Missouri Moseley, Kansas, November 1983

John had asked her to come here.

To check the house and see if she could find what had visited his family that night to rain death and destruction down on their lives.

Missouri had agreed, anything to help the distraught man in front of her with some closure on his wife's death.

Standing here now she knew she shouldn't have come.

What she was going to tell him would set him on a course that would change his life forever.

Not that that hadn't already happened.

The fuse was lit, she was just going to fan the flames.

She stepped forward and ripped the 'danger keep out' tape from the doorframe, trying to ignore the irony in that and stopped in the nursery doorway for a moment, steeling herself for the task ahead. And then she went in.


I'm standing in the room and I can feel it.

The evil that has visited this place. It's taint still hangs in the air the way the smell of the smoke from the fire does. Its stain clinging to the walls of this place like the soot from the flames; dripping down on me like the dousing water still does, from what is left of the ceiling above my head. It's touch reachin' down into my very soul, staining it too.

And it was evil, real evil that had come to call at the home of the Winchesters.

That touch fills me with a feeling so cold that I shudder involuntarily.

Turning at the sound of the floorboard creaking in the hall, expecting to see John, I see her, realising at that moment that the sound had been only in my head. She is hovering in the doorway, her fingers rubbing sleepily at her eyes as she speaks to some unknown figure in the room behind me. She has a soft, almost angelic quality about her as she smiles sweetly at whatever she is seeing that I cannot.

With a flash of long, loose, blonde hair, a little rustle of the long, white nightgown that she wears, she turns and steps out into the hallway. Something catches her eye and she steps towards the stairs.

I follow.

She has stopped at the top of the stairs, she's reaching up, touching the light, a gentle tap and then she is turning, head cocked to the side, listening. Drawn by a noise that I cannot hear, she walks downstairs.

Her image drifts from view for a moment and then she is back, screaming her baby's name, and this time there is nothing slow or sleepy in her movements. This time it is as if all the hounds in hell are chasing her.

I feel it as she passes through me, her alarm for the safety of her child. It causes me to turn, step back towards the room that she is now frozen in the doorway of, her hand to her face, recognition in her eyes. She stepped through and I feel the slam of the door that no longer stands there and her scream fills my head in a rush so intense that I am crumbling, grasping at the wall to stop myself from falling.

I feel the other in the hall now. These ones are not so strong. The imprint of the living left by traumatic events never are. John drifts into the room, away from my perception, but I know what he is seeing as I feel his horror, his fear filling me at the sight that confronts him as he looks up from his son's crib.

The older son is here too, hovering unsure before me, summoned by his mother's scream but frozen by the reflections of the flames that now glow on the walls around him.

Strangely though I feel no real fear from him. Only apprehension for what is going to happen next. He is ready but he is not afraid.

Just for a moment, I see it. It's yellow eyes glinting in the fire light and I want to scream as it stares at the child before me, it's delight as it's action painful to bare in the wake of the consequences of them.

John is back now, stronger, his fear strengthening his image. He thrusts the small bundle at the child and issues an unheard command. It is obeyed immediately and without question but then John's sense of urgency now fills the air around us. I turn to follow the image of the child, can hear in my head the slap of his bare feet on the wooden stairs as he runs down them.

And then he is gone.

And the house is burning.

One final cry from John assaults my senses and then he too is past me and gone from this house of horror, worry for his sons overriding the grief for his wife and driving him from the burning wreckage of his life.

The heat hits me then, the smell of burning wood, underlain with the awful stench of burning flesh. I gag and then instinctively lift my hand to cover my face as the flashback ends with a roar of heat and flame from the nursery.

And then it too is gone.

And finally, it is quiet.

Stillness and peace return.

And then I see her.

Stepping from her room to begin the loop again.

Her death echo stuck here until we can find a way to free her from it. Until John is strong enough to face this. I can't stay. I cannot watch the destruction of this family again.

As I turn he is standing there.

For a moment I am not sure if he is real or not and then he looks at me with those solemn, deep, green eyes and I know that the image before me is flesh and blood. Pushed against the wall, his gaze is locked on the scene that is playing out behind me. I step forward and shield him even as I feel her brush by me on the way downstairs again.

"C'mon sweet ch'ld, let's get you back to your Daddy. This ain't no place for a little 'un. Not no more."

I touch his head and he looks at me, drowns me in the sea of emotions that are swirling in his head but absent from his face. John had told me that the child isn't talking but I hear his question just as loudly as if he had spoken it.

Did you see it too?

"I saw it baby boy." I reach for his hand and he takes mine, grips it tightly.

"Time to go."

Chapter End Notes:

Hope you enjoyed that. Thank you as always for reading! mary xx