Chapter 2: I Can See Dead People.

Sam stared at the blood, his thoughts dancing around in a jumble. "I'm not. . .I didn't. . .You can see that?" he asked looking back up at his brother.

Dean met his gaze, slightly surprised by the question. "Of course I can see it. It's blood on a white pillow why wouldn't I be able to see. . ." He stopped, watching as Sam took a tense step backwards staring up at the ceiling, then looking down at the blood and back up again. "It was. . .in my nightmare.. . ." He spoke hesitantly. "I saw. . .it was. . " His voice dropped so quiet Dean had to strain to hear the next word. "Jess. . ."

Dean was dragged back to that day six months ago when he'd once again had to run from a burning building with his younger brother. Only this time he'd caught some of the horror, had seen the vision that had so clearly haunted his father for all these years. Sam's girlfriend Jessica pinned to the ceiling, bleeding burning, just like his mother, and in all his imaginings it hadn't been as bad as the reality. Now he knew what he'd seen on those occasions when he'd looked into his father's eyes and seen the anguish, and knew he was remembering.

He'd had his own share of nightmares since that day. His mind replacing what he saw of Jessica with what he remembered of his mother, but as ever he'd subsumed his own horror and grief beneath his brothers, Sam's was more immediate, more recent, more important. Sam had lost someone he loved and no one should have to go through that. Dean had barely dragged him out alive, and sometimes when he looked into his eyes he seemed to still be trapped in that moment. Again like father like son, and Dean knew only too well what that kind of grief could do to a man. He'd watched his father's pain for years and repressed his own, and now he watched his brother's.

Dean looked up to the ceiling. He knew that there was nothing there but he still had to look.

"You're sure you can see that?" Sam asked, as Dean looked down at the pillow again.

Dean nodded moving forwards, reaching out tentatively to touch the red stain, staring fascinated as he brought his fingers back rubbing it between them. "Feels like blood," he stated flatly. He brought his fingers up to his nose. "Smells like it too."

"Dude, if you taste that I swear I'll barf" Sam said, wincing slightly, "and I've got nothing left to bring up."

Dean looked up at him and gave a half smile, the tension that somehow thickened the air around them eased slightly, as Sam began to slip back into the safety of their banter. It had allowed them to function in situations that would have your average teenager or twenty something screaming and running away. Whatever the horror movies would have you believe, most people weren't brave enough, or stupid enough to walk into genuinely haunted houses, or face down real zombies and demons, but Sam and Dean Winchester did, regularly, even though they knew what these things could really do, and if they weren't going to scream or run then they had to replace that with something, especially when they were genuinely scared, like now, freaked in fact.

"No, but if you get your junior CSI kit out you can find out what this is," Dean said gesturing to the red smear on his fingers, "while I check for EMF."

That was the other thing that kept them both going, action, doing stuff. As long as they were working, somehow the horror was easier to deal with. Sam nodded and grabbed the small pack of chemicals they kept. Dean went to the bathroom to clean up before, retrieving his homemade EMF detector. It looked like a high school science fair project, gone wrong, but it did the job and Dean was never one to go for style over function.

"Wow," Dean said as all the bells and whistles went off on the detector. "The readings are off the scale and they seem to be centred on. . . ." He moved the detector around, tracing a wide arc around the room. He frowned.

Sam moved forward, walking around the bed to get to his brother. "What is it? Let me see."

Dean moved the scanner round again just to be sure, but now that his brother was moving there could be no mistaking the reading. He looked up, shoving the antenna of the homemade device together as he turned it off. "So what did you find out? Is it blood? Is it human?"

The distraction worked briefly as Sam's attention was drawn away from the device in Dean's hands. He met his brother's gaze. "Yes and yes," he answered.

"And you're sure you haven't got any cuts on you?" Dean asked. "Maybe I should check." He tossed the scanner on to the bed beside him and brushed Sam's hair back to reveal his hairline. Slightly relieved as his hand touched solid warm flesh, not that that was a true indication, there were creatures that could fool your senses, but. . .no, this was Sam. There was some other explanation for. . .

Sam knocked his brother's hands away. "I told you no, I'm fine, no cuts. I already checked in the mirror. Now what did the scanner show." His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What aren't you telling me?"

Dean sighed. Picking up the scanner, he dropped heavily onto the bed, bouncing slightly on the cheap springs. He fiddled with it between his fingers for a few seconds before answering. "The EMF readings are centred on you." He met his brother's gaze. "Whatever we're dealing with, whatever happened in this room, it's centred on you."

Sam was slightly surprised that he wasn't surprised by the revelation. Somehow he'd known, known that the nightmare was more than just a nightmare, known that something was happening and that it now involved him. He nodded sagely. "Breakfast?" he asked.

Dean felt sick. Something was happening and Sam was right in the middle of it. It was too late to run away, too late to take the easy route. They had to solve this or Sam would. . .The last thing he felt like doing was casually strolling into a diner and ordering eggs over easy. They needed to work, needed to re-interview friends and relatives, check for local legends, do research to find something that would fit the profile. They needed to. . ."Breakfast," he agreed.

SUPERNATURALSUPERNATURAL

Despite the earlier feelings of sickness Dean tucked into his breakfast with gusto, shovelling the eggs and sweet bacon down almost without touching the sides. The first mouthful had been enough to convince him that if he could just cram enough in then maybe he could fill the gaping hole where his intestines used to be. Far from making him feel worse, the food was having a calming effect on him. Maybe this was what comfort eating was all about. Good job he had a healthy metabolism and a job that meant running around a lot, otherwise he was darn sure he could get used to this, and he didn't really relish the thought of ending up stuck in an armchair the size of a small house.

Sam by contrast was picking at his food, taking the odd tentative bite and then pushing the rest around his plate with the fork, like a kid trying to convince his parents that he had actually eaten something so that maybe he could get dessert. Not that Sam had ever had any parents to convince, Dean had usually fed him, and Dean was a pushover.

"You gonna eat that bacon?" Dean asked eyeing it hungrily. He was slightly worried that his brother wasn't eating but if Sam didn't want the food, letting it go to waste wouldn't change anything, and he still had a big hole to fill.

Sam pushed his plate over. "Help yourself," he stated, pulling his 'God you're a pig' grimace before picking up his coffee and taking a sip. "So what's our next step?"

"I think," Dean said around a mouthful of bacon, "that we should try to talk to Matt's friends. See if they noticed anything unusual."

Matt was the first victim, and since his death had happened almost two months previously, they had so far been concentrating on Simon, who had died just four days ago. It had taken them a day to get here then they'd gone straight to the crime scene. They'd spent the next couple of days checking the internet and the archives of the local papers and attempting to talk to Simon's friends and family, but they had nothing but dead ends to show for it. Simon had become a virtual recluse since his fiancées death in a house fire just five months earlier. No one had seen or heard from him in the days leading up to his death, so talking to them hadn't been much help, and there didn't seem to be anything unusual about the way she'd died, at least not their kind of unusual. They had managed to get a look at photographs of the fire, a simple electrical fault, traced to a faulty heater. They had nothing, so it was time to see if they would have more luck with Matt's friends.

Sam nodded and took another sip from his coffee. He wasn't sure what made him turn his head to look through the slightly grimy window, and that was when he saw her, standing just twenty feet away in the parking lot, her hair blown by the morning wind so that she had to raise her hand to push the strands back from her face. He caught the moment that she saw him, recognised him. Her face lit up and she smiled at him. Jessica smiled at him in that way that made his insides skip.

TO BE CONTINUED. . .