Beneath my feet

Chapter 2

Sam blinked, in denial. That wasn't supposed to happen.

'Dean?' he called softly. His mind raced with possibilities: Dean was hiding. Dean had been turned invisible. The elevator was some kind of portal to another realm. Dean had been abducted by aliens. However, reading beyond the syllabus had introduced him to Ockham's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the best.

Still uncertain, he crept towards the door, and stuck his head into the metal compartment, keeping his feet firmly on the more reliable ground of the hallway.

As he glanced around, the elevator dissolved around him, and he found himself leaning out into an empty shaft. The change was sudden and disconcerting, and he swayed, dizzily, over the void, clinging white-fingered to the door frame to keep from falling.

He blinked hard, again, to clear his vision and, hopefully, make some sense of what had happened. Twisting his head round, still holding onto the doorframe, Sam looked up the shaft and realised that the elevator was several floors above him: he could see its heavy metal hull looming over his head. Its weight and solidity were frightening – standing there with his head stretched out into the shaft, he was inconveniently reminded of a horror film in which a character was decapitated by a speeding elevator, and retracted his head a little.

In a few moments, his head stopped spinning enough to think. The room he had seen had been an illusion, a trick of light – the room Dean had stepped into. His heart tensed, and he held his breath, fearful, as he looked down.

Dean was lying on the unforgiving floor, sprawled out and unmoving. Sam was again overwhelmed with giddiness, and he gripped the door frame so tight it made his fingers ache as he waited for everything to stop spinning. 'Dean?' he called again, with a strangled note in his voice.

Dean shifted, very slightly, but Sam was convinced he hadn't imagined it. 'I'm coming!' he said. He threw a glance over his shoulder, wondering whether it would be better to use the stairs, but dismissed the idea – too slow. There was a ladder in the elevator shaft; it would do.

He took another glance upwards as he stepped out onto the ladder, and noticed a slight tremble in the elevator above him – it had jerked downwards, he was sure. He was filled with a compulsion to leap out the still open metal door and escape before he was crushed, but instead clung on to the ladder as though it were his life source.

Taking a step down, he looked up again warily at the elevator. It had moved, he was sure, it was closer now.

Shaking violently, he sped up, feeling clumsily for the rungs with his feet and shooting up nervous glances at the advancing hull. He was breathing fast and shallow, muttering to himself.

As he looked up again at the weight hovering over his head, his feet tangled around a rung of the ladder and missed it entirely, while his hands panicked and sprang back from the metal supports as though it had burned them. He tumbled back in confusion and terror, landing heavily a couple of metres below, on his coccyx. He swore, using a word his father didn't know he knew.

He gasped, half in relief for having found the ground without being crushed, half in shock at the harsh impact. He rolled over hurriedly, scrambling across the floor, on his hands and knees in the dust, to Dean's side. Dean twitched, this time, definitely.

'Dean?' he asked, yet again, this time with tenderness and concern. Dean shifted, tried to push himself up on an elbow, and moaned, collapsing back onto the floor.

'I'm… alright. Fell on my elbow… hurts… like a bitch…'

'You're lucky you didn't fall on your head,' Sam replied, sympathy bypassed, because he was blinded by relief. He reached a hand out to his brother's shoulder, and helped him roll over, cradling the shattered arm against his stomach. 'Is it just the arm?' he added.

Dean half grinned, but the smile was muted by pain. 'Always the pragmatist, Sammy…'

Sam was irritated, because he had thought there weren't any more words that Dean knew the meaning of and he didn't, but, for once, he let it slide. 'Anything else, apart from the arm?'

'Bruised and battered, but I don't think anything's broken. 'Cept the arm.'

Sam looked critically at the offending arm. The elbow was white and veined, grazed and bleeding very slightly. It seemed swollen, or somehow out of shape, and the forearm was limp and boneless against Dean's stomach. He was white, and he seemed tensed, teeth gritted against the burning in the joint.

He sat in silence for a while, assessing his brother's condition, which he couldn't help feeling was miraculously good for someone who had just fallen ten feet onto concrete. At least it was only one floor down… It took him several minutes to move his focus from Dean himself to the area immediately surrounding him, but when he noticed, he started.

'Dean, you're lying in a chalk outline,' he exclaimed.

'What?' Dean struggled to sit up, and with Sam's aid, wriggled away from the spot.

'It must be where that woman fell… but you were in it…. It could have been drawn round you…'

Dean nodded breathlessly. 'Weird,' he agreed.

'This shaft must be haunted… the spirit must have made that imaginary elevator, and that woman was fooled by it, and then you…'

He cut off abruptly at a creaking noise above him. Somehow, in the relief of finding Dean relatively well off, and of having his feet back on the floor, he had forgotten that he was still sitting below a great weight which could conceivably thrust downwards and crush him at any moment.

'We need to move…' he muttered agitatedly, taking full stock of his surroundings for the first time. The outer door of the elevator was tightly shut, enclosing the shaft like a small, square room with an exceptionally high ceiling. Like a tube, whose plunger was waiting to crash down. And the Winchester were trapped in its line of fire.

Dean glanced up, following Sam's gaze, and swore under his breath. 'I didn't think of that,' he admitted. 'Can you get those doors open?'

Sam twitched his lips doubtfully, scrambling to his feet and jamming his fingers against the crack between the metal sliding doors. It was airtight, and his frantic clawing found no purchase on the smooth surface. He turned hopeless eyes to his brother as a violent jerk several storeys above them rained dust down onto their heads.

'Anything…' Dean paused, screwing his eyes up for a second as a slight movement set the shattered fragments of his elbow grinding against each other in his arm. 'Anything,' he continued huskily, 'that you could use to winch them open?'

'Like what, Dean? The handy pocket sized crow bar I carry at all times?' Sam demanded, impatient with fear as a metallic clunk echoed off the narrow walls.

'Improvise,' Dean replied, shooting hurried looks around the small space for anything they could use. His eye stopped roaming suddenly. 'Pipes,' he choked, indicating a length of copper which seemed to be hanging loose at one end, though the other was fixed to the concrete wall.

'Pipes,' Sam echoed nervously. He spun round in search of them. When they appeared, he stumbled forwards shaking violently, and reached out urgent hands to yank it away from the screws securing the pipe to the wall. 'It's fixed!' he yelped, shooting another glance up. The elevator was retracting now, upwards and away; it looked for all the world like a hammer being drawn back ready to strike.

Dean crawled towards him, one handed, and knelt. 'Move back,' he ordered, snatching a revolver out the back of his jeans. The shots were painfully loud, and left echoes ringing up and down the shaft: one shot, two, three, one for each screw, until the pipe could be easily pulled away from the wall.

Sam grabbed the length of copper and jammed one end into the door, pushing against it. 'I should have known,' he panted, 'that whenever you say "improvise", you mean, "use a gun".'

Dean opened his mouth to answer, but stopped short, as a resounding clunk, far above them, seized his attention. Slowly, with eyes so wide he could feel the tension in the tendons around them, he tilted his head back to look up. The elevator was hovering. It was on the top floor, immobile, glaring down at its captive prey. Like a bird, waiting to dive.

It was further away from them than it had been the whole time they had spent in the elevator shaft, and not moving, but something about its character of sitting up there was ominous and threatening. 'Sam…' Dean said quietly, with faint, barely there traces of uncertainty, even fear, in his voice.

Sam looked up, and he felt it, too. For a second, he froze, and the stillness was palpable. Dean, unmoving on the floor, Sam, statue-like by the closed door, both looking up, eyes fixed on the stationary mass on the distant ceiling. The air solidified for a stretched instant in which nobody moved.

The first to move, unfortunately, was the elevator. With another loud clunk, it shifted into motion. Downwards. Fast. The distant dark square which was its underside grew, faster and faster, over their heads, filling more and more space, closing the area they occupied and making it more and more like a prison cell. On death row. Because as the hull sped downwards, it showed no sign of decelerating, and its velocity could almost suggest that someone had cut the wire from which it was suspended.

Closer, and closer, heavy, hard death. Unforgiving and unstoppable. Rushing down with the sound of a car passing on the highway, or of blood, pumping desperate and futile in their ears.

Sam sprang into motion, jamming the pipe's end harder into the crack between the doors and throwing himself against the other end of the bar. Dean lurched to his feet and added his weight. Both felt something give. A little, not enough. They kept pushing, with the roaring descent of the elevator increasing in their ears.

It was ten floors above their heads, and still coming. Growling with effort through clenched teeth, Sam felt another couple of inches open up. He could see through the gap between the doors, dark space. He screwed up his eyes and leaned on it harder, hearing Dean cry out behind him in unexplained agony. He didn't turn to see what had caused it, but kept on at the bar.

Eight floors up, and not slowing. The gap opened further, and the bar clattered out of its hold. Sam wedged his shoulder between the doors and pushed them apart with hands and feet.

Five floors. Another couple of inches and they could get through. Come on…

The door seemed to have jammed. Sam could feel it digging ruts in his limbs as he forced them apart with every ounce of power in his body. Half an inch… so close.

Three floors above. The roaring of friction as the elevator fell at unnatural speed was too loud for Sam to hear whatever it was Dean was shouting in his ear.

Two floors.

Not enough, push harder…

One.

The black hull of the elevator shuttle filled his vision, and he could feel the weight of the compressed air it pushed before it, pressing down onto him as a preview for the coming strike. In the dark, he didn't see his life flash before his eyes.

Maybe disturbed by the vibration in the walls, the doors gave up another three inches to Sam's pressure. He collapsed outwards, pulling Dean with a hand clutched iron-like around his upper arm. Both Winchesters fell heavily onto the concrete floor, and were showered with the dust which burst out as the elevator hit basement, with a crash which shook the foundations of the building.

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I was told off for blackmail, so this time I'll ask nicely. Review, please!