2xxx
Dean stared out at the ocean, hands gripping the railing firmly. He loved the smell of the salt-water. Once, when he was no more than seven or eight, John had taken him and Sammy to the beach one day and the same smell had made his feel safer than he had since before his mother had died. Even at that young age, he'd already learnt the importance of salt, from the protective salt-circles John placed around the doors and windows of whatever temporary home they were currently living in.
Hearing someone giggle, he turned his head slightly. A young girl was skipping a little way along from him, the skipping rope slapping the ground rhythmically. Unlike the other children he had seen on board, all wearing shorts and t-shirts, she wore a white sundress, her long hair kept back by a ribbon. Seeing his look, she smiled at him, showing a gap in her front teeth.
"Your friend's looking for you," she said, still skipping. "She's really needs you help."
"What?"
"Dean!"
Dean's head shot round to see Sara hurrying towards him. She had a small cut on her check.
"What happened?"
"We have a seriousproblem."
xxx
Dean looked at the shattered remains of the mirror and shook his head. This was so typical.
"What did it say again?" he asked finally.
"Albatross," Sara replied. "And I thought you said the boat was clean."
"It was. Nothing weird, not so much as a blood curdling scream in the night. And besides, this is probably your fault."
"How?"
"I'm still working on that." He rubbed his face. "Well, so much for our holiday."
"We did have a whole, what, twenty four hours to ourselves. No wonder something went wrong."
He shifted uncomfortably. "Well, maybe it's just one of those freak incidents, you know? Weird weather or something."
"Yeah, 'cause that applies so often to our lives," Sara said, sounding amused.
"Fair point. So, what are we dealing with then?"
"Ghost? Poltergeist?" She frowned. "But why now? You said nothing happened on the way to England."
"Beats me. God, we need more information."
"We always need more information. And how are we going to get it in the middle of the Atlantic?"
Dean smiled slowly as realisation dawned. "There's some display, up in the ballroom. This journey, it's special somehow."
"Special enough to get a spook worked up?"
"Anniversaries do bring out the freaky. Come on, let's go see what we can dig up."
"Uh, Dean?"
"What?"
"You're not... You won't try to salt-and-burn the ship, will you?"
"No! Well," he added after a moment's thought. "Not all of it."
xxx
Twenty minutes later, Sara stared at a wall of photos. Each one showed the crew of the Louisiana, the dates going from the first voyage in the '30s to one taken just six months ago. A short distance away, Dean was running his gaze down a passenger list from forty years ago.
"Why do they have all this stuff up anyway?" she asked.
"Ship's last voyage," offered a voice behind her.
An image of the speaker could properly be found in the dictionary, under the heading Stereotypical Grandfather. Sara had never known her grandfather. Oliver Lucian had died when Amelia was just fourteen, five years before Sara was born. This man was the sort of grandfather she'd wished for when she was kid and her gran was annoying her. The sort, she'd decided later after meeting a few real grandfathers, that didn't exist.
"Tell me that isn't a premonition," Dean commented.
The old man grinned. "The company's been taken over. The Louisiana's too old to keep sailing. Not economically viable."
"You sound like you disagree," Sara said.
"I've been on this ship since I was a boy. A man gets attached."
"So it's your last voyage as well?"
He nodded. "I was going to retire soon anyway."
Behind the man's back, Dean raised his eyebrows at Sara.
"You know," Sara started, giving the man a friendly smile. "I once knew a sailor who refused to sail on the 3rd of March because he was convinced that the ghost of an old commander of his was trying to drown him on that day."
"We are a superstitious lot," the man conceded with a chuckle.
"So are there are any good ghost stories about this ship?"
"Ah, miss, I had you down as a nice young lady!"
Dean snorted.
"Nicer than my friend here at any rate," Sara said, mock-serious.
"So I can see. But no, miss, there are no ghosts aboard the Louisiana."
"Nothing?" she asked. "Not a single odd occurrence?"
"All ships are odd in their own way, miss. The Louisiana is no different. One of the new boys, James Pearce, swears he keeps hearing a child, playing on the rear deck."
"There are a load of kids on board," Sara pointed out. She hadn't missed the gleam in Dean's eyes. This was important, although she had no idea why.
The man shook his head. "Not on the rear deck. They're not allowed there, not any longer. It's dangerous." Glancing at the clock, the man frowned. "Sorry, I really must be getting back to work."
When he'd left, Dean made straight for the wall of photos, scanning each one eagerly.
"What?" Sara asked.
"Knew it!" he said triumphantly, tapping one photo. "Look."
She did so, seeing the black and white image of a group of sailors with a young girl in their midst.
"She was on the rear deck when you came to find me," Dean continued. "And she knew you were looking for me."
"This picture was taken forty years ago."
"And she hasn't aged a day."
Sara shook her head in disbelief. "The caption, Dean? The new crewmen and their albatross."
"We have a winner," he said. "Does it say what her real name was?"
"Nope. Not here, at any rate."
"Were you making up that story about the sailor?"
"Oh, no. He did really think that. I did check it out though, just good old fashioned paranoia and stupidity." Sara rubbed her scarred right finger against her lip. "Hey, did that guy mention a James Pearce?"
xxx
Dean was waiting for Sara in her room when she finally made it back.
"So what did you find out?" he asked.
He was sitting in the room's only chair, so Sara perched on the end of her bed.
"The girl's name was Elizabeth Ward, according to James," she replied. "She was eleven. Forty years ago, she got on the Louisiana to go to America, but fell overboard,
drowned. James says he's heard her playing on the rear deck at about midnight, the time they think it happened. But every time he's gone to look, nothing."
"Did they ever recover the body?"
"Nope. Atlantic's kinda big, in case you hadn't noticed."
Dean sighed. "Well, that's just great. We can't salt-and-burn a body that doesn't exist. Oh, exorcism?"
"You don't exorcise a ghost unless it's in someone. You cleanse the site."
"Fine, so cleanse already."
"It's not that simple and you know it," Sara replied.
"Do I?"
"Firstly, me doing anything like this will really piss Mum off, so you have to cover for me. You did it, not me, ok?"
"Yeah, fine," Dean said.
"So then we just need to find some candles and the hotspot, wherever that is." Sara paused and then added, "Oh, and two other people to form the Magnus Tripod."
"Two other people? Is that all?"
"Dean, do you want to find the guys in white coats waiting for you at the end of this voyage?"
"You said it yourself. Sailors are very superstitious. Half of them probably already believe in ghosts."
"Yeah, and half of those probably believe that ghosts are here to give us some cosmic message of peace and harmony!"
"Okay, so you go convert your boyfriend and I'll find us some candles."
"And you can't even add up properly. That would make three of us, not four."
She was right. This was going to take more time that he'd thought. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," she agreed.
xxx
Sara woke up early as always, her body still stuck in the school routine. But as she didn't have a bell ringing to get her up or any lessons to get to, she didn't feel too bad about not springing out of bed the moment she woke up. Rolling over, Sara kept her eyes closed but made a face as the black cord of her silver pendant half-choked her. It was a simple necklace, a silver spiral given to her by Dean for her seventeenth birthday.
In the year since Dean had given her the necklace, she'd barely taken it off. At school, it had been first a reminder that, yes, the whole thing with the cult had happened, and yes, she really was going to be trained as an exorcist at long last. Later on, when Dean had somehow managed to find time to send her letters and photos, to call just to chat to her, Sara's friends had, incorrectly, theorised that the silver spiral was some sort of lover's token. Her half-hearted attempts to explain that the necklace just made her feel better about everything had little effect.
With eyes still closed, Sara reached up to shift the necklace slightly. Her fingers brushed ice-cold flesh; Sara opened her eyes just as the necklace was torn from her neck.
"Jesus Christ!" she yelped.
The spiral hang from its cord in mid-air, with nothing apparently holding it there. But a childish giggle told her exactly what was going on.
She lunged for the necklace, which leapt just out of her reach and floated towards the door. It didn't go through it, however, but just waited there. Waiting for Sara to try again.
Sara bit back a curse and quickly found jeans, shoes and a jumper. She was not going to chase a ghost in her nightclothes, not even for her favourite necklace.
Dean stuck his head around the connecting door just as she finished dressing. "Sara? What that you who yelled?"
"Yep."
"Why?"
She gestured to the floating necklace as she found a hair tie with her other hand.
"Right," she said, firmly tying her long red hair back.
Stepping towards the necklace, Sara kept her eyes on it as it floated closer to the door.
"Hang on, isn't that the necklace I gave you?"
"Yeah, it is," Sara replied absently as the door creaked open and the necklace drifted through.
She followed it, Dean just behind her.
"Why is it floating?"
"Our darling albatross would be my guess," Sara offered. "I don't really care, I just want my necklace back. Preferably now."
Dean slipped in front of her and made a grab for the necklace, which one again was yanked just out of reach before carrying on along the corridor. Sara continued to walk after it, so Dean grabbed her arm.
"Wait, we don't even know if we should be following it," he said.
"I'm getting that necklace back, Dean, one way or another. You're still wearing that thing," she added, giving his amulet a flick when he gave her an exasperated look.
"Protective amulet," he said, pointing to the little brass head. "Trinket," pointing to the floating spiral.
"Alleged protective amulet," Sara retorted. "Favourite trinket."
"If you get me killed, I'm telling," he grumbled, following Sara who was following the necklace.
"Telling who, exactly? St Peter?"
Muttering about smart-aleck exorcists-in-training, and completely ignoring Sara's smirk, Dean made his way down corridors, and later down stairs, after the silver spiral with Sara walking just behind him. The last time she'd insisted on doing that, they had been making their way through an orchard with rotting corpses as decorations to deal with a murderous cult and rescue their parents. Which had, surprisingly, ended quite well, all things considered.
They walked through the ship for about twenty minutes before the necklace darted under a plain wooden door. Dean and Sara traded looks, and shrugs, before Dean tried the handle. The door was locked, but that was no problem for a young Hunter armed with a lock-pick.
"Better than a paper clip," he said at Sara's look.
"At least you've stopped asking me for hair pins," she replied as the lock clicked open.
"Well, after you."
Sara stuck her tongue out at him and pushed the door open, stepping cautiously inside. She felt along the wall for the light switch and flicked it on as Dean stepped in and shut the door.
The necklace dropped softly onto a box in the corner and the door reopened and slammed shut. Sara crossed the room and scooped it up, sighing with relief.
"That's better," she murmured, tying it back around her neck.
"You really like it that much?" Dean asked, shaking his head slightly.
Sara ignored the question, her attention fixed on the box. "Look at this, Dean. The Louisiana, 1951-1958," she read off the box's label.
"The records room," Dean realised. "Hey, Sara. Maybe Elizabeth Ward isn't trying to hurt you." He crouched down next to the box. "Maybe she's trying to show us something."
"She died in about '55," Sara offered. "At least, I think she did."
"Fits with this," Dean said, opening the box. It was filled with folders, each neatly labelled with a year. He pulled out the folder for 1955 and flicked through it. It seemed to contain mostly newspaper cuttings. "Here," he said, showing one to Sara. "Elizabeth Ward, fell overboard in 1955 on the voyage to New York."
"But we already knew that. Why would she show it to us?"
"Hang on," Dean said, scanning the rest of the article. "Listen to this. This tragedy comes only six months after the last death aboard the Louisiana."
"Last death?"
"Fifty-four, fifty-four," he muttered and dug out the next folder. And the next, and the next. "Fifty-four's missing."
"Figures." Sara leant back on her heels. "So I guess the Albatross is just playing games with us?"
"What kind of nickname is that for a kid on a boat anyway? I thought albatrosses were unlucky at sea," Dean said, packing the folders away again.
"Actually an albatross was a ship's good luck until..." Sara trailed off, shaking her head. "Oh, my god, Dean. Until somebody killed it."
Dean pulled the '55 folder out and found the article about the little girl once again. "It says here she came on board with her brother, Thomas Ward. See if you can find him anywhere," he said, gesturing at the other boxes and filing cabinets. "We need to know exactly what happened to her."
"What if someone did kill her? I mean, what can we do about it?"
"Well, if she's hanging around because her killer's still free, then she probably won't try and kill you, so we can just salt the rooms and relax."
"And what if she isn't just an unavenged murder?"
"Then we improvise."
"Oh, God."
"Hey!"
"Sorry, Dean, but last time we had a carefully formulated plan and look how well that went."
"Carefully formulated? I wanted to set fire to the church."
"We did that, remember?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Mum still hasn't forgiven you for that, by the way."
"Huh?"
"Corrupting me. She spent the rest of the summer hiding all the matches. And the salt, come to think of it."
Dean couldn't help it. He snorted, half choking on laughter. "You did burn down a church."
"You started it."
"Good times."
"God, and you object to being called a pyromaniac."
"Pyromaniacs go to meetings."
"Whatever." Sara slid one drawer of files shut and moved onto the next. "Huh. That's odd."
"Please, tell me you have something."
"Thomas Ward, commended in '57. And '58, '59, '61, '64, '65. And the list goes on."
"Commended? For what, letting his kid sister die?"
"Uh... Saving people."
Dean turned around from the boxes he had been searching. "Come again?"
"Stopped another kid falling overboard in '57. And noticed a safeguard was malfunctioning in '58 before it got anyone killed." Sara shook her head in amazement. "All the stuff we would look for in a haunting, only without the blood stains. This is why you didn't find anything on the ship. The ghost has been here the whole time, but he's stopped it hurting anyone."
"When's the last commendation?"
"Six months ago."
"He's probably still on board then. Let's go have a little chat."
"You go ahead. I think I'll go talk to James again, find out what Thomas is really like."
"Hey, be safe."
"You too, pyro."
xxx
A lot of innocent questioning, some charming smiles and a bit of flirting finally pointed Dean towards the right guy. The same old man, it turned out, who had helped him the day before. At any other time, that might have been surprising, but for a Hunter, there was no such thing as coincidence. Just Sod's Law.
Luckily there was no one else around. Dean wasn't really in the mood to tip-toe around anything.
"Heya, Tommy," he said cheerily. "Mind telling me what the hell's going on here?"
"Excuse me?" Thomas replied. "Aren't you the kid from yesterday?"
"Yep. Although slightly better informed this time around." Dean crossed his arms. "Now tell me, what the hell does your kid sister want with Sara?"
Thomas mouth, which had been hanging open in shock, snapped shut in a grim frown. "My sister's been dead for years. What's this about?"
"She was called 'Albatross', right? The same word appeared on Sara's mirror and as you've been covering up your warped sister's ghost for the last forty years, don't even start on the 'that's impossible' bullshit."
"On her mirror?" Suddenly Thomas wasn't pissed, just concerned. "You're sure?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Where is she?"
Growing up with John Winchester had taught Dean when it was important to just answer the damn question and argue about it later. "Went to find some kid, James Pearce. Why?"
Thomas broke into a run, but he was running to something, not away from Dean, so the teenager kept up with the sailor rather than decking him.
"James is on the rear deck," Thomas said, more to himself than to Dean.
"Which is where your sister died, shit!" Dean overtook Thomas.
The freaking hotspot, Sara had just walked off to the freaking hotspot and he already knew the ghost was focusing on her.
This was so not going to end well.
Dean ran faster.
xxx
Sara leant her arms on the railing, mimicking James posture. "You're kidding."
"Nuh-uh. I never lie to a pretty lady."
She dug her elbow into his side. "What did I say about charmers?"
"That wasn't charm," James said. "That was honesty."
"Right, of course."
"Sara! Sara, get away from the edge!"
Sara recognised Dean's voice and turned, frowning slightly. He was sprinting towards her, with some sailor apparently chasing him. What the hell...
"Get away from the edge!" he yelled again.
Trusting, if not understanding, Sara took a step forward.
A hand, invisible but worryingly solid, planted itself on her chest and shoved.
Sara stumbled back, her legs slamming into the railing, and the hand pushed again, bending her back over. She yelped and reached desperately for something to hang onto as she was shoved once more.
And suddenly Dean was there, grabbing her arms and yanking her away from the railing. The hand objected and switched grip, hanging onto her shoulder and pulling her back.
But Dean didn't let go and James seized Sara's other arm, tugging.
"Got any salt?" Dean asked Sara, tightening his grip. This ghost wasn't giving up and all three of them shifted closer to the edge.
Sara shut her eyes, lips moving soundlessly. Then her eyes snapped open again. "In nomine Dei, incende in Tartarum!"
The pressure stopped as suddenly as it had started and Dean toppled over, Sara landing on top of him.
Dean looked up at Thomas.
"We need to talk," the sailor said.
"No shit, Sherlock," Sara muttered. She was still shaking as she rolled off Dean and let James help her to her feet.
"What just happened?" he asked.
She patted him on the arm. "You just imagined it."
James frowned. "No, I didn't."
"Yeah, well, you'll have reasoned it away by tomorrow, so why waste time explaining?" Dean said, standing up.
"Huh?" James asked as Thomas led Dean and Sara away.
"Come on, boy," Thomas called back. "Unless you've already finished forgetting what you saw with your own two eyes?"