The Day The World Went Away
by AmandaK
So, Mom's death, Jessica – it's all because of me? --Sam, Salvation
Chapter 1
The house loomed as a black shape beneath the purple twilight clouds. It sagged a bit to the left, the slate roof a jagged line against the sky. The wood siding was darkened with age and mold and if those boards had ever seen a lick of paint, it was but a distant memory now. Weeds grew in clumps between the shingles on the roof. The second-floor window panes had long since shattered, leaving large holes that resembled empty eye sockets and the front door stood ajar, hanging on one hinge. It reminded Sam of some underworld beast, its gaping maw open and ready to gobble up anyone who came close.
He shivered in the cold March air. Heavy snow clouds were amassing in the north and threatened to blow in. In southern states, people would be preparing for spring but up here in Montana winter wasn't quite ready to give way yet. If they couldn't get the job done in the next few hours, they risked being caught in a blizzard. Perhaps they could find a hunt in Texas next, Sam thought.
At least we'll be warm.
He snuck a glance sideways at Dean before directing his eyes back at the house. "It looks hungry."
Dean shot him a look as if to say, Dude, are you crazy?
Sam offered a one-shouldered shrug; the house did look hungry.
Dean shook his head and checked the shotgun one last time, making sure that it was loaded properly with rock salt. "Let's get this bitch over with," he said. "I'm freezin' my ass off here."
Snapping the barrel of the shotgun back in place, Dean strode across the last few feet of uneven ground and hopped up the porch steps, the set of his shoulder underneath the leather jacket not boding well for the thing that lurked inside the house. Sam hurried to catch up. He touched the handgun lodged in the waistband of his jeans, against his spine, seeking comfort in its cool, unyielding hardness. Not sure what they were dealing with, they'd come prepared for most supernatural eventualities, and the gun held a clip of silver bullets.
Despite these preparations, Sam still had a bad feeling about the whole thing. They rarely went in to a hunt this blind but this time they had not had a choice. The house predated the real estate records so they'd failed to learn its earliest history and as far as anyone's memory could recall, nobody had ever lived there. At least not since the days that wagon trains first ventured onto the Montana plains. Local lore said that the house was haunted, though, and it was whispered that those who went in never came out.
Sam shrugged off his misgivings and slipped after Dean through the opening left by the hanging door. The hallway was decked in gloom and shadows, which deepened even further when he blocked what little light managed to fall through the doorway. Switching on their flashlights, they moved further into the house. A foul smell hung in the air, moldy and heavy with dry rot; Sam could feel it clogging his throat. The floorboards creaked beneath their weight, and for a moment Sam held his breath, fearing that the floor would give way. The house was old, and termites would've started feasting on the ancient timber decades ago. But the floor held, and with one final groan that shuddered through the entire building, the house settled around them, becoming silent.
Dean shone his light around the hallway. It appeared unremarkable, with an archway to a room on the right, another on the left. Further on, a staircase with a flimsy-looking banister went up to the second floor. Darkness swallowed the far end of the hallway, at least until Sam directed his flashlight straight at it. Another door—pantry, maybe—glimmered pale in the glare.
"Left or right?" Sam asked.
Dean shrugged. "Left."
They walked through the left-hand archway. The room beyond was bare, not even a piece of abandoned furniture in sight, with a cold, empty fireplace that, by the looks of it, had never been lit. A thick layer of dust coated the wooden floor. And in that dust a single set of footsteps led away from the doorway and stopped in the middle of the room.
"What the hell?" Dean pinned the prints with his flashlight.
Sam checked for the gun again and thought about taking it out before he tightened his grip on his own light. He swiveled the beam around, shining it into the farthest corners but aside from the footsteps, there was nothing to see. He knelt beside the prints, careful not to disturb them, and touched their edges with one finger. "These are fresh," he said. "Looks like an expensive shoe, too. Smooth leather soles, not sneakers."
"The developer guy."
"Yeah." Sam straightened. It was that story, which had brought them here in the first place: Real Estate Agent Disappears Without A Trace. By itself, the newspaper headline wouldn't have been enough to make them drive up north from Colorado. But then they learned the man's company had been looking to start a new development project and was planning to tear down an old, abandoned house that was reputed to be haunted. That had gotten their attention and they'd begun to dig a little deeper until they discovered the other disappearances.
Couple of teenagers, back in the fifties.
A woman wildlife photographer from out of town, twenty years ago.
And, get this, a kid's dog, just last month. All of them had gone into this house and never returned, leaving no sign they'd ever been there in the first place. Except for that single set of footprints.
Dean inched further into the room, circling around the trail so he wouldn't damage the impressions in the dust. Sam suddenly realized what bothered him about the room: it was too empty, too clean despite the layer of dust. In his experience, every abandoned building had its share of animal squatters: spiders weaving webs in the corners, birds nesting under the rafters, rodents leaving droppings all over the place...
"Dean, be—Whoa!"
Without warning, the house started to shake, rattling and banging doors and windows. The floorboards undulated beneath their feet, bucking and heaving like an angry rodeo bull, catapulting Dean forward into the room, where he smacked head-first into the fireplace with a sickening thud. His shotgun clattered across the floorboards and his flashlight rolled after it, flickering one last time before it died. Sam was thrown backwards into the hallway, landing hard on his ass and sliding along until he hit the wall. Agony shot up along his spine and for long moments, Sam could only gasp in pain.
At last the floor settled, the boards uttering a soft series of creaks and cracks before silence descended again.
"Dean!"
Dean didn't move, didn't answer, didn't utter any of the expected curses about them getting attacked by a goddamned floor.
Sam suppressed the urge to rush to Dean's side and see how badly his brother was injured. He hesitated only a moment before he went back into the room, tiptoeing, as if he could thread lightly enough to keep the house from noticing him. He inched his way ever closer to Dean, toeing each board before putting his weight on it. Another two yards, five more feet and—
He never made it.
Three, maybe four feet of treacherous floor into the room, the ground disappeared beneath him. It didn't give way, didn't collapse or anything. One moment it was there, firm, unyielding, sturdy. The next, it was just... gone.
Sam let out a cry, more startled than anything, and fell into inky nothingness.
o0o
Something wet and sticky dribbled down Dean's jaw. Blood—he'd felt it often enough to recognize it even through the daze of semi-consciousness; its slick warmth on his skin was almost as familiar as the texture of his favorite jeans. It felt like a trickle, the flow already stopping.
Just a cut, then, nothin' to worry about.
Reassured he wasn't bleeding out, Dean continued his mental inventory. A hard, sharp object was poking his left shoulder blade; dust clogged his nose, and his head pounded like a jackhammer. He really should stop smacking into things head-first, he thought; one of these days he was gonna end up with his brains so scrambled they'd never get straight again.
He scrunched his eyes into slits, peeking through his lashes. The beam from a flashlight discarded near the doorway pierced the gloom, dust motes dancing in its glare. They tickled his nose and he sneezed, moaning at the way the convulsion exploded in a bright flare of pain behind his eyes. Dean counted to five, then ten, taking careful breaths through his mouth until the pain faded to a dull throb inside his skull.
"Sam?"
Last thing he remembered was walking into the room and getting chucked into the fire place. After that, things were dark. But it wasn't hard to figure out what happened: some angry poltergeist had been waiting for them, and they'd walked right into its trap.
Sloppy, Winchester, Dean chided himself. Slipshoddiness like that could get them killed.
He eased himself up in a sitting position, feeling fresh bruises tug at his skin, and ran a mental check of limbs and torso. Everything seemed to be in working order; there were no broken bones or cracked ribs, no injuries other than the cut on his forehead. He lifted a hand and touched the wound lightly. His fingers came away bloody, but his first guess had been right: the gash wasn't deep, the blood already clotting over the cut.
"Sammy?"
Dean half-expected to find Sam at his side, with that apprehensive wrinkle of concern between his brows that only eased once Dean woke up—as if it were Sam's job to look after him. He looked around the room again, peering into the shadowy corners where the dim beam of the flashlight didn't reach, but saw nothing. He felt the first twinge of worry.
"Sam!"
Sam didn't respond. The house was still around Dean. Very, very still, contrasting sharply with the chorus of creaks and cracks and groans that had greeted them when they entered. His breathing was the only sound in the room, and Dean thought he could hear his heart thump against his ribs, it was that quiet. He was gaining a new understanding of the term 'oppressive silence'.
He scrambled across the floor for Sam's flashlight, ignoring the rough boards that scratched the flesh of his palms, and angled its beam higher, lighting up the dark corners. The room remained empty. Clambering to his feet, Dean staggered into the hallway, where he shone the light around again and peered up the staircase and down the corridor. There was no sign of Sam anywhere.
"Sammy!" Dean fought down the surge of panic, angling the flashlight back into the room once more as if repeated inspections would miraculously produce his brother. Perhaps—perhaps Sam had gone to search the other rooms for the poltergeist, he told himself. Maybe he'd gone back to the car for the first aid kit, or—
"Holy shit."
The list of things Sam might be doing that would explain his absence fled from Dean's mind the instant he saw the footprints. The smooth, leather-soled impressions left by the real estate developer were gone, hidden beneath the fresh layer of dust that had settled after the house's upheaval. Instead, Dean's own boots had made a couple of new prints in the doorway and he'd left a long streak in the dust where he'd crawled to the flashlight. Besides those, there were a couple of gargantuan footsteps that could only be Sam's, slightly smeared where Dean had walked right over them. Sam's trail headed for the fireplace...
...except...
...his footprints stopped.
They fucking ended right in the middle of the fucking room. Just like the footprints of the developer had.
For long seconds, Dean gawked at his brother's boot prints that ceased in the middle of the room, like Sam had gone up in thin air or sprouted wings and flown off. A thought repeated itself in his head, over and over again. Sam was gone. Sam wasn't in another room. Sam wasn't outside. Sam was gone. And it looked as if the house had swallowed him, exactly like it had those other people.
"Goddammit," Dean swore, his voice reverberating through the empty, quiet rooms and nearly scaring him out of his skin.
Houses didnot eat people. Not even in their fucked-up crazy Winchester world they didn't.
They just... didn't.
TBC
