Dean slammed the Chevy's trunk after gathering the equipment he and his brother would use to dispatch the ghost.
"Let's roast this asshat," he told his sibling as he handed Sam a shotgun loaded with rock salt and the bright red jug of gasoline.
Shoving a container of table salt into the pocket of his jacket and picking up his own shotgun and a shovel, Dean started across the lawn of the cemetery.
Sam followed his sibling quietly, his mind on the gruesome history of the ghost they would shortly be torching.
Arthur Bloch had been a local butcher in the small town of Mayville, Kentucky during the mid-nineteen thirties, during the height of the Great Depression, and for all intents and purposes had been a friendly, well-liked member of the community. However, as the economic crisis in the country worsened and food became scarce, Bloch's livelihood became jeopardized. Ever the innovative man, and a lover of the pleasures of the flesh, Bloch had the wonderful idea of combining the two into a gruesome crime that had rocked the town at the time and had long become a legend in Mayville.
Arthur Bloch would drive his bright yellow 1933 Oldsmobile through the town and offer food to any young woman willing to trade for sexual favours. As a result of the times, many people were desperate to do anything in order to feed their hungry families.
Once Bloch had his victim in his car, he would drive her to his butcher shop, promising to give her some much needed food when they had finished.
Instead, the man would bash the woman's head in with a meat tenderizer, strip her body and chop it up into manageable pieces in order to be sold in his shop as 'pork'.
Bloch murdered nearly ten women before his last victim, a fifteen-year old girl, orphaned and struggling to care for her younger siblings, had taken the butcher up on his offer. Back in his shop, the girl had seen him grab the heavy meat tenderizer and fled in terror, running straight to the police station to inform them of what had happened.
Bloch was promptly arrested the next day, the local law enforcement finding women's clothes stuffed into a barrel of pickling spice in his shop. The butcher's trial was short and swift and a month after his murderous rampage was brought to an end, Bloch was hung for his crimes and supposedly buried in a grave in the back of the cemetery, far away from the resting places of anyone else.
For seventy-four years Arthur Bloch's butcher shop stood abandoned and moldering, unwanted but for the thrill seekers and ghost chasers who broke in to try and catch a glimpse of the local serial killer's ghost, or perhaps that of one of his victims.
Twenty-four months ago, however, an independent contractor had the brilliant idea of buying the unused building and turning it into, of all things, a steak house. The renovations and construction had gone on without any issue and it seemed as though everything was looking up for the poorly named 'Butcher's Block Steakhouse & Bar', but as soon as the restaurant opened, its female employees seemed to have been terrorized by some dark spirit.
At first the complaints were trivial, a waitress would find her clothes missing from her locker at the end of her shift and be unable to find them, dishes fell from shelves to smash on the floor, bottles of alcohol flew across the bar. But then the ghost became more violent, and the woman would claim they were being pushed, pinched, their hair pulled by the spirit.
Then, the first waitress died. A thirty-three year old woman named Nanci Connolly was found lying in a pool of her own blood, stark naked, her skull cracked, in the ladies' locker room.
A police investigation was immediate but the local law enforcement was unable to find the woman's killer.
The 'Butcher's Block Steakhouse & Bar' continued to operate.
Two more employees- one another waitress and the second a bartender- were also found murdered in the same fashion as Nanci Connelly.
The restaurant quickly became a ghost town, patrons too scared by the recent murders to even think of going to eat there and the steakhouse quickly closed.
What had piqued the Winchesters' interest in the case was the claim by the owner of the steakhouse, a man named Trevor Donaldson, was that as he was going through the building, locking up his pride and joy, he encountered the ghost that his employees had been complaining about for months.
The description Donaldson gave of the spirit matched the archived photo of Arthur Bloch taken by the police in 1932 before his execution.
It seemed that now there were women once again in what had been Bloch's butcher shop, the spirit decided that he needed to continue the gruesome work he had begun all those years before.
Even though the Winchesters had hunted and laid many ghosts to rest, there were some that really stuck out to Sam and made his blood run cold.
"Sam."
The sound of his brother hissing his name brought the younger man back to the present day and his gaze fell on his sibling, a few feet ahead of him, flashlight scanning the line of trees at the back of the cemetery.
"He has to be here," Dean muttered, squinting as though that would help him see well.
"Look at the ground," Sam suggested, "It's been a long time since Bloch was buried, maybe his gravestone's crumbled."
"Yeah," Dean added, with a hint of sarcasm, "Or some kids knocked it over."
Sam approached the tree line and crouched down, pushing grasses and branches away with one arm.
"I think I have something," he told his brother as his gaze fell on a pile of broken limestone, moss-coated and nearly hidden among the weeds growing up around and between the chucks of gravestone.
"All right!" Dean cried, "Way to go, Sammy!"
The younger man smiled slightly and moved back as his brother pocketed his flashlight and dug the blade of his shovel into the ground in front of the fallen tombstone.
Sam kept his flashlight out, making sure to offer his brother enough light to work by while also watching for an attack from a pissed off ghost.
Dean had only dug up a half-dozen shovelfuls of dirt when Arthur Bloch appeared.
He appeared out of thin air, right behind the elder Winchester, bloody meat tenderizer raised in one hand, ready to bring the weapon down on the hunter's head.
"DEAN!" Sam shouted and his brother reacted instantly, ducking and rolling away from the ghost as his sibling dropped his flashlight so that he could use his shotgun.
BANG!
The shot rang out incredibly loud in the quiet cemetery and the spirit vanished as rock salt pellets broke apart his body.
"Shit," Dean swore and stood, brushing bits of dirt and grass off his clothes.
"Give me a little more of a heads up next time, would you Sammy?" he asked and picked up his shovel.
"Sorry," the younger brother apologized, "I didn't expect him to be so close."
Dean made a noncommittal noise and continued digging up the crazy butcher's body.
As the hole became wider and deeper, there was no sign of Bloch, but that didn't lull the brothers into a false sense of security, they knew it would take some time for the ghost to materialize again and attack.
It was Sam's turn to dig and he stood in a hole up to his waist, knowing that Dean would make sure he'd be safe as he worked.
The younger Winchester sighed and paused, raising one arm to wipe the sweat away from his forehead to keep the liquid from dripping into his eyes and saw his brother's eyes widen as Dean stared at him a second before he instinctively moved to the left and pain flared across his right shoulder and down his arm, causing him to drop the shovel as his fingers went numb.
"SAMMY!" Dean shouted as Sam twisted around to see Arthur Bloch standing behind him in the open grave, a furious expression on the ghost's face.
The spirit lifted the meat tenderizer again and Sam staggered backwards as far as he could in the tight space, certain he was about to have the weapon smashed into his face.
BANG!
With a snarl, Arthur Bloch's spirit vanished once again, leaving both Sam and Dean panting for air, shocked and shaking.
"Sammy, did he get you? Are you okay?" Dean asked and Sam shook his head.
"He… hit my shoulder," he told his brother and lifted his left hand to gently touch the injured limb.
Hissing with pain, Sam returned his attention to his brother, "I don't think it's broken."
"Okay, why don't you let me finish digging this son of a bitch up? You can have the honour of torching him, what do you say?" Dean asked, his voice tinged with worry.
Sam nodded and took Dean's offered hand with his left, allowing his brother to pull him up out of the hole.
Once his brother was armed with shotgun and flashlight, Dean jumped down into the hole and began scooping up dirt as though his life depended on it.
Sam tried to ignore the pain in his shoulder and forced himself to keep a keen eye on his surroundings, telling himself he would not be surprised by Bloch's ghost again.
Minutes passed and the butcher failed to make a third appearance. Sam though, was set on high alert and every shadow or animal sound wound him even tighter.
THUNK
"I think we got it," Dean announced, smiling up at him from the grave.
Sam nodded and inched closer to the hole, heart pounding in his chest.
Using the blade of the shovel, Dean broke apart the coffin, the simple wooden box soft with rot and age, to reveal the skeleton of Arthur Bloch, noose still around his neck like some macabre necklace.
"Help me up," Dean told Sam and the younger brother pulled his sibling out of the hole.
Taking the container of salt from his pocket, Dean handed it to Sam and nodded, "Go ahead."
Thumbing open the tab on the container of salt, Sam shook it over the uncovered skeleton as Dean unscrewed the cap to the can of gas.
"Let's light this sucker up," the older Winchester up, and handed Sam the can.
"Tha-" the younger sibling began when he felt an intense pain on the back of his head and then everything went black.
W
"Sammy? Sam! Open your eyes! C'mon, dammit!" Dean's voice brought the younger man back to consciousness, his head throbbing in time with his shoulder.
"D'n," Sam muttered, his lips barely moving.
"Sam! Sammy! Look at me!" Dean demanded and Sam slowly peeled his eyelids open, groaning in pain.
"Shit," Dean breathed with relief and smiled, his face hovering over his brother's.
"For a moment I thought…" he began but paused, "Never mind."
With one hand beneath his sibling's neck, Dean helped Sam sit up, ignoring the younger man's moans of protest.
A hot, orange fire blazed cheerfully away in the open grave only feet away, devouring the earthly remains of Arthur Bloch.
"After the Friendly Neighbourhood Butcher knocked you out I grabbed the gas can and finished the job," Dean told him, "Maybe next time you'll get your chance."
Sam watched the flames for a moment, saying nothing.
"Hey, Sammy, you okay? You better not have a concussion," Dean warned jokingly.
"I'm fine," the younger hunter assured him, "But I'd like to get out of here."
His brother smiled, "Say no more."
Reaching down, Dean helped Sam to his feet, grabbed the guns and handed the gas can to his sibling.
"I don't know about you but I'm in the mood for a big, juicy steak," Dean commented nonchalantly, causing Sam to wrinkle his nose in disgust.
"I'm joking," the older hunter chuckled, "Let's get you patched up and go to bed. I'm exhausted."
Sam nodded and followed his sibling out of the cemetery while the fire burned away behind them.
Author's Note:
This was going to be one of my 'rules' for the Winchesters' Rules for Hunting but once I started writing it I realized that it would do better as a stand-alone story.
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