Disclaimer: It pains me every time I have to write this, but I do not own Supernatural.
Simon Screamed
Chapter 2
Abby's knuckles were white on the steering wheel as she followed her brothers to Guthrie. She had been trying to stay calm and collected in the Roadhouse, but now that she was alone, her nervousness was starting to get the better of her. It was not just being back on the hunt that bothered her; she could deal with that. It was what, or rather who, they were hunting.
Andrew Gallagher. He was only Sam's age, a normal kid except for the fact that his mother had died the same way as Mary Winchester. Sam had insisted that they were not hunting him, just trying to find him for more information, but Abby had been unnerved by the look in his eyes. He had changed; of that she was certain. She just did not know what he was changing into. And that was what scared her.
ooooooooooooooooo
The first few steps of the hunt were simple; easy and familiar. The Winchesters arrived in town late, caught a few hours of sleep in a motel that was just as gross as Abby remembered, then went to talk to Andrew Gallagher's last employer. Before they left the motel however, Dean pulled his twin aside.
"Just, uh…keep an eye on Sammy for this one, okay?" he said quietly.
"Of course," Abby replied. Dean was not the only one who worried about their little brother.
"No, I mean really keep an eye on him."
Abby stared at her twin. Something was haunting him, and she suspected that it had been since their father's death.
"Is there anything in particular that I should be looking for?" She wished that Dean were not allergic to straight answers and sharing his burdens.
"He's been doing his emo routine again," said Dean, apparently trying to make light of his genuine concern. "He's worried about this demon, you know? I just don't want him getting hurt because he's being reckless."
Abby could tell that Dean was not telling her everything, but she decided not to press him.
"Alright," she agreed, trying to ease some of the dread in her twin's eyes.
ooooooooooooooooo
Gallagher's boss turned out to be a sweet girl named Tracy, who ran a small, but tasteful coffee shop. They fed her one of their standard stories; this time claiming to be lawyers trying to give Gallagher inheritance money from his fictitious dead aunt. Abby was not sure that the young woman bought their lie, but she told them where they might be able to find Andy anyway. She directed them towards Orchard Street, and a van with a barbarian queen painted on the side. The boys got up to leave, but Abby stayed seated; something about Tracy's expression making her believe that there was more information to be had from her.
"Go on," she said to her brothers, who were waiting for her. "I'll catch up with you."
The boys just shrugged and left. Abby turned back to Tracy with a friendly smile.
"So Andy…" she began slowly.
"What about him?" asked Tracy cautiously.
"Well, what's he like? I mean, you must have gotten to know him pretty well while he worked here, and you said the two of you were friends…"
"Yeah, but why do you ask? I mean, the money from his aunt goes to him regardless of the type of person he is, doesn't it?" Tracy looked hard at Abby for a moment. "You're not really a lawyer are you?"
Abby smiled apologetically.
"Who are you?" asked Tracy, upset. "What do you want with Andy?"
"Easy, Tracy, it's okay. We're not going to hurt him. It's just…" She looked at the girl, trying to decide how much to tell her. If she had been as close to Andy as Abby suspected, she could be a valuable resource. But if she panicked…
"We think that Andy might be special." She decided to go with as much of the truth as possible.
"Special how?" Tracy's tone was extremely distrustful.
"Look, you said earlier that you don't see much of him anymore. He's started acting differently right? This past year, he hasn't been himself; maybe he's been able to do things that he couldn't before. For example, getting away with a huge mountain of debt."
"I guess it's a little unusual, but Andy's not a bad guy; he just isn't!"
"I believe you," said Abby placatingly. She wanted to believe the best of the young man she had never met, despite Sam's suspicions. "I just want to know more about him. You see, I think that he might be in some kind of trouble here, and I'm trying to help him."
Because if Andy truly was innocent, then he was like Sam, caught up in the yellow-eyed demon's web. Abby would do anything that she could to help him, if he really needed it. Tracy must have believed her sincerity, because her face relaxed slightly, and she opened her mouth to speak.
"I don't think that would be the best idea." Abby jumped in response to the voice in her ear that had not come from the young woman standing before her. She turned to see Webber, the man who had praised Andy earlier in their conversation. She had forgotten about him after Tracy dismissed him to go clear tables. But apparently he had been listening.
"Don't worry," Abby began. If she had to win over his trust too, then so be it. "I'm just-"
"Stop talking," Webber hissed quietly.
The rest of Abby's sentence stuck in her throat and she choked. She stared up at the young man that she had not even considered as a threat. But it made sense; if Andy was as innocent as Tracy believed, then there had to be someone else in town who was not, because someone had to instigate the events of Sam's vision. Abby started to rise; ready to fight, but then felt Webber's icy voice in her mind.
Don't move.
Abby froze. It wasn't like mind control, not really. It was more like body control. She was perfectly lucid; she just had no power over a single muscle. She sat there powerlessly as Webber turned to Tracy, who was watching them with suspicious curiosity.
"It's alright," he said calmly, and Abby could hear the extra layer of control in his voice. "Everything is going to be alright. You're going to go back to work, and you're going to forget that this woman stayed behind to talk to you. You're going to remember that she left with the other two, aren't you Tracy?"
The young woman's eyes went blank. She nodded slowly, then went back into the kitchen without a word. Webber leaned down to whisper in Abby's ear.
"As for you; you're going to leave. You're going to forget about me, and you're going to forget about Andy. You're going to go back to your friends, and you're going to tell them that everything is fine, and that they can stop looking. Can you do that for me?"
Abby nodded, but she was having a hard time remembering why she should be nodding. She looked around in confusion, wondering what she was still doing in the coffee shop. She had to go find Sam and Dean; had to tell them that nothing was wrong, and that they could stop looking for Andy. But how did she know that? It did not matter. She was about to get up to leave when she was stopped by a hand on her arm.
"Oh, and you're going to give me your phone number, in case I need to talk to you again," said the pale boy from earlier with a smile that gave Abby the creeps.
She normally did not give out her phone number to just anyone, but she found herself writing it down for this man. She exited the shop with a vague feeling of unease, but a stronger impulse to find her brothers. She just knew that she had to tell them that they could stop looking for Andrew Gallagher.
Abby drove towards the address for Andy that Tracy had given to her brothers, still trying to fight the sensation of wrongness that was eating at her. She was shaken out of her thoughts by the sight of Dean's beloved impala being driven by some scrawny guy in a robe who was most definitely not Dean. Without thinking, Abby swerved her truck into the opposite lane, blocking the young man's path. She was out of her car with her gun drawn before the kid had even stopped fully.
"Who the hell are you?!" she shouted, her gun aimed at the boy's head.
He threw his hands into the air after opening the door and practically falling out of it, looking like he was about to pee his pants.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa; I'm sorry," he shouted. "Just put the gun down."
Abby found herself lowering her weapon without making the conscious decision to do so. But the young man looked harmless enough. Too bad he picked the wrong car to steal for a joyride. She stuck her gun back into her waistband and approached the kid menacingly until they were nose to nose.
"What, may I ask," she said with exaggerated calm, "Are you doing with my brother's car?"
"Oh, this is your brother's" he said with a nervous laugh. "Look, I wasn't going to keep it; I just wanted to take it for a ride."
"How did you even get it?" Abby did not believe that this guy was a threat, but there were no signs that the impala was broken into, and she was worried about what could have happened to Dean that made him leave his car unprotected.
"I just asked him if I could borrow it."
"Right. The man barely lets me drive this thing; there's no way in hell that he would just hand over the wheel to some random stranger."
Said random stranger looked at Abby intently.
"It's not a problem," he said, appearing to have finally calmed down from his near car accident and shooting. "Your brother let me borrow his car, and you don't mind. Now you're going to let me go."
"Right," said Abby, stepping back and letting him get back into the car. She watched as he carefully swerved around the truck that she had parked haphazardly in the middle of the street. She shook her head, the same feeling of wrongness as before coming back to plague her. She was trying to decide whether or not to pursue the impala when she heard the whine of sirens close by. She jogged back to her truck and drove towards the commotion.
Abby spotted her brothers as soon as she arrived at the grisly scene. Dean was pulling Sam towards the curb, away from the mangled remains of a body in the middle of the street. She could see a bus stopped further down the road, a large splash of blood painted across the front. The place was swarming with police officers, medics, and even a fire truck. The piercing whine of an alarm from one of the stores blared. Abby ran up to her brothers.
"What happened? Sammy, are you alright?"
She had just noticed how pale her little brother was. She could also tell that he was trembling, and his eyes looked haunted. He started to sway, and Abby and Dean both grabbed his elbows and lowered him gently to sit on the curb. The young doctor felt Sam's wrist for his pulse, which was steady enough to ease her concern. He was in mild shock, but nothing too severe. She got up and swiped one of the scratchy shock blankets from the back of an ambulance and wrapped it around her little brother's shoulders, while Dean rubbed his back soothingly. The fact that Sam did not even try to shrug them off was what worried Abby most of all.
"I kept him out of the gun store," Sam said finally, his voice a broken whisper. "I thought he was okay. I thought he was past it, at least…I should've stayed with him."
The body in the street must have been the doctor from Sam's vision. But at least it sounded like he had managed to save the man in the store.
"You couldn't have known, Sammy," said Dean, sharing a concerned glance with his sister.
"Dean's right, Sam," she added. "You did what you thought was best. And you saved the other guy."
Recognizing that their words were having no effect on Sam, and giving up for the moment, Abby turned to Dean.
"Uh, I'm pretty sure that Andy stole your car," she said to him. It only made sense that Andy was the boy that she had talked to, because she was growing certain that they were dealing with mind control.
"Yeah, he asked me for it, and I just-," Dean began. "Wait, how did you know that?"
"Um, I sort of almost shot him," Abby admitted. "I saw him driving your car, and I thought that he might have hurt you to get it, so I just…reacted. But then he told me to leave, and I just did. I didn't even think about it until after he was gone."
"That's what happened with the car," said Dean. "I was tailing him, but then he stopped and asked if he could have my baby, and I gave it to him."
"Wow," said Abby, knowing how attached her twin was to his car. "It has to be mind control then. Nothing else could make you give up the impala like that."
"Yeah," said Dean.
They were both silent for a moment.
"This case is going to be a bitch," said Abby eventually.
"No kidding," replied Dean, standing up from the curb. "But first thing's first; we need to find my baby."
"No, wait," said Abby suddenly.
"What?"
"We can stop looking for Andy."
"What?"
"I don't know," said Abby, truly not understanding where the words were coming from, but recognizing their importance. "I just had to tell you that we can stop looking for him."
Dean stared at her for a moment, then shook his head.
"Okay, well since you have no valid reason why I should listen to you, and you haven't been back on the hunt long enough for me to trust your instincts, we're just going to look for him anyway. Alright?"
Abby shrugged; content now that she had told him that they could stop looking. She and Dean helped Sam up and walked towards the truck. Just then, Abby's phone began to ring.
"Hello?" she asked, not recognizing the number.
"Hi Abby," said the eerily familiar voice of Webber. "I want you to do something for me, okay?"
"Okay," Abby replied, her voice calm, but a choir of alarm bells blaring in her head and her body frozen.
"I want you to kill your two partners."
A/N Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you think, and if I should continue writing stories with Abby. I am happy to keep writing them if you guys still like them, but I won't bother if no one cares anymore. Don't worry; I will finish this particular story regardless, I just wanted your opinion, because it seems like no one is reading these anymore. The next chapter should be up in a few days.
