This is a disclaimer.
AN: Complete with John Connolly references, gore, and you-know-who. Title from Lovecraft. Mokroye delo is Russian for wet work.
Which can eternal lie
Louisiana is hot as Hades and twice as unpleasant.
There's something about this state that makes you think of decay, of rot, of the slow decomposition of dead things that choke and strangle and reach out to grasp jealously at the living even as they fall apart. Darkness in Louisiana is deeper, more threatening, filled with malice and terror; whereas daylight seems fainter despite the heat, weaker, without the power to banish the nightmares.
Louisiana, in short, reminds you of the jungles.
"You read Lovecraft, Win?" Carson says from beside you. That old Corps nickname from his lips doesn't help calm you down any.
"Heard of him," you say, quiet and noncommittal.
Carson scoffs. "Heard of him. There's this story he wrote, see. The most famous one, I guess. The Call of Cthulhu. Talks about a cult out in the Louisiana woods that worship these... these monstrous gods."
"Oh, that's reassuring, Carson. Damn reassuring. You might have nothing left to live for, but I wanna get back to my boys when we're done here."
You're pretty sure Carson rolls his eyes. He's a little on the crazy side, but then, what hunter isn't? He's good at what he does, and you trust him to have your back. That's enough.
The two of you are out here waiting on a wizard, a man of great power over living and dead, or so they say. As a rule, you've got no objection to a little bit of magic here and there to make people's lives easier, as long as the user isn't about to summon a Prince of Hell or open a Devil's Gate by mistake because they're just some dumb schmuck playin' around with stuff they don't understand and would be terrified of if they did.
However... your easy-going, tolerant attitude tends to end at the whole 'summoning the dead' bit. Necromancy is one of the few things about magic that there are no shades of gray to, no complicated questions of good or evil. Most of the time, that sort of thing hinges on the practitioner and their intentions.
But necromancy, like blood magic, is among the blackest of the Black Arts, and no one who practises it can possibly be up to any good.
Difference between your actual necromancy and the boring old spirit-summoning that runs under the same name is that spirits that are summoned are just that: spirits. 'True' necromancy, on the other hand, involves forcing them back into their old bodies – literally making them rise from the dead. Again, not the same as randomly animating dead bodies. It's a literal imitation of life. As far as you know, very few witches or wizards are powerful enough to do it, and even then, it usually goes pretty gore-ily wrong.
Louisiana is Carson's turf, mostly, his and Lafayette's, who's down in New Orleans mostly. But you'd made the mistake of passing through Arkansas by Deacon's place, and Lafayette got wind of it somehow, and by an even more mysterious passage of events... here you are.
Damn the man. At least the boys are safe at Deacon's place for the time being.
So anyway. You're crouched in the humid heat of a Louisiana swap, waiting for the necromancer to return home so the three of you can... well... well, you can't let him continue like this, anyway. There have been three "grave robbings" already, and though none of you could find out what's happened to the risen bodies, you'd bet the Impala herself that it's nothing good.
Course, if you did, and turned out to be wrong, Mary would kill you. Fucking around with her car is one of the sure-fire ways to get on her bad side, and Jesus, it's been nearly ten years and you still keep using the present tense when you think of her.
Lucky you've had so much practice at turning your thoughts to other things, really.
Carson hasn't noticed your little... your little moment, thank God. He's peering intently through the foliage in the direction Lafayette went, but you doubt he can see the guy, as he's crouched behind the house, near the back door.
Someone's coming. Heavy shuffling footsteps along the path to your left, the low croon of a blues song being mangled by someone without an ear for music. It makes you wince, slide the safety off your gun.
"It's him," Carson whispers. Well, duh. Not many other people are going to be coming out here at this time of night, given the man's reputation.
He shuffles into view, slow and easy, still crooning as he makes his way across thin gravel and leaves and dried mud to the front door of his house. Part of the reason your mind shies away from the idea of killing him is his age: old as dirt, he is, slow and fragile-looking. Story goes he's so old even he no longer remembers his name. Folks round here – folks in half Louisiana, it seems – know him as the Singing Man.
It's strangely fitting. After all, the chants to raise a spirit are more properly sung than spoken.
Your hands clench tight around the gun and loosen again when the Singing Man moves directly into your line of sight. He shuffles still, slow and smooth, and the movements remind you of a snake, lazy but lethal. Your qualms about killing him are beginning to fade; there's something inhuman about that wizened figure moving with such grace. He's bald, no more than wisps of hair at his scalp and the vague suggestion of stubble, a small, shrunken goblin crooning spells into the night.
Palms itching for a rifle now. He could be dead already; aren't you the best sniper for two hundred miles and more in any direction? But Carson is creeping forward now, inch by silent inch, edging to the bushes marking the end of the trees.
You're about to follow him when a graveyard stench stronger than anything else you've ever smelled fills up your nostrils, a precursor to the hands on your shoulders that drag you up and fling you viciously against the nearest tree, and fuck you're getting too old for this but you haven't lost your grip on the gun, and the... the zombie – the Thing – the Singing Man created staggers back with the impact of the bullet, head snapping backwards and sending it off balance.
Then, as you're getting to your feet, it straightens, and speaks.
"That weren't very nice, now, was it?"
Or at least, you think that's what it says. It's barely intelligible, the words a wet drawl dragged out of a decomposing throat, and you almost feel a moment's pity for the rotting Thing, but then it lunges for you, and maybe you're not that nice a person after all.
The fight is messy and wet and utterly disgusting, the smell of the Thing enough to knock most people out, you think. It's like struggling against a ghoul, your opponent's body just as decayed, just as putrified, but while a ghoul is essentially a mindless monster that knows nothing but rage and hunger, this Thing was once human. It's intelligent.
It shrieks when the second silver bullet enters its heart, but of course it's too much to hope for that it would just die like that. Fire, maybe?
More likely you've got to break the spell the Singing Man laid on it. You stagger away from the thrashing creature in the undergrowth, out into the open space before the house in time to watch the second one tear Lafayette's head off.
There's a spray of blood and two sick thumps as head and body hit the wet ground, red pooling in the leaves, filling up old tire-tracks in the packed dirt. Carson and the Singing Man are nowhere to be seen.
The second Thing raises its head and looks at you, and it's like a slap to the face to realise that it was a woman once, a young girl. It's hard to tell for sure, but its rotted, twisted features look mournful for a minute before it steps over your friend's body towards you.
This one gets two silver bullets to the heart, just for kicks and giggles. It goes down in a shrieking heap like the first. You can hear it crashing in the undergrowth behind you.
Silver kills or incapacitates just about anything, you've found.
Now for Carson. Where the fuck is he? Maybe the Singing Man is already dead.
It occurs to you briefly to check outside first, but you don't have the time; any minute now those Things might well shake off the effects of the silver, and then you're a dead man.
John Winchester is not going to die at the hands of George A. Romero's rejects in the middle of the Louisiana swamps. The boys still need you too much.
Not until you make a move towards the house do you realise that the first Thing tore your right leg open in your fight. Three long clawmarks that rake across your thigh. Terrific. Who knows where the Thing's fingernails have been?
The door is open.
Hallway's narrow and unlit, much like the whole house, you're beginning to suspect, and while your footsteps are mostly silent the floorboards are not. Still, no one comes. By your reckoning, there's at least one more Thing out there, but the house is silent, whisper of wind in the cracks of the wood, your heartbeat, million-times-a-minute, your harsh quick breathing, inout inout inout.
The rooms are sparsely furnished if at all, all filthy. Stench of death still in your nostrils, death and decay. It's like the house itself if rotting, the structure liquefying like all dead things do in this swamp.
Come on, you think. Something happen. Anything.
Something does.
You get a split second to realise you weren't the one to make that last creak before a body slams into you, hard and fast. It's Carson; the two of you topple and fall through a door on the other side of the corridor, grappling. This time, your gun does skitter away.
"Carson! Carson, stop, it's me!"
He gets in another punch, dropping you to the ground. Carson follows you down, eyes gleaming in the dimness.
"I know," he says and hits you again.
When the lights come back on, your head is pounding and your jaw aches, and there's the bitter taste of bile and betrayal in the back of your throat.
Apparently Carson's gone way past a little crazy and come out so far over the other side you'd be surprised if he could find it with a telescope. What was he thinking?
At a guess... nothing.
It's a little degrading to crawl across the floor on hands and knees, but your head's still spinning so it's probably the best idea. You find your gun more by lucky chance than design; your hand falls on it in the dark. You're guessing it's long past midnight by now.
Flicker of firelight in the corridor, and you halt at the doorway, lean against the frame. Carson's voice is loud and sharp, floating out to you. The Singing Man seems to murmur in reply, a low lilt that might be a song for all you know, his words indistinguishable.
Your right leg is shaking a little with the strain of even that short crawl, stiffening and aching. You shift position so that you're sprawled out on the dirty floor, back to the door. It's not ideal, but it's this, have it collapse under you, or be seen.
Carson's talking again. Always did have quite a mouth on him.
"... came myself, didn't I? I'm not about to risk this by trying to deter two other hunters from checking into grave robbings. How much of an idiot did you think I was?"
You've got your own choice opinions on that one, actually.
The Singing Man doesn't answer; or if he does, it's in a voice too low for you to hear. Carson snaps right back.
"I've held up my end of the deal. Hell, your... experiments... were even successful."
You strain your ears this time, but still no words – barely any noise but that soft whistling murmur that might be a song but might not.
"All right. Then we'll leave tomorrow."
Leave for where, dammit?
"Winchester? I'll kill him on the way out. You can use his body, if you like. Won't have to open up another grave."
Oh, that's nice, Carson. Real nice. So this is the thanks you get for saving a guy from a poltergeist? You'd never realised that that sort of debt falls under a statute of limitations.
Time to move. You drag your legs up and under you, haul yourself upright. You're still a bit groggy, but your head did clear pretty quickly. Your leg... it'll be all right. As long as you get out of here before infection sets in, anyway.
While you were struggling with your lack of balance, the Singing Man was talking.
Heh.
"Yes, of course. But there is one more thing," Carson says. It's the first time you've ever been grateful for how loud the man can get.
"I want to be sure that the spell is in no way dependant on you, you understand? Not like those poor bastards outside. I don't want you to croak off in a few years and then have Vanessa dead at my feet."
Thanks, Carson. That was real decent of you. Least you can do, after the betrayal and the knock to the head, and Lafayette's murder. You let him walk into a death trap and did everything you could to make sure neither of us would walk out.
Anger burns its way through dizziness and pain, consuming them. Fuel for the fire. It spreads outwards through your body and helps you focus, helps you straighten up and move silently across the corridor to the doorway the light is spilling from, a false promise of safety.
Unsurprisingly, the room you make out beyond the door is as spare and dirty as the rest of the house. You doubt that Carson's ever seen the sort of place the Singing Man really likes to frequent.
He might be an unimaginative little prick, but your brain is supplying you with plenty suggestions.
Question is, who's Vanessa?
And why does he want her resurrected? Likely she's family, a sister or daughter or some such. Surely no one could want that shambling half-life, that trapped existence in a dead body, still decomposing with every step, every word, for a loved one. You just can't understand.
You can't see either of them through the crack between door and lintel; Carson's on one side and the Singing Man is on the other, hidden in shadow at the side of the fireplace rather than in front of it.
What now? Barge in and shoot them both?
Yeah, right. Cause your reflexes and speed are both on top form right now. No. Wait your chance, then one by one.
You slink back into the shadows of the other room and wait. Unless you miss your guess, Carson's done with you. He won't be checking in. You recognised the bite in his voice, the harshness: the snap of desperation. Whatever he's up to, it won't wait much longer.
The Singing Man, on the other hand, is no fool. And far less incautious, or he wouldn't have lived so long.
Sure enough, Carson comes out a few minutes later. "Wait here," he tosses over his shoulder. "I'll get the truck."
If the bastard does anything to the Impala, you'll saw his head off with a blunt machete.
The Singing Man shuffles down the corridor once the front door swings shut, little footsteps like Sammy in too-long trousers, trying not to trip. You're expecting slow and cautious, but he enters the room like a snake striking, quick as lightening, and looks right at you.
You freeze up, gun slipping to the ground.
His face is still human, true. So are his eyes. But the pupils are black and soulless like those of a demon, and there is an ancient wisdom in every deep, scoured line of his face. There is a cruelty and malice under that beaten-leather skin that shocks the breath out of you and makes you rock back on your heels like you've been slapped in the face.
"John Winchester," he says, and his voice is the voice of thousands, the sound of uncounted simultaneous whispers, as if he were speaking with all the voices of the dead he's ever touched with his black magic. You know now why they call him the Singing Man: it's like listening to a church choir from outside the building, but the song is a more terrible one than any righteous hymn of the Lord.
The sound of your name on his lips is a curse and a threat, and it terrifies you. His hands are twisted and shrunken, barely human. Closer to those of a monkey, and you think if they touch you you might just throw up but there's no place to go, your back is to the wall anyway and –
Two fingers reaching out to press against your forehead, icy cold pinpricks coming ever closer to your skin, but there's a crash from outside and the Singing Man turns around, whiplash-quick like before. No prizes for guessing what it is that's making that noise. The Singing Man leaves you there without a backward glance, pressed against the wall like a frightened kid, and you surge forwards furiously, knock into him the same way Carson crashed into you earlier.
You stagger into the hallway together, and then there's the stench of rotted flesh and hands yanking at you, the Singing Man getting to his feet as you struggle with the third of those Things he created. It's by far more decomposed than the other two, skull and bone showing through tattered rags of flesh, and oh God, it's actually keening in that ravaged throat, an animal in agony.
The gunshot tears through the house like a thunderclap, and it collapses. Unlike the others, it doesn't shriek; it no longer has the vocal cords to do so. It thrashes and twists around and keeps on keening, and you want to throw up more than ever.
When you turn back to the Singing Man, Mary is standing in front of you.
"John," she says, and her smile is wide and lovely and loving. "John, I've been – I've missed you so much –" and takes a step towards you. She shines in dark of this pit of a house, bright as the sun, golden hair and pale skin and white white dress.
You can't move, rooted to the spot as she comes to you and stretches out her hands to you. Fingertips rest on your chest, and then palms. Hands spread over your heartbeat. Mary tilts her head and grins at you a little, eyes bright.
"Win," she says, arching up to your mouth, and how you want to part your lips and let her in, wrap your arms around her and hold her against you for eternity. "Come on and kiss me."
The illusion disappears in a puff of gunsmoke, and you pull the second clip out of your back pocket, calmly reload the gun.
The Singing Man remains impassive, but his eyes are pits of anger.
"It's the one nickname she always refused to call me," you explain casually. "Not that you were to know that, obviously. But she thought it was dumb."
"I can still return her to you," the Singing Man says. You turn a little, look down at the corpse still thrashing at your feet.
"No, you can't," you say softly.
He laughs then, a wheezing, ancient laughter. "Extraordinary. So. Here we are... you have defeated my servants. You will not be swayed by my offer. Any further illusions on my part would be an insult, no? Then what now? Will you kill an old man in cold blood?"
Somewhere, buried under layers of the dead, a vaguely French accent remains in his voice... or Creole?
More likely. Who knows, if even he cannot remember his own name?
How many has he killed in all that time? How many spirits have been trapped by him, enslaved until their bodies finally fell apart for good?
How many of those experiments Carson spoke of has he performed, and how many of them involved the death of an innocent? The torture of a human being? You'll never know for sure, but in this case, there doesn't seem to be much question of reasonable doubt anyway.
The safety catch on the gun snaps off smoothly, and you raise it, arm thankfully steady.
"Yes," you shrug, like it's the most natural and obvious thing in the world.
Mokroye delo.
Sometimes both your colleagues and your enemies tend to forget that you were a killer long before you became a hunter.
Carson doesn't take long to make it back after that – maybe five minutes. By then, the house is merrily ablaze, and you're hauling the last of the Things through the front door. They're cold and dead and unmoving now, the spirits released with the Singing Man's death and the end of his spell.
He tumbles out of the cab of the truck with eyes gone huge and hands trembling. You limp over to him and casually backhand him across the face even as he reaches for a gun. You've got every intention of killing him, but first you want a few answers.
He stumbles and scrambles in the dirt, twisting to look up at you. "What – you –"
"Me? Me? You coward, you've just murdered a good man, tried to kill me, and helped that monster to do God only knows what, and you want to know about me?"
Is he sobbing?
"You don't understand," he whispers.
"Explain," you grate out, trembling with adrenaline and the need to just kill the bastard.
"My wife!" he bursts out, and you freeze up for the second time tonight. "My wife Vanessa. She's in a coma."
"And – that – was gonna bring her back?" You spit out the word; you're not sure you could ever call a creature like that a man. "Great idea, Carson. I'm sure she woulda appreciated the lack of breath, the rotting flesh, the liquefying eyeballs."
Carson, instead of flinching away from the horror in your voice, rushes you for the second time. You kick his gun out of the way with one foot and weave away from his punch. Carson's furious, too furious, sloppy and uncoordinated. It's a half-hearted fight on your part, and eventually you just drop him with one crisp precise blow.
He doesn't look at you again, crouched miserably in the dirt, still shaking with fury.
"She's alive," he snarls. "She's just... her higher brain functions are gone. She's on machines... the docs say she'll never wake up on her own. I had to try. I had to. And now you've killed her only chance. You've destroyed the last chance my wife had. And you call me the murderer?"
"She doesn't have a chance, Carson," you say roughly. "She's dead already. You should shut the machines off and let her be at rest."
He looks up at you, trembling with his fury, but you just move past him, limping still, your right foot dragging a little in the fallen leaves. Grab his gun on the way past. He's stabbed you in the back once tonight; you won't give him an opportunity to make that a shot.
You thought it was hot out here before the blaze. Now it's stifling, and you're about ready to choke.
"What about yours?" Carson shouts after you. He's kneeling in the dirt, staring after you wild and dishevelled. "What about your precious Mary? What lengths wouldn't you go to to bring her back?"
You stop then, turn back to him one last time. "None," you say. "None at all. As long as I were the only one who had to pay the price."
Far off in the distance, thunderclouds are drawing in. By tomorrow night, the house, and the Singing Man, will be a smouldering pile of ashes, steaming wetly in the rains.
The Impala hasn't been touched. You slide into the drivers seat and wrap your hands around the steering wheel, weight finally off your bad leg. Smell of leather and guns and baby powder and those damn cheese-crisp things that Dean eats. If you sit here long enough, if you try hard enough, you might even smell the faintest scent of Mary.