"Hey, Sammy. I know your probably not gonna even listen to this message, but in case you do … call me back? I just wanna know that you're still alive man, so please? Call me? You know your brother? Dean? Just in case you forgot that actually have one."

Sam clicked the end call button after listening to the voice mail that Dean had left him. He wanted to call him back, he really did and it wasn't that Sam didn't love his brother anymore because he did, probably more than was healthy. Dean had been the only thing that had kept him sane whilst he was on the road, hunting for as long as he had. And he missed Dean, really missed him, but he wanted the life that he had now too much and he knew that calling Dean back would be like giving him an open invitation to come on back into his life and bring all of the crap that Sam had left behind, with him. His damned conscience couldn't let his brother worry about him though, so Sam text him instead, that way he wouldn't have to speak to Dean and be reminded any more than necessary of the brother he had left behind.

Dean's phone buzzed with the alert of a new message. He picked his mobile up off of the cheap motel night stand and flipped it open. He stared in surprise at who it was from, because he honestly hadn't expected to get any kind of acknowledgement from Sam that Dean had even picked up the phone. He clicked 'open', eager and hungry for any kind of communication from Sam, and read the short and to the point text message.

I'm fine Dean. Please quit calling me. Sam.

Please quit calling me. Like that was even possible. If the big oaf thought for one damned minute that Dean would just give up on trying to get his little brother to talk to him then he could think again. He might want Sammy to be happy, but Dean was still his big brother and he still loved the kid, still wanted reassurance that he was doing okay.

Whilst he was glad that Sam had responded to his voice mail this time, the text wasn't exactly a long heart felt paragraph about how great Sammy's new life was or about how much he missed his awesome big brother. But it was something. At least now he had some sort of confirmation that his little brother was still alive and kicking and hadn't been killed off by a demon or some other supernatural freak. Dean sighed a weary breath, but guessed that the text was better than the long bitter silence that had been the norm ever since Sammy had left for Stanford.

Dean lifted his beer to his lips and cringed at the warmth of it as it slid past his lips and down his throat. It was better than nothing though so he raised it again and drained the bottle, slamming it back onto the night stand when he'd finished.

He tried to distract himself from morose thoughts of Sam by moving over to the cheap round table at one end of the room and spread out the news reports and tried to find the connection between all of these people. Right now all he had was that they were all male, aged from 13 to 52, and they had all been killed with three shots to the chest, each shot being in the exact same place on each of them. No eye witnesses, no bullets, no gunpowder and no shots were heard.

The killings were usually 3-5 guys every 15 years in the week occurring after the 20th of September at which point no killings occurred exactly like that for the next 15 years. It seemed to be right down Dean's street of the weird and freaky.

He couldn't help thinking how useful Sammy would be right now though. Geek Boy was always the best at getting the research done and finding the information that they needed, whilst Dean had always hated having to do that kind of thing and so it took him forever to his ass in gear and do the research necessary.

He knew he was dealing with a ghost because of the pattern to the kills, the exact way in which all of these people had died and then the specific gender of each victim, kind of like the ghost was killing these people in the same way that he had been killed. The EMF at the crime scene of Adam Johnston's murder on the 20th, had only helped to confirm his beliefs. The problem he now faced was finding out who the ghost was and where he was buried so that Dean could salt and burn the poor sucker's bones.