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TWO
Brewer Motor Inn
Brewer, Maine
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
8:12 AM
The clicking of a lock caused Dean's eyes to pop open much earlier than he wanted them to. The conversation with Sam in the middle of the night had played merry hell on his sleeping, causing him to wake up at least once every hour, and he had been planning to stay in bed way past the normal time in order to right the wrong.
Unfortunately, it seemed the front door of their motel room didn't agree with the idea. Rubbing his eyes, Dean propped himself up against the headboard and saw through the gap in the curtains that his brother was standing outside, on the phone, tugging a sweatshirt on over his head as he spoke with whoever was on the other end of the line. Thankfully, Sam had had the mind to talk as quietly as possible to allow his brother to sleep, but now that Dean was awake and curious, he silently cursed his younger brother's cordialness.
Groaning as loudly as possible, Dean slid back under the covers and stared up at the ceiling. He and Sam had been in Brewer, Maine for the last week, sticking around for awhile in hopes that a case somewhere, Northeast or not, would appear. They had been without a case for nearly two weeks—unless the call about a fake haunting in the area counted, which he didn't think it did—and without something to beat up, Dean was starting to go crazy. He was growing restless as the days passed, suddenly able to understand Sam's need for a hunt back when they were under house arrest in Fort Wayne. At the time, Dean thought that Sam was just being a whiny and annoying younger brother, but now he knew how it felt to have a want to do something, but no outlet for it.
As his eyes visually traced the open beams above him, Dean's mind wondered whether or not the shortage of jobs was foreboding. Usually when the supernatural went quiet, that's when it was time to worry. Ultimately, though, he had a feeling it wasn't. He had gone longer stretches of time without a case. He just had too much energy this time around without anything to channel it into—probably because no matter how many times he cruised the bars, he still hadn't found anyone willing to spend the night with him. In fact, he hardly found anyone of the female persuasion in any bar. It seemed pubs in Maine were a male-only establishment, causing Dean to become equally frustrated in his lack of encounters as he was with the lack of cases.
Glancing out the window again, he saw that Sam was still on the phone, his expression one of deep concentration that usually signaled a business call. Hopefully Sammy had unearthed something in the wee hours of the morning—since Dean knew his brother had stayed up thanks to Sam's computer light waking him up every half an hour—something that wouldn't take long to track down and beat up.
Getting to his feet, Dean stretched and let his toes dig into the cold carpet. Despite the fact that Maine was a particularly frigid state, after working two extremely sweltering jobs in the South in the middle of July, Dean was certain August should be dedicated to the upper forty-eight. At least here his t-shirts weren't sticking to him and he could wear his favorite leather jacket without looking like a moron. In addition to the winter-like weather, Maine was also notoriously famous for its lobster, meaning that Dean could fill up on all the seafood he wanted before switching back to burgers—since shellfish was the only thing that could deter him from his favorite food anyway.
Heading toward the sputtering coffee pot sitting on a small kitchenette counter across the room, Dean grabbed his mug from yesterday off the TV stand and poured himself a cup. Taking a sip of the hot brew, he closed his eyes to let the smell wake him up. As he did so, the door to the room clicked closed, causing his eyes to pop open for a second time. In the doorway stood Sam, a smirk on his face at Dean's expression. "Hey."
"Hey yourself," Dean replied, taking another sip and letting the silence fall as Sam slipped behind his computer again to stare intently at the screen. Taking this as a good sign that his brother had found something up their alley, he let Sam continue to scour the web while he continued drinking his coffee.
After a few minutes, the sound of the portable printer they carried with them filled the room with its low hum as it ejected a page that shot toward Sam's outstretched hand. Catching it gingerly, Dean raised an eyebrow as his brother got up from his chair and headed toward him, paper held out as an offer to start a conversation.
"I think I got us a case."
"Yeah? What?"
Sam shook his head tiredly, as if to let his brother know that he wasn't in the mood to talk it over until Dean caught up with what he knew. Giving his brother a once-over before taking the paper, Dean could see that Sam's eyes were heavy with sleeplessness, overwhelming him with the urge to ask his brother whether or not he had been having nightmares again. Remembering that he had already done so somewhere between four and five in the morning, he bit back the question and snatched what looked like a document out of his brother's hand. Yawning, Dean set his mug down on the counter behind him to read what inked over most of page. What he thought was a document was actually an article from the Brewer Morning News titled DEADLY CRASH MYSTIFIES LOCALS, SECOND TRAGEDY FOR BROWN FAMILY over a black-and-white picture of a smashed and bloody car that closely resembled an accordion.
Bangor, ME – It was approaching ten o'clock when Rebecca Donaldson, 34, of Bangor, Maine witnessed something she would never forget. It was a night that would not only change her life, but of those of the Whites, Munroes, and Browns living in the sleepy, neighboring town of Brewer.
The screech of tires and the rumble of a leaden diesel engine awoke Ms. Donaldson early Tuesday night as the sound carried in through her open bedroom window. Rushing to a balcony overlooking Union Street, she saw two vehicles collide—that of a small sedan and an oversized semi truck. While accidents like this have happened many, many times in the past in towns across the nation, the story Ms. Donaldson told reporters later that night differs in many ways from the cautionary tales worried parents often tell their children about driving on heavy-traffic roads at night.
According to Ms. Donaldson, the two automobiles were travelling at speeds much over the limit, heading toward each other as if playing a game of chicken. When neither vehicle swerved to avoid the other, the two collided in a sickening crash that would forever be seared into her memory. Unfortunately, the living nightmare didn't stop there. A moment after witnessing the accident, the big rig that had overtaken the sedan backed up and disappeared. Not by driving away, however, but by vanishing into the night by way of smoke.
When asked to explain it, Ms. Donaldson seemed at a loss for words. "I can't tell you that what I saw made any sense, because it didn't, but I saw it with my own two eyes. The truck backed up before becoming nothing but wisps. It was like the wind had taken it away."
Authorities, on the other hand, seem to be taking the tale with a grain of salt, attributing the lack of evidence proving the woman's story as an illusion. While there are no tire tracks, chips of paint from the truck, or anything else that would point to another vehicle being involved, officials claim to have the answer to the mystery.
"We've had many hit-and-run incidents like this one in the past," Sheriff William Harris says. "Though, a disappearing truck, while illogical and impossible, has never been used as an explanation before."
When asked what the police believe is behind the collision, Sheriff Harris remained tight-lipped, only saying one more thing before returning to his work. "It's possible that the girls hit a retaining wall and spun out of control."
Rebecca Donaldson, however, remains firm in her belief of a "ghost truck", as she calls it, telling anyone who will listen the story of what had happened during the night. While there are many who choose to ignore her claims, there is no one so disbelieving as the families of the deceased. Upon receiving the call of the accident, the parents of Alexandra White (18), Emily Munroe (18), and Carla Brown (18) arrived on the scene moments after the police.
However, an accident so severe shadows over only one more experienced within Bangor city limits—that of Carla Brown's own father, Robert. In December of 2005, Robert Brown was driving home from his shift at the shipping yard in Portland when a moving truck barreled through the divider on I-95, crashing into the driver's side of Robert's car.
The link between the two, it seems, will not be ignored by the authorities.
"It's possible the wrecks are connected," Bangor Police Department spokeswoman, Callie Hayes, says. "But we can't be sure since no one got a license number."
Still, a second crash near the same town has sent red flags up around both Bangor and Brewer, causing residents to become more cautious about taking to the streets. In addition to such realistic terrors, Ms. Donaldson's story is sending a few members of both towns into high alert, some even taking precaution and holing up in their houses until the driver responsible for the wreck is uncovered.
While most find that to be an absurd measure, until the vehicle behind the collision is discovered, no one really knows whether the police have an inebriated trucker on their hands or something much more sinister sweeping the town.
Scratching the back of his neck, Dean raised an eyebrow before placing the article on the counter behind him and picking up the half-empty cup of coffee. Shooting Sam a look as he noticed his brother had taken a seat on the bed while Dean had been reading, he saw the same warring conflictions on Sam's face as Dean was feeling inside. He hated articles like that, the ones that sounded like a ghost story rather than actual news. They had already been tricked once by something similar, it was the reason they were in town in the first place, and he didn't want to be made a fool of following a false story again. He wanted an actual job, and if this one turned out to be a fake, he and Sam were packing up and leaving town as soon as possible.
However, while Dean knew that most small towns were starved for entertainment and sensationalized whatever they could, something about the article had sparked something in him. The story of a disappearing big rig was eerily similar to something both he and Sam had faced not long ago in Mississippi, a job involving a "ghost truck" running people down on a stretch of highway not far from Adamsville. While up until then he had never heard of anything like that, it now seemed as though the idea wasn't as one-of-a-kind as he had originally thought. That was, of course, if the news reporter wasn't using scandalous ideas in order to rope people into the article—and he was hoping that wasn't the case.
Deciding to see what his brother thought, Dean tapped the story behind him absently with his fingertip and glanced at Sam over the edge of his upturned mug. Lowering it, he nodded at his younger brother. "So, what're you thinking? We got another racist vehicle on our hands?"
Smirking, Sam shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "Not this time."
"Think it's legit?" Dean frowned.
At the question, Sam stopped what he was doing and lowered his hands to fidget with the cell phone he had shoved into his pocket upon entering their room. After a moment, he sighed. "I don't know. I called a few people this morning to check into it, but they're on opposing sides. The cops think it's one thing, while some of the other people I talked to think it's something else. No real way to know unless we check into it."
"Well, I ain't complaining," Dean nodded, draining the last of his coffee. "It's better than sitting here twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do. Who should we hit up first?"
Sam bit his lip before getting to his feet and crossing over to his computer sitting on the bistro set beneath the window. Looking at a list scribbled on a legal pad, he ran his finger down a line of names before stopping on one. "The Browns. The article said Robert Brown was involved in a semi accident before. If anyone knows whether or not there's some ghost truck after them, he would."
"You sound skeptical," Dean grinned.
"Yeah, I know," Sam sighed. "I guess I'm kind of expecting another letdown."
Sighing in agreement, Dean pushed himself off of the counter he had been leaning against and headed toward the bathroom portion of their room to grab his toothbrush. Running it under the water and squeezing a bit of Crest on the bristles, he looked at Sam through the mirror before sticking the thing in his mouth.
He could sympathize with Sam's conclusion that they were on a path to nothing, but was slowly becoming intent to stay positive. Maybe if they looked further into it, they'd discover something under the surface. If the car crash lead turned into a dud, it was possible there was a case hiding somewhere in town that the news wasn't covering. Hell, if it came down to it, maybe they could ask Rebecca Donaldson if she had seen anything weird. She seemed to be one for believing in the paranormal.
Rinsing out his mouth, Dean placed the toothbrush on the countertop and turned toward the shower, grabbing jeans and a t-shirt off a stack of clothes at the edge of the sink. In the reflection, he could see Sam's raised eyebrow in the background, followed by a small smirk. Dean knew that look. Sam had already established their personas, and it wasn't something he was going to like.
"You're kidding," Dean scoffed, slapping his hands at his sides. "The monkey suits again? C'mon, man! I hate those things."
"The 'monkey suits' get us farther than just the badges," Sam sighed, rolling his eyes as if the point was already obvious. "We can't keep pretending to be reporters and expecting to get into things like police reports, and we don't have enough cash to pay off corrupt cops."
"Maybe you don't," Dean mumbled, dragging his feet as he crossed over to the dresser beside the dividing wall to the bathroom and grabbing the black-and-white suit hanging from one of the drawer pulls. Rolling his eyes, he shuffled over to the bathroom, silently wondering if it would be better to sit around instead of wearing a stupid suit for the third case in a row. When he and Dad had been hunting while Sam was away at Stanford, they hadn't even considered a change of outfit, but instead bribed their way to information. Now that his younger brother was with him, Sam insisted on playing dress-up whenever they got the chance—which meant whenever Sam thought he could call the shots.
Deciding that putting the damn thing on was better than doing nothing in a motel room for another week, Dean shut the bathroom door behind him, careful to make sure that Sam heard his grumbling from across the room.
"Stupid monkey suits."
