Sam kept his footsteps light and the beam of his flashlight turned down. The other doors on their corridor were boys' bedrooms, and the room on the end was a large dormitory where the little kids slept all together. The corridor leading away on the opposite side, parallel to their own, was the older girls' wing. There wasn't much they could do about the bedrooms except wave the EMF reader in front of the door, although Dean suggested that Sam could slip in, and if caught,
"You could say were lost and had a nightmare."
Sam flipped him off.
"Look through the keyholes?" Dean suggested.
"Ew."
"It's professional!" Dean objected.
"It's skeevy. And will definitely get us kicked out."
"You got a better idea?"
"Get Ella to invite you back to her place and scope out the girls' wing then. At least you'll be invited."
Dean appeared to consider that.
"And find out how old she is first!"
"Such a buzzkill. Jeez."
They ducked past the night lounge, where the warden on duty, back turned to them, was watching a Happy Days on a black-and-white TV set. Sam didn't get a good look at the warden, just a glimpse of a silhouette, but he or she didn't move as they and slipped silently past and down to the lower corridor. The TV room and the canteen were in darkness. They waved the EMF reader around and the little static line flickered and jumped.
"Yeah, there's something unnatural here," Dean said quietly. "It's dull though. Not very strong."
"Strong enough to kidnap or kill someone," Sam said.
"Maybe."
Sam gave him a sharp look.
"We don't know the girl didn't go with it on purpose. She was talking about her friends, right?"
Sam paused and a shiver ran up his back. That was – just creepy.
The EMF frequency increased slightly as they headed to the bottom of the corridor. Beyond was the school for the little kids – it was locked, but the lock was a piece of crap, and Sam set to work on picking it while Dean stood guard and half-watched him.
"Said you were a regular criminal," he remarked.
"Just applying what you taught me."
"Yeah, nice job on that."
The school was like a cross between an arts-and-crafts room and a kindergarten. A big wooden table occupied the center, and someone had left out a set of fingerpaints. There was a sink in one corner and a mat in the other. Drawers painted in faded colours, labelled 'paper', 'crayons and pencils', and 'arts'. A couple of shelves of kids' books. A second locked door labelled 'Basement: Laundry' brought them to the far end of the Home.
Somewhere out in the corridor, a door opened and closed.
"Shit, night warden," said Dean.
"We can finish," said Sam as the footsteps faded away, heading back in the other direction. "You look here, I'll just
go on down to the basement."
"No, you stay here and I'llcheck the basement. Take a look around, and if anyone comes in, hide."
Sam repressed a comment about how he wasn't an amateur, and Dean picked the lock in half his time before disappearing through the door to the basement. Sam could hear the squeak-tread of the night warden climbing the stairs again, and hoped he or she wasn't going to check on the sleepers. He let his flashlight roam over the room, jumping slightly when it caught the edge of a crudely-made lion painting: a circus-display by small children's hands covered a third of the near wall. He ran his light over the names on the little lockers: Rachel. Damon. Oliver. Each was written by an adult first, with a more or less legible attempt to copy underneath by the child.
The flash of the clown mask in the beam of his torch almost made him scream, and drop it.
He immediately jerked the light back to the place it had hung in the air, three or four foot above the ground, but the air was empty. Sam rolled the light all around, hand sliding into his jeans pocket to grip his gun, loaded with rocksalt. The sensible thing to do now would be to shout for his brother, but the thing was gone, and if he yelled he would have the night warden down on them seconds.
He could've imagined it. It had only been the briefest fragment of a second, and Sam had to admit that clowns were the one thing that could render him less than rational. But the image of it was clear in his mind – faded white like paper maché, with red lips, and bold rings of blue around the eyes that could only be seen as slits.
Gripping his gun in one hand and his torch in the other, he edged towards the spot where he had glimpsed the clown. There was nothing there – just the plain wall, but was it his imagination, or was the wood a little darker here, a little – newer looking? Sam ran one hand over it, searching for a crack, something that would indicate the edge of a panel –
"What are you doing here?"
Barely supressing a yelp, he spun around, heart hammering in his chest. An old woman was standing behind him, eyes narrowed and lips pursed in a frown. She wore an old fashioned flowered dress, thick coke-bottle glasses, and a badge reading, 'STAFF'.
"You should be in bed," she told him.
Sam breathed out. The night warden. Just the night warden.
"And what is that?" the old woman's eyes went to the gun Sam had hastily stuffed in the back of his jeans. "Give it to me, young man."
"Um it's just…" Sam stalled.
"Sammy? What-" Dean's footsteps pounded up the basement stairs, obviously drawn by the voices, and stopped in the doorway when he saw the old woman. "Ah," he said.
"Give me that," ordered the woman again, and Sam had no choice but to surrender the gun. The woman tsked, and opened it with practice – Sam supposed it wasn't the first time she'd seen one, working in Children's Services. "Salt!" she exclaimed. "Well how extraordinary." Her eyes went to Dean and back to Sam. "You must be new."
"Yes Ma'am," said Sam meekly. "We're sorry. It's just, I couldn't sleep, and I thought I heard sounds from down here, so I got my brother to come check it out with me. I was scared." He made his eyes big, dark and sad, hung his head a little – Dean wasn't the only one who could play to an audience.
"Well," said the old woman. "I'll have to confiscate this. Now go back to bed. This is the small children's place. Go."
"We were just leaving," Dean smiled his most charming smile and grabbed Sam's wrist, hurrying him out of the school room. Sam expected the old woman to follow them up to their bedroom and make sure they went to bed, but she turned away at the bottom of the staircase.
"Weird," Sam muttered.
"You can say that again," Dean said, staring straight ahead, and Sam followed his eyes to the lounge they had passed on their way downstairs.
The warden was still watching Happy Days, and had moved enough for Sam to see it was a man in his thirties.
"There could be two," Sam offered as they closed the door of their bedroom behind them. "They wouldn't leave one guy here on his own at night."
"Patience is on the girls' wing," Dean said shortly. "I checked the staff roster on the board in the TV room."
"Oh," Sam should have thought of that. "So what, we got two ghosts on our hands?"
"That wasn't a ghost. She touched the salt."
"Right." Where was his head at?
"Hey. You okay?"
"Dean I – I think I saw the clown kid. Just for a split second, whilst you were down in the basement, but when I turned the light back on it, it was gone."
"Hm." Dean sat down hard on Sam's bunk. "Okay. So it probably hangs out around the schoolroom. First thing we look for tomorrow is any record of kids who died on the property."
"Shouldn't we um – shouldn't we report the woman?" Sam sat down next to Dean, close enough for their legs to just touch but not close enough to be pathetic.
"Hell no. We should find her and question her. She obviously knows something about something."
"She didn't seem that open to questioning."
"We'll catch her in the daytime."
"Yeah. Okay." Sam breathed out and let his shoulders sag a little.
"Get some sleep," Dean said and punched his shoulder as he got up. Sam watched his silhouette as bent to run a line of salt across their doorway.