CHAPTER TWO
The motel room they were staying in was dark and clammy, the complete opposite of the diner. Sam sat at the small table under the window, his computer plugged into the dial-up so he'd be able to browse through the police records. So far, he had three out of the four kids' files pulled up, and the last one would be coming soon.
He clicked on the final name and the most recent death in the county: a Joseph Emerson, about thirteen years old, lived with his parents and two elder siblings on an old farm not all that far from here. Cause of death: trampled by wild horses.
The second name was Andrew Adamson. He was in the same class as Joseph, at the same school, and lived in a small apartment building with his mother. According to the write up, his parents had divorced three years ago, and his father had been M.I.A since. Cause of death: trampled by wild horses.
The last two profiles belonged to Lucille Samuels and Evan Baker, two cousins who had moved to Nevada five years ago, together with their families. Lucille (or Lucy, as he found she was called) was the eldest of four girls, and Evan the middle of three. Both of them had gone out, on completely different nights, and both had been found crushed and broken the next morning. And the cause of death: trampled by wild horses.
Sam looked at the pictures on the files, of four young kids both in life and death. He always got uneasy when kids died; it seemed so unnatural. They were always so full of life, bouncing off the walls and ceilings. Looking at the pictures, they looked like really big, really messed up dolls. It was kind of creepy now that he thought about it.
He shook the thought out of his head and cleared his throat in an attempt to get Dean's attention, but his brother's eyes stayed firmly planted on the television screen.
"Dean!" he tried, and this time Dean gave him an acknowledging grunt. "Could you turn that off? Or at least down? We've got work to do."
Dean turned the volume down two bars as something exploded off screen and rolled around on the bed so he was facing Sam (getting up and moving would be far too difficult, after all). "So I'm right then! This is a job. I told you so," he said smugly. "We have any popcorn?"
"What? No. No popcorn. And this really isn't the right time. Can you please turn that thing down?" Sam asked desperately. He hated it when he had to compete with the television for Dean's attention, and at the moment, he was loosing to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"I did turn it down," Dean protested lightly.
"Dean. Please," Sam said, his no-nonsense tone thick and aggravated. This whole thing had been Dean's idea, the least he could do was pay attention to the research. Sam had wanted to go to San Francisco, but no. They had to do Dean's horse-thing.
"All right, all right, Mister Cranky Pants," Dean replied, shutting the television off.
"Thank you. Now, I looked up the kids, and they all go to the same middle school: Elmer Oaks," Sam began, turning back to his computer with the files laid out neatly in a row.
Dean gave a half-assed laugh. "Elmer," he replied breathily.
Sam ignored him. "They were all in the same class, all eighth grade. Ninth soon, but school still doesn't end for another two months. Anyway, they don't seem to be related, except for the first two, Lucy Samuels and Evan Baker, who were cousins. There's no mention that any of them ever really knew each other, except for Lucy and Evan. The stampedes all happened in the middle of the night, in the same general area: the Silver Horse Ranch, which doubles as a bed-and-breakfast. There've been no witnesses to any of the kid's deaths until –"
"Until now," Dean cut in, his thoughts flashing back to the kids in the dinner.
"Yeah. Until now. All the deaths have happened during the past six weeks, and up until then there hasn't been a single wild horse roaming anywhere near civilization. No one's ever seen the herd either, so they can't ID the horses, and no one at the Silver Horse has ever heard anything," he added, saving the file to his hard drive.
"And that's…weird, right?" Dean asked. What the hell did he know about horses? He'd never ridden one, except for that nasty little pony at the carnival when he was five, and he'd never had a chance to do more than watch them on tv. What worried him was why Sam knew so much.
"Yes, Dean. That's weird. Usually when a herd of horses comes stampeding through somewhere, you hear them. Not to mention they're less than likely o vanish into thin air when they're done," Sam replied.
Dean clapped his hands together definitively, as though he needed no further evidence. "Great! It's a case!"
Sam looked back at the kid's files, scouring them for anything he may have missed, as he always did. "Yup," he said distractedly. "It's a case."