Okay, everyone, here is Chapter 4. We get back to something fairly normal after the last, freaky, chapter. lol. Anyway, here it is!
Chapter 4
"Okay," Sam said, "this is just too weird." He looked, frowning, at the notes he'd taken over the past few hours. "Most of the time, it started out as a bunch of idiots daring someone or other to go into the house. Then they'd just never come back out. No screaming, no struggles, no trying to run back out of the house. They just…disappeared."
"So you're starting to believe me now, eh?" Dean pulled the pen he was chewing on out of his mouth. "Told ya there was something weird going on."
Sam shot him a dirty look. "Yeah, whatever." He shuffled the many sheets and squinted at what he'd written. "But then there's more than one report of people going into the damn place and coming out perfectly fine."
Dean chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Can you see any sort of pattern at all?"
Sam started to scribble again. "Hang on."
Dean sighed and leaned back in the uncomfortable library chair. God, he hated this part of a job. Sam obviously didn't mind being in a library for four hours straight, poring over book after book, but some days it drove him absolutely crazy.
"It's every four years," Sam said abruptly, dropping his pen. "Every leap year. Look." He shoved the paper at Dean.
Dean took it and scanned the page. Sam must have written the years when people disappeared. Sure enough, each year listed was a leap year. 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992, 1984, 1980, 1976, 1972, 1968, 1960, 1956. He frowned. "There's two years missing," he pointed out. "1988 and 1964."
Sam took the sheet back and looked back at his notes. "No one disappeared those years, as far as I can tell," he said. "I wonder why?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "We'll figure it out. Come on, let's go. I'm tired of this."
"You've barely done anything," Sam said.
"I've been working hard. I can tell you the whole history of that damn house."
"Oh, yeah?" Sam folded his arms and glared challengingly across the table at his brother.
Dean pulled the closest book to him so he could read it. "It's really good," he informed Sam. "It was built in 1933 and it stayed in the possession of the same family until 1907. That's when the last descendant sold it."
"Wow," Sam said. "I'm impressed."
"Oh, wait, there's more." Dean pulled another book forward. "It bounced around from family to family until the MacDowells bought it in 1949. This is where it gets interesting." Sam raised an eyebrow. "From what I can tell, they were a pretty normal family. Mom, Dad, three daughters, two sons."
"Dean," Sam said, "I'm finding all this just as fascinating as you are, but is it really relevant?"
"God, you're impatient." Dean flipped forward a few pages. "Just listen, will you? Okay, so everything worked out great until 1952. On February 29 – the leap year," he added with a meaningful look at Sam, "the youngest girl, Lucy, turned 12. Actually, she really only turned…" His voice trailed off as he tried to calculate it.
"Three," Sam said wearily.
"Yeah, that. Anyway, she disappeared."
He saw Sam starting to pay attention now. "She disappeared?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah. In here it says she was walking home from school when she was nabbed. There was one witness, but he wasn't really much help. He got the license plate of the car he saw, but it was found later abandoned."
"So did they find Lucy?" Sam asked, rising and going to Dean's side of the table. He frowned down at the book Dean was reading from.
"No," Dean replied. "But a few weeks later the entire MacDowell family was found murdered at that house."
Sam's eyes widened. "Wow."
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "So I'm thinking it's Lucy. She was probably kidnapped and murdered, and came back to finish off her family…maybe because they couldn't save her?"
"Now if someone wanders into her old home on a leap year…" Sam didn't finish.
Dean nodded. "Hey, Sam, do you have the dates of when those people disappeared?"
Sam went back to his seat and skimmed through his notes. "Some of the more recent ones have dates, but not all of them."
"Is there another pattern other than the years?" Dean asked. Sam went over the dates again and nodded.
"They're all in February," he said, sounding slightly awed.
"Ghost Girl's killing people in her birthday month," Dean said. Suddenly, a sour look came over his face. "Oh, come on!"
Sam looked around. "What?"
Dean shook his head. "Lucy MacDowell was never found," he reminded Sam. As far as we know, there are no remains to destroy."
Sam sighed. "Right." He paused. "That sucks."
Dean slammed the book shut. "So I guess we have two options," he reasoned. "We could keep digging and try to solve a fifty-year-old mystery, or we could just, like, torch the place and hope the spirit goes with it."
Sam frowned. "Yeah. I guess so." He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. "Let's check out the house first, though, all right?"
Dean smirked. "Told ya there was something weird going on."
Sam glared at him. "You already said that."
Dean kept smirking. "I know."
Sam glanced at his watch. "It's almost dark," he remarked. "And I'm getting hungry. Let's get something to eat and head back to the motel. We can check the house out tomorrow."
Still laughing, Dean closed his other books and took off. Sam stacked his books in a neat pile and gathered up his papers before following his brother out the library door.
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