Quick Note, Please Read: I wrote this a while ago, found it on my computer, and decided to post it! I don't remember if it was finished or not, so I may expand on it later. One last thing: reviews, awesome; flames, just not cool. Thanks for reading! :D
Don't own anything, just having fun.
Terror. Pure terror. That's all I can feel right now, and I'm not used to it. I don't know how to handle it. I'm used to being in control, staying calm. There is no control now.
There's one hour.
I gun the Impala, knowing I shouldn't, knowing increasing the stakes for myself won't help me get to Dean any sooner. You can only go so fast on these curvy roads. I feel the same sentiment emanating from Bobby, who sits next to me in the passenger seat. Bobby. Thank God for Bobby, the only reason I know where I'm going. The one of us who kept his head, calculated that son-of-a-bitch spirit's modus operandi despite the pressure. Despite the fact that bastard got his hands on my boy and buried him alive.
The thought brings bile to my throat, and I push the accelerator harder.
"John," Bobby says, a wary inflection in his voice. He doesn't want to upset me further, or let me continue endangering both our lives. "We'll find him. I swear; this boy is not dying."
"He could already be dead," I reply tightly, staring straight ahead at the road, my knuckles white around the steering wheel. "It takes at most fifteen minutes for a person to asphyxiate underground. It's been three hours."
The car rips around another corner.
"That isn't this guy's MO. Four hours. That's how long he was buried before he suffocated. That's how long he gives his victims. We're getting Dean back. John."
Bobby stresses my name, testing if I'm listening, trying to get me to blink or something, anything. I don't. After a moment, I force myself to glance his way.
"And we're supposed to trust this fucker's math?"
He looks out the windshield as I've been doing this entire drive — no response.
If Dean is dead, it's my fault. This ghost — the ghost of Marcus Penhall — preys on ill will between fathers and sons. In life, Penhall engaged in some sick romantic relationship with his own mother, prompting his father to conk him over the head and toss him in a box beneath the earth so the devil could have him, all the while fully aware that his son was not dead. Every year on the anniversary of his burial, Penhall takes an angry son and does the dirty work for the father. This time, he's taken Dean, because I was too stubborn, too trigger-happy to hear what my boy had to say. Because I didn't want to hear him blaming me for Sammy leaving.
College was an obvious choice for Sam — it was where I knew he'd end up. I discouraged it, subtly, at every turn for a couple of years before it happened, but with his drive and his brains, it was inevitable. That doesn't mean I was happy when the application finally turned up, that I didn't try every threat, every warning in the book to make him stay with me and his brother. And when he didn't listen, my stupid pride yelled out for him not to come back, ever. That wasn't what I wanted. It isn't. But what's done is done, right?
That's my philosophy. I can live by that. But Dean — Dean's grown up fixing things, and his brother's absence kills him every day, makes him angrier and angrier that I won't do a damn thing about the one problem he can't repair in my stead. He's powerless to make Sam come back, and somewhere inside that confused, hurt, pissed off head of his, he can't accept that I'm powerless too. No one can make Sam come back. That kid and I could either have parted on good terms or bad terms, and it just happened that they were bad. But I didn't bother explaining to Dean; I snapped at him, told him to shake off that chip on his shoulder, to sort out that attitude. I let his feelings toward me stew, and didn't think about it once as I dragged him in to face that son of a bitch.
If he's dead, it's my fault.
"John, slow down," Bobby says.
I grit my jaw, bearing my teeth, and am absolutely shocked when a tear slips from my eye, luckily on the left side so Bobby doesn't see. My son, my boy is out there somewhere, beneath the ground we're driving on, scared, alone, running out of oxygen, and all I have to help me find him is the vicinity in which Bobby figures Penhall buried him. Maybe we have an hour, but every second Dean is suffering. Every second, he doesn't know if he'll live or die, if I'm coming for him, if I'll save him, if he'll ever see the sun again. I can't stand thinking of him in that kind of agony.
"No way in hell," I tell Bobby, but he sighs in annoyance and pulls an EMF reader from the pocket of his jacket.
"Slow down so this baby can tell us when we're close. We're closing in, John. He should be around here."
Understanding now, I do as he instructed, but my anxiety piques. What if he's not here? Oh God, what if we're in the wrong place? Dean would die. I would have failed him, and myself. I would lose my reason to live.
As we putt down the road, the EMF reader bleeps at us, one tiny spike of activity that might as well be an alarm blaring for its significance. "Stop the car," Bobby says, but I've already done it, and am getting out ahead of him. On one side of the road, there are thick woods; on the other, a conspicuously open field — neither easy to navigate in the pitch dark of rural environs.
"It's coming from the woods," Bobby announces, which makes me cuss but doesn't surprise me. This asshole doesn't like his victims found.
I go to the trunk, and pull out as many weapons as I can carry, packing them on my person, then toss a shovel to Bobby. Penhall's spirit might be hanging around — one of us needs to be prepared for defense, while the other one digs. It's as good as it's going to get.
"We're coming, Dean," I mutter to my son who can't hear me, probably can't hear anything but his own panicked breathing and his screams which will never carry to the surface. Then I stride forward into the trees, my determination shaking the ground with every footfall.
The EMF reader leads the way with Bobby at the helm, the scale lighting up and down like some sick game of Marco-Polo, telling us when we're hot and when we're cold. It's failsafe, though, and takes us to a small clearing in the woods where the moon shines through, illuminating the disturbed dirt in the center. I can picture Dean at the bottom, kicking and fighting like a Winchester through and through, but my whole body aches with despair and desperation at the knowledge that I wouldn't have found him if it hadn't been for Bobby. All the Winchester blood in my kid's veins would have been useless. I would have been useless.
I fall to my knees and start pushing dirt aside, forgetting about the shovel and the plan to have a lookout. My vigor almost scares me — even in the Marines, I was never this dedicated to a task, but it's my boy at stake, his life, and he needs me; oh God, he needs me now.
Bobby's helping, but I'm not even aware of him. Three feet, four feet, five fe— there! My hands find a wooden surface, and I clear the dirt ever faster. As I continue to unearth the box, I see Marcus Penhall's family seal burned into the lid, a literal supernatural clock counting down the seconds my son has to breathe, unless the coffin is opened. I scramble for the latch, knowing that it will be locked.
Before I can do a thing, I feel the wind change and the air go frigid. My reflexes quick and sharp, I reach for my shotgun — loaded with rock salt, Dean's genius idea — but there's no way I can anticipate just how quick and sharp this spirit is. My hand grazes the weapon only enough to knock it into the grave we've dug as I'm picked up and tossed several yards across the clearing by an invisible force. Bobby flies the other way and lands in the trees, crunching the brush and becoming as impossible for me to see as our attacker. He doesn't move again.
I roll back to my feet and scan the clearing, posture defensive, pulling a handgun from inside my jacket, which I know will be worthless. No rock salt in this baby. Still, I can hope it looks menacing. The trees rock with the cold, wicked breeze, but nothing comes at me a second time, nothing else so much as shifts. I need to get back to Dean.
I take a step forward, and the next thing I know my head smacks against a thick, hard tree trunk at the rim of the clearing. My back throbs from the impact, but this time I can't get free of whatever's holding me there, and its icy fingers snake around my neck, constricting my airway. How the hell am I supposed to fight it if I can't see it? This is how the spirit got the drop on me the first time, knocked me unconscious and took Dean. This is how it won; this is how it's going to win.
As my lungs begin to shout for air, I let the handgun slip from my grasp, and struggle to maintain the presence of mind to reach inside my coat one last time and retrieve a vial of holy water. I screw off the top and fling the vial's contents out in front of me. Something hisses and sizzles, and I fall to the ground, looking up just in time to see Marcus Penhall take form. I feel something wet and sticky around my throat, comprehending as I see the ectoplasm bleeding from the spirit's fingernails and hands. Open wounds, dating back to his battle to survive.
He launches himself at me, and there's nothing I can do, no time to react. Hopefully Bobby can still save Dean, because this is it for me, and it'll be worth it only if my boy lives. Then a shot is fired, and Marcus Penhall dematerializes before me.
I let the spirit smoke clear and my eyes focus, and see not Bobby but Dean standing across the clearing, in front of his own grave, holding my shotgun. His hands are still bound — God knows how he operated the weapon — and he's gagged with a cloth tied round his head, inside his mouth. Penhall didn't want a struggle. And now, if I'm right, Penhall's ghost has been destroyed; Dean fractured his pattern by escaping, by living. That wasn't in the plan.
As I watch, Bobby lurches back into the clearing, his jaw slack, equally in awe of my boy, who kicked his way out of a locked coffin to save his old man. I get back to my feet, proud and relieved, but then Dean sinks to his knees, dropping the gun and sliding into a full-blown collapse. My legs are moving me toward him before my brain forms a conscious thought.
I slide to him like a baseball player when I draw near, grabbing the front of his shirt — he must be freezing in this weather — and shaking him to jolt him into awareness. It doesn't work. His whole body is trembling, and even though I suspect it's not from the cold, I shrug off my coat and pull him into my arms to wrap the garment around him. His head tips back, and I take his jaw in one hand, slapping his cheek.
"Dean. Dean! Wake up, come on, kid, it's me. Wake up for me, Dean."
As I struggle to rouse him, Bobby removes the rope around his wrists and the gag in his mouth, and then finally Dean moans and coughs and those big green eyes — Mary's eyes — crack open just a touch, hazy and disoriented. I'm so relieved I let out a laugh, and across from me, Bobby lets out a huge sigh. And then Dean's clinging to me, like he hasn't done since just after his mother died. He's clinging to me, because right now, Bobby and I are the only reason he's not still buried in the dark.
Wasting very little time, Bobby and I haul him up and support him on the way back to the Impala; his legs don't seem to want to work. We lay him in the backseat, then I toss the keys to Bobby, who for a moment is legitimately taken aback — I never let anyone drive this car. But he doesn't question it, just gets in the driver's side while I climb in the back to let my son lean against me. I tell myself the arrangement is for Dean's benefit, when it's probably just as much for mine. I almost let this kid slip through my fingers. I got stupid, and Dean came so close to paying the price. I don't appreciate him enough — hell, when was the last time I hugged him? An involuntary response to this thought, my arm tightens around his chest.
He's shaking so much it starts to scare me, just a steady quiver he can't control. I know how tough he is, know his tendency to push things to the back of his mind and disguise both physical and emotional pain. He can't even try to hide this. That goddamn spirit got him good.
I brush a hand through his hair, fighting back my fury at a thing that's long gone, out of reach. Helpless now, as it had made my boy. That was the only satisfaction I could take.
"Dean, it's okay," I tell him. "You're safe now. Say something to me, son."
I can't let him retreat too far into his own mind, not after experiencing something like this. The military taught me that much.
"You gotta talk to me, Dean," I try again.
"We get the son of a bitch?" his hoarse voice answers at last, following a rattling breath.
"Yeah," I say, comforted enormously by that one sentence. "Yeah, we got him. He's gone for good."