This story has parts that are very nearly three years old. It began with the intention of being an LJ 50 States challenge response...and then I got lazy. And this was forgotten, about five times over.
While the park and legend are both real, I have taken much liberty in the way of mixing and melding mythology and legends. Don't hate me for anything seeming inaccurate. Set early season 2.
There's More than Corn in Indiana
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."
"Thirty-eight bottles of beer on the wall…"
Sam, with every intention not to give Dean the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, had been steadily avoiding eye contact and comment, staring out of his window long enough to turn his stomach. Like Dean knew, the car suddenly accelerated; red, orange, and yellow leaves from passing trees blending into one giant puke-colored blur.
Ugh. The double-barrel shotgun in the trunk came too easily to mind. A little messy…
"Thirty-eight bottles of beer…"
…but ultimately, probably worth it. Obviously, this little game of Dean's had been going on for awhile. The Attempt to Drive Sam Batshit Crazy with as Little Effort as Possible Game, one he'd been playing since they were kids, when he was annoyed with Sam or just trying to keep him from talking. Such was his intent during this particular car ride. For the past few weeks Dean had been operating under the impression every time Sam opened his mouth he was going to try to get Dean to talk to him. He wasn't wrong, but that wasn't the point.
Dean wasn't dealing; that was the point. Sam himself wasn't exactly Johnny McDealing, not with Jess and now Dad, but felt he had a better handle on things than his brother. It wasn't about talking his feelings about Dad's death to…death. At this point Sam was concerned because Dean wasn't talking about Dad AT ALL.
Dean's second favorite game was Guess What Dad Did, ever since his first tag-along hunt. He'd always loved telling Sam stories about Dad, about the heroic and/or crazy shit he did. True, Sam had stopped caring to hear Dean's hero-worship-Dad stories a long time ago, but now that Dad was gone, he could really use one. Except his brother wouldn't even mention Dad and every time Sam brought him up Dean spazzed on him or hit him.
Two years spent in a tiny dorm room with a psychology major eventually had Sam on the bandwagon, believing there wasn't any problem that couldn't be solved with some combination of talking and listening. Sam always wanted to talk, but Dad and Dean had never operated that way. Dad preferred to run away for weeks at a time, Dean destroyed shit with a crowbar, and both spent quality time with The Boys: Jim, Jack, and Jose.
There was no talking about any of those things, though; Dean wasn't giving him the opportunity. He was strictly hunthunthunt and the car had become his trap-Sam-in-a-tiny-enclosed-space-with-offkey-and-sans-accompanianment-singing torturemobile. Sam had recently spent four years living amongst functional human beings, even attending the occasional family gathering with a friend and once with Jess, and just wasn't jiving with this old school brand of avoidance-at-all-costs.
Because of the psych major roommate and subsequent Psych 101 course forced upon him, Sam even knew the name for what Dean was doing: displacement. The conflict formed between the feelings he HAD to be having about Dad and that inherent Winchester need to never let anything show was causing Dean to lash out. Instead of dealing with those feelings and frustration and the questions he could never have answered because Dad was GONE, he was making it through the day on coffee, hard liquor, and tearing and/or shooting things apart. Mostly the latter. Voice, and consequently make real, any of these things and Sam would find himself face down on the side of the highway, mouth full of gravel, while Dean sped away.
Dean had been in KILLKILLKILL mode long enough, and Sam was mentally and physically exhausted trying to keep up with him. He hadn't grabbed more than four hours of sleep in a night – and just when he had finally fallen into what was almost a NORMAL sleeping pattern – and had head-to-toe bruises that just kept stacking up. If Dean wanted to hunt that damn bad, well, Sam would find him something to hunt. Nothing with fangs or claws or an axe. Nothing that would try to kill them the very second it laid eyes on them. Dean did say he wanted to hunt down that fabric softener teddy bear. He needed to find something legitimate and interesting enough Dean would go along, but ultimately harmless. No killing involved, and extra points if he could drag it out a few days. They could both use a break.
At the moment, however, all Sam could do was close his eyes, eliminating the immediate need to barf, and try to tune out his brother.
Encouraged by the obvious success of his Annoy Sammy strategy, Dean continued to sing, louder. "Take one DOWN, pass it AROUND…"
Sam's last frayed nerve finally snapped of its own volition. "Dean!"
Dean had the audacity to recoil, looking offended, as though this wasn't the very outburst he'd been working towards the past twenty minutes. He blinked. "What?"
"What? You're making me crazy, that's what!" Sam realized his right foot was doing the paranoid-mom-fake-brake. "And slow down. A little," he added quietly. Sam was not permitted to comment on Dean's driving, or anything to do with the car. He recalled the Indian burn he'd embarrassingly recently received for pointing out a few water spots.
"You never let me finish that song." Dean flipped on the radio, buzzing with static, and grumpily began the search for a local station playing music he could stomach.
"I know. How terribly insensitive of me." Sam huffed, despite all the effort he put into doing the opposite. Dean went into high-and-mighty-self-righteous mode when Sam huffed. He was raising that cocky-ass eyebrow even as Sam continued. "Can you just, please, find some other way to pass the time?" Sam was trying to be patient and understanding, he really was, but the thing with family is they know all of your buttons and just how to PUSH.
"Like what, count stalks of corn as they pass us by? That could keep me busy for hours." Dean quit messing with the radio knobs as a now-familiar drum beat thrummed from the speakers. "Least there's a decent classic rock station sandwiched between all the twanging. It's about all my achy breaky heart can handle."
What does he have against Billy Ray? Couldn't be the mullet. Sam leaned against the door, looking at his brother appraisingly. "You need a nap." Or a sedative.
"And you need a muzzle."
Right. I'M the one who needs a muzzle. Sam sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He'd always been prone to headaches around dusk. Or Dean. "We've been on the road all day. Can we just find somewhere to stop for the night? I'll find us a gig and you can…chill."
"I can chill? I don't need to chill. And I don't think anyone even says 'chill' anymore." Dean was so tense his shoulders were up somewhere around his ears.
"Oh, you're totally calm." Sam was almost starting to miss Silently Stoic Dean, having spent the past few weeks with this new-and-not-improved short-tempered, snappy version who was more amused the more pissed Sam got. "What was I thinking?"
"You need your beauty sleep that bad?" Dean nodded at an approaching road sign, his lip curling. "Look, princess, there's a place right up here."
Sam ignored the jab, grimacing at the sign: Kinighttime Inn. He imagined a full suit of armor watching him sleep from the foot of his bed. "Let's find something else."
"Why? This is fine." Meaning cheap. And probably a rodent infestation of some kind. Dean was already guiding the car towards the exit.
Sam wrinkled his nose. "I said I'd search for a job. There's no wireless there."
"You don't know that."
"They're advertising color TV, Dean. You really think they have internet access?"
Dean argued if Sam needed to download porn or play online Scrabble that damn bad he could walk his needy ass down the street to the Starbucks. Sam pointed out those sounded more like Dean's internet needs than his own, although he wouldn't turn down a latte that hadn't dripped from a gas station coffee machine. Dean started singing again, backtracking all the way to ninety-nine bottles. He also claimed they could drive another hour and a half before needing to stop for gas. Sam gave in, mostly because he would be the one walking down the highway with the gas can when they were inevitably stranded.
There wasn't a suit of armor, but they did have to cross a miniature drawbridge to reach the motel office, leading Sam to wonder, where the hell do they come up with this stuff? Dean, like your average five-year-old, simply tried to snatch a koi from the pond below.
The color TV in their room only carried three channels, one just snow. "It stormed last night," was the explanation from the manager. "You can jiggle the antenna if you want, but I don't think it'll do much good. We don't get great reception out here." Then he spat on the floor. Of their room.
Fantastic.
"Fuck Indiana," was Dean's mumbled response. Sam stomped on his foot.
Turned out Sam didn't have to walk his needy ass to the Starbucks; his laptop picked up a wireless signal from some other nearby residence or business. Actually, probably the Starbucks.
"Isn't that kind of like stealing?"
After such a hellacious car ride, Sam didn't have the patience to deal with Dean's randomly alternating sense of morality and the lack thereof. He simply responded, "Yes," and took a walk down the street for that latte.
In the recurring pattern of his entire life Sam hated the motel room at the Knighttime Inn more than the last room and not quite as much as he would the next. The room was square and gray – carpet, walls, curtains, bedspread. Gray, gray, gray, gray. The only décor matching the dive's name was a gigantic oil painting of a dreary-looking castle spanning the wall above both beds, and only a shade less creepy than the suit of armor Sam had imagined. But, with two beds and a nearly microscopic price tag, the room served its purpose.
Sam went to work right away, booting up the laptop as soon as he returned with his coffee, before Dean popped the cap of his first beer. This, really, was a feat in itself.
Sam stared until he went cross-eyed at a paragraph on the screen. He remembered his criteria: legitimate yet harmless. And, God help him, this was even interesting, if it turned out to be real. Maybe even if it didn't. "I think I found something."
Beer in hand, Dean sat up from his spread-eagle position on his bed, from which he was presumably counting water stains on the dilapidated ceiling because he certainly wasn't doing anything else. "Thank God. If I had to listen to you clacking on that keyboard for another minute I was gonna hunt the damn computer." He paused long enough to take a drink. "Where?"
"Anderson Mounds State Park."
"Anderson, what?"
"Mounds State Park."
"No, dumbass. Anderson, where?"
Rolling his eyes, Sam brought up the map he'd downloaded. "Here in Indiana. About an hour or so north."
"We just got here."
Sam winced at the castle over Dean's head. "Yeah, I'm not really that attached."
"Okay, so what's going on in the park?"
Sam clicked a few keys, clearing his throat and bringing a hand up to his mouth. A harmless idea, until Dean smacked him in the head for suggesting something so retarded. "Apparently, tourists have been seeing…dwarves," he said through his fingers. Please don't make me say it again.
Dean shook his head like he had water in his ears. "Dwarves."
"Dwarves. Wearing blue gowns." Sam regretted the words as they were coming out of his mouth.
Dean nodded slowly and looked at Sam like he maybe needed a CAT scan. He brought his bottle to his lips. "Do these cross-dressing dwarves have a name?"
"Pud-wuk-ies."
Dean, mid-drink, nearly spit out his mouthful of beer. "Fuck buddies?"
"Pud-wuk-ies."
"Fuck woodies."
Sam pursed his lips, convinced Dean was just screwing with him. "Pud- WUK-ies."
"Pud…"
"Wuk-ies."
"Wuk-ies."
"Yes."
"Like Chewbacca."
Sam thought again of that shotgun. Definitely the shotgun. "Do I really need to answer that?"
Dean grinned. "You're just messin' with me, though, right?"
"Totally serious. Hopewell Indian legend, apparently."
Dean thought a moment. "They hurting anyone?"
"No, they're just…there, I guess."
"You guess?" Dean stood and moved to the table as though he was going to double-check Sam's research. As if.
Sam scrolled down the page. "Yeah. We've never really dealt with or heard about anything like this before, and there's not a whole lot of information here."
"Even for you? With your magic…internal knowledge?" Dean gestured at the computer screen.
"You mean the search engine? Yeah, there's nothing else on this site."
Dean squinted and leaned in closer. "What site?"
Caught, Sam squirmed. "The, uh, Indiana Ghosts and Hauntings website."
Dean was, unsurprisingly, not pleased. He punched Sam in the shoulder, and not lightly. "I thought you said you would find us a gig, not Google local urban legends."
How did he – "Well, sometimes our gigs turn out to be urban legends. That turn out to be real." And then he pulled out his pocket aces. "And, come on, Dean. Dwarves." Reel it in… Sam watched Dean take it all in, knowing he couldn't resist.
He finally shrugged and tipped back the rest of his beer. "Yeah, okay."
Dean grumbled about forty dollars lost on a room they spent two hours in, but Sam was happy to get as far away from that damn castle painting as possible. This time, he picked the motel, and still hated it just as much as he knew he would.
"Read this." Sam tossed a pamphlet at Dean's face. That was the intention, anyway. The flimsy folded paper fanned open mid-flight and floated lazily to the floor like a failed paper airplane. "Read…that."
Setting aside his hamburger, Dean watched the fall with exaggerated interest. "Why?"
"Do something."
"I have a beer."
Sam glared, and wasn't entirely convinced Dean wasn't just pissed over waiting so long for dinner. "Read. Now."
Dean rolled his eyes and stooped to retrieve the pamphlet, studying the cover. "The park brochure?"
"Yeah. There's jack online about this place or this legend. Maybe there's something useful in there."
"What, like 'don't hurt the animals'?"
This earned Dean another glare. "Exactly."
Dean opened the pamphlet with a put-upon sigh. Sam kept an eye on Dean long enough to ensure he was doing more than humoring him before returning his attention to the computer.
Dean snapped his fingers not a minute later. "Found it," he said, mouth full of cow and cheese.
"Yeah?" Sam eagerly set his computer aside and swung around to face Dean.
"Yeah." Dean swallowed and pointed to a line on the first page of the brochure. "'Do not injure or damage any structure, rock, flower, bird, or wild ANIMAL – "
"I hate you."
"Aw." Dean reached over from his spot on his bed and ruffled Sam's hair with his greasy fingers. "You love me."
They walked the trail along the White River, kicking pebbles and scuffing leaves because, honestly, there wasn't a damn thing else to do. The river's name gave the impression it was possibly something pristine and frothy, clean and drinkable when it was in fact the complete opposite of all these things.
Dean was losing interest by the minute and Sam couldn't blame him. In a way, that was kind of the plan, as much of a plan it was. "You didn't find some kind of pud-fuckie summoning ritual?"
Didn't mean it didn't annoy him. With the toe of his sneaker, Sam sent a sizable rock scuttling through a scattering of dried leaves to remove the temptation to use it to bash in Dean's head. "Pud-wuk-ie. And no. I don't think dwarves are summonable."
There was a brief pause, and the quiet between them was filled with the rippling of dirty water and the sound of various Indiana forest creatures. A pair of squirrels dashed across the path in front of them. Despite the mild autumn day, the park was nearly empty. Every now and then a shriek of child's laughter cut through the woods, but they hadn't come across another human soul since leaving the parking lot for the trail.
"Is that a word?"
"Since when do you care?" Dean had to be pretty damn bored to be discussing grammar. Or it could be all the online Scrabble. And here Sam thought he only played in an attempt to get away with submitting dirty words.
Dean shrugged, gazing off into the trees. "These guys are supposed to be part of Indian legend, though, right? Maybe there's like a rain dance, but for Mud-puddies."
Sam sighed. "Yeah, maybe."
The leafy overhang of the park filtered the afternoon sunlight to fall in warm blocks on the path. Dean was keeping a pace to stay a few steps ahead of Sam, no matter how quickly Sam walked. That way they wouldn't be tempted to converse with one another.
"It's kind of pretty," Sam offered. And it was. There weren't two trees in sight whose leaves were the same color.
Dean shrugged but didn't turn around. He was staring at the path ahead, not the scenery around them. "Sure. If you're into this kind of thing."
'This kind of thing' being nature. Right. Not a fan. Sam sighed. "The mound should be coming up soon." They were headed for Circle Mound. Of the half-dozen or so earthworks in the park it was located closest to the river, and was their target for glimpsing one of the little guys.
"Great," Dean said, his tone giving no indication it was something he found to be really all that great. It sounded more like he was bored out of his mind. He can deal with it. Bored was better than killing everything.
Unless he wanted to chat about weaponry or the most efficient mode of dismemberment, it was a painful process attempting conversation with Dean. Heaven forbid they do that TALKING thing Dean was so deathly afraid of, and Sam wasn't currently in a mood to keep trying. He gave up for the moment, content to take in the sights, and they walked on in silence.
The path widened and through the opening in the trees, Sam could make out what appeared to be a large pile of dirt surrounded by a low wooden fence.
"That your mound?" Dean asked, as if there was the possibility it was a different mound of dirt they were looking for.
Sam jogged a few steps to match Dean's stride. "Yeah, that's it."
Leaving the path, Dean walked right up to the fence and braced his hands on the top rail, scrutinizing the mound. They'd figured it would be quite the coincidence for the park to be home to both mysterious ancient earthworks AND forest-dwelling lawn gnomes. Dean's words. The objective of this little field trip was to see if there was any obvious connection between the two. "Doesn't look like much."
"It isn't really, I guess."
"So where are your little woodland friends?"
"I don't know."
"Well, if they're really here, they've got to be around here somewhere, right? Except for the campground, park's closed at night, so all these sightings – " Dean emphasized his skepticism with finger-quotes – "must have happened during the day."
Sam looked up at the sun, still high in the afternoon sky. Plenty of daylight left. "Yeah. You want to wait?"
Dean snorted. "Play stakeout on a big pile of dirt? Really not."
"More research?"
"Really, really not."
Sam shrugged. "Well, then, what do you want to do?"
A dangerous question, and Dean's face communicated his intentions loud and clear. He wanted to kill something, a REAL something, and Sam was running him around on a wild goose chase. These were all things Sam already knew. In an uncharacteristic show of restraint, however, Dean only shrugged.
Sam's eyes narrowed. "Fine. We'll do what I want to do."
Dean smirked and turned, resting an elbow on the knotted board. "Well, someone's wearing his big boy pants today."
"You're not taking this seriously."
"Oh, I think you're taking it seriously enough for the both of us. Indian legends and ancient mounds of dirt? Dwarves? I feel like I'm in a friggin' cartoon."
"It's a hunt." Sam stomped his foot.
"It's a tourist trap, Sammy." Dean shook his head. "A total hoax."
"We haven't spent enough time on this for you to know that. Besides, that's what people say about the things we see every day."
"Since when are you Grand Defender of the Hunt?" Dean asked, obviously rhetorically as he turned away, facing the mound. "One hour. No dwarves, we go back to the motel and you can get your jollies and research on. Let's just find out what's going on with these things – if they even exist – and move on."
Sam snorted. Dean, always with the last word. He leaned on the railing next to his brother. Just standing still in the serene forest for even a moment was relaxing him; he felt as though he could melt into the fence. Beside him, Dean was the opposite: back ramrod straight, shoulders tense, jaw set. A coil ready to spring. It wouldn't be long down this road before Dean was massacring every harmless rabbit that hopped across his path.
Speak up. Sam squinted at the sun. "Fine," he said. "Deal."
Chicken.
Discounting a couple of toddlers being hauled around by their parents they didn't see anything resembling a dwarf in the park, and there was not, in fact, a Mud-puddie rain dance – Dean actually made Sam check. There were only the same two or three sentences to be found over and over on a handful of amateur websites. Sam turned his attention to researching the history of the park and the brochure Dean had abandoned the night before, actually turning it into a paper airplane and nailing Sam in the side of the head with it. "The park opened in 1930 as a way to preserve the mounds…" he muttered out loud for Dean's benefit as he read from the computer screen.
Dean, for his part, wasn't doing anything useful save for chewing his dinner loudly and alternating between lying and sitting on his bed, constantly checking his watch and updating Sam to how much time he had spent on pointless research. "I just don't understand why you're pushing investing so much time and energy into hunting something that hasn't hurt anyone, and might not even exist. I haven't killed anything in forever."
While there were several things on the tip of Sam's tongue – that was kind of the point, and oh yeah, what about those vampires two months ago? – he swallowed them back with a giant bite from his own burger. I am so sick of hamburgers. "I don't know. It's kind of cool, don't you think?" he asked, setting aside the burger and wiping his hands on a napkin before touching the keyboard.
"Yeah, it's both cool and worthy of my precious time. From now on, I'm the only one who gets to pick what jobs we take." Dean balled up his wrapper and tossed it into the trash can across the room before falling back lazily across his bed. "Aren't you the one who told me I wasn't taking the job seriously? Forty minutes, by the way."
"Would you knock it off? And I do take it seriously."
"Then what are we doing it here?"
Sam sighed and threw one for nothing. "I thought it would be something different to look into, and a break from, you know, all of the crazy."
Dean turned his head, face screwed up in concern genuine enough to throw Sam into full-on guilt mode. "You need a break?"
Sam lifted a shoulder. "Yeah, I guess." It was a card he felt guilty playing, like he was cheating. And he kind of was.
Dean's head bobbed. "Yeah, okay." He sat up with a grunt, reaching for his container of fries on the bedside table. "So what's the deal with the mounds?" He glanced at his watch but didn't say anything.
So at least he'd found the time to listen a little in between the nothing he was otherwise doing. "Um…" Sam scrolled down the page, squinting to read the small font. "Been there since about 1000 B.C. Assumed to be used for…"
"Used for what?"
Okay, so maybe Sam should have read a little further down the page before opening his big mouth. Damn it, Sam. You wanted something legitimate. He propped a hand up on his thigh. "Burial."
"Great. You know how many ghosts we could be talking about?" While Sam continued reading Dean stood and began pacing the length of the room; it didn't take long. "Ghost dwarves, apparently," he mumbled to himself. "But ghosts."
"Whoa." Sam held up a hand. He swallowed, stomach put more at ease. "They're not," he amended quickly. "For burial, I mean."
Dean stopped both walking and talking to himself. "Then what are they for? Decoration?"
"Back in the eighties, archaeologists from a local state university theorized they were designed to track the movement of the sun and stars. Like an observatory."
Dean absorbed the information quicker than Sam expected. And why not? He was much more interested now that he might get the chance to shoot something. He had that glint in his eye. "So they're just weird. They're not haunted?"
"Doubtful."
Dean's face fell. "Then what? It is a hoax? Or are there really little…people living in the woods out there?"
Sam shrugged. "Maybe. Wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've come across."
"I guess." Dean stared at the wall a moment, shoulders slumped. Then his lack of attention span kicked in. "Hey, what do you think is the weirdest thing we've come across?"
Finish what you started, Sam. Ignoring his brother, he crossed the room to his duffle and dug out their dad's journal. He told himself the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach was just the guilt talking.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking a shot."
"I seriously doubt there's anything in Dad's journal about this place."
"Yeah, me, too," Sam said, dropping the book onto the table. "But maybe he knew some kind of lore about…dwarves. Something about the Indian legend, maybe." He started flipping pages. "You gonna time me?"
Dean kicked off his boots and settled back on his bed, grabbing the remote control. "Whatever, dude. Knock yourself out."
"Got something." Sam had spent a long time thinking before finally speaking up. He hadn't actually expected to find anything in the journal, but there it was, close to the front, from when Dad was first starting out and taking note of anything registering on his weird-shit-o-meter. Near the end – bad choice of words – he'd become a hair more selective about what he considered noteworthy. Even if he HAD thought Dad would have come across anything remotely similar to these dwarf stories, he never would have anticipated this. Anything but this.
Sam chewed the inside of his cheek, thinking through what he would say and how Dean would react, playing out the possible scenarios, not liking how any of them ended. Dean was too stubborn and Sam cared too much. And lying wasn't even an option, not now. Next time, just leave it alone.
From behind him, Dean grunted. Sam turned to see his brother stretched out on his bed, dozing with his arms folded over his chest. Sam reached out and smacked his leg. "Hey," he said louder, rousing Dean. "I've got something."
Dean sat up, rubbing his eyes. "'Bout time. Let's hear it."
"Well, there wasn't anything obvious…but Dad did have a few notes about dwarves and animism." Sam looked up to a blankly blinking Dean. "Or, the idea there are religious spirits existing in nature." He spoke slowly, not because Dean wouldn't understand but because he was trying to delay the inevitable. He stared at the decades-old smudged writing on the page.
Something hard connected with his shoulder and Sam's head snapped up as the object thudded to the floor, breaking him from his thoughts. "Huh?"
"I said 'like animals.' What's wrong with you?" Dean retrieved his boot and pulled it on, already itchin' to go. His own weird-shit-o-meter was clearly spiking.
Sam shook his head. "Nothing. Yeah, like animals. But also in plants, rocks, thunder, or even geographic features," he said pointedly.
Dean nodded. "Like the mounds."
"Maybe."
"So what's that have to do with our dwarf situation?"
Sam paused, staring at the journal, hoping to give the impression he was rereading to gather his facts and get them straight. Instead, he took the time to mentally berate himself for thinking he needed an elaborate plan to help Dean deal with Dad's death. Which brought him to, Maybe you didn't do this for him, Sam.
Dean didn't give him a chance to back out. "What?"
Sam let out a breath, stalling as long as he could. "Well, according to Dad's notes, any lore says dwarves live underground or in mountainous areas. Or," he said slowly, "burial mounds."
Dean raised his eyebrows. "Okay. So they might actually exist."
Sam nodded. "That's not all." Dean waited. "The journal says according to some mythology dwarves followed animistic traditions, and have been said to have a strong association with death." He paused for a moment. "Meaning if they exist, they might be able to communicate with spirits."
As anticipated, Dean's interest increased exponentially. He scooted to the very edge of his bed, folding his hands between his knees. His eyes were now alert and serious. "With all spirits?"
"Dean – "
"Answer the question, Sam."
Sam maintained a steady eye contact, trying to be strong, trying not to admit he'd already had these same thoughts. "I don't know."
"Sam – "
"I don't know. It doesn't say."
"Well, look again." Dean stood and crossed the room. Sam put a hand on the journal, covering the contents instead of reading them, and watched as Dean turned and leaned against the dresser, rubbing a hand over his face. "You think maybe if we can actually find of these things, maybe it can…"
"Maybe it can what?" Sam asked, knowing already what Dean was going to say.
Dean lifted a shoulder. "Maybe it can talk to Dad."
Sam shook his head forcefully, slamming the journal closed. "No."
Dean straightened, looking more offended than mad. "What do you mean, no?"
"I miss Dad, too, Dean, but – "
"Dad is the one who wrote that stuff – he knew these things were out there somewhere. He could have left the information for us to figure it out, in case anything ever happened to him."
"That's really reaching, Dean," Sam said quietly. "We don't even know if they're real or really out there."
Dean pointed to the journal in Sam's hands. "You just said it: they live near burial mounds."
"But they aren't burial mounds, Dean!"
"What, because the archaeologists said so? Maybe they got it wrong."
"Archaeologists are usually pretty good at what they do," Sam argued, trying to talk Dean down.
"So are we," Dean shot right back. He appeared both angry and excited, pacing the room and practically pulsating with energy, his eyes moving about the room as his thoughts raced.
Sam stared at the journal, fingers trailing along the frayed, worn edges of the leather. "This is not a healthy train of thought, not…not this soon. Not ever. And I'm not going to let you do whatever you're thinking about doing."
Dean didn't stop pacing but with a steely gaze, he dared Sam to try and stop him. Sam pulled the book onto his lap like it was the key to whatever idiotic plan Dean was thinking up. Like without it in hand, Dean would fall like a house of cards. "That's not what this was supposed to be about."
Dean whirled in his heel, eyes now dark and dangerous. "What do you mean 'that's not what this was supposed to be about'? What did you do here, Sammy?"
Sam sat back, trying very hard not to give Dean the fight he was so clearly itching for. Given the chance he'd kick the crap out of anything, and Sam had sported the bruise for a week to prove it. "Don't get mad. I wasn't trying to manipulate you or anything, I just wanted to find us a…cheesecake hunt and get your mind off of…things," he finished lamely.
"My mind is fine," Dean snapped. He turned from Sam and grabbed his leather coat from the back of a chair, moving towards the door. "Fuck, Sam. Dwarves? Were you thinking we would find Snow White and have ourselves a tea party?"
Sam frowned. "Where are you going?"
"I'm gonna take a walk so I don't kick your ass," Dean said, opening the door. Sam believed him. "And tomorrow morning, I'm going back to the park."
"Dean – "
"Come with me, don't come with me, I don't really care. I'm going." Dean flipped up his collar, stepped out into a light autumn drizzle, and pulled the door shut tightly behind him. Not a slam, but just as effective.
Sam chucked his dad's journal across the table and shoved back his chair, rubbing his eyes roughly. Of course he would go back to the park with Dean, if for no other reason than to keep his brother from doing something really, really stupid.
Dean returned to the room only physically cooled down by the steady drizzle that quickly became a downpour. Sam waited up, propping up a chair against the wall next to the door. When the door finally opened an hour later he tipped forward, the chair's front legs landing with a thud on the thin carpet.
Dean didn't look at him as he tossed the room key onto the table. "It's late. You didn't have to wait up."
Sam shrugged. "Didn't feel like going to sleep."
"And you just thought you'd sit next to the door until you got sleepy?" Dean shrugged out of his leather coat, leaned to the left, and dragged a hand through his hair, shaking out water droplets and giving Sam a little shower. "I'm not talking about anything."
Sam frowned, wiping rainwater from his face, but didn't get up. "Then listen."
Dean stopped halfway across the room, raising his eyebrows.
"Dean, let's just leave. Right now. No more of this…damn dwarf talk."
Dean scratched at the corner of his eye. "I get it, Sam. I do. It's not about you thinking this won't work and wanting to spare my feelings or whatever the hell you're telling yourself. You're afraid it will work."
Sam gaped. "What are you talking about?"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about. Now how about you worry about you and let me worry about me."
"We're family, Dean. That means we worry about each other. We help each other."
"Yeah, well, I don't need any of your help," Dean snapped, and started to pull his coat back on.
Sam sighed. "Now where are you going? Like you said, it's late."
"I'm gonna go get a drink," Dean answered flatly, opening the door.
"Well, color me surprised," Sam mumbled, just loud enough.
Dean paused on the threshold, fixing Sam with a look he wouldn't soon forget, and pulled the door shut without a word.
Good one, Sam. He knocked the back of his head against the wall and sighed. "Good one."
The morning was awkward, but not unusual. Though he'd never admit it, Dean was hurt, and Sam was suffering from a severe case of foot-in-the-mouth. Guilt being the wonderful thing it was, he'd gone ahead and gotten himself into a situation where he would have to go along with the very plan he'd been so adamant to derail the night before.
When Dean was almost talking to him, Sam presented the notion if they were going to roll into a state park illegally armed and aiming to coerce a mythical creature into communicating with the other side, they should maybe wait until nightfall to eliminate the probability of witnesses.
Dean rolled his eyes. "Whatever."
But whatever wasn't no. So that was the plan, which meant camping in the park grounds. Which in turn meant being locked in the park overnight. Which presented a bit of a problem, because all they had was the Impala.
"We could steal a camper."
"Um, no."
"You wanna sleep in the car?"
"No. But I want not to commit a crime even more." Hell, why not add grand theft auto to the festivities?
Dean spent most of the day ignoring Sam and finding passive ways to piss him off, like leaving the sink running, "forgetting" to get him lunch, and knocking the laptop's power cord out of the wall with his foot.
When they finally went back to the park Dean was in full tight-ass mode, requesting one of the cheapest campsites despite the fact they'd be sleeping in the car, after all. The guy at the main gate recognized said car and did a double-take before exclaiming, "Hey, weren't you guys here yesterday?"
Dean dug a ten out of his wallet and handed it over. "Yeah? So were you."
"I work here."
Not pleased about their sleeping conditions, Sam glared as the attendant rooted in his fanny pack for Dean's change. "What?" Dean asked unapologetically. "It's only eight bucks." When Sam continued to glare he added, "And there will be less people around." His eyes added, and I don't really care what you think.
Sam kicked out a foot. "Yeah, okay. Point taken."
Dean wordlessly took his change and saluted the gate attendant with the park map that came with it. He tossed the map at Sam as they pulled away.
Sneaking out of the campground was easy. Finding the spot they needed to switch trails, that was a different story. The park looked completely different in the dark and the merge happened too close to the campground to use flashlights to search out the trail markers, so they relied on the moon, overshooting the path and having to double back. Once they changed trails and the forest was immediately denser, they broke out the mini-maglites. Dean had a pistol tucked in his waistband. Sam was unarmed.
If he didn't know any better Sam would think Dean was trying to lose him. He'd slipped the flashlight back into his jacket pocket and switched to stealth mode, somehow moving down the path without a sound. It was unnerving, the quiet.
What Sam wanted was to find the words to talk Dean out of this, to convince him the entire thing was a hoax and the notes in Dad's journal were just rumors and hearsay, that they were wasting their time and Dean was going to feel like an idiot in the morning, getting so worked up over nothing. He didn't, because the look in Dean's eyes scared him.
Dean ducked under a low-hanging branch and Sam nearly walked into it. He pushed the branch aside, and then nearly walked into Dean. He'd stopped and gotten his flashlight out again, looking somewhere to their right. Sam also shone his light in that direction. "What?" His heart was pounding, and for no apparent reason.
Dean squinted. "You don't see it? Right over there." He spoke softly, barely bobbing his flashlight to guide Sam's attention.
Sam took a careful step forward. "No, I don't see – "
Dean took off into the woods without warning, chasing something only he could see.
"Dean!" Sam followed his brother, running full-out through the gap in the foliage Dean had blown apart.
Sam couldn't see Dean anymore, just followed the wildly bobbing beam of his flashlight. He cursed Dean's speed, how he could weave between trees and leap fallen logs with the grace of a fucking gazelle in those boots, at night. Sam's sneaker caught an exposed root and he stumbled, raising his hands just in time to keep his face from smacking into the bark of a large tree. "Dean," he called, not caring for stealth, "we've run about five hundred feet PAST right over there!"
Dean skidded to a stop in a small clearing and turned in a few jerky circles, head whipping around at each rotation until he met Sam's eyes across the clearing, frustration evident on his face. Sam jogged the remaining space between them and doubled over to catch his breath, hands on his knees.
"It was right here."
"What was right here?"
"A little…dude. About yea-high." Dean brought a hand level with his hip. "I swear, Sammy. I saw the little bastard." He moved in a crazy, broken pattern, inspecting the moonlit clearing.
Sam straightened. "Dean, there's nothing here."
"Sam, listen to me!" Dean looked like a child, eyes crazy-wide, and Sam lowered his flashlight so he wouldn't have to meet them. "I saw something."
Sam swallowed, with effort, watching Dean search the tree line. "Dean, you listen to me. There's NOTHING here."
"I'm not crazy, Sam."
"I didn't say anything."
"Quit looking at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I'm crazy. I'm not."
"I didn't say anything."
"I saw something, Sam."
The flames in the fire pit threw shapes around the quiet campsite, misshapen blobs bleeding from the tree line. The light danced on Dean's face in a way reminding Sam of the night they…in a way making him really uneasy. He looked away, into the heart of the fire. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." Dean chucked a rock into the fire, causing Sam to wince away as embers shot up and scattered in the breeze. "But when does that ever stop you?"
Sam stared at his hands, spread palms-up between his knees. It had taken him nearly thirty minutes to drag Dean away from the clearing and another fifteen before they made it back to the trail. "I'm just trying to understand, Dean."
"What don't you understand? We came to see a…dwarf. I saw a freakin' dwarf."
"Dean, I didn't see anything. There was no one in that clearing but you and me." Sam shifted on the log. "I think maybe you saw what you wanted to see."
"Okay, Dr. Phil. None of this was my idea. I wasn't the one psyched to find those fucking things." Dean heaved another rock, this one clipping Sam's foot, and Sam didn't think it was an accident.
He frowned. "No. Not at first." Dean glared, but Sam didn't break eye contact. "Not until we found out about their possible connection to spirits."
Dean set his jaw. "Stop making everything about Dad."
"I'm not making it about Dad. I'm making it about you."
"Well, don't make it about me, either. You're the one who wanted to get his picture taken with one of the seven dwarves."
"And why do you think I suggested we hunt…"
"A cartoon character?"
"Dean."
"If I had to guess? To piss me off."
"SHH!"
Both brothers turned at the sound, finding themselves facing their neighbor for the night, a heavyset woman in sweats and unruly hair standing at the door of her camper, hand on what was presumably her hip. Dean rolled his eyes and poked at the fire with a stick.
Sam held up a hand. "We're sorry."
"I'm not," Dean muttered. Sam frowned, but the woman didn't notice. She shook her head and stepped back up into her creaky camper.
Dean stared down at the dirt between his boots. "So, are you waiting around for a hug and cry, or can I actually get some sleep tonight?"
Sam blinked. "Yeah. Whatever you want."
"Great." Dean rose without even looking at him and went to the car.
Wide awake despite the late hour, Sam stayed by the fire until all of the embers had died.
Sam would have guessed it was still night when Dean nudged him awake. "Dude."
"Hmm."
"Time to hit the road."
Sam heard the familiar creak and click of the Impala's door and then roar of the car coming to life. He rolled and bumped into something rough, realizing he'd fallen asleep against the log. And damn, was that going to hurt when he got up and going. He groaned and pulled himself into a sitting position, his spine cracking top to bottom. Glancing at his watch, he noted he'd probably gotten no more than three hours of sleep, if it could be called that. There was getting an early start and then there was this. The sun wasn't yet visible, just a hint of orange haze beginning to bleed into the midnight blue of the night's sky.
Sam climbed into the car and slammed the door shut. "I can't believe you let me sleep on the ground."
Dean lifted a shoulder. It could have meant 'sorry' or 'sorry 'bout ya'; he didn't elaborate. Sam started counting as they pulled out of the park, and they drove in silence until he hit five hundred. "So I guess you're still pissed at me."
Dean shot him that special Dean Look out of the corner of his eye. Then he turned on the radio and started drumming on the steering wheel. Sam sighed and turned it off. "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap," and he knew he would be paying for that one.
"What."
"Why are you pissed at me?"
"I'm not, Sam."
"Really, Dean? Because you let me sleep on the ground last night."
"I'm not pissed at you, Sam. God!" Dean shook his head, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. "I just don't want to talk about everything all the goddamned time. Just…let me think. For once, Sam, please." Dean made eye contact for the first time since Sam had gotten into the car. They weren't angry like in the motel or crazy like in the clearing. For the first time in weeks, it seemed, the only thing in Dean's eyes was Dean.
Sam nodded slowly. "Sure. Okay, Dean." Dean returned his gaze to the windshield and Sam clicked on the radio in time to catch the end of the song. He tapped along on his knees. "You know, I actually like this song."
Dean ran a hand through his hair, scratched behind his ear. "Yeah, you always have. You and Dad, you used to…" A smile started on his lips but quickly died.
"It's okay to miss him."
Dean didn't respond, but Sam didn't expect him to. He fidgeted against the bench seat, picking at the threads in a hole in his jeans. "I didn't mean anything. When I said…you know. I didn't mean anything."
Dean tilted his head. "Sure you did."
Sam rolled his head, mouth open but momentarily speechless. "Maybe," he managed. "But not…" I just meant you're turning into Dad. He couldn't say that. Dean would take it as a compliment instead of what it was: a warning.
"I know. Don't worry about it."
"This hunt, if you can even call it that, was a stupid idea. I get that, and I'm sorry I even brought us here. I just wanted to hunt something…" Sam let out a breath. "I don't know. Something less real. Something less dangerous." He laughed without humor. "Guess it's kind of the same thing."
Dean's eyes ticked over to Sam for a fraction of a second, the only movement he'd made while Sam was talking. "Sometimes, yeah."
"I really was just trying to help."
"And?"
"And lesson learned, believe me. I'm really sorry if…if I made things worse for you." Certainly didn't make them better over here. Sam took a page out of Dean's book and changed the subject. He cleared his throat. "So where to?"
Dean squinted at the rising sun. "Well, I guess we'll just have to see where this road takes us, little brother." He reached over and dug his sunglasses from the glove box, raising his eyebrows at Sam.
Sam couldn't help but smile, annoyed because he knew it was what Dean wanted. "Yeah. I guess we will."