The next morning, the Winchester brothers had just finished their breakfast of eggs, sausage, and pancakes, when a woman approached them.
"Excuse me," she murmured timidly, "Are you the two agents Father Tim wanted me to talk to?"
Dean sized up the woman: high, Puritan neckline, so no interest there; red hair in a severe cut right at the cheekbones; the brown eyes were genuine enough. He put on his best "church-boy" smile.
"Well, hello there, how are you? You must be Florence."
She nodded and accepted Sam's gesture to take the open seat in front of her.
Dean kept talking, "I'm Agent Spencer, and this is Agent Guster; I assume you know why we're here."
Florence nodded mutely.
Sam and Dean shared a glance. "So..." Sam took over. "Miss Finchley—"
"Oh, please!" Florence interposed nervously, "Call me Flo; everybody does."
Sam nodded, "Flo, would you mind just going over everything that happened that night? Everything you can remember."
Flo stared at him. "Which night?" She asked innocently.
Dean leaned in. "The night Stan died. Father Tim said you were there when he found the body?"
Flo's eyes just about popped out of her head. "Father Tim found a body?" She squealed.
Patrons were starting to give them weird looks. Dean raised a hand.
"Shhh!" He hissed. "You're telling me you had no idea?"
Flo shook her head, her face flushed and blotchy like she might burst into tears. "Agent Spencer, I can tell you most certainly that if there had been a body, I would remember! Secrets are kind of hard to keep in a neighborhood as small as this."
"Wait a minute," said Sam, "if you don't know of any body... Do you know a Stan Miller?"
"Who is that?" Flo asked. "I've never heard that name. Is he one of your suspects?"
A third glance; this interview was certainly the least informative they'd ever had!
"No," Dean said slowly. "He's the victim."
"Oh," Flo pressed her lips and dropped her eyes to the table. "The man Father Tim said he found."
Dean arched an eyebrow. "Are you saying the Reverend was lying?"
Flo still didn't meet their gazes as she shrugged. "I'm saying that every night for the last week has been perfectly normal. Father Tim stays late to study, I leave—"
"What time do you leave?" Sam asked. Perhaps Father Tim had been mistaken, and Flo had not been there to hear him cry out. The time of death, according to the coroner, had been sometime between ten and half-past—
"I would leave at around ten-thirty, and Father Tim would still be there," said Flo.
"Okay, think back for a sec," said Sam. "This night would have been two days ago. Father Tim told us last night that you had been so traumatized that you stayed home yesterday."
Flo's mouth dropped open and she gave a little cough of surprise. "I did no such thing!" She cried. "I came to work yesterday like I always do! There was no—I didn't see a..." She could not bring herself to say it.
"Did Father Tim ever have any late-night visitors?" Dean asked, setting aside the topic of the body that was somehow missing from Flo's memory. "Anybody from the area coming to speak to him?"
Flo shook her head. "You don't understand; we are a small community. Anybody who lives within walking distance of the church abides by a curfew: everyone is home and stays home after ten o'clock. No one would even think about visiting the church that late!" She paused, as if she noticed that their faces were still serious, in spite of her responses. "You don't think that... Maybe... Someone wanted to make Father Tim think he saw something he didn't actually see, like... To discredit him or anything like that?"
Sam glanced at her with a frown. "Do you know anybody like that?"
Flo shook her head. "Oh, no, not really. Everybody likes Father Tim. The only trouble we've had is with the farm on the other side of the church property."
"Trouble?" Dean prompted.
Flo blushed. "The cows keep escaping their field to eat the grass in the graveyard. Nothing too serious, you understand."
"Ah." Dean nodded, unsure of how to proceed; why had Father Tim lied to them? "Well, thank you for your honesty, Flo."
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more help to you two gentlemen," she blushed as all three of them stood. "Is there anything else that I can do?"
"Yeah, actually," Sam said. "Father Tim said that Stan had a wife, Judy; do you know—"
Flo was already shaking her head before he finished his question. "I'm sorry; I don't know Stan Miller or a Judy."
Dean finished leaving the cash for their meal on the table. "Well, thank you for coming down, Flo. Sorry to have bothered you." He smiled at her.
"Oh, no problem!" She grinned and absently ran her fingers through her cropped red hair. "Hope you gentlemen find whatever it is you're looking for!"
The Winchesters saw her off, then climbed into the Impala to confer.
"Well," Dean grumbled, "that was a bust!"
"I don't get it!" Sam burst out. "To hear Father Tim talk, one could practically see the bloodstains in the courtyard. Now Flo says there hasn't been a Stan Miller..."
Both boys were silent for all of five seconds.
"So what do you think we might be dealing with?" Dean asked his brother.
Sam combed through his memory, trying to recall if the Men of Letters had ever encountered an entity like this one. "Something big, for sure. Those claw marks... We did see the body, right?" The interview with Flo was beginning to make him doubt himself.
Dean snorted, "We saw a body," he allowed, "but if it wasn't Stan, then who was it really?"
"Either Father Tim is lying," Sam mused, "or Flo lost her memory of the event."
Dean fired up Baby. "We need to get back to that morgue."
Dean and Sam walked in, badges at the ready. The same petite blond stood at the receptionist's desk. Dean took point.
"Hi, Sally—" he started, but she glanced up with a confused smile.
"I'm sorry, do I know you?" She couldn't keep the blush out of her cheeks, but Sam—who had seen enough of his brother's encounters—could tell that she honestly didn't remember meeting them the day before.
Dean had already backpedaled to save face. Throwing a glance at Sam, he flashed his badge and said, "Maybe not; I am Agent Spencer and this is my partner Agent Guster. We came here yesterday to look at a body as part of an active murder investigation."
"Murder?" Sally blanched. "Yesterday, you say? Oh, it must not have been my shift, because I don't remember you two." She looked between the two men. "But if it's an investigation, I can give you any help you need. What records do you need to see?"
"Stan Miller?" Sam leaned his elbows on the counter.
"One moment," Sally tapped on her keyboard, eyes searching the screen intently. "Miller... Miller..." She chanted softly to herself. After a moment, she frowned. "I'm sorry, there hasn't been a Stan Miller delivered here recently."
Dean shifted his position, and Sam caught his meaning: another person who doesn't remember the victim?
Sally saw the gathering frustration. "I can show you photos of the John Does if you like," she offered. "Do you happen to know the state of the body?"
Happen to know? There was no way they would forget it!
"Victim had bruising on his upper arm, deep gashes on his abdomen and throat," Dean rapped out brusquely. There would be no more flirting.
Sally nodded and entered the information. "Oh!" She blinked.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
Sally frowned. "Well, I opened the search to all records to find the one you're looking for, and the death certificate for Stan Miller came up."
"It did?" Dean cried.
"Yes, but—" Sally squirmed uncomfortably. "It says he died in the eighties."
Dean tilted his head toward her. "He what now?"
Sally slid over to the bank of filing cabinets behind her and rifled through one drawer. She passed the folder over the counter.
"Yeah, here's his certificate. He wasn't maimed, he died in his sleep."
The boys stared at the piece of paper; they had made enough counterfeit certificates in their lives to know that this was the real deal.
The questions spun through their brains.
Sally watched their frowns with growing agitation. "I'm sorry..." She whimpered, unsure of anything else to say.
Sam recovered first. "Thank you, Sally; we'll figure this out elsewhere."
They made it as far as the sidewalk in front of the morgue before Dean came to a stop. "Is it just me," he seethed, "or does this case make ZERO SENSE?"
Sam sighed and shrugged. "I got nothing."
Dean set off down the block, heading deeper into town. "I mean, assuming we saw a body yesterday."
"Yep."
"We go and talk to the last person to see him alive, get the whole story, everything's straightforward—" he stopped again. "And suddenly everybody's acting like this guy didn't exist?" He squinted.
Sam bobbed his head. "Not quite," he reminded Dean.
The older brother wasn't having any of it. "Yeah, and how about that? The guy who died supposedly two days ago has the same name as somebody who died thirty years ago?"
"Unless that's our guy," Sam said, regretting his words when Dean glared at him.
"Oh yeah? And what the hell kind of spirit or demon transports its victims through time?" Dean turned and started walking up the steps to enter the building.
Sam looked up. "City Hall?" He read. "What are we doing here?"
Dean turned back to face him. "You and I are going to look through the town's newspapers," he said. "If it's happening now and people don't notice, maybe it's happened before."
They went inside and received permission from the clerk on duty. Dean pointed.
"You take computers, I'll take the microfilm. You find anything out of order, you holler. Got it?"
Sam sighed and prepared to hunker down in front of the screen.
Dean flexed his hands to crack his knuckles. "We'll find you, you sonofabitch," he muttered. He started with the date of the article Sam had picked up that brought them out here.
The periodical for that date was missing, but he found an article about Father Tim and the cows. On a whim, he searched back over the rolls of film to the ones from the year "Stan Miller" died. Sure enough, his name came up in the obituaries.
"Here we go," said Sam. "I found an article about the church. It's from last week."
Dean slipped the film back in its case and moved to join his brother. "Does it have a nice view?"
"Apparently," Sam sighed, "Our buddy Stan repaired the rafters in the bell tower." He pointed to the face in the picture that was a near-perfect match to the one they had seen in the morgue.
Dean frowned. "Whoa, hold up!" He returned to the film canister and pulled out the obituary section. Placing it on the scanner, he snatched the paper as it came out.
"What's this?" Sam asked as his brother practically shoved the paper in his face.
"Obituaries," answered Dean. "From thirty years ago."
Sam found Stan's name immediately. "What?" He looked at the rest of the page as Dean tried to find a film of the article Sam was looking at. "Dean, there's more!"
"More what?" Dean gave up the search and rejoined Sam.
The lanky young man was busy scanning the article before him and circling names on the obituary page. Finally he showed Dean.
"Three other names on here are people in this photo," he said.
Dean pressed his lips. "So," he said sharply. "How do people who died thirty years ago suddenly show up in an article from last week?"
Sam shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Further inspection showed this phenomenon happening all the way back to the first census since the town's founding. Sam would find recent articles with pictures of various people, and Dean would in turn find their names in the obituaries from decades ago. What was more, when Sam tried to look up old census records, the volume of obituaries and birth announcements did not match the mortality rate recorded online. The brothers tried to find matching articles to compare information, but for every mysterious disappearance Sam discovered, it seemed that something else had vanished: the "daily paper" for that day.
It was evening by the time the boys had finished their "research."
"Well," sighed Sam as they left City Hall and headed back to their car, "we can at least confirm one thing."
"Yeah," Dean muttered, "this is definitely the weirdest case on record."
Sam waggled his hand back and forth. "Debatable," he said. "But there's also something else."
"Oh yeah?" Dean climbed into the Impala. "What's that?"
Sam took his seat before answering. "All of the people who have disappeared were attendees of Father Tim's church."
Dean shot him a look. "You think Father Tim's behind this?"
"Not quite," Sam admitted. "But think about it: the disappearances started happening six months ago."
Dean froze with his hand on the ignition. "Why six months ago?" He asked. "What happened six months ago?"
Sam shrugged. "I couldn't really find much, but I just figured—if the disappearances all happened in the church courtyard..." His voice trailed off.
Dean fired up the engine and pulled a U-turn.
"We need to get back to that church."