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Dean let his head fall back onto the dusty board of the porch. A long tortured groan escaped his lips. His shoulder throbbed and he could feel every thump of his heart inside his head. He forced his eyes to open. Bright sunlight burned his corners and a dark figure moved across this line of vision. Dean jerked back and cracked his head against the wooden wall again.
"Son-of-a…" he bit down and took a deep breath. He inhaled air past his teeth and realized the dark shape that startled him was Sam.
"Dean, take it easy! Are you ok?" His younger brother's voice was filled that dripping tone of worry that Dean hated.
"Did you shoot the bitch?"
"You could see her?"
"Yeah I could see her, she was trying to rip my freaking arm off," Dean muttered as he slowly raised himself into an upright position. "Why the hell are you looking at me like that?"
"I couldn't see her." Sam shook his head and reached for his phone from its spot on the floor. "I had to use my camera."
Dean shook his head and struggled to his feet. "How did you get her to back off?"
Sam shrugged his broad shoulders and shook his shaggy head. "After you hit the wall, she just vanished."
Dean slowly got to his feet and looked around the ghost town. Nothing looked out of place. Nothing smelled strange. What Sam had said reverberated though his skull. He had to use the camera phone to see the ghost. "All right, Haley Joel, why do we think she grabbed me?"
Sam made a face at the nickname, it wasn't one he appreciated, but Dean thought it was funny. "Some ghost can chose who they—"
"Yeah, I know that response. I've read Dad's journal too." Dean stood up and gingerly rubbed his hand over his shoulder. "We need to—"
"Find out who she was. I know."
The musky smell of the old book filled Dean's nose as he closed the volume. He placed it onto of his stack. The fourth book in two hours and there was nothing about the history of the tiny town in the mountains.
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. He'd long ago learned to ignore pain. To do what he did, what every single day required of him, he had to block out any kind of pain and work through it. It was something he was good at.
Which was why his shoulder was bothering him. The pain refused to be ignored. His back didn't ache, his head was fine, but the place where she'd dug her fingers into his flesh…He felt as though he had stakes of ice driven into his shoulder. He gingerly placed his hand over the spot. Even through his layers of a t-shirt and the shirt underneath, his should felt cold to his touch.
It pained him to think about what it could possibly look like. A horrific image of blackened skin flashed in his mind. Dean closed his eyes for a second. He'd have to examine it once they got back to the motel room.
"Find anything?" Sam's voice broke into his brother's thoughts."
Dean quickly dropped his hand away, hoping his ever vigilant little brother hadn't noticed what he'd been doing. "Nothing. At least not about what happened to make it a ghost town."
Sam placed his laptop on the stack of books and sat down in one of the creaking library chairs. "I didn't find much else besides what we already knew when we went in. It was a small mining town, flourished for a while, then was abandoned when the mine collapsed."
"She didn't look like a miner." Dean knew that her appearance didn't necessarily relate to how she died, but so far, her apparition was the best they had to go on.
Sam shook his shaggy, dark head.
Dean popped himself up on his good arm and studied his younger counterpart. "Sammy, after all you went though in Cold Oak, why would you even suggest we go to another ghost town?" Something flickered behind Sammy's dark eyes. Dean waited expectantly; it wasn't like Sam to keep secrets, ever.
"What happened in Cold Oak was because of the demon." Sam's voice was even, and controlled. "We went back to Lawrence and all of its history."
Dean thought about pushing the subject further. He wanted to tell Sam that besides getting his own ass handed to him, there was nothing out of place in the abandoned town. But Dean was also familiar with the twitch in Sam's jaw, and the look of pure determination on his brother's face. They would thoroughly investigate the place and put Dean's new friend to rest before Sam would let him leave. There was already a problem in this perfectly laid plan.
If they couldn't find records for the town, they couldn't find who she was, and they couldn't find her bones. Great. Just what he wanted to hear.
Dean waited until he heard Sam's even breathing from the bed beside his own. His shoulder still throbbed, but he hadn't been able to look at it yet.
He grabbed the edges of his shirts and pulled the material over his head. He winced and bit back a grunt. He tossed them onto his bed and turned towards the mirror. The motel room was so small the bathroom housed only a tub and toilet. The small alcove that opened to the main room with the beds was where the sink and large mirror were.
Dean looked over his shoulder then flicked on the light. He sucked in a sharp gasp of air then bit down on his lip.
The spot that had bothered him all day was a blackened shade of green. Small gray lines crept away from wound and disappeared into the healthy flesh. Dean cursed softly and leaned closer.
He ran his fingers over the mark.
It still hurt but there was no wound, nothing that indicated the ghost's fingers had dug into his skin. No reason it should look like his skin was rotting from the touch. Dean's fingers gently probed the outer regions where the offshoots were.
They didn't hurt. But something told him they would.
