Scream and Shout
A car door slammed harshly in the emptiness of the night, distracting Jo from the papers spread out on the worn-down pool table before her.
She looked over at the wooden door of the Roadhouse, the incessant clicking of the ceiling fan becoming almost unnerving in the sudden silence. Standing up from the rusty metal chair, Jo made her way through the dimly-lit saloon, briefly stopping at the counter of the bar to grab a shotgun.
She continued towards the door and stopped, muscles tensed. There was no way in hell she was going to be caught off-guard in her own home.
Reaching at the golden lock of the door, Jo's petite fingers twisted the latch slowly and smoothly.
She jumped back as she flung the door open, aiming the thick barrel at the space thereof.
She halted, her eyes widening as she saw the familiar shoulder length, dark brown hair and broad shoulders. She lowered the gun, placing it on the counter to her side.
Sam looked a complete mess. Dark circles framed dead hazel eyes whilst the rough gravel of an unshaven jaw replaced his typically gentle appearance.
Jo covered her nose, eyes watering, as she noticed the reek of alcohol coming from Sam's body. There was a solemn beer gripped tightly in his right hand, and his shirt soaked with what was either drink or sweat.
"Hey Jo," Sam whispered dejectedly, smiling sadly at his old friend.
"Sam…" Jo murmured, eyebrows furrowed.
"Wh-what happened?"
She glanced behind the 20-year-old, hoping to see the familiar cocky smile and brilliant green eyes standing behind him.
Her stomach dropped as a sudden realization hit her.
"Sam…" Jo whispered, walking up to him, "where's Dean?" She tried her best to keep the panic from her voice, but, judging from the look on Sam's face, it hadn't worked very well.
"Dean-" Sam could say no more. He broke down finally, falling to his knees and slamming his hands down, gracelessly smashing the beer bottle into the wooden boards of the floor.
"Sam!" Jo cried, kneeling down to pick up the shattered pieces of glass and toss them before examining his hand. Small glass shards protruded from the skin thereof.
A soft sigh escaped her lips, and she began picking the unwanted debris out of his hand, using the bar towel on her shoulder to wrap it up momentarily and stop the bleeding. She kicked the remainder of the glass away before sitting down next to him and putting and arm on his shoulder, unsure of what to say. Something had obviously happened to Dean, but Sam didn't seem able to talk about it, and she wasn't going to push him. Besides, she had lost someone close to her before. There really wasn't anything that could be said.
Instead of dwelling on it any longer, she pulled the bar towel back off of his bloodied hand and examined it again, attempting to gauge whether the wound would need stitches or not.
"He sold his soul, you know," Sam muttered unexpectedly, not looking up, "I'd died, and Dean sold his soul to a demon to bring me back. They gave him one year… and…"
And that year was now up Jo thought, completing Sam's sentence on her own.
"This is going to need some stitches," Jo commented numbly, standing up to stumble towards the back of the bar to where they kept the first aid supplies.
Dean wouldn't sell his soul to a demon…
She pulled out a needle and thread as well as some tweezers from a small glass cabinet, shutting the door softly before heading towards the bar to grab a bottle of whiskey
Sam knelt on the ground calmly, holding his back straight and head up as if to pretend the freak-out moments before had never happened. He remained silent as Jo used the tweezers to pull out the remainder of the glass shards from his hand, her fingers deftly tying a knot in the thread and pulling the string through the needle.
I mean, I guess it WAS Sam… Dean couldn't bear to let his brother die...
Sam winced as Jo started stitching up his hand and she froze, looking to him for permission to continue.
"Yeah, just keep going," Sam mumbled groggily, shutting his eyes and exhaling slowly.
Jo finished her work quickly, tying a neat knot before cutting the excess with a pocket-knife from her worn jeans.
A glance at the clock, and a pour later, and Sam's hand was patched up and ready to roll.
Insisting that Sam now needed to get some rest, she took him by the arm and helped him up, dragging him to one of the spare bedrooms as he wobbled about uneasily, stumbling to keep up with Jo in his drunken state.
Jo opened the door of the spare bedroom and helped Sam inside, guiding him to the bed and having him sit down. She helped him take off his shoes and shirts and quietly left, leaving him to get some rest.
She really hoped Sam would feel better tomorrow.
The next morning, Jo woke up early, tying her wavy blonde hair up into a tight ponytail and pulling her favorite leather jacket over her shoulders. She quickly organized her sheets of papers from last night and strode to the spare room, rapping softly against the wooden door.
She knew the exact thing to help Sam feel better.
She noticed the neatly folded shirts lying on the floor just at her feet and picked them up. She had washed the filthy items of clothing the night before and laid them in front of the door for Sam in case he had woken up before her, but she had completely forgotten about them until now.
A groan came from inside the room, and Jo opened the door just a crack, the old wood groaning as she peeked her head in.
"Sam?"
"MMRRRGGG…"
Entering the room completely, Jo stopped at the edge of the bed, kicking her leg up onto the covers in order to nudge the sleeping man.
"Hey, I know you're still a little…" Jo searched for the word, "ill… from last night, but I've got something I think will make you feel better."
Sam rolled around in the bed to face Jo, rubbing his eyes and squinting up at her in confusion.
"I think I found a hunt."
He sat up promptly, groaning and closing his eyes as a massive headache rolled over him.
"A hunt?"
"Yeah," Jo beamed, throwing his shirts at him, "so you'd better get cleaned up. We're hitting the road in an hour."
It didn't take Sam very long to shower and shave, and, considering his condition last night, he looked much better.
The eagerness didn't seem to last very long, though, seeing as when they were only ten minutes into the day-long drive, Jo had to pull the car over to the side of the road to allow Sam to throw up in some sagebrush alongside the highway.
"Still a bit hung-over?" Jo teased, leaning against the sleek black hood of Sam's 1967 Chevy Impala. The day had been fairly pleasant so far, but it was heating up quickly and Jo doubted that would be very good for Sam's condition.
"Oh yeah," he winced, taking a swig from his water bottle and spitting it back out onto the street.
"What's this hunt even about? I just realized that you never even told me."
Jo straightened up and went around to the driver's side of the car, reaching through the window to pull a pile of papers off of the leather seat.
"Ok, so…" she started, shuffling through the papers as she walked back around towards where Sam was, "Hot Springs, South Dakota. A man by the David O'Neill loses his wife to childbirth about three to four years ago. Then, his oldest son, James O'Neill, calls the police, about a week or two ago, telling them about some, and I quote "woman who's skin was so white it was practically transparent," with dark hair and manic black eyes. She had apparently been wailing viciously, following him all around the town, but he had been the only person that ever saw him. A week later, he dies. Heart attack. Police report even says that he has "scratch marks surrounding his ears and his own flesh encrusted in the beds of his fingernails."
She looked at Sam expectantly, hoping something would click in his mind.
"So… The ghost of this guys wife is haunting the family?" Sam asked hesitantly, glancing at Jo as he realized that she was waiting for a reply.
"Well, think about it for a moment. It doesn't really seem like a regular ghost, does it? So I did some research…" Jo shuffled through the papers in her arms before pulling one out, looking satisfied. She handed the white sheet to him.
"It's a banshee." Jo stated in a matter-of-fact voice, looking sadly down at the picture of the pale woman, "A woman who normally dies during child-birth, she is thought to be the harbinger, or messenger, of death. They are always attached to only the family with which they lived. The strange thing is, though, that banshees usually don't live in America. They refuse to leave Ireland, so I don't understand why this one was in South Dakota…" Jo speculated, staring at the ground, holding the stack of papers to her chest.
A cool wind blew through the empty highway, making the tall grass around them whisper into the distance. Jo looked over at Sam, who just nodded slowly, squeezing his eyes shut.
His headache must've been horrendous.
"So ya ready to go?" Jo skipped around the car, placing the papers on the backseat and climbing into the driver's seat, shoving a pair of dark sunglasses onto her ivory face. She hoped they could get on the road again soon
Sam climbed into the passenger's seat, slamming the door shut before wincing at the noise and the stupidity of his mistake.
At least he doesn't look like he's gonna throw up anymore.
The rest of the day flew by fast, their only stop to eat at a small, abandoned diner alongside the highway .
It was getting to be late -almost midnight- so Jo quickly went inside and rented a room for her and Sam.
They didn't spend much time chatting, seeing as Jo immediately passed out in her bed, exhausted from driving all day. Sam smiled at her sleeping form and climbed into the bed on the other side of the room, glad he had such a great friend.
The next morning was hectic. Sam and Jo woke up at about 10:30 A.M., discussing what they should do first as they both took turns changing in the cramped bathroom of their room.
"Shall we go talk to the coroner first?" Sam suggested, fumbling for the fake FBI badge he constantly carried on him.
"I… Um… Sure? Why? I have the reports right here." Jo gave Sam a questioning look while waving a handful of papers up for him to see.
"Well I figured you would know why…" Sam frowned, coughing as he furrowed his brow, "Um. Well. As you may have figured, coroners don't always… See… everything that's there. They assume that deaths are caused by human forces, so they only look for that sort of evidence…"
Jo briskly nodded her head, finally understanding.
Why hadn't she known that before? She should have. She had gone on a hunt before..
Tugging at her skirt and snatching a badge similar to Sam's from off her night stand, Jo marched to the door, holding it open for Sam.
"After you."
The coroner's office was a breeze, giving Jo some hope for this hunt.
The two found the coroner quickly and asked him a couple of questions about the autopsy report, examining the body as he spoke.
"Yeah, they say he died from a heart attack, but it must have been really massive," The man said, picking at the corpse in order to show them more of the heart area, " I've never seen a heart attack strong enough to burst all of the arteries in the body. I guess it must have been some freak-occurrence-of-nature type thing, though, you know?"
Jo and Sam exchanged looks before thanking the man and heading out the door.
"Seems you were right," Sam observed, an impressed look on his face.
Jo snorted, "Don't look so surprised, Mr. Hunter Boy. My dad was a hunter too, so I would think I'd know how to handle this stuff..."
"Well, yeah, I know…." Sam interjected, rolling his eyes, "It's just that your mom never really seems to want you to hunt."
Jo stared at the steering wheel for a moment, silent as she delayed starting the car.
"Yeah, well…" She snapped her head up, roughly turning the key to ignite the roar of the Impala, "I really don't care what she thinks anymore. I'm my own person, and she just has to learn to deal with that."
They drove in silence for about ten minutes, Jo not wanting to speak anymore, and Sam slightly scared to try. The car rattled slightly as Jo finally pulled up to a curb outside of one of the houses. Closed blinds and the absence of any cars made the whereabouts of the owner quite possibly known to the two.
"It doesn't look like anyone's here," Sam speculated, absent-mindedly breathing on the window and drawing pictures in the fog.
Jo narrowed her eyes.
"Well we're just going to have to find out, then, aren't we?" she snapped, chocolate eyes filled with hard determination.
Without a word, Jo yanked out the key and threw the door open, promptly getting out of the car and striding up to the old oak door. She grasped the tarnished knocker and tapped it against the door thrice, all-the-while not even checking to see if Sam had followed.
An elderly man opened the door, hair grey and thinning. He looked up at Jo expectantly.
"Um. Hello." Jo coughed, suddenly not quite as confident in herself. She wasn't as experienced at doing this. She had let Sam do all the talking at the coroners.
"I.. Um. Are you David O'Neill, sir? I'm agent Samantha Baker, FBI. I'd like to ask you a few questions about your son if that'd be ok?" Jo held up her fake badge for a brief moment, just long enough for the man to realize that she was… probably… the real deal.
"Oh, that's perfectly fine with me…" He looked up behind Sam, a confused look on his face, "and you are?"
"Miss Baker's partner, sir. Agent Scott Geoffreys."
Jo did her best not to jump. She hadn't even heard Sam come up behind her. That boy was freaking sneaky.
"Oh. Oh, right. Ok"
The old man led them into the house, guiding them through a warm entry hall before coming into an old-fashioned living room. He motioned for the two to sit upon a large red sofa, taking a seat himself.
"So, what would you like to know about James?" he asked, pulling the circular wire-framed glasses from his nose and cleaning them with his plaid shirt.
"We've read all the police reports, but we still don't quite understand what happened with James," Sam replied, adopting a very professional appearance which made Jo envious, "we'd just like to hear your side of what happened."
"Yes… Well…" Mr. O'Neill replaced the glasses upon his face, looking from Jo to Sam before continuing, "Let's see… It happened about… two weeks ago? James had come over to visit, and during the middle of the night, he called the police, claiming to have seen a white woman with dark, ratted hair staring at him from outside his window. I tried to calm him down about it, but he was convinced, constantly telling me "she's right there! She's right there! Don't you see her?"
"And?"
"I never saw anyone. He just kept seeing shadows of people.
"Then it got worse."
He explained to them about how James condition got worse over the week, as he would never sleep, never eat. He constantly complained about how noisy everything was in moments of complete silence. And then… he died.
Heart attack, doctors said, but David didn't feel so sure.
"That's all I know," he finished, staring at his weathered hands, "now, if you don't mind, an old man needs his rest."
It was only momentarily, but Jo could swear she saw a hint of fear in his eyes as he looked towards the dark doorway of the kitchen.
Full of sudden curiosity, she looked towards the doorway and froze. Red eyes stared back at her, the pale, translucent face tilting to the side as a flash of revolting yellow teeth showed in an eerie smile.
Jo shot up, grabbing Sam by the wrist.
"Thank you so much for your time," she blurted choppily, turning to leave, "thank you for letting us speak with you."
As they heard the small click of the door close, Sam turned to give Jo an annoyed look.
"What was that all about?" he snapped, stopping her at the edge of the car.
"Did you see his face, Sam?" Jo blurted, "Did you see the way he looked at the kitchen? He could SEE her!"
Jo casually left out the part in which she had seen the woman as well, denying the fact that she had even seen anything.
"Ok then, what do you think we should do? Go back to the house when he's not there and snoop around for any kind of hints to indicate how long he's been seeing her?"
Jo grinned at him, internally screaming, yet trying to keep her cool.
"That's exactly what we're gonna do."
They waited about two days before they went to the house again, during which time Jo had started to hear the faint cries of a woman, and have nightmares with a lady in white washing Jo's own bloodstained clothes in a river.
She waved the thought away as she drove towards the same old house once more, this time prepared to break in rather than have a friendly little chat.
Sam knocked as loudly as he could, waiting the designated ten minutes before finally kneeling down and pulling out a small lock pick. Jo kept watch while he worked at the lock, beaming at him when the door finally swung open.
"Honey, I'm home."
Jo wandered the halls of the 2nd floor, opening doors on each side of the hallway and checking the rooms for any kind of hint as to how long Mr. O'Neill had been seeing the banshee. She honestly had no clue what kinds of things she was looking for, but she also really didn't care.
As she approached the last room in the hallway, she knew there was something wrong. Her heart started pounding and she could hear the cries again. She could hear faint whispers of a scream coming from the awful… thing just beyond the door.
Jo took a deep breath, knowing that she had to do this. She was a hunter; danger was in the job description.
She gripped the handle and turned it, opening the door. Lying on a blood-stained bed was a recently-departed David O'Neill, white-blue eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. Standing above him was the white woman, who regarded him as though he were some curious insect rather than a dead man.
At the sound of the click, the woman looked up, her eyes boring into Jo's, causing Jo's heart to thud harshly in her chest.
The woman snarled at her, opening her mouth and emitting a gut-wrenching shriek as an invisible force shoved Jo into the room and slammed the door behind her. Jo grasped at her ears, frantically clawing the sides of her head as she looked about frantically, the woman getting ever nearer to her.
Her head started to spin and the world was turning red. A ringing noise filled Jo's mind and she dropped to her knees helplessly, curling up in a ball in an attempt to block out the world.
"Viviella Banshee's are a different kind of creature…" Jo read, tapping a pencil against her temple, "Some, more powerful than others, are able to feel someone's loneliness; their hurt, their dread, and they're able to feed off it, consuming the person, causing imaginary wails to occur within the victims mind.
Jo's eyes flashed about the room frantically, an idea forming in her mind.
The mere image of a Viviella banshee can be enough to drive one insane.
She stood up, grasping her ears tightly as she fought her way towards the nightstand, hoping to get at the hand-mirror lying on the top.
The banshee screamed louder, a fierceness filling her form flashed in front of Jo, cutting her off. She reached out and grabbed Jo's throat, icy hands pulling tighter and tighter until Jo's vision went dark. She scratched at the white woman's hands. Clawing desperately at her last chance of life, it felt like.
Sam smashed through the door and saw Jo struggling against some unknown force, eyes widening as she remained pinned to the wall.
She released the woman's arms long enough to point at the nightstand, urgently motioning towards the mirror there.
Sam picked up on her message quickly, running over and snatching the mirror off of it. He threw it to Jo, who somehow managed to catch it even though she was now practically blind from lack of oxygen.
She held the mirror in front of her face, angling it at the dark Spector.
Immediately the hands around her neck fell, and the woman went quite; her red eyes were wide with fear as she beheld her image in the mirror. Flames leapt around the edge of her skirt, climbing until they finally consumed her, leaving no trace behind.
Jo let out a sigh of relief, coughing as she slid to the floor, her back resting against the wall.
Great job on your first real hunt, Jo. You almost got yourself killed
(Authors Note: Sorry if they're really outta character and for the really rushed ending xP I did this for a school project and it could only be ten pages long, sooooo...)