BURNING MEMORIES
Chapter 4
The case takes a turn for the worse when the brothers uncover an unsavoury character from Featherstone's past.
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A long day of laborious research, staring at a laptop screen and schlepping round museums and libraries followed as both brothers set out to find as much about the house as possible. It proved to be an easier task than either of them hoped due to the fact that the erstwhile Jail Governor, a Mr Roderick Archer, appeared to have significant links with the house, and be something of an infamous local legend at the same time; the Winchesters soon found themselves drowning under the weight of facts, theories, dates and stories about him.
It was well into the small hours when the pieces all finally fell into place. Sam had wished at that point that he could just lie down and rest his tired, aching eyes; but as the awful reality came to light, he realised he had never felt less like sleeping in his life.
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Dean, obviously not as stimulated by the research as Sam, had dozed off on his bed, a copy of the Featherstone Tribune spread out across his chest. He suddenly found himself being roughly shaken awake by an agitated brother.
"H-hey, steady on, dude!" He blinked vacantly until his eyes focussed on his brother's distressed face.
"Dean, we gotta go." Sam's eyes were glazed in fear.
Dean abruptly sat up, "What's goin' on?"
"Alison and Maisie are in danger - real bad danger; we've gotta go now."
"Dude, it's two o'clock I the morning", Dean muttered blearily, "They're gonna love us if we turn up hammerin' on their door in the middle of the night!"
"Dean, listen to me!" Sam grabbed Dean by the shoulders, "If we don't go there now, there's a very good chance they won't be around in the morning to love us or otherwise!"
Dean knew that look; his brother was beyond scared. He slid off the bed, and grabbed his jacket "C'mon then dude" he grumbled over a yawn.
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"So, you gonna tell me what this midnight dash is all about?" Dean turned to Sam who was fidgetting like a frog on a hotplate.
Sam took a deep breath; "Our friend, Mr Archer; he didn't live in the house where Alison lives; he lived in one on the same site before that."
"Uh-huh!" Dean acknowledged, really not sure where this was going.
"Archer's house burnt down with him in it exactly two hundred years ago. He burned to death in the fire Dean."
"Exactly two hundred years ago?" Dean's head whipped round to face Sam, "how exactly?"
"Tonight exactly", Sam responded.
"Dean, our guy had a reputation for being a tyrant; well, a complete psycho in fact! He hung and flogged more prisoners than the rest of the state combined. During his tenure more prisoners died than in the whole period after his retirement in 1810 up until the Jail closed in the 1930s." Sam took a deep breath and continued before Dean could speak up. "Shortly after he retired, a couple of prisoners escaped from the jail; they set about making his life hell in some kind of revenge-driven vendetta; they attacked him and his house, setting fires, poisoning the water supply, killing their animals; you name it, they did it; they terrified the old man and his wife almost to the point of insanity. They persecuted him for three months, and then one night, they burnt the house to the ground. He and his wife died in the fire".
"Three months?" Dean asked warily
"Three months!" Sam confirmed
"The poltergeist has been persecuting Alison for three months." Now Dean was as wide awake as Sam.
"The activity has been getting progressively more severe ..." Sam added.
"And the two hundredth anniversary of the fire is tonight." Dean hesitated, "Sam, this isn't some random poltergeist manifestation", he turned to Sam in wide-eyed horror, "this is a countdown."
Sam nodded in agreement, "just for the record, Alison's house is about 70 years old; some of the stones from the demolition of the old jail were used to build it."
Dean felt his stomach lurch; he slammed his foot hard on the accelerator and the Impala's powerful growl turned into a roar.
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Both Winchesters gaped in horror when they saw a pall of smoke as the Impala turned into the isolated drive up to the house. Sam had his mobile phone out calling the fire department before the Impala had even skidded to a halt.
Vivid orange flames were pouring out of two broken upstairs windows, and thick, acrid smoke engulfed the top half of the house. Already the heat and roar of the flames was overwhelming.
The brothers leapt out of the Impala and ran towards the burning house, they were met by Alison trying to fight her way into the house, screaming hysterically.
Sam grabbed her, and pulled her away from the burning house, "Alison!" he said urgently, "you're OK, I've got you."
She turned to him, her soot stained face streaked with tears, and fought violently against his grip; "Maisie" she screamed, barely audible over the chaos, "Maisie's in there."
Those words were the only prompt Dean needed. He shrugged his thick leather jacket off and slung it over his head in the manner of a hood, and without even a glance towards Sam and Alison, he dashed blindly into the house, ignoring Sam's frantic cry of "Dean, NO!"
"We got out" she cried, her voice punctuated by choking coughs, "we got out; then just as my back was turned, she ran back in to get that damn rabbit." She broke down in Sam's arms, "I tried to go in after her but I lost her in the smoke".
Sam bit back desperate tears; "Dean's in there now," he reassured her firmly, "if anyone can get Maisie out; trust me, he will!"
Sam looked over the top of Alison's head into the burning house, the thundering roar of the fire, crackling and whistling like a living swarm, the billowing, choking smoke, flying, drifting embers lighting up the night sky like some twisted, hellish firework display. In the distance he heard the faint wail of a siren, and thanked God silently that help was on it's way. Help for Maisie; help for Dean.
Every instinct in his body screamed at him to follow Dean into the house, to find his brother and drag him out to safety, but he knew what Dean would expect; Alison needed protection so that's what Sam had to do. He held the stricken woman tightly and closed his eyes, trying not to think of his brother and that little girl in that terrible inferno …
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tbc
