Disclaimer: BONJOUR! We are not French, but we do a mean French accent and ze Winchesters are not ours, neither is anything zat you may recognize from ze show. Enjoy!
*
As the clock struck midnight, Sam awoke in a cold sweat. Something was definitely wrong.
He started by slowly opening his eyes, so that if there was anyone in his room, he'd see them before they noticed that he'd woken up. There wasn't anyone else, that he could see, so he sat up slowly and surveyed the small bedroom.
His four poster bed was against the south wall. Beside the bed was a simple nightstand, on top of which sat the bell that he was supposed to ding if he needed anything, so said Leah. Across from the bed, at the north wall, was a short dresser and, to its left, was the dark wood door to the bathroom.
Everything looked normal, exactly as it had when Sam had gone to sleep.
He pushed the light red sheets aside as he stood up and walked to his duffel bag, which he'd left on the floor by the dresser. Out of it, he pulled a flashlight, since he didn't want to turn on the light in the room, which had basically blinded him when he'd stepped in hours earlier.
He wondered if Dean was up right now, doing the exact same thing in his respective room. They both usually had a sixth sense just for knowing when something was wrong, but, in case he was exaggerating, Sam decided not to cross the hall to his brother's room.
He shone the flashlight around, going over everything in the room he'd just seen, and then the shadows corners that he couldn't and still found nothing out of the ordinary. That left the bathroom.
As Sam pushed open the door, the smell was the first thing he noticed.
Cringing, he took a step back and almost dropped his flashlight. It was a smell which he recognized, but he couldn't quite put his finger on where he'd smelled it before. It wasn't sulphur; that smell he would've known anywhere.
Taking a deep breath of fresh air, Sam held the air in his cheeks, which probably made a laughable sight, and stepped forward.
It looked like any ordinary bathroom would; white tiled floors, a claw-foot bathtub, which, admittedly, was kind of weird, a porcelain toilet and sink, and a single window on the wall opposite the door.
Sam walked to the window and gazed outside. The yard was big, some might say huge even, the lake was still as placid as it had been earlier on, but all the outdoors lights had been turned off. Nothing weird or strange out there that he could see.
Maybe he was over-reacting after all.
Suddenly, Sam heard a low slippery noise, kind of like mud leaking down a hill, and wheeled around, bringing the beam of light from the flashlight with him.
He breathed in an involuntary gasp, which made him cough and sputter, at the sight in front of him.
The bathtub, sink, walls and even the toilet were seeping a thick white liquid. It overflowed from the toilet, flowed over the tall sides of the tub, poured over the rims of the sink in waves and dribbled out of cracks in the walls, near the ceiling.
It was a disgusting sight, not to mention smell; the same smell he'd noticed upon first walking into this bathroom. But he'd seen and smelt worse, so Sam forced himself to bear the sight and smell to try and find out what was going on.
*
"Dean...Dean!"
Dean grumbled something incoherent even to himself, but he was too tired to try to form words, much less full sentences. Still, a voice that sounded like his younger brother's, continued to pester him out of a deep peaceful sleep.
"Dean, wake up! Something is going on here."
The oldest Winchester snorted and found his voice, but didn't bother opening his eyes yet. "Thank you, Captain Obvious. You're trying to get back at me for my antics earlier on today. Well, it's not going to work. I'm going to ignore you. So there."
Dean smirked to himself and rolled over onto his other side. To his dismay, he heard Sam's heavy footfalls tromp around the bed and then the shaking began.
"Okay, okay! I'm awake! Happy?!" Dean grabbed both Sam's large hands and pried them off of his own shoulders. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked, unamusedly, into Sam's brown ones. Once he saw the worry and apprehension in his eyes, however, Dean knew that this was not a joke. Nor was it payback, even though Dean would admit that he deserved it.
"What? What is it, Sam?"
"This place – I think it's haunted," Sam said, sitting down on the side of Dean's bed.
Dean chuckled to himself. The last time he could remember Sam coming into his room and sitting on his bed looking this worried about something had been when Sam was nine and he'd been afraid of the thing in his closet.
"What?" Sam looked confused and just a little offended.
Dean shook his head, "Don't worry about it. So, you think the place is haunted? Why exactly?"
"Well, take this for example," Sam said in a tone that he reserved specifically for talking to Dean when his brother had upset him, "I woke up a few minutes ago, went into the washroom and everything started leaking white stuff."
Dean wrinkled his nose, "Do I even want to know what you're talking about?"
"Dean, please, stay with me here," Sam rolled his eyes, "This white substance started leaking out of every facility and wall in the room."
"Facility?"
"Yes, Dean! The sink, the tub, hell, even the toilet was overflowing this disgusting smelling white...stuff!"
Exactly as he would have when Sam was nine, Dean nodded with determination, rose from the bed, the sheets falling from his bare chest, put a hand on Sam's shoulder and said, "Let's go check it out together."
*
"It was here a minute ago," Sam whined, examining his bathroom.
He and Dean were both standing in the light of the bathroom itself, the flashlights were left back on Sam's bed, and could see nothing out of the ordinary in the room. It was as if what Sam had seen had never happened.
"I swear! It was overflowing from every possible outlet. It was all over the floor," Sam kneeled down to check the tiles. He put his hand to the floor and shivered from the cold, but still found no indication that the white stuff had ever been there.
Dean checked the walls in turn, found nothing and turned back to his brother. "Hey, maybe you were just tired." He shrugged.
Sam stood, another offended look on his face. Dean just couldn't win tonight.
"Seriously? After everything we've seen, after everything we've been through together, you don't believe me?!"
"There's nothing here, Sam-"
Sam shook his head, "It was; I know it was. And it smelled-"
Dean's ears perked up and he looked around, "Shh."
"What?!" Sam took a step forward but Dean held up an arm to stop him, tone and facial expression serious as serious could be.
"Sammy, shut it." Sam crossed his arms over his bare chest and pouted. Dean rolled his eyes and suppressed a smile. He even looked nine. "I hear something, so be quiet."
That lifted the pout a little and it was replaced on his face with a pensive look as the brothers fell to silence.
Whispers. There were whispers coming from somewhere in the room. Dean stepped out of the bathroom and into Sam's bedroom, then shook his head, indicating that the voices could only be heard from the bathroom, and stepped back in to join his brother again.
Try as they might, neither brother could make out what the voice was saying. They both recognized that the voice was female and it had a pleading and panicked tone to it, but her words were unintelligible. As suddenly as the whispering started, it stopped.
And then the smell came back.
Both brothers wrinkled their noses and Sam felt it necessary to say, "Do you smell that?"
Dean nodded, looking around.
The oozing came back; the white stuff, coming out of the toilet, sink, tub and walls, just like before. Instead of cringing, Sam smiled triumphantly and gave Dean, who was still looking thoroughly sickened, a look that clearly said "Told you so".
When Dean was finished rolling his eyes for what felt like the hundredth time that night, or morning depending on how he looked at it, he took to examining the substance. It didn't take him long to figure out what it was either.
"That's bleach," Dean said, confusion in his voice.
"Bleach? Are you sure?" Sam came to his brother's side and leaned towards the white stuff. Dean took hold of his shoulder and pulled him back.
"It's corrosive, don't touch it."
Silently, Sam turned slowly to narrow his eyes suspiciously at his older brother.
"What?" Dean shrugged.
"Never mind," Sam turned back to the bleach spilling from the sink, "So...what do we do?"
"What can we do? If it disappeared before, who's to say it won't disappear again."
"We shouldn't complain to the owners?"
"Not exactly, but we should definitely talk to them," Dean walked from the bathroom, Sam on his hells. "By the way, I've got dibs on the hot film noir chick."
"It was Lenoire, if I remember correctly," Sam raised his eyebrows.
"Whatever. I meant that she looked – never mind. Do I have to explain everything to you?" He went to the door, swung it open and then started off down the hall until he noticed that Sam wasn't following anymore and he had to turn back. "You coming?"
"Uh, Dean?" Sam smirked, "Aren't you forgetting something?"
Dean thought about that for a moment and then he realized what he'd noticed before but hadn't really given much thought to.
Sam was in his boxers, simple blue ones. Dean was used to the sight, they both slept in them every night, so it didn't faze him at all, but then he remembered something, and, when he looked down, he confirmed it. Dean was still in his boxers as well.
His favourites. They were comfortable and pretty, in his opinion, but he couldn't go traipsing around the hotel in his boxers and neither could Sam.
"Right," Dean nodded sheepishly and scratched the back of his head, "Guess we need pants, huh?"
Sam grinned widely as his brother left the room.
*
They, fully clothed, found Leah in the library on the first floor. Although they were both surprised to find anyone still up at this hour, they felt like they were justified in waking a few people up if need be to get the answers that they needed. Lives might be at stake depending on what was up with the bleach waterfall upstairs.
"Uh, Leah, right?" Sam spoke quietly as they approached her from behind.
She still jumped about two feet in the air from the comfy chair she was seated on while reading what looked like a romance novel; two people, half naked and kissing, bodies pressed together, on the cover. Sam ripped his eyes away and glared at Dean, who'd tilted his head to get a better view. Dean only smiled and shrugged.
"Yeah," Leah said, when she finally recomposed herself and snapped shut the book, placing it face down on the coffee table in front of her. "Can I help you?" Her face took on a confused expression and she cocked her head to the side, "I thought I told you about the bells..."
"You did, don't worry," Sam smiled tightly, "We just...well, we were just restless. We needed some air and we just thought, you know, what a nice hotel this is. It's got to be at least a century old, right?"
Leah shrugged, "I just work here. You should ask Miss Lenoire questions like that."
"Right, sure," Sam nodded, "Where is she again?"
"Miss Lenoire has a private room...somewhere in the hotel. I've never been there and I don't know where it is...she's very secretive that way, but she's not as mysterious as she sounds. She's really a very nice woman," Leah leapt to her employer's defence as if she'd said something mean about the woman.
Sam and Dean exchanged a glance.
"Is there something I can do for you in the meantime?"
"No," Dean shook his head quickly, "We'll just ask Miss Lenoire our questions tomorrow. Thanks, Leah."
They turned and walked away, whispering together even when they knew they were out of earshot.
"That's kind of weird, right? Miss Lenoire having her own secret room somewhere in the hotel that nobody knows about? Its borderline Scooby-Doo haunted house, secret passage way, rotating bookcase creepy."
Sam nodded, "On the other hand, how do we know that Leah is her only employee? There might be others. We should ask them about this Miss Lenoire character if we can, but I'm sure she'll be around the hotel tomorrow."
"Probably."
The brothers stopped in the hallway outside their rooms, facing each other.
"So, I guess this is good night," Sam said awkwardly.
Dean nodded slowly, coughing. "You going to be okay over there for the rest of the night, scaredy-Sam?"
Sam wrinkled his nose with a smile, "You stopped calling me that years ago."
"I stopped calling you that when you stopped telling me about the monsters in your closet and under your bed."
"I stopped telling you because you wouldn't stop teasing me."
Dean smiled, "Fair enough. Night, Sam."
"Night," Sam smiled back and then they both returned to their respective rooms and closed their doors.
*
And then they both died. And now for the Bella and Ruby show...
KIDDING!!
*
A/N: Keep letting us know what you think! We sure appreciate it! Did you like our ending to the chapter? How much would it kill if that happened in real life?