Well, this certainly took far longer than I anticipated. Ugh, this chapter was being so mean. My muse also decided to suddenly go on vacation so you can blame her.
Thanks to superloudean and Ziggymia123 for being awesome as always!
I own nothing. Just Melanie.
Chapter Two
Melanie had been on the road roughly sixteen hours. How many of those she had been fully conscious for was debatable. There was a pile of empty coffee cups in the backseat which was starting to grow faster as her stops became more frequent. Caffeine was no longer cutting it. She briefly considered cocaine but that was the drowsiness talking, at least she hoped. God knows where she would find it anyway. She was in The Middle of Nowhere, Indiana. Population: herself and about a couple thousand trees but even those were starting to taper off as she got closer and closer to the rolling plains of the Midwest. She hated that. It reminded her of Kansas, which in turn reminded her of home, burnt and broken, dead and gone.
She took a long look at her cup and tossed it in the back. That was the last time she'd try anything other than black.
The emptiness of the highway was slightly disturbing to her. She was on the interstate after all, or at least she thought. It was almost noon. Not exactly rush hour but she would have expected someone. Maybe that was just her paranoia creeping up again. It was an annoying thing that had gotten her in trouble a lot over the years. Hell, it was what had her on this little road trip now.
With a sigh, Melanie allowed her head to bump the steering wheel a moment. What was she doing? This wasn't like her charging head first into the unknown on a whim. That was Dean's department, like a yin yang thing she suspected. She was the planner, always making sure the pieces fit, always knowing what to do. She had not even called anyone to ask if it was them, to confirm they really, truly, were dead. But she saw their names, their real names, not some hapless combination of dead rock stars. That was indication enough that something had gone wrong. And deep in her gut, she knew. Maybe it was that psychic twin thing (although it had failed her miserably when he actually died), but somehow she knew. Uncharacteristic it may have been but she had an excuse. It was acceptable.
Apparently the opposite could be said for John Winchester.
The car lurched forward as Melanie increased the pressure on the gas pedal.
At least twice an hour she tried his phone with the same results as always. She even tried the number he provided of Dean's but knowing her twin, he had probably lost this phone long ago. Not that it mattered. He was not the one who was going to pick it up.
Melanie tried not to scream out of the building frustration toward her father, but the effort was difficult to say the least. She desperately wanted to say there was an excuse for him not calling but this was something that he would pull. She could swear she knew a different man once…
Dean had taken her doll, her favorite one with purple ribbons in her hair. Melanie chased him all around the house until she finally tackled him on the living room floor, smirking at the rug burn he got on his hands. They had started fighting then, exchanging hair tugs and arm smacks until the strong arms of their father pulled them apart.
"What are you two doing?" John had asked with that booming voice of his. Both of them visibly gulped and came to attention like soldiers at boot camp.
"He took my doll!" Melanie accused.
"You took my car!" Dean spat back.
"I didn't take your stupid car!"
"That's enough," John said sternly, causing the twins to quiet down again. "Now Dean, give Melanie back her doll. We'll go look for your car together. And please, stop fighting your sister."
"I can take care of myself!" Melanie stated as she ripped her doll back, sticking her tongue out at her barely older brother.
"I'm sure you can," he had replied with one of his rare smiles. Both children looked at their father curiously. He was not a harsh man, just distant, somber. Moments like this left them confused. "But that's not the point."
"Then what is?"
He took her by the shoulders then, each hand larger than her face. His eyes got that look she had seen so many times. He was not looking at her but through her, at some place far away and well out of her reach. She caught a glimpse of the man he hid from the world.
"You should never have to fight anyone for anything."
If only he still held that belief. There were days when Melanie truly thought she had made that memory up. There was so little of her father left from the past, she found it hard to believe he was ever real.
"Turn right in two miles," a female voice stated in monotone, snapping Melanie from her thoughts. For a split second, she had no idea where the voice had come from until she spied the small GPS system in the middle of the dashboard. She gave the piece of technology a funny look until it repeated the phrase for 1.5 miles.
"Turn right?" Melanie echoed, looking over the opening countryside. She could see the overpass ahead. It would take her off the highway and well out of her way, north it appeared. If anything, she needed to head south. "What are you doing?"
She began to tinker with the buttons but unfortunately electronics were not her greatest ally. Any other day she would have preferred a good old fashioned paper map. That being said, the given circumstances did not leave her much time to plot a course. So after changing the language to Mandarin and figuring out how to change it back, Melanie determined her destination was the same but the route had somehow changed. At this point, the exit was almost directly to her right. According to the sign, it led to Pontiac, Indiana. Every instinct she had told her not to take it. Something in the device had probably malfunctioned.
'Take it.'
Melanie suddenly found herself swerving onto the off ramp, plowing through the patch of grass behind the exit sign. The engine roared unnaturally as the SUV was forced to turn and jump in multiple directions so quickly. When Melanie finally straightened the vehicle out, she could see clear damaged and tire markings through the rearview mirror. Her grip on the wheel was like death but her heart pounded ferociously with life. She drove like that for some time, with no thoughts to occupy her mind, no feelings at all save for overwhelming surprise. Eventually a flicker of life returned when she stopped the car and put into park, but even then she sat idle for some time.
"What just happened?" she whispered. The car gave no reply and neither did the voice that had only moments ago echoed in her mind.
Voice?
With a sigh, Melanie slid down in her seat, covering her face with her hands. That was it. She was crazy. The line, however blurred it had been in the past, had now been officially crossed. Keep firearms in every nook and cranny of the house? Fine. Memorize the methods to kill every kind of fairytale creature people could think of? No problem. These were 'normal' in her world but voices other than your own in your head was still a big sign that something wasn't right upstairs. Worse still was that she had listened to it, did not even hesitate. She couldn't explain it. Something strange had come over her and in that moment, it felt as though a hand had reached out and yanked her in that direction. Someone or something wanted her in Pontiac, Indiana.
God, how she hated thinking like that.
Peering through her fingers, she stared at the open road before her. The area looked innocent enough but that was how they all looked. Over the years, a hunter came to realize that most incidents did not occur in big, sprawling cities like New York or Los Angeles. They happened in small, wholesome towns and if Pontiac didn't qualify for that, she had really been out of it far too long. Monsters liked rural communities, places out of the loop and less inclined to attract attention.
Monument, Colorado had probably been such a place.
Melanie swore. Whatever was going on would have to wait. She was not about to abandon her family for a hunt. Even considering it made her sick to her stomach. She had only promised herself two things when she left all those years ago. One: never hunt again. That had already been broken about 3 years ago when a particularly nasty poltergeist was holed up in the local high school. It was not like she could say no, not when the damn thing was in her own backyard. But she had been rusty and it nearly got her killed. She had the scar on her abdomen to prove it.
The second was that she would never become like her father and what she had just been considering doing in Pontiac would have broken that one as well. But no, not this time fate. She still had some say in her life.
As she began to turn the key in the ignition, a clap of thunder startled her. Normally Melanie was not the jumpy sort but the sky had been stark blue just moments before. Now as she gazed out the windshield, dark, massive clouds circled overhead. The land had grown impossibly dark and if Melanie didn't know any better, she would have sworn a tornado was about to drop on her.
Curiosity overpowering everything else, Melanie stepped out of her car and watched the clouds. They seemed to be concentrated at a specific point, one that seemed to be just above a grouping of trees. Their movements were strange, not like anything she had ever seen before and part of her wondered if her mind was making this up too.
Then the ground began to shake.
Melanie fell back against her car, unprepared for the sudden motion of the earth. The movement became more violent as time passed and did not show any sign of letting up. She was about ready to watch the ground split into pieces and swallow her whole, but it never gave in.
Lightning struck somewhere nearby with a loud crack and Melanie ducked behind her car. The wind howled and the clouds began to spin faster and faster. A droning sound suddenly appeared in the background, somehow cutting through all the noises far louder than it. But its intensity, like everything else that was occurring, started to grow until it was a high pitch that threatened to burst her eardrums. Then there was what she could only describe as an explosion of white. That was it. Nothing else. It was all she saw and while nothing actually touched her, Melanie felt as though some kind of pressure was pushing against her body from all angles. She thought her body would be crushed.
It was dead silent in the veil of white, yet she still felt the pain in her ears as though the sounds had never stopped. She screamed, could feel her voice, though nonexistent, pushing through her throat, but it could not break through the barrier. Her head was throbbing, her body on fire. For a brief moment, a picture of her mother entered her mind, the flames licking her body, her scream. Was this what she felt? Was this how she died?
And then it ended.
Melanie's eyes flew open, instantly filled with the bright blue of the sky, greeting her as though it had been there all along. Her body was lying on the road a few feet from her car. She gasped as she sat up, looking around in every direction for…something, anything, but the land was as it had been before everything lost all sense. Even the birds merrily sang their songs as though they had not a care in the world. It made no sense but she was done with thoughts of being crazy. THAT was not something she could have made up.
"What the hell is going on?" she breathed. Carefully she stood, afraid that the earth would start to move again but that was not the case. She looked to the forest where the weather's rage had been concentrated. It too appeared unscathed but something about it seemed different. There was an air about it that was off, wrong. She took a step toward it, feeling the wind pick up as though it was pushing her in that direction. Melanie did not question it.
After crossing a small field, Melanie entered the trees. Again, nothing looked different or wrong for that matter but there was something lurking in the air, an energy, pulsing, alive. It made her hair stand on end and her pulse quicken. In her life, Melanie had encountered a number of supernatural occurrences. None of them ever really made sense but this was different. This was new and on a much grander scale than Wendigos and shape shifters.
'Look to the left.'
This time she did not immediately obey. Melanie turned in every direction, looking for the source of the voice despite it having clearly echoed in her mind. It was soft and feminine, like none she had ever heard before.
"Who are you?" she called to the forest.
'The clearing.'
"Get out of my head!" Melanie screamed, gripping her skull tightly. She sank to her knees, waiting for it to dare speak up again. Voices in her mind, exploding light, mysterious sounds, freaky weather, this was all too much. One moment she had been living a paranormal free life (or at least trying her best) and the next it is beating her over the head, making up for lost time.
When nothing happened, Melanie dared to look up. Between the tree trunks in the distance she could see the clearing that the voice spoke of. She stood again and stared at it awhile.
"I am so going to regret this," Melanie spoke softly as she began to make her way toward it. At first she thought it would just end up at another field but as she neared the break in the forest, her eyes widened and she gasped.
Trees, dozens of them, were lying on the ground, felled by some strong force, whether it was a storm or…an explosion. They all pointed different directions from the center of the clearing. Melanie picked her way across the trunks and branches, finding a lone, standing cross amongst it all. This was where they all pointed. She watched it a moment, slowly reaching for the cross when a hand shot out of the earth.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Melanie shouted, falling backwards. Her gun was in her hands before she had fully registered what was going on. It pointed at the arm that was slowly making its way out of the shallow grave. Then a head broke through the surface, gasping for air. As much as she wanted to help, all Melanie could do was watch as the man crawled out, grasping at the grass for some kind of leverage. Once fully free, he collapsed in a coughing fit. Her senses came back then and she put a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you alright?" she asked. He looked up at her, at first giving a glare that screamed 'do I look alright to you?' But then his eyes widened, his gaze softened to an astonished expression. When his eyes hit hers, it took all the strength Melanie had to not fall over. It was like someone had punched her in the gut but in a good way, if that made any sense. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she gazed at the impossible.
"Dean."
Have a nice day! Thanks for reading!
