A/N: Wow, I really went on a writing spree today! 6 pages to finish the chapter! I'm glad I could get this one up so soon after I got back from vacation. I guess the writing muse was building up inspiration while I was away. Thank you soooo much for the lovely reviews; your words give me pleasure that only writers can understand, as I'm sure you know. And irismay, I'm so glad you loved the switch-up with their jobs; that was one of the main ideas that birthed this fic. And I'm also glad you liked UFO guy! He was so much fun to write. Anyway, I'm very excited to give you the next part, so I won't delay you any longer. Onto chapter 4!
Dean shifted uncomfortably under his stiff sport coat and cleared his throat. Twenty-five pairs of eyes stared back at him: bored, expectant, daring, annoyed.
"Hi, class," he greeted, wincing inwardly at how lame he sounded. Think Marty Robinson. Be Marty Robinson. Here's to you, Marty Robinson… okay, focus. "Since Mrs. H—" He stuttered, trying to remember the woman's name. "H-Hadley has broken her leg, I'm gonna be your sub for the rest of the week."
A gangly, dark-haired kid near the front spoke up, eyes glinting, a sneer on his face: "Is Mrs. H-H-Hadley going to be okay?" He mocked.
A few other students chuckled. Clearly substitute teachers had no respect.
Dean figured that could do with changing.
He walked up to the kid's desk, put his hands onto it, and leaned forward. "And you are?"
"Jimmy," the kid replied, raising his eyebrows challengingly.
"Okay, Jimmy. Your dad a military man?"
Jimmy replied with bored contempt, "No."
"Well, mine was," Dean replied, a smirk on his face and a glint in his eye, voice quiet and seemingly friendly with an undertone of menace. "And whenever I talked back, his punishment was for me to drop and give him twenty. So why don't you start with that and do another twenty each time you open that smart mouth of yours, okay?"
Jimmy stared at him warily but didn't move.
Dean raised his eyebrows. "Did I stutter?"
Throwing a nasty look at Dean's irony, Jimmy got down on his stomach and did twenty push-ups. While he was busy with that, Dean walked back to the front of the room and observed the students, who looked amused and gleeful at their classmate's comeuppance, as well as sharp and attentive for the new boss.
That's respect.
"So, U.S. History, right?" A few students nodded. Dean sat down on top of the teacher's desk at the front of the room, rubbing his hands together. "What are you guys studying?"
A blonde girl piped up from the back, "The colonies."
Dean grinned. "Did you learn about the lost colony of Roanoke yet?" A few shook their heads. "Croatoan? No? Well, here's how it went down…"
For almost forty minutes, Dean proceeded to regale them with all the weird historical tales he'd ever heard: Roanoke, haunted Civil War battlegrounds, urban legends involving dead presidents, and the industrialist and inventor (and gunsmith) Samuel Colt.
The students were amazed by his unique knowledge. They sat rapt, listening to his stories and eagerly asking questions. Even Jimmy looked intrigued despite himself. Dean couldn't help the smile that kept stealing onto his face. And Sam had said he couldn't do it.
"Okay, now that I've told you all this cool stuff that I know, there's something I'm curious to hear from you guys."
The atmosphere in the room quickly changed from enthusiastic and interested to somber and subdued. They knew what he was talking about.
"I'm hearin' all sorts of things about this murder… and if I'm teaching here, I'd just like to get the facts straight," he continued cautiously, watching as a few students cast nervous glances to the back of the room.
"Please," one girl said quietly, gazing at him with wide brown eyes. She twisted her fingers anxiously, biting her lip. After a moment she found her voice again. "It's just… Audrey found him," she finished in almost a whisper, throwing a look to the back of the room. Dean followed everyone's eyes now to the girl in the back with dark red hair and a spatter of freckles dusting her face. She slumped in her chair in the back row, head down, eyes trained on her lap, ignoring everyone.
Jackpot.
"Right. Sorry," Dean offered, voice once again sounding lame in his own ears. "Well… that's all I've got today. No homework."
A few smiles broke across the students' faces at that news, but the mood had sufficiently been killed. Nice going, Dean.
The bell rang, and by the time it was done, the entire class had vanished into the teeming hallway—all except for Audrey, who was still slinging her bag over her shoulder and eyeing Dean as she stood up. He approached her desk.
"Sorry for bringing all that up," he offered more sincerely.
Audrey raised her eyebrows, giving him an appraising look, and shrugged. "It's cool. Everyone's all freaked because they think if they mention Brian, I'll shatter like a piece of glass."
"You're… not bothered by what happened?" Dean asked slowly.
"Don't be ridiculous; of course I am," she retorted, rolling her eyes. She went quiet for a short moment. "I can't…" She shrugged one shoulder, glancing away. "I can't get it out of my head sometimes. His eyes were gouged out," she said slowly, dropping the full weight of it into the air between them. "But I also couldn't stand Brian. I know that's not a very nice thing to say about a dead guy, but I'm not going to cry over him."
Dean shook his head. "Still, though. It's gotta be rough, having to see something like that. And not know who did it, or if it'll happen again."
Audrey's eyes were cold and scornful. "Well, all the yahoos here think it's a ghost or something."
"What?"
"You know, with the stories." When it became clear to her that Dean didn't know, she added, "Everyone thinks Fair Hill High is haunted because of the schoolhouse murders. People say they've seen dead children strung up from the ceiling at night when everyone's gone home. And of course, everyone tells the freshman that if they don't behave, Miss Carver will come get them."
Dean quirked an eyebrow. "But you don't believe that?"
Audrey scoffed. "Of course not. It's just a story the upperclassmen tell to spook the freshmen. It's like a rite of passage. Besides, it's a ghost story. Nobody actually believes it."
Dean nodded. "Right. But it makes sense that people will be grasping at straws here. I mean, the killer left no clues. Unless you saw anything else in the bathroom the day you found Brian…?"
"Yeah," Audrey replied quietly, hesitant, eyes downcast. "There was something. A message written on the wall, in blood. It said 'aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?' Oh wait—wrong ghost story…"
The bell rang again, signaling the end of passing period.
"Damn it," Dean grumbled, looking down at his watch, realizing that he was supposed to be in another room this period. "I'm late for my next class."
Audrey shrugged. "Don't sweat it; so am I. But I can get away with so much crap these days, it's ridiculous. I'll just go splash some water on my eyes and pretend I was holed up in the bathroom for a while. Mr. Snyder will probably give me a pass on the pop quiz." She was already making her way to the door, and she swiveled her head over her shoulder as she entered the hallway, calling out, "See you tomorrow!"
Dean shook his head. Conniving little bitch.
As he walked down the hall with the EMF meter hidden under a rag and the headphones tucked inconspicuously into his ears, Sam wondered how Dean was faring with his students.
He snorted. Dean had students. Sam couldn't help but be amused by this thought.
The EMF whined. He was near the bathroom.
Yep, Dean was playing sub while Sam mopped floors. That made sense. Sam figured if anyone should be playing teacher, it should be him. He was better suited to it. Dean would probably blow their cover by revealing that he actually knew less about U.S. History than he knew about car engines and proper gunmanship.
The EMF whined. Sam looked up, glancing around. He'd gotten the odd crackle here and there throughout the school, but the signal was strongest right around the bathroom in which Brian had been found. The thing practically went haywire at certain places: the boys bathroom, the hall just outside of it, and the next classroom over.
Which mean that Sam had figured out where on the premises that old schoolhouse had once resided.
The bell rang, and Sam pulled the headphones out of his ears and kept walking, trying to spot Dean somewhere among the throng of people. He really wanted to know how his brother was faring.
Because, really. Dean with students. Right.
Dean smacked Sam on the arm as he rounded a corner of the hallway.
"Dude, there you are. I've been lookin' for you all day."
It was almost four o'clock; the students had all dashed out of the building as if their tails had caught fire. Sam raised his eyebrows.
"Couldn't handle the kids?" he ventured, throwing a dirty rag over his shoulder and continuing in the direction of his closet. "Hmm, who could have predicted that?"
Dean grabbed the rag off Sam's shoulder and snapped it at him, the tip cracking sharply against Sam's elbow. "No, asshat. The kids were great, actually. From this perspective, high school doesn't look so bad."
"Because you have the power to make your students' lives miserable? That's probably why you hated teachers, Dean," Sam replied as he pulled open his closet, snatched the rag out of Dean's hand, and tossed it inside while fishing around the shelf for the EMF meter. "And besides, I thought you liked high school."
Dean's eyebrows shot so high Sam thought they were in danger of flying right off his face. "What would give you the idea that I ever enjoyed school?"
"Well, not so much the classroom aspect, but, you know. Lively social scene… I don't know, you always seemed to enjoy yourself." Sam shrugged as they started walking to the parking lot, fiddling with the gadget in his hand.
"I hated high school."
"Whatever. Anyway, EMF's through the roof by that bathroom. I'm figuring that's where the schoolhouse was. Of course, that doesn't really do us much good if we can't figure out where she's buried," Sam added, voice exasperated with the situation. "But I saw the kids—the ones she killed. They're still hanging around, too." He grimaced. "Literally."
Dean was grinning. "Put that on a Styrofoam headstone." He pulled open the car door and slid inside, swiping a hand down his face. "Some of the students think the school is haunted."
"It is."
"I know that, genius," Dean pointed out. He sighed. "Least they're on the right page. I mean, ghosts make more sense than aliens."
"What?"
"Never mind."
They drove in silence. Dean glanced out the window and watched the Halloween decorations slide by, sweeping away behind him as soon as he got a good look. There were fake spider-webs, scarecrows, jack-o-lanterns… One house had a stuffed zombie perched on the porch, a plastic severed leg in its lap like an afternoon snack.
Dean knew that Sam hated zombies. Not only had one broken his wrist last year in a footrace, but the possibility of their presence always wreaked havoc. Always. Especially around Halloween, when things were never as they seemed…
Dean, being a hotheaded eighteen-year-old, was not adverse to punching his brother when he deserved it—which is exactly what he did when he'd had enough of his scoffing, eye-rolling, and snide under-the-breath remarks without ever looking away from his book.
It was only a light punch, a warning. Sam rolled his shoulder after the impact, glowering darkly at Dean with sullenness that was rapidly becoming routine for the angry fourteen-year-old.
"Dad thinks it's something."
Sam snorted into his book, holding it up over his face. "If he guns down a couple of kids begging for candy—"
Dean punched him again in the shoulder, and Sam dropped his book in his lap, rubbing the tender joint with his left hand. "Dad's not an idiot, Sam. There really is something here. Crops going bad, diseased livestock left and right, flickering lights. And, oh yeah, people have been seeing dead guys walkin' the streets at night."
"Sounds like Halloween to me."
"Yeah, well Dad doesn't think so. Could be demons inhabiting the dead. Or zombies. Anyway, we'll find out tonight."
Sam rolled his eyes. "We're in a crappy farming town. It's been dry lately, which can account for dead crops. People have been getting sick here, so there's something going around, and maybe it can infect the livestock, too. And the dead people are teenagers dressed up trying to scare little kids for Halloween. This entire holiday mocks us. Everyone thinks it's so much fun to pretend monsters are real for a day, but it would suck for them if they found out they are real."
Dean was taken aback by Sam's tirade, but the logic started poking at him like a sharp stick. "When did you become so cynical?" he muttered before walking away, turning over the signs of the supernatural they'd found here so far. It wasn't a stretch to attribute all those things to what Sam had said. So far the only one who had died was some old priest—maybe he'd just been old. Gotten sick. That's what everyone in town said it was.
He heaved a frustrated sigh and gathered up a couple of guns in the duffel, wishing Sam didn't always have to make so much damn sense.
Despite heated protests on Sam's part and some weak objections from Dean, John Winchester was resolute, and at eleven o'clock that evening they were creeping through the woods beyond the cemetery, where the dead people had been seen most often. Dean had worked himself up so much over Sam's argument that he found himself worried about what they would or wouldn't find, convinced that Sam was right and trick-or-treating brats were to blame for everything.
Then they saw it: a gray-skinned corpse moving amongst the trees in the distance, half-hidden in the shadows and the low-hanging branches. John was a good ways off to the left; Sam was right by Dean's side, and as Dean raised his gun instinctively, Sam swatted it away.
"Dude, what if that's someone in a costume?" he hissed angrily, and Dean faltered, casting a glance to their father, who was far enough away that he had neither seen the creature nor heard Sam speak.
It did kind of look like a kid with a lot of makeup on. The clothes looked as though they had once been nice—a suit or something—but were now in tatters and covered in dirt, and when moonlight shimmered through the bare branches, Dean could make out that it was a tall, young man.
He lowered his gun.
The figure turned and spotted them, stopping in his tracks.
Then he was bounding in their direction, quick as a flash, faster than the lumbering zombies in typical horror flicks. A misty light flickered in the distance, off to the left, and a gun cracked and echoed off the trees, and the corpse was upon Dean, who got a whiff of its stale, rotting breath and saw the hollow sockets where its eyes had been and noticed the sallow, sunken cheeks and felt the ice cold of its dead, decaying flesh wrapping around his neck in a vice-like grip.
Stars danced in front of Dean's vision as his head slammed against a jutting tree root, his back bouncing off hard dirt, and then the stars became black dots as the skeletal hands squeezed his windpipe shut. His gun clattered off somewhere, and he struggled unarmed against the strong creature until another gunshot cracked through the air and the corpse went slack and fell heavily on top of him, pure dead weight. He struggled for a few painful, rasping breaths before his vision swam back.
Sam was standing on his right, horror etched in every line of his face; John was running towards them from the left, sawed-off still raised, fury clouding his features.
"What the hell is the matter with you, Sam? Why didn't you do anything?" he shouted.
Standing there with his gun hanging loosely by his knees, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, Sam looked all the gangly, shamefaced fourteen-year-old that he was. "I thought it was someone in a costume," he murmured in a low voice, sounding stricken. "For… for Halloween."
John tore his eyes away from Sam and looked down at Dean. "You all right?"
Dean nodded and shoved the heavy corpse off of him, rolling away from it, trying not to retch from the horrible stench of death that was still filling his nostrils. Slowly he got to his feet, grabbing his gun from the ground where it had fallen.
He was going to ask what had happened when John interrupted with a brief explanation, "I saw the apparition over by me, sent it away with some salt. It was a Bhuta."
Realization dawned on Dean, and he felt like a fool for not having thought of that sooner. Bhutas were a type of evil spirit, referred to most often in Hinduism; it was a man who died a violent death, like all evil spirits, but who hadn't been given proper funerary rites. Which explained the death of the priest, if he'd been cutting corners.
Dean went through the signs of a Bhuta in his head: appear as flickering lights; tend to haunt forests; cause bad crops, diseased livestock, illness, and insanity; and, most importantly, reanimate dead bodies at night. When John had sent the spirit away, its hold on the corpse that had been attacking Dean had been severed.
"So all we've got to do is find the guy and give him a proper funeral?" Dean offered, rubbing his sore neck.
John gave a curt nod, throwing another death glare in Sam's direction that told them both that he would be dealing with Sam's error in judgment after they finished off the Bhuta. "Come on."
Sam and Dean followed along in his wake, guns held loose at their sides, Sam's head down so that his bangs fell in front of his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he murmured as they walked, side-by-side, through the forest.
Dean shrugged.
"I just—I really thought it was just someone in costume. Halloween screws everything up," he explained.
Dean nodded. "I know."
John marched on in front of them, ignoring the quiet conversation.
"That thing could have killed you," Sam whispered, more to himself, it seemed, than to Dean. He sounded aghast. Dean was already over it. Near-death experiences were expected in the life of a hunter, and aside from a little bruising that would surely crop up on his neck, he was fine now. Dad had their backs. But Sam still looked as if someone had slapped him in the face.
"I hate Halloween," Sam grumbled, and Dean thought of laughing trick-or-treaters and little kids' excited faces when they got free candy and costumed partygoers, and he thought of Sam staring out the window at passing monsters and reanimated corpses that look like costumed teenagers, and he agreed.
Dean shook himself out of his thoughts as he walked down the emptying hall.
His three classes had gone well today; as he'd done yesterday, he told some stories and legends he knew, thrilling the students with accounts of gunfights in the Old West and his vast knowledge of historical serial killers, including H.H. Holmes' shenanigans during the 1893 World Fair at Chicago. The ones who'd read The Devil in the White City had been eager to throw their knowledge into the pot on that one, and Dean had thought about where the sadistic bastard was now, stuck under a couple tons of concrete surrounded by a ring of salt, and smirked.
He hadn't spoken with Audrey at all today, but he figured he'd gotten everything out of her that was relevant, anyway. She'd come into his class, lowered her head, and stared at her desk for forty-five minutes, and as soon as the bell rang, she'd hopped out of her seat and fled. Some of the other students had hung back to chat for a minute or two before bolting to their next classes, wanting to comment on how interesting they found Dean's stories, which made him more pleased than he could articulate. Even Jimmy the Jerk had warmed up to him and stopped making bitchy comments.
It had been a good day. He hadn't gotten any more info on the crazy old broad that killed Brian, but at least he'd had good classes. Oddly, he liked teaching. He was enjoying high school, for the first time in his life. Ruthless teenagers weren't staring at him like an outsider; snobby girls weren't sneering at his ripped jeans and same three Salvation Army tee-shirts that he rotated during the week; geeks weren't shrinking away from him, afraid for some reason that he'd beat them up just because he could. The students were talking with him, and rather amiably at that.
Finally, he thought as he spotted Sam at the closet of cleaning supplies.
"Anything good?" he asked as he strode over, loosening the tie Sam had made him don for the day and further rolling up the already crumpled sleeves of his dress shirt.
Sam heaved a great sigh. "Other than the girl walking around with the lime green thong hanging out of her pants, nothing."
Dean glanced around the empty hallway for show, looking around to spot the elusive green thong. With a shrug, he turned back to Sam. "Well, so far we are just doing a bang-up job on this case."
"Tell me about it," Sam muttered, rolling his shoulders in his uncomfortably-fitting gray getup. "Let's get out of here."
They had just started their trek down the hallway when the lights flickered briefly, a quick electrical hiccup. Dean whirled around, feeling naked without a gun tucked in the back of his pants. At least he had his knife strapped to the inside of his ankle. There were no metal detectors at this school, which had made it easy to sneak the weapon in, but he would pay hell if anyone saw, so he left it where it was for now, somewhat comforted by the feel of it against his leg.
They didn't even have to turn on the EMF meter.
"You feel that?" Sam murmured, and Dean noticed the way the hair on his arms was standing, how static electricity seemed to be coursing through the air, buzzing in his ears.
"Yeah," he replied quietly, keeping a cautious eye around the empty hallway. "That is some powerful mojo."
"Keep your eyes peeled."
They made their way to the junction in the main hallway that shot off into a smaller one, right next to the dreaded boys bathroom; to save on electricity, the school had already shut down the lights in that hallway, darkness pouring through it with the faint gleam of afternoon sun shining in from the big windows of the main hallway. Lockers lined one side, classrooms on the other. Sam and Dean stepped into the hall, watching each other's backs, hackles raised on high alert, Dean's fingers itching to grab his knife.
Something flickered in the middle of the hallway, and for a fraction of an instant she was there.
The brief glimpse gave them a view of a woman in her forties, graying brown hair pulled into a bun, glasses perched on her pointed nose. Though the colors were washed out like an old photograph, it was clear that she was clad in a dull—perhaps brown—dress traditional to the late 1800s with a white collar and big buttons down the front. In one hand she held a book, and in the other a pointer that had once been used to indicate words written on a chalkboard and slap naughty children's knuckles.
But she flickered away in an instant, and that was all the detail Dean could acquire. In the next moment a new image flickered in the hallway, again for the briefest of moments, and Dean watched in horror as children appeared before him, hanging from nooses attached to the ceiling, heads cocked and limp, faces ravaged by a blade and oozing dark crimson blood from the places where their eyes, noses, and mouths had once been.
Then that image, too, was gone, and Miss Carver flickered back into focus, closer this time, jumping through the hallway whenever she was invisible. She was down the hallway, flickered out, then appeared at half that distance, vanished, then was amazingly ten feet in front of them.
Panic melted into the adrenaline that accompanied dangerous hunts, the kind of heat and strength thrumming through the body that Dean fed off, and in one swift movement he reached down and yanked his knife out from its hiding place, holding it up just as she appeared a foot in front of him with her pointer raised to slam it down on his head with a crack, and they both drove their weapons through the air at one another, and Dean's hand—knife clutched tight—sailed through emptiness, which whooshed down on him with the sound of a wooden stick being whipped through the thin air.
He glanced at Sam, breathing hard. An amused cackle echoed through the hallway, turning his feet cold. The adrenaline of the fight drained away, but Dean kept his guard up, heart still pumping heat through his body, eyes watchful for any kind of movement.
But she was gone, and with her, the hanging children. The hallway was empty.
"What the hell?" he wondered aloud.
Sam ignored him; his eyes were trained on the floor, and Dean followed his gaze to the book lying before him, the one Miss Carver had been holding. He reached down and picked it up, frowning at the cover.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
He flashed Sam a view of the cover. It was an old, brittle copy of the Bible, the cover brown leather worn with age. As he held it, a wind like the one that had come on him as he was swinging the knife ripped over the book in his hands, creaking open the cover and flipping yellowed paper until the book landed open on a page with underlined text, and the wind died down.
Dean read the underlined section of the proverb.
For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.
But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.
He raised an eyebrow at Sam, who was reading it over his shoulder. Sam cast him an uneasy look, probably thinking of all the things about Dean that Miss Carver would find punishable by death. Dean returned his gaze to the ominous proverb.
It was a warning.