AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG
Chapter Four
"First we forgot where we planted those bulbs last year,
and then we forgot that we'd planted at all ..."
-Dar Williams, "February"
It is Jim Murphy who dials the phone, once every fifteen minutes, and listens to the disconnect recording with a growing sense of dread.
But it is Bobby Singer, notified of the situation by Jim and questioned about possible activity in the area, who jumps in his aging truck and hits the interstate.
It will take him seventeen hours. At least that's the conventional wisdom. He knows he can shave a heck of a lot off the conventional wisdom, but that still leaves him with the better part of a day's worth of empty road before he can check in on John's children. He feels the need to crush something in his hand. Looks down and realizes he's chosen his hat for the job.
Jim's mention of Dusk Valley was the first sign of trouble.
Bobby knows Dusk Valley. Or anyway, he knows the legends. Obscure, not well-known, but not a story you'd just forget. Took him a minute to blow the dust off the foggy – bad pun intended – memories when Jim called, and a few more minutes still to locate the book, with its handwritten accounts of a whole town dropping off the map once every thirty-three years.
Dropping off the map and coming up empty.
Last time was in 1961. Time before that was 1928. Both times the town disappeared. No calls, no letters in and out. The town's radio station went quiet, back when it bothered to keep a radio station. Its citizens stopped showing up for their out-of-town jobs. Eyewitnesses in '61 report trying to drive into the area, only to find that the road never got there. Just kept looping and twisting, rising and falling through increasingly heavy fog, until the motorist finally acknowledged they'd driven three or four times over the distance it should have taken them to get there, and they couldn't see a thing in front of their car.
Sixteen days, the town went quiet. Went absent. Ceased to exist at the end of the road. And when it resurfaced from its – as the bewildered authorities reported – "weather anomaly," the whole damn place was empty. Not a soul left anywhere.
"Mass hysteria," the bumfuzzled media reported. "Citizens of the town of Dusk Valley, largely a superstitious bunch, became frightened of the distinctive weather patterns there – caused, of course, by a very scientific meeting of the river and the mountain and the valley, not to mention all those miles of steel track cutting through the town – and scattered to other local communities, mostly living with relatives and failing to report their address changes."
Right.
What the media only hinted at was that the weather it referred to was an all-consuming fog. A fog which came despite bright sun or heavy snow in surrounding areas, despite steady temperatures and weather conditions which should have prevented fog from occurring.
Every time he thinks about an all-consuming fog swallowing up a town and spitting out the bones, picked clean of John's boys and everybody else, Bobby hits the gas harder and shaves another few precious minutes off his trip.
"Sixteen days," he tells himself. Just because the town's already gone quiet doesn't mean he won't be able to get in. He's a hunter, after all. He knows things those fool drivers back in 1961 didn't know. He will be able to get in. He will be able to find Dean and Sam in the fog, to get them out.
Three hours in, he stops for gas, calls Jim from a payphone. "Any luck?"
"It rang once," Jim said. "Then the line kind of went … gray." The pastor searches for words. "I had the distinct impression I was hearing something through the line, that I was connected to the boys. But I didn't actually hear anything."
"You sure the line wasn't just dead?"
"No. It was a very peculiar experience. I wasn't exactly hearing anything, but I felt like – I felt like I was hearing the sounds of Dusk Valley at this particular moment."
"Well, that … ain't comforting," Bobby groans. He's crushing his hat again, and he can feel the unfamiliar sensation of a breeze on the top of his head.
"No," Jim says. "It isn't. Bobby, should I start that way?"
"Naw, I'm closer at this point and anyway I'm faster."
"Yes, I have the slight disadvantage of still recognizing traffic laws," Jim allows dryly. He pauses. Bobby would swear he hears the man swallow. "I'm hoping for a call from John at any time."
"He calls, you get him turned around and started toward his kids. He's a hell of a lot closer'n either of us." But both men know the possibility of John's phone call is just that – a possibility. It isn't something to be counted on, not when John's out in the forest taking down some other evil.
Bobby can't help but think, some lesser evil. He wishes he had some way of signaling John that the safe little town he picked for his boys is anything but. Part of him is furious – John should have checked the town out more thoroughly, he should have known it had a history – but the more rational part of him – the part getting breeze where usually there is only a hat – has to admit that the story is obscure, and few people outside of himself even know about it. Jim hadn't, and he's been dealing with this stuff a lot longer than John.
Besides. Bobby knows what John does, what he is sure John doesn't want to think about when choosing a place to leave the boys: Every place has a history. The trick is knowing how to deal with it.
The thought is mildly comforting. John left the boys alone, sure, but he didn't leave them unarmed. Just like the motorists trying to drive into town in the sixties didn't know what Bobby knows, the townsfolk who have disappeared in Dusk Valley before don't know what Dean and Sam Winchester do. Dean's fifteen now and not a little kid. He's smart and strong, quick and well-trained, and he will protect himself and his brother as long as he can.
He will buy time for Bobby to find a way in. He has to believe this is true.
"Jim," Bobby says, "you keep trying that phone. You get 'em, you tell them to keep inside, keep out of that fog. Tell 'em I'm coming."
"You know I will," Jim says. "Bobby, drive safe, and ..." He trails off, which is unusual for the pastor. Bobby hears the rest of the thought loud and clear: Find a way in. Save those boys.
"Yep," he says, and ends the connection.
By nightfall, he has put nine hours of road in his rearview. He is hunched over the wheel, dealing with blinding snow and heavy dark. It has not been an easy drive and he doesn't know that he's managed to shave any time off his anticipated ETA, but at his last pit stop, Jim reported no further luck reaching the boys, and no word from their father. He can't stop, can't turn around, despite the deteriorating road conditions and the mangled condition of his favorite hat.
He is filled with growing dread and he's got hours yet to go.
To be continued ...