Here's your story, hon. Hugs. I hope you like it! I lived on the Res for years, and was privileged to work on several digs in the Southwest. No Impalas were harmed in the writing of this story. Thanks to TraSan!

A/N II: Title is from the song by The Doors as well as a very influential paper on Southwestern Archaeology. The evidence for butchered human remains is well documented, but the why (cannibalism, torture, warfare) is still a controversial subject.

Scream of the Butterfly

Chapter One

Bright sunlight touched the landscape, warming the interior of the Impala, despite the cool air coming in through the open windows. The scent of sagebrush mingled with coffee, giving the morning an almost medicinal smell. Sam shifted, trying to stay awake, they'd gotten into town late the night before and Dean had insisted on stopping at a local tavern that advertised green chile bacon burgers before they checked into the motel. By the time Sam had finally managed to get to bed it was well past midnight. To top it all off, he had a nagging headache, the result of beer too late and...

"My head hurts," Dean grumbled, mercifully turning the music down.

"It's probably the altitude," Sam said, rubbing his temples. "And the cheese fries, and burgers and whatever that was you ate for dessert."

"Fry bread with berry topping and whipped cream."

"Yeah." Sam sighed. "That."

"It was awesome. I'm having more tonight."

"If we come back into town. We might need to stay out there tonight."

"I'm not camping, Sam. Never, ever camping ever again. Ever." Dean grinned.

"Fine," Sam huffed, not really up to his brother's mood this morning. "No camping. That's the turn coming up, I think."

Dean slowed the car, turning on the left turn light as they approached the place Sam had indicated. "There? Are you sure?"

"That's what Rich said, 'turn left at dirt road across from the church, go under railroad tracks and turn right,'" he said, reading the directions he'd taken the day before.

"Uh huh." Dean turned onto the narrow dirt road and stopped. He looked at the passage under the railway bridge, over at Sam, back at the road and then to Sam. "You've got to be kidding me." He put the car in park and got out, pacing down the road, when he reached the trestle he stretched his arms out, measuring the distance. Sam watched him walk further along the road, a few seconds later, Dean was back, sliding behind the wheel.

"Well?"

"It's going to be close, but this isn't even the best part." Dean put the car in gear and crept down the road, carefully centering the car before driving though the tight space. He stopped on the other side and glanced over at Sam. "Check that out."

"Can you even get up that?" Sam asked in horror. The road turned and went up a hill that looked like it was more a cliff than anything. The clay surface was deeply rutted by other vehicles, the road itself several feet below the surrounding area.

"I hope so, assuming our wheel-base is anything close to those, we might be okay."

"Might?"

"Yep." Dean took a breath, shifted his hands so his thumbs were on the outside of the wheel the way their father had shown them, then eased the car forward, gaining momentum as he went. "Here we go," he said as they reached the base of the hill. Sam could only watch with a combination of horror and admiration as his brother maneuvered the car onto the top of the ruts and up the hill. The rear wheels spun for a moment, but Dean kept the car moving, and they shot over the crest of the hill. Dean stopped and wiped his hand on his jeans. "And the fun continues," Dean's voice dripped with disgust as he looked down the gravel road in front of them.

"Dean..."

"If I get one single scratch on this car, Sammy, I'm kicking your ass."

"How is this my fault?"

"Rich called you." Dean started down the road.

"I answered your phone, Dean."

"Yeah, you did and that makes it your fault. It's in the rules."

"What rules?"

"The 'you answered the phone' rules."

"It was your phone."

"And you told him we'd come."

"You said it would be a simple salt and burn and we should come. You said since he was paying for the hotel and food it would be a great idea. You said we needed a break and this would be a good one."

"Well you wrote the directions down." Dean grinned. "Is there more coffee?"

"Yeah." Sam grinned back, fished the thermos out of the back and cautiously poured Dean a cup of coffee.

"Thanks." Dean took it and focused on the road, humming in time to the music.

Sam leaned back in the seat, bracing himself against the jarring ride. The road wound though a sagebrush flat for several miles before huge red mesas rose on either side, the canyon becoming increasingly narrow as they made their way along a road that looked like it had been a river at one time. It felt like they were the only people on earth, the land around them empty of everything except the huge red canyon walls, sparse vegetation and occasional jackrabbit. Dean swore when he hit a large pot hole or rock, muttering about the underside of the car and casting mock frowning glances at Sam every time it happened.

They were headed out to an archaeological project run by an old friend of their father's and Bobby. Rich Williamson was heading up a large dig sponsored, in part, by donations from a large East Coast development group that had an eye on the land. The dig was situated on a tiny sliver of privately owned land set between the reservation on one side and public lands on the other. State law required an archaeological survey and when the survey team turned up a potential site, Rich had been asked to do the excavation.

Five weeks after work started, the accidents began, at first it was minor things—a transit breaking, the cook stove catching fire during dinner, a rattlesnake in the outhouse—but things had escalated and in the last two weeks three of the project's vehicles had been put out of commission, one worker had a trench wall collapse on him and the staff artist had nearly lost her life when the scaffolding she was sitting on to sketch part of the project gave way. The final straw for Rich had been when the truck carrying artifacts from the dig had plowed into one of the cliffs, killing the man inside and destroying everything in the truck.

"You find anything else?" Dean said, breaking a half an hour of silence.

"No, everything points to a simple haunting."

"By a really pissed off spirit."

"Yeah, the only thing is..."

"Here comes the bad news."

"I read through the field notes Rich forwarded. There are six burials of varying ages on the site."

"Six?" Dean groaned.

"Yeah, and evidence of maybe three more."

"Evidence?"

"Charred bones under the floors in several rooms."

"Charred bones, what does that... Wait, people bones?"

"Yes and they might have been..."

"Don't say it."

"Butchered."

"I told you not to say it. So, it's a people-chow spirit? Ghost of dinners past?"

"Possibly."

"So, we finished charring the bones and we're out of there, have another night in town, eat a couple more green chile burgers and hit the road."

"Assuming that's the spirit."

"Getting eaten tends to piss people off, Sam," Dean said with a smirk. "Who else would it be?"

"One of the other burials?"

"You just have to make it hard don't you?"

They followed a fork in the road, the cliffs closing around them as they went. Dean was breathing a little fast when they finally arrived at the dig twenty minutes later. There was a run-down ranch house surrounded by a juniper log fence sitting in the middle of a box canyon. Dean parked the car outside of the fence and they got out, the red sand covering their boots as they walked.

"Can I help you?" a blond woman in khaki pants and a t-shirt asked as they stepped onto the porch.

"We're looking for Dr. Williamson," Sam said before Dean could get started.

"He's in the office, I'll show you." She smiled brightly at Dean.

"Thanks," Dean said, pushing Sam aside with a quirk of his eyebrow. "I'm Dean, that's my brother Sam."

"I'm Tress, I'm the assistant artist."

"Tress?"

"It's actually Teresa, but my kid sister couldn't manage it when she was younger. When you're done talking to Rich, come out back and I'll show you around."

"Awesome." Dean hit her with the killer smile as she stopped by a doorway closed off from the rest of the house by a multicolored blanket.

"Dean?"

"Just getting to know the locals, so I can get information later."

"Yeah." Sam pulled the blanket aside. "Rich?"

"Sam! Come in," the man said, waving them in. "I'm glad you're here."

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"We had another accident."

"What happened?" Dean said, concerned.

"The lab trailer caught fire last night. Luckily no one was hurt, but it was pure luck, they'd just taken a break to get a snack. If they hadn't they would have been killed. It burned so fast, never seen anything like it."

"Where did the fire start?" Sam asked, meeting his brother's eyes.

"We're not sure. The stove was disabled and the propane tanks were empty."

"What was in the trailer?" Dean was all business.

"We'd just moved some of the artifacts we found over the last few days in there to be evaluated. Tools, pottery, some other items."

"Bones?"

"Some, mostly animal. A human femur and part of a skull cap."

"Can you show us?" Sam said.

"Sure, it's out back," Rich said, standing. He groaned as he did so. "Old age might be setting in, I know all this is making me feel old." He led the way through the house and out the back, waving at several people sitting at a picnic table set under a dead tree. "We moved a lot of the things that had been in the trailer to safekeeping until we could get another truck to run it into the museum."

"Museum?" Sam inquired. He didn't recall seeing a museum mentioned in the papers, but it had mostly been field notes.

"Yes, they are keeping the valuable—and perishable—items until I can take them back to the university."

"Perishable?"

"We've had a fair amount of organic remains here, thanks to the various levels of occupation. We've found foodstuffs from the homestead, shells, feathers and other items in the older parts of the site. We hit the burials in the first few weeks, including the mummy."

"Mummy?" Dean stopped and looked at the older man. "Like Boris Karloff?"

"No, it's not an intentional mummification. It's an accident of the climate. It happens out here. He was buried at the base of the cliff. There's evidence of habitation in the rock shelter near where he was buried as well as a small settlement and kiva up the rock face from where he was found. Very interesting burial goods, unique in my experience. I can't wait to investigate further. We would have kept him here, but we had looters turn up one night. Tress chased them off, but they'd destroyed one entire test trench, so we moved everything of value out of here. It was on the third run into town that the truck wrecked."

"Looters? Could they be responsible for the accidents?"

"I've wondered, but I'm not sure. Some of them, like the fire, just don't seem likely. There was no one around but us last night. No ATVs or even signs of someone on the road up there," Rich said, gesturing towards the top of a cliff. "This is the trailer."

"Oh my god," Sam whispered, looking at the melted remains of a travel trailer. There wasn't much left, just the skeleton and the twisted pieces of one wall. The ground was blackened by the fire and heat still rose from the spot.

"Jeff, come over and meet the Winchesters," Rich called. A large man with native features in a t-shirt and jeans walked over. He had a heavy turquoise and silver watch bracelet on his left wrist. "Jeff Yazzie, this is Sam and Dean."

Yazzie shook Sam's hand in a firm grip and smiled. "Rich told me he was calling you."

"Jeff's my second in command. He's worked with me for three years, although I might lose him to the Nation one of these days."

"Nation?"

"The Navajo Nation," Rich said like it was obvious. "Jeff is an expert on all phases of excavation and as an added bonus was raised a little north of here in Tohatchi, so he knows the area well. He's acted as a liaison with members of the Nation, talking to them and adding to our background knowledge of the area."

"Don't listen to him, he only hired me because I make a mean goat stew."

"He does, and he's right, only reason I hired him." Rich chuckled.

"Goat stew?" Dean made a face.

"Don't knock it till you try it."

"Right." Dean wandered off, poking through the remains of the trailer. He squatted down and dug at something with his pocket knife, flipped it over and moved on. Sam watched him. His brother was in hunter-mode, nothing could really distract him once he got going. He waited as Dean poked around, stopping to dig something up now and then, toeing at the dirt someplace else. "Sam, look at this."

"What is it?" Sam asked, hurrying over to his brother, Rich and Jeff trailing behind him.

"Check it out, I think the fire started here." Dean squatted down and poked at a black ring, darker than the surrounding sand.

Sam crouched down beside his brother. The heat from the ground radiated through his jeans. He pulled his own knife out and prodded at the ground. The sand in the dark ring was a different texture than the earth surrounding it. He slid the blade along the ring. What's the melting temperature of sand? About 1500 degrees? Whatever had caused the fire had come close to that temperature, the sand wasn't glass, but it was well on its way.

"I think you're right," Sam said. "But how?"

"Pissed off people-chow?"

"What?" Jeff asked.

"Victims of cannibalism?" Dean gave him a "duh" look.

"Actually, we're not sure it was cannibalism," Jeff offered cautiously.

"Sam said some of the remains showed evidence of butchering. If that doesn't indicate cannibalism what does it mean?" Dean stood and brushed off his hands, facing Jeff and Rich. Sam hid a grin, leave it to his brother to get right to the point of controversy.

"It could be many things, mistreatment of prisoners of war, some kind of punishment related to capital crimes..." Rich began.

"Right," Dean cut him off. "How about we go with 'people who are butchered might be pissed off.'"

"Salt and burn?" Rich asked with a smile.

"Sounds like a plan," Dean said.

"We can't burn the remains!" Jeff said, horrified.

"Do you have another idea to deal with a really angry spirit, because that's what we're dealing with here," Dean snapped. "The fire that destroyed your trailer was hot enough to make glass, you think that was just an accident? Or that some looter could set a fire that burned that hot?"

"But..." Jeff was shaking his head.

"But what?" Dean snapped out, Sam could tell his brother was angry.

"Dean," Sam said softly, trying to stop Dean before his brother got really wound up.

"What, Sammy? Wait till someone else dies? A simple salt and burn is all it needs."

Sam sighed, Dean was right, but he doubted it would be easy to convince an archaeologist to burn artifacts. "We need to investigate further, but it really does sound like that's the only answer." Let the idea sink in for a bit, Dean. He stared at his brother, sending the silent message, hoping Dean would understand the meaning of the look.

He shouldn't have worried, Dean met his gaze and nodded. "Yeah, it might be one of the other graves for all we know. We'll look around for awhile. I'll talk to some of your crew and we can take a look at the site."

"Sites actually," Rich said, relieved. "There's the rock shelter, the kiva, and the homestead."

"Okay, we'll start at the back and work our way forward," Dean said. "Sam?"

"I'll look at the rock shelter with Jeff."

"So I get to climb the cliff, right? How did that happen?"

"I'm stealthy, that means you're agile," Sam said, tossing one of Dean's favorite quotes back at him.

"I might go ilk hunting." Dean grinned. "You know what an ilk is, right?" he said, continuing the scene.

"A really big deer?" Sam answered with a laugh.

"Boys?" Rich said, looking from one to the other.

"Sorry." Dean smirked. "Want to point me in the right direction?"

"I'll have Dale show you around," Jeff said as they walked back towards the ranch house. "He's in charge of that part of the project."

A light breeze was blowing through the canyon, the trees whispering softly, native sunflowers lined the path, their bright blossoms turned to the east. The sun was warm, but there was a definite chill on the wind, Autumn was arriving in the high country already. As they headed across the site, Sam looked around, getting his bearings, noting the pin flags fluttering in the breeze. Probably marking excavations. He could see people working in the distance, only heads and shoulders visible above the ground. When they reached the house, they stopped by the picnic table, several people were still sitting there, coffee mugs sitting in front of them.

"Dale?" Jeff said to the group.

"Yeah?" a dark-haired man, looking to be in his early thirties answered.

"Can you show Dean the excavation?"

"Sure. I'm Dale," he said, extending his hand to Dean, then Sam. "You want coffee?" He stood, picking up his cup. Sam looked at him in surprise, the man was a least a couple of inches taller than him.

"Coffee?" Dean perked up. "Yeah."

"Let's get a cup and I'll show you around." He led Dean into the house.

"You want coffee?" Jeff asked Sam.

"No, I'm fine."

"Okay. Do you want to look at the graveyard? It's on the way to the rock shelter."

"No, let's start at the shelter," Sam said, falling in beside Jeff as they headed up a path towards the towering cliffs. As they got closer, Sam could see black streaks marring the stone, looking like liquid had run down the wall. Or maybe smoke up it? "Have you been here since the project started?"

"Before, actually. We used to come down here when I was a kid. We stayed in the house when we were following the sheep." Jeff smiled. "It was quite an adventure. We used to scare each other by saying we heard something, or we saw a ghost."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"See a ghost?" If there's an angry spirit here, you'd think it was here then, too.

"No, not really."

"Not really?" Sam glanced at him.

"There are stories about this canyon, legends, about spirits here and of course some of them mention bad spirits, but I've never heard about anyone being killed or injured, at least not until we got here."

"Are you sure?" An odd sense of foreboding, bordering on panic, was starting to find its way into Sam, he wasn't sure what was causing it, but his hunter's instincts were suddenly ringing an increasingly loud alarm. He stopped and looked around, everything was quiet, but that sense of doom was still there, prodding at him.

"Yeah, I am, I would have heard about it, believe me." Jeff sighed and led the way under a huge overhang of sandstone. There were several square holes cut into the floor of the rock shelter, one of them with a dark circle in the center. "That's a hearth," Jeff said, following his look.

"What's that?" Sam said, pointing to a line of pink flags on the far side of the rock shelter. He could see Dean and Dale walking along a path that skirted the area. Dean stopped and looked up the cliff, Sam couldn't hear what his brother said, but from the tone of the laughter that did reach him he could make a guess.

"That's where we found the mummy and to the right there," Jeff said, pointing along the shadow of another rock shelter, "the floor of a possible dwelling, parts of some butchered bodies. At least two individuals."

"Is there a cave there?"

"Yes, in the corner, it's the dark spot. It goes a ways back into the cliff and has been used for a long time as a sacred spot."

"How long?"

"It's still in use," Jeff said, his voice hard. "It's one of the reasons I am trying to stop the developers. Some of them don't care what we've found and I think..."

"What?"

"All these accidents started happening after we reported finds that might halt their plans. Then looters show up?"

"You think it's them?"

"I don't know," he growled.

"Anything else?" Sam wandered around the shelter, following a path made by flags, looking into the trenches, hoping to see something that would make sense, and digesting the information Jeff had given him. Of course, it raises other questions as well.

"About them or the site?"

"Either?"

"We had an odd find between the cave and where the mummy was, it looked like a grave, but no body, just offerings. I think it relates to the site's use as a sacred space, Rich thinks it might have been..." He stopped, his head cocked to the side. "What the hell is that?"

Sam heard it, a deep rumbling along the cliff wall, the sense of foreboding exploding into full blown panic. He cast a wild glance at Jeff and started running, not even sure where he was going, but following along the wall as the sound build from rumble to something more ominous. Oh my god, no.

"Dean!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. His brother heard him and turned, Sam saw the look of concern flit over Dean's face. "Get out of there! Dean!" Blind panic propelled him along the path a high speed.

"Sammy?" Dean shouted, starting towards him.

"Dean! RUN!"

The panic in his voice must have impressed his brother. Dean started to run.

It was too late. With a terrible shriek that sounded like a human voice raised in fury, the cliff above Dean blasted apart. Sam was tackled from behind, Jeff's weight bearing them both to the ground as rocks rained down on them. The stones slammed into Sam, pain running though his body. He was breathing hard, trying to stay conscious, when the rumbling died away. Not caring about his own injuries, he pushed himself up through the sandstone that had fallen on him and looked towards where his brother had been. There was very little of the rock shelter left, the mouth of the cave was completely buried in rumble.

"Dean!" Sam called desperately as he reached the pile of stone.

A single leg protruded from the stones, or what had been a leg, only the crushed and mangled remains of an ankle and foot were visible. "NO!" Sam shouted. He fell to his knees and started pulling stones away from the body, working through the tears filling his eyes and running down his cheeks.

To Be Continued

A/N III: Chapter Two will be up next Saturday.

A/N IV: For those of you waiting for Edge, Gifts and The Forest, I should have chapters up before Wednesday.