This is a disclaimer.
AN: You call this the afterlife? I call this a horror movie. What's more, I call this a horror movie I wouldn't pay to see! Title from Ari Hest.
Out of Aberdeen
OK, so this is really not the way Adam Milligan always imagined the afterlife.
Well, to be honest, he'd never given much thought to the afterlife full stop, but being trapped in this creepy-ass mausoleum would not have been on the list even if he had. The place is filthy. There's human bones scattered all over the place, his own corpse is lying in a coffin in one of the niches, and there's some monster out of a horror movie sitting on the other coffin, gnawing on Benton's shinbone while wearing Adam's face.
It pisses him off.
He slouches against the muddy walls, kicks his feet across the floor. Scatters a few bones here and there. Jumps up and down in front of not!Adam, yelling at him.
Gets no reaction.
Is he a ghost? Cause that would be... freaky. To say the least.
The hours leading up to his actual death are something he'd rather not think about too much, thanks. His mind shies away from them like a skittish horse. All he allows himself to remember is a red haze of pain and blood, and then he does everything he can to get even those images out of his head.
Not that Adam actually has a head anymore. Well no, that's not true either; it's just that his head is lying in a coffin three meters away, eyes wide and glassy and face streaked in blood. Adam shoots the whole arrangement a baleful glare.
"You're an asshole," he tells not!Adam. "A murdering asshole. I hope you die in the most painful and agonising way imaginable."
Not!Adam doesn't answer him. He's too busy picking bits of gore out of his teeth.
"I have a scholarship, you know," Adam says. "Med school. Dorm room's awesome. My grades are near perfect. I have a great Mom and a Dad who kicks some serious ass when he's in town and a girlfriend who's smokin', and if I find out that thanks to you that jerkface Tyler Hanson thinks he can go ahead and make a move on her now I'm a disembodied entity, I will destroy you."
He pauses a moment. Not!Adam doesn't so much as look up at him.
"Douchebag," Adam says.
Dad. There's still Dad. Admittedly, he hasn't been around in a while, but the last time he dropped by he'd said to Adam that he had no idea when he'd be back. Mom eventually started to believe that he'd just skipped out on them after all, but Adam thinks that's ridiculous. Dad would never abandon him like that. What does Mom know about it? All she ever did was sleep with the guy. Adam knows him better than that.
Dad will hear about - about this, about Adam. And Dad will come. Adam's sure of it. There's an expression they use about knowing things in your bones, but Adam is not actually connected to his bones anymore in any relevant way, so he can't really use it.
Eventually, not!Adam leaves. He crawls out through that tunnel in the side of the crypt wall; there's someone waiting for him at the other end, but it's too dark to see who. Adam tries to follow the bastard through, but it doesn't work. He gets about five feet along the tunnel when he just - stops. He literally cannot move another inch in a forwards direction. Back is no problem, and Adam can twist and roll over onto his back, but he can't move forwards. Apparently he's more connected to his bones than he'd thought.
He shuffles back into the crypt and glares around at the skeletons littering the floor.
"A little hint as to what's expected of me in my current state would be real nice, guys," he says.
None of the skeletons answer him.
Adam slides down the wall to sit on a pile of what he hopes is rubble, and wraps his arms around his knees.
*********
It turns out that, besides leaving the creepy-ass crypt, the other thing Adam-as-disembodied-entity is incapable of is sleeping. Which means, of course, that it doesn't take him long to get incredibly bored.
He shuffles around the crypt till he could navigate across it with his eyes shut. He tries three more times to get out of the place. He rearranges the human bones lying all over the floor, carefully reconstructing full human skeletons, naming each bone he picks up in Latin and English, and then giving names to each 'person' he's uncovered.
There are ten skulls in all, which means ten bodies - ten people - with still more bones to spare. Adam thinks of making a sculpture of sorts with them, like in those medieval chapels in Europe, but then a little glimpse of sanity comes back to him, and he shakes his head. People. These were people once. What the hell's he doing down here, rearranging them into sculptures for his own entertainment like some sick, twisted God of Death?
Adam puts the bones back where he found them, carefully, one by one. He feels like apologising, but has no idea who to; so instead, he walks to the centre of the crypt and looks up at the ceiling, at the glass window there.
"Dad," he says. "Wherever you are, I could use a little help here, please?"
Dad's not God, or an enchanter to be summoned when you call his name, but talking to him like this makes Adam feel better anyway.
"Please, Dad," he says. "Come find me. You said you'd be away for a while. You didn't say you were gonna disappear like this and leave me alone."
After a moment, he adds, "And Mom could probably use your help too."
Mom is another one of those hazy red images his mind won't let him think about too clearly.
*********
Finally, after an eternity stuck in the darkness, someone comes. Adam's been studying his own entrails with a sick, detached fascination, trying to remember which one is his liver and which his kidney, but when the guy starts crawling through the tunnel, he lets the coffin lid fall shut and jumps up, standing in the middle of the floor. There's a skull by his right foot and his hands are filthy with astral dirt, or something.
He's a tall guy, taller than Adam though not by much. Maybe early thirties? Strange sort of amulet round his neck. There are deep, deep shadows under his eyes, which are extraordinarily green. He turns to one side a little, and they seem to change colour with the changing light. Broad shoulders, sorta bow-legged, a gun and a flashlight.
Something about the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, his nose and mouth, remind Adam of someone, but it takes him forever to work out who, and by that time, the guy has already lifted the lid on Adam's coffin.
"Dad," he says, coming to stand beside him. "You look like Dad, 'cept for the hair and the eyes. And the walk. And of couse you can't see me, can you? That thing that stole my face couldn't, either."
The guy doesn't even look at him. In fact, he walks right through him, and Adam tucks his hands into the pockets of his trousers and sighs.
"Super," he says.
*********
At least Nameless Guy Who Looks Sorta Like Dad's efforts to get out of the crypt are mildly entertaining. Adam watches him with his head tilted off to one side. Nameless Guy doesn't bother panicking; he just sets about getting out of the pit they're both in with methodical thorough- and stubbornness that Adam suspects Dad would have approved of.
He's not quite sure why he's been thinking of Dad so much since he died. Sure, he missed the guy while alive - it's been two years since he last stopped by - but Adam can't shake the feeling that he's missing something important here (besides his, y'know, life), and that it's got something to do with Dad.
The red hazy memories stir in his mind again, and he veers away from them and takes some time to admire the way Nameless Guy swings himself out of the hole, like a gymnast, only way cooler, because he's doing it in biker boots and he has a gun.
It turns out that Adam can't get out of the crypt that way, either. He sprawls on the filthy stone and wonders absently if ghosts can get bruises.
*********
Boredom has become apathy by the time Nameless Guy comes back. There's someone else with him, and from their conversation Adam deduces that his guy is in fact named Dean, and that the second one is Sam, and that they're brothers. They both move with a gingerness that speaks of aches and pains; Adam knows that feeling. He played soccer all through high school.
He can't manage to stand up, to try and make them notice him. He just sits, and watches.
Dean and Sam climb down into the pit and make their way to Adam's coffin, boots crunching on bones. Neither of them seem to care much.
"Christ," Sam says, staring down at Adam's corpse. It probably stinks to high heaven by now.
"Yeah," Dean says tightly.
Sam looks over at him. "It's not like there was anything we could have done," he says quietly "We didn't know about him."
Adam jumps up as they manoeuvre his corpse out of the coffin. "Know what about me? What the fuck are you doing?"
Mummifying him, apparently. Adam has several objections to the way they're wrapping him in strips of sheet or something similar, and he voices them quite loudly and with many illustrative hand gestures, most of which Mom would have washed his mouth out with soap for knowing, but neither Dean nor Sam can hear a word he says, of course.
"Great!" Adam yells. "Just great. First I die, then I get to haunt this pit, and now you're mutilating my corpse! My rotting corpse, I might add, and I hope one of those maggots bites you and lays its eggs under your skin."
He sits down on the edge of the coffin his bones were resting in, and glares at them furiously.
They hoist his wrapped-up corpse out of the hole in the roof, and Adam, still cursing indignantly, follows them out. "Where the hell are you going with me?" he shouts, too angry to notice that he's actually out of the pit., stumbling along after the two brothers, carrying his mortal remains between them like they've done this before.
It becomes fairly obvious when they carry him over to a makeshift pyre in front of the mausoleum.
"Cremation," Adam says. "Hmm. I could get with that, actually. I'm done with being trapped underground, that's for sure."
"You sure we should do this?" Sam asks.
Dean is pouring gasoline on Adam's corpse. "Ghouls didn't fake those pictures," he says. "And they didn't fake Dad's journal... Adam was our brother. He died like a hunter, he deserves to go out like one."
"I'm your what?!" Adam yells as the fire catches at his corpse. Despite the understandable confusion, and the indignation, and the rush of anger at Dad, he feels suddenly... weightless. Free. Like he just needs to let go of - something - and he'll be gone, up and away.
"Adam," a voice from behind him says, and there's a girl there, short and dark and lovely. "Adam. Time to go. You promised."
Adam stares at her uncertainly. Her face looks familiar, but he can't place it, not quite; there are things associated with it that he never wants to have to think about again. Things that make him ache and shudder and want to cry like a baby. "I did?"
She nods, once, but firmly. Adam looks back at Dean and Sam and thinks, brothers. I have brothers. Shoulda known. Dad always wore that wedding ring...
He feels so alone right now, small and betrayed and worthless, and the girl slides her hand into his. Gives it a gentle tug.
Adam takes a step back, about to follow her, and then pulls away and walks over to Dean. Stands right in front of him, and yeah. Yeah, they're brothers. He's not sure how he knows that, but standing in front of him like this, even invisible, the knowledge is there, in his gut, and he smiles, a little.
"Thanks for this," he says to Dean, who can't hear him. Doesn't see him. "And hey. Tell Dad he's an asshole."
The girl laughs. "Tell him yourself," she murmurs. "Come on, Adam."
Adam sighs. "I guess." He lets her pull him away, gently, step by step, watching his brothers till he can't see them anymore in between the trees of the graveyard, till all that's left of them is the glow of the fire they lit to speed him on his way. "Hey, what's your name?"
She smiles. "Dean calls me Tessa."
"I really hope you're not his girlfriend," Adam says. "No offense, but you're sorta creepy."
Tessa sniffs. "I'm a Reaper," she says. "What did you expect? Pink flowery shirts and lollipops?"
Adam shrugs, laughs a little. He's still not convinced he's ever seen her before, but the red hazy memories are so far away now that he couldn't summon them if he tried anyway. He twists around, just once more, to look back at that warm glow in the dark, that burning farewell.
"I always kinda wanted an older brother," he says wistfully.
Tessa looks over at him, eyes unreadable. "They'll join you soon enough," she says. "Everybody does."
Meeting her eyes like this, Adam shivers. Thinks he can still manage to wait a while before he gets to meet his brothers.
Hopes he'll have to.