Chapter Four
"Sammmmmy, run!"
Trained to react immediately to an order during a hunt, Sam spun away, even knowing he'd be leaving his family .But he'd just found them. The plaster wall already had a good chunk pulled out of it. Their duffel bag lay on the floor, a tire iron beside it like it had been dropped . They were behind that wall.
Screaming for him to run. Uggggh! He turned. He'd be back for them. He had to do what they said now so that he could come back.
Except Dorthea Truman blinked into the hallway, blocking his retreat. He recognized her from old black and white photographs from their research, although her hair was down instead of piled on top of her head.
"Well, well." Smiling, she held out a graceful palm.
Witch. Killer of children. Sam dodged around her, ducking low, only to be hurled back into the wall.
"Ah-ah-ah." Dorthea waggled a finger, walking toward Sam. Her icy hand grazed his cheek as he darted beneath her arm, but not before she snagged his collar and wrenched him back into a closed door, where he slid to the floor in a heap.
Blinking out, she materialized, leaning over him, her cheek pressed to his, long hair falling over them both like a cloak while her laughter filled every surface of the hall. "We're going to have such a lovely time," she cooed, even as the light on the wall above them sputtered, glinting across the raised silver blade in her hand.
"Let go of me!" Sam shoved against her, screaming out for his dad even as he threw an arm up to shield him from the descending knife and felt himself ripped sideways out of her grasp and whipped down the hall, butt and legs dragging across the floor, stirring clouds of dust. Through the corridor, across the hallway, Sam spilled into another of the wings, and was rolled into an expansive kitchen and hauled up against the side of a gigantic fireplace.
Flames erupted within the cold hearth, sprouting up as high as Sam's shoulders and the boy with the limp flickered into existence, hands around Sam's throat, holding him in place. Angry eyes bore into Sam.
Sam latched onto the boy's wrists, trying to pry his hands away from his throat and kicked out, but the kid held firm and started sliding Sam sideways across the wall toward the fireplace. Heat and smoke wafted over Sam as his shoulder blade dragged across the corner of the hearth, turning the side of his face toward the flames.
"No, no! Please, no!" He struggled in the ghost's solid grasp. "I'm trying to help you! Please, please, no!"
Terror contracted his muscles.
He was pushed closer to the fire when the boy's hands left his throat and latched onto Sam's head and the room, fire, air spun around him.
A horse shrieked. Hooves pawed the air near Sam's face. People screamed around him. He jumped back out of the cobblestone street as the bouncing carriage clattered away.
"Are you all right?" Dorthea rushed past Sam, all satiny skirts and prim flowered bonnet, toward a figure on the ground that a crowd gathered around.
Eyes wide, Sam turned in an uneasy circle, taking in his surroundings. Horse-drawn carriages and buggies, men with vests and cravats and canes and brimmed hats strolled the sidewalks with women in long silky finery as though Sam fell through a rabbit hole in time.
Not a hole in time. A memory, a young male voice drizzled in Sam's ear. His gaze snapped back to Dorthea who knelt in the street beside the boy who moments ago had been pushing Sam into the fire. All doting concern, Dorthea helped the boy stand and guided him, limping, into her own waiting carriage. "We're going to have such a lovely time." She walked past Sam, seemingly unaware of his presence as though he was the ghost here, though the boy turned back and met Sam's gaze.
The world blurred, tilted. Sam's balance wavered and he threw out his hands, falling onto a beautifully laid hardwood floor. Blinking, he got to his feet, finding himself in a sun-dappled room, standing next to a four-poster bed. Dorthea sat on its edge, running her fingers through the other boy's dark hair.
"I'm going to take care of you, darling. Forever and ever."
The boy's feelings flooded into Sam. Fragmented thoughts struck him like punches. A home. Mother. Orphan. Safe now. No more hiding. Visions.
Sam's stomach tightened. "You're psychic?"
The kid's eyes slanted to Sam and more emotions poured through him. The boy was so happy, content, unbelieving of his good fortune until without warning, screams erupted in his head, the four other murdered children crying out from four concealed points of the mansion. Staring up at Dorthea in horror, the psychic kid plucked all the gruesome details from her head without her knowing it.
All was laid bare before him. The ritual, her plans, the purpose behind it all. It flowed from the witch to the kid and was now slamming into Sam in a furious rush. He saw and felt everything.
The ritual would allow Dorthea to travel the ether, the in between dimension, the blood offering of the innocents entitling her to a demonic power known only to the likes of Cain and Ramses and Rasputin before her, brought back to the mortal world where she'd be unstoppable, a queen, wielding the power of a thousand demons.
But the psychic kid learned something else as well. He stole words buried deep, phrases locked away in the witch's mind and when Dorthea's blade sank into his heart, he cried out, Latin spilling from his lips as his life's blood spilled from his body.
It all came down to blood.
Unable to steal what is freely sacrificed.
As the witch's ritual completed, transforming her body to walk within the ether, the psychic boy wove a spell with the unfamiliar Latin taken from her own mind and bound the woman to the in-between, trapping her within the boundaries of the giant pentagram where all the power she'd gone into the realm to gain couldn't release her.
The psychic's emotions swirled through Sam, coming rapidly, too much too much, slamming and biting with stiletto teeth. He shied away from them. Vision graying, Sam sank to the floor, hands clasped around his head to stop the forced memories, keep them out while the world rocked hard around him. He barely grasped when it stopped, the lull of emotions subsided, and he realized the rocking motion was him, pitching forward and back on his knees and head.
Light sheared through his eyelids. He peeked sideways at the fire, which abruptly shrank and piffed out to ashes in a cold dead hearth.
Sam was alone in the large kitchen. The psychic boy was gone.
ooo000ooo
Pressing a hand to his chest, Dean dragged himself up to lean against the wall. Sam shouldn't be anywhere near this hunt. Sam was supposed to be back at the motel safe.
His dad prowled around the walls, looking for any loose bricks, sometimes slamming his fist against one. John stood back and dragged his hands through his hair.
"Dad." Dean cringed at the agony coating his vocal cords. "She's going to kill Sam."
"No." John crouched beside Dean, carefully avoiding stepping on the dead boy's bones. "No she's not." A grimace of pure terror enveloped John's features before he was able to shutter the emotion away. It frightened Dean to his core. "How the hell did he get here?"
Dean shifted, grimacing at the pull in his wounds. "You know Sammy. He's resourceful. Probably got worried and hotwired a car."
Nodding, John shrugged out of his blue button down shirt, stripping down to his T-shirt. "How bad it is?" He glanced toward Dean's wounds as he guided the younger man's arms through the long sleeves.
Hurts like a mother. "They're not that deep. Not even bleeding anymore."
John started buttoning the shirt over the cuts. "Could you feel . . ." Dean stared into his dad's face. The shadows gave him a haggard appearance. "Do you know what she was doing to you?"
The question startled Dean. He was only aware of how bad it hurt. "It just . . ." He shook his head. "Felt weird, like I was getting weaker, draining me."
John's lips pressed together hard. "I'm going to get you out of here. We're going to find Sam."
"I know you will." Except he didn't. He'd already checked every brick as well. There were no loose joints and they didn't have any tools to break through.
Dean lifted his gaze and jolted. "Dad!"
A dark-haired boy about Sam's age stood in the corner, his dirty shirt wet with blood.
John twisted around at his exclamation, whipping up to stand between Dean and the ghost, but the kid lifted his palms and then turned to the wall and placed one hand low on a brick. He looked back as though making sure they watched him. Then he positioned his other hand on a brick higher up and pushed, dissolving through the wall.
"The hell was that?" Dean grimaced.
"I don't know." Brows creased, John studied the wall, putting his hands in the exact spots the kid had. "Press on one brick and nothing happens. But press on two . . . the right ones, and . . ." He pushed and the bricks scraped in. Grinning, John looked back at Dean. "Pressure points, like a Chinese puzzle box." He shoved harder and the entire wall swung outward. "Let's go get your brother."
ooo000ooo
A deep shuddering moan clawed past Sam's throat. He pushed up on his hands to get off of the dirty kitchen floor. He understood what had happened now, the ritual, all of it, but he didn't know what to do about it. The psychic had sealed the witch in the other realm. Her physical form at any rate, though it appeared she could cross over and still murder children. Similar to a spirit, but not a spirit. She wasn't dead. Dorthea was just somehow stuck between worlds.
And if his father and Dean burned her bones they might inadvertently unseal the psychic kid's spell. Except . . . there wasn't a corpse to salt and burn. Dorthea Truman never actually died, her body slipped into the ether with her soul—if she had a soul. And since she wasn't technically a ghost, salt and iron wouldn't work on her.
In fact, Sam realized, there wasn't any way to get rid of her. She couldn't be killed in the ether, which was a huge problem because even though she was bound to this house—to the pentagram—she still killed any child who wandered in here.
Burning the mansion wasn't an option either. It was too massive. Firefighters would be on scene before half a wing could be destroyed.
Sam sat up, his mind sifting through a million horrible realizations. Dorthea didn't know her ritual had actually worked, that she completed it. She didn't know the last boy was a psychic who turned her spell against her. That's why she kept carving sigils into any kid on the property and hiding them away in the secret rooms. She was still trying to finish the ritual.
What would happen if Dean and Dad salt and burned the bodies of the murdered children? If the psychic kid's spirit was put to rest, that might be enough to unravel the spell he welded over Dorthea. Then the witch would be released from the pentagram, but she'd be supercharged with the power source of a thousand demons at her beck and call.
Sam scrambled to his feet. He had to warn his father.
He made it to the door, reached for the handle when it jerked open.
Sam yelped.
Dorthea stood in the doorway and latched onto the young hunter's upper arms. "I'm very disappointed. Never run from Mother. You could have been killed." Laughter chimed around them like a melody.
Fear slithered across Sam's skin, burrowing inside. Sam drew back, trying to wrench out of her grasp, but she was too strong. She floated backwards, gaze steady on him, the hem of her gown sweeping through dust. Sam's sneakers squeaked across the hardwood.
Dorthea stopped, delicate brows bunching together as she peered intently into his face. "You're like the other boy."
Hell did that mean? "Let me go."
She frowned sadly, lifted a hand away from Sam's arm to feather her fingers across the bridge of his nose. "Never ever. You'll always be mine."
Pivoting on her heel, she dragged Sam by his arm. Skidding and backpedaling across the floor, Sam grabbed onto the door jamb, trying to leverage himself back, but Dorthea merely sighed and jerked him off, dragging him through the length of the corridor, across the foyer.
He was tired of getting hauled off all over this mansion.
"Let go! Let go!" In his struggle, her palm slipped down the length of his arm to catch at his wrist. With his other hand, Sam pushed at her fingers, fighting to yank free from her iron-clad grip. At the bottom of one of the curving staircases, Sam grabbed hold of the banister, sucking in a breath to call out for his dad at the top of his lungs, but anticipating it, Dorthea clamped a hand over his mouth, cutting short his cry. Her arms wrapped around him like steel bands, lifting him back against her.
"Shhhhh, sweetheart. Just you and me now. No one else." Dorthea's icy breath puffed the ends of Sam's hair, tickling his neck. She carried him up the stairway as though he weighed nothing, even while he flailed against her, his screams and tears muffled beneath her wintry hand. He tried to hook his dragging heels against each step, losing a shoe that thumped-thumped-thumped down the staircase.
TBC