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Where all the Ghosts Play
But if you should go there, be careful and remember-never, never unlock the door…It is forbidden.
-The Forbidden Door
Where all the ghosts play, there is only darkness.
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Dean disappears several days after St. Louis and Sam doesn't think anything of it, but oh God, he wishes he had.
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The sky is bright, endless blue. Sam blinks, staring up into it as his brother runs into the convenience slash gas station store. The highway is in the distance, the sounds of cars and trucks hums under the sound of the gas station door opening and closing. A man rubs his pant leg with his hand, a smoker trying not to smoke. Sam brings his head down, his eyes drifting to the newspapers waiting to be picked up. In between political statements and the most recent car wreck is another girl gone missing. Maybe the boyfriend is suspected, but Sam doesn't get a chance to read it. Dean comes back clutching chip bags and pop, his green eyes twinkling warmly.
They get into the car and drive away, back out onto the highway. Sam forgets about newspapers and ghostly pictures of missing girls as he argues with his brother about the music, their destination, and whether or not Dean ever had a chance with the girl at the gas station.
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He counts the days, continuously on edge, waiting for recognition. Dean drifts from scene to scene, unconcerned. He told Sam once: it's what you believe that's important. If you don't believe you are what you say you are, then no one else will.
There's enough hero worship left in Sam for him to disregard the obvious lie in the statement. But the words haunt. And Sam watches, but no one comments on the uncanny resemblance Dean bares to a dead serial killer across the country.
Sometimes Dean sees him watching and he leans forward, eyes gently mocking, and says,
"What, Sammy? You see something wrong?"
Sam shakes his head, and maybe Dean leans back incredibly relieved, or maybe he leans back amused. Sam will never know.
Dean takes the newspapers, while Sam scours the internet. New cases pile up, but what Sam sees, sometimes, is an emerging pattern twisting right off the page. Then he'll blink and it'll be gone, but Dean's voice will whisper, mockingly, you see something wrong?
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Dean comes back with a small cut on his lip. It's barely noticeably unless you're someone watching very closely. Sam is lying in bed watching the shadows on the ceiling melt in traffic headlights. His brother isn't quiet, like he knows that Sam is awake. Turning his head, Sam watches his brother switch on the light, and for a brief instant Dean's eyes are reflected in lamplight, cold and inhuman. Sam remembers cruel words meant to cut, and firm hands squeezing the air out of his lungs.
"Sorry if I woke you."
"I was awake. What happened?"
"Stupid bitch slapped me."
"Get tired of your bad come on lines?"
"Ha, ha, Sam. Very funny."
Sam thinks so. He smiles when Dean slams the bathroom door closed. Dean's not angry, not really. If there's one thing Sam's always prided himself on, it's reading his brother.
He gets up and checks the Impala anyway, when he hears the shower turn on. He tells himself it's his book he's interested in. He left it in the back seat. And he finds it there, on the floor.
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Rebecca's voice mail tells him to leave a message after the tone. He breathes once, twice, into the receiver, not sure what to say. Then he says it's Sam calling to say hi. He figures the breathing into the phone was too creepy not to leave a message.
He walks back into the motel room. The lights are on, and the television is playing Bugs Bunny. Dean is crouched over the weapons, cleaning them methodically. Sam shuts the door, and Dean clicks the gun he's been working on closed.
"Where've you been?" He's still holding the gun, watching Sam.
"Out. I needed to go for a walk."
His brother stays so still that Sam wonders if there's anything wrong. Then Dean lays the gun down and starts working on a knife. "Did you reach her?"
Sam swallows and throws the phone on the dresser, not bothering to answer the question.
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It was a guy in grade school who told Sam about Blue Beard and his seventh wife. Actually, the boy was trying to scare one of the girls. Really, thinking back on it, its one of those times when you realize just how stupid you were in your youth. She hadn't been scared, Sam hadn't been scared, and it had been quickly forgotten.
He thinks they made movies based on that idea, but then again, they make movies about everything. A woman too curious for her own good, or a man too crazy to be dealt with. Didn't matter in the end, she still looked in the forbidden room.
He calls Rebecca again, and again gets the voice mail. He doesn't leave a message for her this time.
He's standing just inside the library doors. Outside it's cold and wet. His eyes sting from the artificial library light. He's been here for hours, and Dean will pick him up soon. He could call and tell his brother to meet him back at the motel. He could call Rebecca back and leave a message. Neither decision will change the pictures in the newspapers.
They ranged all the way back to the time before.
The library door swings open, letting the cold in. Dean grins at him.
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See, there's this whole thing they didn't explore. Sam lets it rest for so long that the articles pile up and the world shifts into sunny days where the shadows live only under the trees. He thinks about Nietzsche and the Vulcan mind meld.
Dean looks at him, side long and smiling, "You cannot tell me you're brooding on a day like today."
The Rolling Stones say she's under my thumb.
"I'm not brooding." But his voice is distant, and he's having trouble speaking past the lump in his throat.
"You know what you need?"
Sam knows what he needs, but the weapons are in the trunk, and he knows Dean won't pull over.
"To loosen up. Man, you are way too stuck on those dark depressing thoughts of yours."
He wants to reconcile a missing period of time where the shape shifter tried to kill him, and where he was suddenly breathing again. There is so much time missing. If he counts backwards, its melds into before Jessica, and back to a bus station with the Impala getting smaller in the distance.
"Something wrong, Sam?" Dean's voice is so concerned, but his eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses.
"No, nothing."
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They sit in a bar, the sun set hours ago. They used to give women a curfew. Parents tell their kids to be in by dark, but nobody talks like that these days when women take self-defense courses, and where shape shifters lie as much as they tell the truth.
He never thought to ask which way those things worked, which head the person's getting into. It's family history, and if Sam goes back beyond four years of absence, he knows what he will find smiling prettily up at him from yellowed newspaper pages.
Dean leans over and says, "Hey, I think she's checking me out. What do you think? She's hot."
There's a smirk on his lips as he takes a swig of his beer. His eyebrows waggle at him, but his eyes catch the light, and Sam can't tell what the twinkle in them means.
He barely makes it out of the bar before he throws up, the half digested chicken fingers he forced himself to eat splattering on the pavement. He hears footsteps, the opening and closing of the bar door. The Impala is parked around back, the weapons neatly locked in the trunk. Dean has the keys.
A warm hand touches his back, rubbing soothing circles while Dean's voice whispers in his ear, "It's okay, Sammy, everything's okay."