A/N: The Winchesters head for the East Coast in search of a good old fashioned angry spirit hunt after a gory murder in a brand new cinema...naturally, just like with true love, the course of a Winchester hunt rarely goes smoothly.

Set in non existent future Season 6 so there may be occasional very brief, very high level references to stuff pertaining to any or all preceding seasons. Some sparing use of the f-word...hence the T rating

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Chapter 1.

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It all started when Buzz Lightyear flew out of the film and into the movie theatre. Of course none of the grown ups believed the kids who witnessed this wonder, and so nothing was done about it. Towards the end of the film, when some of the laser beams shot by Emperor Zurg made small burn holes in the otherwise pristine upholstery, the cleaning staff put it down to parents illicitly smoking in the auditorium, though they never found any cigarette butts or smelt any tobacco smoke. Teddy Tuijl, owner/manager of the brand new movie theatre, did wonder at the number of Buzz Lightyear dolls that were left behind by the audience during that week, but as he was new to this line of work, thought nothing of it.

The following week the Marsh Movie Theatre had booked another 3D experience, but this one was for the adults, a celebration for the up and coming Valentine's Day. It was a shame that the events during Toy Story 2 in 3D had not been recognised for the warning shots that they were, as perhaps that might have enabled the next incident to be avoided. Or maybe it was just inevitable – an unnatural accident waiting to happen. As it was, when Malcolm Sergeant (bachelor, 32) was found at the end of the second evening's show pinned to his seat with a bloodied mining implement, the police were forced to close the cinema down while a murder investigation was carried out.

Balding and amiable Sheriff Eric Sutcliffe was out of his depth and floundering, never having had to deal with anything more violent than one or two domestic disputes that had got out of hand (plates had been thrown and there had been considerable use of foul language) and one accidental drowning of a wealthy tourist who had fallen from the deck of his multi-million dollar yacht one night whilst high on cocaine. And the latter death had been greeted by most of the community as poetic justice for what had obviously been a life of profligate sin.

So when the FBI arrived on the scene some five days after Malcolm's death, Sheriff Sutcliffe greeted them with great relief.

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He wasn't listening to Sam any more, instead his attention was focussed solely on staying conscious. He didn't understand what was happening. One moment everything had been fine. He and Sam were chatting about something minor and unimportant over the mini barrier of the raised laptop screen, the next moment he felt the most incredible pain wash over him, his sight had blanked out and he'd felt his heart judder against his ribs as if someone or something had grabbed hold of the throbbing organ and given it a yank. Beside his ear he felt hot breath and a hated voice whispered

"You got a lot to learn, boy. So I'll see you back in class bright and early Monday morning…"

Alastair. No. Impossible. Alastair was dead, Sam had killed him; hadn't he?

He gripped the edge of the Formica table in desperation as he began to burn from the inside out.

Dean Winchester woke with a start, swallowing the scream on his lips before it could overspill and fly free round the room to wake up his sleeping brother. He wiped sweat from his face with a hand that was, he was annoyed to see, still shaking. Groaning silently, he propped himself up on one elbow and checked the luminous display on the bedside clock. 03:14. Crap. Still four hours before dawn. Four hours to get through before facing another day. He reached under the bed for the whiskey bottle that was his constant companion, found it suspiciously lightweight and sure enough, when he held it up to the pale green light cast by the electronic clock's display, he found it empty. He cursed under his breath and sat up. There was no way he would sleep now, he knew from weary experience once he'd woken from one of these nightmares, he would be wide awake for the rest of the long, long night. Well, no point in bitching about it, may as well do something useful with the dead time and see if he couldn't do better than his geek brother in finding their next job.

He padded silently across the motel room in his bare feet and settled himself at the small Formica topped table in front of the laptop, both of which had just featured so vividly in his dream. Gritting his teeth as the images flashed in front of his sore eyes all over again, he flipped open the lid and powered up. The sooner he had something to do, the sooner he could thrust those thoughts to the back of his mind, safely locked up with all the rest in the huge Dean-box of unpleasant memories. Keeping the lid on that box wasn't getting any easier, but most days, Dean managed to sit on the lid long enough maintain his front of insouciance, to his own satisfaction at least.

Unlike Sam's more clinical, structured approach, the Dean Winchester research method was just to type random searches into the news feeds, taking pot luck on what might pop up. After a few minutes, Dean was safely absorbed into the weird and wonderful apocrypha that constituted news for small-town America; so much so that he barely noticed the time passing, and his nightmares were, at least temporarily, forgotten. Every now and then, he would chuckle quietly to himself as he found some new gem worthy of the front page of Weekly World News. Then after about two hours of searching, he found it. The job he'd been looking for.

Satisfied, he allowed himself to be soothed by the continued soundtrack of soft snoring provided by his kid brother, and with a smile on his tired face, Dean happily dozed off at last, face pillowed by the plastic keyboard.

******

Sam found Dean there in the morning, and kindly left him drooling into the keys. He knew Dean needed all the sleep he could get these days, whatever odd position it might be in. It was Dean's laptop, so he was undisturbed by any worries about short-circuiting the machine, and besides was mildly interested to see what strange patterns would be imprinted on the older Winchester's cheek when he finally surfaced.

He didn't have long to wait. By the time Sam had showered and cleaned his teeth the older Winchester was stirring, and already bitching about how hungry he was. Sam smiled to himself. Some things never changed, and the insatiable appetite of Dean Winchester for the biggest, greasiest breakfasts that the roadside diners of America had to offer was one of them. What was more surprising was that Dean had not been surfing porn sites but had been doing some research and had found them a job.

"Lewes you say? And that's where exactly?"

"Delaware." Mumbled through a mouthful of bacon.

"Right, Delaware, near New Jersey – what's that, a two day drive from here?"

"More like 15 hours, Sammy, a nice easy run in a day for me and my baby."

"And you want to go there to investigate a possible haunting in a movie theatre, when there are still hundreds of dangerous demons on the loose, and probably at least one closer to Clinton Iowa than the east coast."

"Yes, Sam, I do. I want a job that is straight-forward for a change. You know, no mind-fucking, no Asian demon-spirits who seduce and freeze you, no tricksters who twist reality, no frigging angels dragging our asses back and forward in time…oh and not to mention that way out there in a one-boat seaside town there's not much chance of bumping into any ignorant gung ho hunters out to kick our butts for jump-starting the apocalypse. And besides, a man is impaled with a pickaxe for crissakes, while out at the movies with his recently-dead brother's widow, what's not to like about a nice simple pissed off spirit case like that?"

Sam had been staring at the older Winchester in fascination, wondering when he was going to pause to take a breath, decided that he wasn't, so interrupted before Dean suffocated himself.

"Whoa, okay, okay. Lewes it is then."

His big brother was clearly in a good mood, or at least putting on a convincing show for his small audience of one. So much so, he even let Sam drive the first leg of the trip, though Sam still couldn't persuade Dean to allow him to crank up the volume on the music of his choice – yeah, driver picks and shotgun shuts up, but tolerance and Winchester rules only went so far when it came to the volume controls for what Dean complained was Sam's poor taste in 'easy listening crap'.

So Sam kept the antique cassette deck volume low and hummed along quietly to Jason Manns while Dean turned up the collar on his battered leather jacket, covered his eyes with his shades and snored his way through Illinois and most of Indiana. In fact, Dean barely stirred when Sam stopped for gas, only woke briefly to scoff the burger and fries Sam bought at a drive in grease-pit somewhere east of South Bend, then slept like the noisy dead again until they were nearly at the border with Ohio. He was so uncharacteristically quiet (apart from the snoring, of course) Sam had just started to worry there was actually something wrong with him when Dean finally woke up and put his mind at rest by immediately grumbling about Sam's driving. That was Sam's cue to let Dean take the wheel, and he wasn't slow in taking his big brother's none too subtle hints. They swapped places at the next opportunity, and it was Sam's turn to sleep as the Impala ate up the miles to the Delaware coast with a self-satisfied purr.

******

Lewes was small, a pretty coastal town with all the usual amenities, unremarkable save for the fact that its brand new movie theatre down by the site of the old whaling station had been witness to a particularly gruesome murder by someone or something with a deranged sense of humour. Using the very implement for the dirty deed that featured so heavily in the film that was being shown at the time the victim was killed seemed to indicate a strong sense of irony in the perpetrator.

Being heavily reliant on the tourist trade, which didn't usually take too kindly to the idea that there might be a crazed pickaxe-wielding killer on the loose, the town-folk of Lewes were very keen to see the case resolved as quickly as possible. This meant they were extra pleased to welcome Sam Ermalenko and Dean Macey, FBI agents, and far less likely to wonder why Federal Bureau representatives might turn up in a classic 1967 Chevrolet Impala, dressed (initially at least) in ripped jeans and scruffy casual jackets.

The Winchesters checked into the Marine Motel's Moby Dick room (which elicited a guffaw from Dean that earned him his fifth Sam-bitch-face of the day, not that he'd been counting) thinking to grab a night's rest (rest being a euphemism in the Winchester dictionary as neither man ever slept that easily) before starting their investigation in earnest the next morning. Their plans were thwarted by the small town mentality that meant that Mandy the Motel receptionist who had quizzed them briefly about their presence in Lewes, had immediately rung all her friends, who had rung their friends, one of whom mentioned the fact that the FBI had arrived in town to Sheriff Sutcliffe, who, eager beyond words to hand over his file, jumped straight into Lewes' only cop car and within three quarters of an hour of their arrival, surprised said Special Agents Ermalenko and Macey with a knock on their door.

Dean answered the door warily fresh from his shower, and was surprised to find himself face to face with a tall, thin, slightly shiny man in a khaki country sheriff's uniform who immediately seized his hand and started pumping it enthusiastically.

"Eric Sutcliffe, Sussex County Sheriff," the shiny man introduced himself, his pale blue eyes wide, and eagerly fixed on Dean's bemused hazel ones.

"Erm, right." Dean swiftly collected his scattered thoughts and hoped Sam was listening from the bathroom where he'd disappeared to shower, or he might embarrass them further by appearing clad only in towel or worse, naked. "Dean Macey, FBI." The hunter had rarely felt less like a convincing representative of the Federal Bureau than at that moment, standing in the doorway of a Moby Dick themed motel room in nothing but black boxers and an old Led Zeppelin t shirt, but if the Sheriff wasn't bothered by his unconventional appearance, he supposed, why should Dean worry?

"Um, perhaps you'd better step inside, Sheriff Sutcliffe, while I get some clothes on…"

The earnest law enforcer only just seemed to notice that this representative of the Central Government was actually half naked, and rapidly nodded as he followed Dean into the room, flushing from chin to the shining crown of his balding head in embarrassment. Dean barely managed to suppress a smile as he thought the Sheriff at that a moment looked exactly like one of those nodding dogs you used to get to sit in the rear windscreens of cars and annoy the hell out of the driver behind.

"P..p..please," stammered the nervously nodding Sheriff, "Call me Eric."

"Right. Eric." Dean gestured to the strangely shaped table that appeared to be made entirely from driftwood by a demented carpenter, and offered Eric a seat in a chair that unfortunately matched the table perfectly. Aside from the beds, which thankfully appeared to have escaped the attentions of the Motel's interior designer, none of the additional furniture in the room looked as though it would stand up to actually being used, but fortunately for the Sheriff, appearances can indeed be deceiving, and the driftwood chair held up as the Sheriff sat down and placed his beige case folder on the rough wood table top. Dean decided against dressing in his standard FBI/lawyer/whatever-else-he-needed-to-be-suit in front of the law enforcement officer and instead just grabbed his tatty jeans and pulled them on quickly before sitting himself down opposite Eric. He promptly wished he'd faced the window instead of the wall, because behind Eric's head was a huge relief/mural of what was clearly intended to be Moby Dick himself, but really looked more like a cross between Babar the Elephant and Big Bird – which as Dean had pointed out to his brother earlier, really ought to be impossible and probably should be illegal. With a struggle, the older of the Winchesters pulled his attention back to the earnest Sheriff of Lewes and his now open case folder.

It was worth his attention. The Sheriff spread out the photographs of the victim in situ in the auditorium of the cinema. Malcolm Sergeant was sitting in his seat, a look of intense surprise on his slightly podgy face, his bulging eyes focussed on the undeniable standard issue mining pickaxe that was buried, pointy end first, deep in his slightly podgy stomach. As Dean started to examine the photos, a fully clothed if casually dressed Sam emerged from the nautically themed bathroom (kitted out rather disturbingly to look like the cockpit of a whaling ship, complete with ship's wheel). The younger Winchester had clearly overheard their unexpected visitor arrive, so was prepared to jump straight into the debriefing discussion with his usual incisive questioning style partnering and complimenting his brother's more indirect off the wall approach.

An hour or so later, Dean was showing the now relaxed and happy Eric to the door, having relieved himself, as he saw it, of a heavy burden. He had been only too eager to leave all the paperwork in the very capable hands of Uncle Sam's two tall representatives. Closing the door on the satisfied Sheriff, the two Winchesters ran over their conclusions so far.

"So, I'm thinking pissed off spirit is probably right, and Malcolm's late brother looks the likeliest candidate., seeing as how he's now banging James Sergeant's ex wife."

Sam nodded in agreement. "Certainly seems the strongest possibility, given nobody in the cinema saw anyone with a pickaxe before during or after the movie, apart from the one being used by the characters on the screen."

Dean snorted. "Yep. And it's not like anyone can just stick a bloody great pickaxe in a bag or down the back of their pants and hope no one notices. The problem is, the Sheriff..." Sam interjected with a grin "You mean Eric, don't you?" Dean flipped Sam the finger – second of the day – not that he was counting – and continued.

"The Sheriff said James Sergeant was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, and no remains were brought home so…"

"So what is holding his spirit here? And why the Movie Theatre? It doesn't make sense, especially as last time James was home in Lewes it wasn't even built."

"Looks like more juicy research for my favourite geek boy tomorrow then, while I do the rounds interviewing a few of the locals."

"As long as that doesn't mean you concentrating on the female locals to the exclusion of the male population, Dean, that's fine by me."

"Oh ha, ha, bro'. I'll have you know that I am a consummate professional. As a member of Uncle Sam's Federal Bureau my investigations are always carried out with absolute probity."

"Absolute what?" Sam sniggered. "I think you mean propriety."

Dean grinned at having drawn Sam in. "Exactly. So glad you agree. You see, I am always right."

Sam huffed, then laughed. "Yes Dean, and no doubt you think you're an awesome brother too."

"Damn right I am, Sammy boy. Damn right."

Somehow or other, that night under the beady gaze of Moby Dick proved to be the best night's sleep either Winchester had managed for a very long time.

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A/N: Chapter 2 in the pipeline - all comments (good, bad or indifferent) very welcome - let me know what works for you, and what doesn't!