Blue (even behind his closed eyes, he saw blue) and wet...for a moment, Sam thought he was near or in water. Not water like the lake water he'd had to swim through on the last job. That had been murky and grayish. This was luminous and...
Drip...thick?...drip...and the smell of...
Blood...
Sam opened his eyes...and saw Jess on the ceiling. But this time, her face wasn't dead. It was barely alive. And it wasn't frozen in horror, but accusation. And Jess, who was never meant to know who her boyfriend really was, spoke accusingly, "Why, Sam? Why, Sam?"
Sam screamed...as he always did...and Jess burst into an ocean of flames. Just as before, Sam couldn't prevent or stop it...
"Sam! Wake up!"
Sam does...confused though. His nightmares, even a few weeks before Jess' death, were so vivid. Now awake and finding himself slouching in the Impala's shotgun, Sam sat up and looked around. Dean was next to him, and Jane was poking her head between the front seats - both were deeply worried about Sam. "I take it I was having a nightmare," Sam said finally.
"Yeah, another one," Dean confirmed. He understood the nightmares right after Jessica's death. Hell, he'd had his own after his mother's, but those decreased in time. Sam's seemed to occur every time he slept...if he even slept...and seemed to be growing in intensity.
"Hey, at least I got some sleep," said Sam, trying to look on the bright side.
Jane snorted, "I wouldn't count the last fifteen minutes. And you were tossing and turning before that."
"It's creepy; you watching me sleep," Sam replied.
"No," Jane argued, "what's creepy is that I'm considering taking drastic measures if you keep it up." She knew Sam couldn't help it, but - three weeks of this - they were running out of options.
Dean wouldn't put it past Jane to drug his brother, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. "You know, Sam, sooner or later, we're really gonna have to talk about this."
"Are we here?" said Sam, changing the subject. Jane wanted to drug him and Dean wanted to talk? The world was coming to an end.
"Yup," Dean answered Sam. "Welcome to Toledo, Ohio."
The hunters were parked in front of a large, white hospital building - about to examine the corpse of Steven Shoemaker, who'd died suddenly. Aside from a few odd details - bleeding eyeballs had caught Dean's attention - there wasn't much to go on. But after not finding John Winchester in Blackwater Ridge, Colorado (and finding a Wendigo instead), and after investigating a series of deaths occurring within two families in Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin (which were committed by a dead boy getting revenge for his accidental drowning), it was the best they had to go on. Sam, who wanted to find his dad in order to find the thing that killed Jess, thought all these hunts were a waste of time. But Dean's attitude that Dad wanted them to "pick up where he left off...saving people, hunting things - the family business" - had made it clear that Sam wasn't going to get what he wanted.
Picking up the newspaper with Shoemaker's obituary on it, Sam asked, "So what do you think really happened to this guy."
"That's what we're gonna find out," Dean said. "Let's go."
