I gotta whole lotta holes in my life.
I gotta whole lotta holes in my life.
If you stack them all together,
You could fall in there forever.
Gotta whole lotta holes in my life
Kathy Mattea
So many holes.
It was nothing. These were nothing. Sam had been strong for so long, what was a little longer? These were nothing. He could handle these. They were nothing.
They were holes.
In the ground.
In an old cemetery.
They were nothing.
A whole lot of nothing.
It was a salt and burn and nothing more. Poor Lyman somebody who drowned in 18 Mile creek back in 1802 had suddenly decided to start rising out of said creek at dusk. That might not have been much of a problem two hundred years before, but there was a Sunoco, a Subway, and a Laundromat at the intersection there now and Lyman-sightings had caused five car accidents and three near drownings.
So, salt and burn it was.
Only, Lyman's cemetery was even older than he would've been and was pretty much abandoned. Most of the graves had been moved and a lot of those hadn't been refilled properly, if at all, and so Sam and Dean were looking for Lyman's headstone having to pick their way around holes.
A lot of holes.
In the ground.
In an old cemetery.
They'd pulled up in front of the old cemetery, down a muddy, rutted, dead end road that belonged to an old, abandoned, disintegrating farm. Dean didn't get out of the car right away; he looked at the cemetery then at Sam.
"You want to sit this one out?"
Yes, Sam wanted to say. Yes, I want to sit this one out a million miles away from here. But he looked at the cemetery, at the holes, at Dean.
"I'm good." He said.
"Sure?"
"Yeah."
So they got out and got their tools and weapons and started across the ground pocked with holes.
A lot were unfilled empty graves, some looked like sinkholes, some were just probably frost-heaved ground.
But whatever the cause, they were holes.
A lot of holes.
In the ground.
In an old cemetery.
Sam could do this.
They were nothing.
The holes were nothing.
A whole lot of nothing.
Okay, so he was freaking out a little on the inside. Holes. A lot of holes. In the ground. In an old cemetery. He kept expecting to fall into one of them. He kept expecting to be pulled into one of them. He kept close to Dean and tried to not look at the holes, tried to not to keep expecting to see hands clawing up out of them, beckoning him, reaching for him, grabbing hold and dragging him back down into hell.
He kept close to Dean, and walked where Dean walked, trusting that Dean knew where to walk, and that Dean wouldn't let him fall into a hole and if he did fall that Dean would catch him and pull him back out and that if he couldn't pull him out he'd find a way to get him out again and –
A huge hole cut the path half a dozen yards in front of them and Dean didn't seem to notice, he only kept walking towards it and Sam knew he'd fall into and fall and fall and fall and –
"Dean!"
He grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him back. Away from grasping hands and eternal hell. Away from the hole.
"It's okay, Sam. We're okay." Dean turned to Sam like he wasn't surprised Sam was freaking out. He put his hand around Sam's arm and held tight. "I see the hole. We can walk around. We're okay."
Sam's heart retreated a little way out of his throat and back into his chest where it belonged, but not all the way.
"Okay. Yeah. Okay."
"Okay." Dean answered. He let go of Sam's arm and kept walking. The hole that was freaking Sam out was only a couple of yards ahead now and when Dean got to it, he stopped and turned back to Sam. "Lyman should be just up here, northeast corner. Hopefully his headstone is still there."
"Yeah."
Sam heard what Dean was saying but his eyes were on the hole Dean was standing in front of. It was a sinkhole. A sinkhole in an old cemetery, and gravel and dry soil sprinkled down into it as his footsteps came closer and if he got too close the ground would give way and drop him in, or drag him in, or push him in, and he'd fall in and he'd fall and fall and fall –
"We get this done early enough, I say we clean up and hit that country-western bar on the other side of town. The sign said they have line dancing tonight."
Sam pulled his eyes up from the hole to Dean's face. He'd kind of heard what Dean said, line dancing? and that little bit told him that Dean wasn't making sense. Probably for the exact purpose of getting Sam to look up because when he did look up, Dean put his arm out and shepherded him securely away from the hole.
"I wonder if Lyman liked line dancing?" Dean asked. More nonsense to get Sam's mind on something else, and even though Sam knew that's what it was, his mind turned the question over anyway.
"Back then, quadrilles, cotillions and country dances were the popular dances." He answered, almost automatically, while he kept his eyes on the scattered holes.
Holes in the ground.
In an old cemetery.
"Of course they were the popular dances back then." Dean said. "And you know this how?"
"We studied Jane Austen in my British Lit pre-Victorian era class. Lyman was alive during that era."
"Okaaaay."
"What? You asked."
"Is there anything you don't know?" Dean asked as they kept moving through the cemetery.
"I don't know why you get annoyed anytime you ask me a rhetorical question that I actually have an answer to."
"Bitch." Dean muttered.
"Jerk." Sam managed to answer before another massive hole loomed in front of them again. But Dean reacted before Sam could, reaching out to take hold of Sam's arm and lead him around it. "So, no line dancing. Fine. We get Lyman taken care of and find the nearest bar that serves decent beer. I'll settle for that."
"Yeah. Okay. Yeah."
So many holes.
Lyman's headstone was intact, barely. Just enough to see his first name and part of his date of birth. Dean set the duffel down and jabbed his shovel into the soil over the grave. He gave Sam a look.
"You okay?"
"Yeah-sure-why?" Sam answered past the breath stuck in his throat.
"Because your knuckles are almost as white as your face."
Sam looked down to his hands gripped tight around the handle of his shovel. He held back a sigh.
"I'm fine."
"You want to wait in the car?"
"No!"
"I'll walk you back." Dean offered, easily, like he was offering to hold a door for Sam or get him extra napkins at a restaurant.
"No." Sam said it quieter, trying to sound stronger than he was feeling. "No, I'm good. I'm okay. This'll get done a lot faster if both of us are working on it."
"Okay." Dean nodded even as he was giving Sam the once-twice-thrice look over. "Let's get it done then."
Dean shoveled near the head of the grave; Sam shoveled at the foot of it. The ground was hard-packed and rocky, and came out in shovelfuls of dust and grit. It was slow going but, little by little, a hole was growing at Sam's feet.
A hole.
In the ground.
In an old cemetery.
"Someday I think we should just have done with it and get ourselves a backhoe." Dean said after a while.
Sam heard him. He heard Dean and understood what he said and knew he should be saying something in reply. But he couldn't stop staring at the hole in the ground at his feet. He wanted to run. Everything in him wanted to run and hide where he couldn't see this ground or these holes or this cemetery.
"Sam? Sam – look at me."
Sam had to drag his eyes away from the ground and up to Dean.
"Let me take you back to the car."
And Sam had to make himself pull in his next breath of air. He shook his head.
"I can do it."
Well, he could tell Dean didn't really believe him, even though he said, "Okay," anyway.
They started digging again. And Sam kept expecting the hole at his feet to suddenly swell into a gaping maw leading straight to hell. He closed his eyes and shook his head to clear the thought. But it wouldn't clear.
Holes.
In the ground.
In an old cemetery.
So many holes.
"Sam."
That was Dean's 'doing it your way isn't working' tone.
Sam turned back but didn't really look at Dean.
"I can't hide every time we have to go into a cemetery."
"Not every time – this time. This is an easy one, broad daylight, I can see the car from here. This one isn't worth risking you having a flashback or hallucination or worse."
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not. We're in a cemetery, surrounded by holes. So you're not okay, and we both know it. "
Sam didn't say anything; he felt like he couldn't catch his breath.
So many holes. So many holes. So many holes.
"Sammy, you have to let me help you."
"I think we've pretty well established that there really isn't anything you can do." Sam said, spitting the words out, sounding as breathless as he felt.
"I can care." Dean said. "I can be there. Look – Sammy - I know it makes me the biggest hypocrite on the planet, after the way I acted when I got back from hell, but I want to know what's going on with you. I want the chance to be there, even if that's all that I can do."
Sam took a few deep breaths.
"There's just so many holes."
"I know. So let me walk you back to the car."
That made Sam smile. In the midst of the terror scrambling through his brain and clawing up his spine, it made him smile that even being twenty eight years old and nearly six and a half feet tall, his big brother would still walk him to the car like he was four, simply because it was what needed to be done.
"What?" Dean asked, a little suspiciously. But Sam shook his head.
"It's just – it's not – not just these holes." Sam gestured to the pocked ground around them. "It's our lives – our whole lives have been full of holes. The hole of losing Mom, the holes in our education, the hole of no permanent home, the hole of losing Jess, losing Dad, losing each other over and over again. And then – and then –"
He hesitated talking about it because it would annoy Dean, but he had to talk about it.
"I opened up a hole into hell, and to put things right, I jumped into that hole into hell. I came back with a hole inside me where my soul wasn't. Now there's holes in my memory, holes in my Wall, holes in my jeans, holes all over this ground. There's so many holes."
Dean looked around for a minute, working the handle of his shovel in his hands. He got a thoughtful look on his face, then stabbed his shovel into the ground and crossed the few feet to Sam.
"Sam – Sam – c'mon. Dean looked out over the old cemetery. He let out a breath and his shoulders seemed to sag. "All right, look – c'mere and look."
He took Sam's shovel and stabbed it into the ground, then he took Sam's arm and tugged to lead him off the grave and a few yards over to a small sunken grave. Sam resisted but not enough to stop Dean tugging him. Only when Dean walked right to the edge of the hole did Sam actually stop, no matter what Dean wanted.
"What?" Sam asked, turning his face away, trying to not look at the sunken, crumbling ground near his feet, trying to not pull free from Dean's grasp to run somewhere, anywhere, just away from here.
"I want you to look, Sam. I know it's hard, but I want you to look." Dean's voice was calm, quiet. "It's okay. You don't have to get any closer, but I want you to look."
"No." Sam pulled out of Dean's grip and turned away. "No – why – what? What do you want me to look at? Why?"
Dean moved to stand right in front of Sam. He bent his head down a little to look into Sam's face. His voice was still calm and quiet.
"The thing about holes, Sam, is that they never stay the same size. Holes in anything living, anything organic, either they kill the thing, or they fill in. A hole in a tree or a plant will callous over. A hole in a human body will scar. And a hole in the ground will eventually fill in with soil and litter and rubble. But if you don't take care of it – if you get a hole in a piece of metal and you don't take care of it, it'll rust itself bigger and bigger until the whole thing just crumbles into dust. Holes in clothes will rip worse if they don't get sewn up. A hole in a rock, with enough time and water, will eventually turn into the Grand Canyon."
"I don't – I don't – understand what you're getting at."
"I want you to look at a hole because I want you to see that it is just a hole. Because the longer you don't see that that's all it is, the bigger it will keep getting until it's the only thing you see. And once you see that this hole is just a hole, once we 'fill' that one in, then we move onto the next hole, and we fill that one in. And then the next one."
"Not every hole can be filled in." Sam said. He managed to look at Dean. "Some of them are just too big."
"No. No, there is no hole that I can't fill." Dean said. He took Sam's left hand into his own. "Stone One, remember? You realizing that I'm real, that was Stone One. And each time you remember that, and use it –" He pressed his thumb over the raw scar on Sam's palm. " – that's another stone that goes back into your wall. Those holes are filling up. And the rest of the holes are filling in. It hurts, I know. Sometimes it hurts so bad, the pain takes up everything else. I know that. But you and me – we're filling in those holes. And you know that."
Sam stared at his hand, at Dean's thumb, calloused and dirty, pressing over the scar. It'd become such second nature to press into that scar, that Sam barely noticed he was doing it sometimes. Yeah, when the hallucinations came hot and heavy, sometimes he had to dig his thumb in until his palm was scratched, bruised, and swollen.
But sometimes, a lot of times, he only just rubbed his thumb over the spot, just as a reminder that he was okay, and that Dean was real and close by. Like a worry stone, like a touch stone.
Stones. Ha. Sam had to laugh.
"Okay. Still worrying me." Dean said. He didn't let go of Sam's hand.
"No – just – you're right. You're right. Each time I beat one of the hallucinations, it's another stone, it's a smaller hole. It's not gonna be overnight, but – yeah, I get it. You're right."
"Okay. So – we're good?"
"Yeah."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, so we get Lyman taken care of and then put a hole in the local beer supply, what d'you say?"
Sam nodded and managed to smile. "Sounds good."
Only then did Dean let go of Sam's hand.
The end.