BEAN STALKER
~Chapter 4~
Sam had no trouble hot wiring 'Gordon's' car and drive it back to the motel. Except for the file, there wasn't much that he could get from it, but a car was a car and this one, Sam was pretty sure, no one would be reporting as missing anytime soon.
Sam forced himself to make a stop at the McDonald's drive-through. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd eaten and it wasn't like his stomach was keeping him updated on his missed meals, with all the churning and turning upside down. Still, he needed to keep functioning if he wanted to help Dean.
Without even thinking about it, Sam ordered a chicken sandwich and a double quarter pounder with cheese and large fries. By the time he noticed that he'd just ordered food for Dean as well, the pimple-riddled teen behind the small window was already relaying his order to the kitchen. Sam just let it go.
Arriving back at the motel room and -predictably- finding it empty, was more depressing that Sam had envisioned. He sighed, looking at his phone longingly.
He'd called Ruby some five times already, but the demon was ignoring him. Bobby was off to some place, again, and so far out that his cell didn't even rate on covered regions. And Castiel... short of doing a heavy duty summoning ritual, Sam had no idea how to get the angel to answer him.
In utter despair, Sam had even tried to reach Chuck, but the writer's phone number had been disconnected.
Dean's burger was now laying in a soggy mess on the spare bed, grease seeping out from the bag, growing cold and looking all alone and abandoned and deprived of its intended purpose. The chicken sandwich was mostly warm as Sam forced it down, but it still tasted like ash.
Sam's attention, however, was on the file he was reading. It was a psychiatric file, on one of the patients in a mental facility in Baltimore, Maryland.
Sam sat himself at the table, popped his computer on to research the place and opened the file to read it more carefully.
There was nothing odd about the facility, nothing out of the ordinary in its history or recent events. Just one more place where the mentally insane were kept hidden from the rest of society.
The file, however, was starting to get a reaction out of Sam's fine hairs in the back of his neck.
"Alice Gean, Caucasian female, 27 years, presents no previous medical conditions prior to her commitment (…) referenced by Dr. Pascal, the patient has a history of psychotic break at the age of 12, which led to first institutionalization in St. Peter's, Minnesota, court mandated (...) upon further study, patient presents signs of superficial charm, high intelligence, poor judgment and failure to learn from experience, pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love, lack of remorse or shame, impulsivity, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, manipulative behavior and poor self-control (…) later confirmed previous diagnose of severe psychopath disorder with delusional tendencies. The occurrence of violent psychotic breaks has been kept under controlled with the use of Lithium, Devalproex, Pargyline and Alprozolam (...) EEG presents minor, non-significant alterations, leading to believe that the memory loss referred by the patient after each of her psychotic breaks is of psychosomatic and not neurological origin (...)"
Sam rubbed his eyes. Why would this file be in the car? Did it belong to the woman who had taken Dean? He tried typing Alice Gean in the DMV page he'd hacked in to earlier. There were no records.
Searching for a credit card bill gave him nothing either.
Sam tried searching for just Gean as last name instead. She might not have a track record now, but she had to come from somewhere.
There were a few hits in the Baltimore area; two were African-American men, one was a British woman, another was an elderly guy with no other relatives noted and the last was a couple, Peter and Gabrielle Gean, both killed in a car crash early that year.
The car accident itself was mentioned in a couple of local newspaper pages of the time. Sam clicked in one at random.
"The Geans, Peter and Gabrielle, both math professors at Baltimore's Western High School, were killed in a tragic car incident the past Wednesday night. The circumstances surrounding the crash are still under investigation, but unofficial sources confirm that the police already suspects foul play. The couple was returning from visiting their daughter, when an apparent break malfunction caused their vehicle to loose control and collide with a tree. Reports on the..."
Sam stared at the computer screen, feeling a chill creep down his spine. He could bet that the daughter that the newspaper was referring to was Alice and if she had been the last to see her parents alive... could she? Would she?
Remembering that the medical file mentioned a court mandate institutionalization in Minneapolis, Sam turned his search there, looking for crimes involving small children. It didn't take him long to find one with the Gean's name attached.
The newspaper headline jumped right off the page. A black and white picture of two teenage girls with long, curly brown hair headed the top of the article.
"Mary Gean, daughter of Peter and Gabrielle Gean, was found dead in her bedroom this Monday morning. Police officers at the scene offered no details about the little girl's death, but unofficial reports state that the parents, who were too late to prevent the tragic incident, found the girl's body already lifeless. Cause of death as yet to be released, but head trauma appears to be the most likely cause (...) Neighbors state that the older sister had always been a (quote) '... very strange little girl... tried to skin my cat once, that one did...' (end of quote). The matter is still under investigation..."
Sam skimmed down, searching for the rest of the story. For a crime that had occurred over fifteen years ago in a small town in Minnesota, the fact that the main suspect was only twelve had warranted national attention to the event.
"... Minneapolis Court House, presided by Judge Montgomery, ruled today that Alice Gean, twelve, convicted of the murder of Mary Gean, ten, was in fact mentally ill at the time of the crime. The minor is to be institutionalized in a unmentioned medical facility until the age of twenty one, pending on (...)"
Sam closed the computer with more force than was healthy for the laptops survival. This was getting him nowhere. Even if this Alice was responsible for taking Dean, Sam couldn't figure out why or where because the woman had absolutely no trail. It was like she didn't existed at all after being committed.
And why was the car in the name of a hunter that had been dead for over a year?
0o0o0o0o0o0o
The book was ruined. Alexa had tried to wash away the sickness from the pages but ended up with a worse result. The paper was too soft and had started to melt away in her hands.
Frantically, Alexa wiped the pages clean, watching in frustration as the black letters disappeared before her eyes. It was one of the oldest books; the one about the ghost in the water and the whole part about Dean talking about his mother and his childhood memories... it was all gone. Vanished.
Alexa threw the washcloth away in frustration, a deep growl, barely perceptible at first, escaping through her throat. There was no chance of her ever finding a replacement for this one book. As it was, it had been hard enough to find the later issues that were missing from her collection...
Methodically, Alexa plucked dishes from the cupboard and threw them, one after another, to the floor. The white ceramic shattered on impact each and every time, and each and every time the sharp pieces that were starting to litter the kitchen floor, did nothing to appease her anger.
Her collection was incomplete and once more, it was all Dean's fault.
Alexa wondered why he was being such a jerk to her, wondered where was the gentle man that had managed to win over the heart of a traumatized Lucas and managed to, not only make him talk again, but start to heal over the trauma of watching his father drown.
It was like Dean was doing it on purpose, egging her to get mad, to lose her temper... she just couldn't understand why.
But then it hit her, and the explanation was actually so simple that Alexa couldn't help but smile to herself. She'd been dumb for not seeing it before. She knew exactly what Dean was doing because he had done it before. It was the very same thing that he'd done for a good portion of the year he spent in between making the deal for Sam's life and going to Hell.
Sam had taken some time to see through Dean's careless and devil-may-care attitude, but he'd finally called Dean on his bluff in 'Fresh blood'. Dean acted like a jerk when he was scared.
Dean was scared now too.
Alexa could understand that. She was, after all, a stranger, and he was hurt and feeling weak. She knew how much Dean hated to look weak in front of strangers. She just wished that he hadn't resorted to ruining one of her books to prove his point.
But she got it now. She understood. Still, Dean had no excuse for taking it out on her book, her irreplaceable book. For that one, Dean would have to pay, so that he could learn that you don't mess with irreplaceable things.
She just had to take from him something irreplaceable too.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean was trashing on the bed like a possessed man. His eyes were opened, but Alexa doubted that he was seeing much.
She sat on the bed frame by his left side, as far from the coppery smell as she could. Even without touching, she could feel the heat coming off of him in stale waves. He probably needed more of those pills, but he didn't deserve them right now.
Grabbing the pair of scissors that she kept on the nightstand, Alexa eyed her goal with a glint in her eyes.
The golden face hanging from Dean's neck rolled around his chest every time the man rolled his neck around, turning from side to side aimlessly.
That amulet had been there on his neck since the very first book, as much a part of him as the car ever was. It wasn't until 'A Very Supernatural Christmas' that its origins were revealed.
To Dean, that amulet was much more than a trinket or a piece of decoration. It was Sam's love for him, Sam's respect for what he did for his younger brother, his connecting link with family. It was Dean's badge of honor as a big brother.
Irreplaceable.
Alexa cut the black leather string with an audible 'snap' and smiled. Now Dean would understand too.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean was dreaming of the sea. He knew he was dreaming because Dean had never been on a boat, he'd never been in the high seas, therefore, he had no idea how accurate his dream version was. And the fact that he was coherent enough inside his own dream to realize that, served only as further prove to Dean that he was in fact, dreaming. Or hallucinating.
Hallucinations had a weird way of being mistaken for reality. This wasn't reality, but it still sucked for real.
Dean was dreaming, but he had no way to wake up or even to tell his body that the thing burning up his skin was not the sun; there was no way to prove to his body that, no matter how surrounded by water that he was, that there was no way to appease the raging thirst inside of him; that the rocking motion making him sick and urging him to throw up was not caused by the rolling sea, up and down, up and down, up and down...
He could taste the salt on his dry lips even though he had no recollection of how he'd come to be there. Maybe he'd been dosed with dream root... or maybe he'd been caught by a Djinn again. A seaman Djinn.
Dean giggled inside his dream, imagining a Donald Duck version of those blue-painted freaks and wondering if instead of dreaming or hallucinating, he wasn't just high.
The only thing that Dean could figure for sure was that there was no land in sight and that he was dying of thirst. He could see nothing more than a world of cobalt blue that hurt his eyes and made him sick.
He heard a loud snap, too close to his ears for comfort, and then he was falling in the water, his poor excuse for a boat disintegrating beneath his feet.
When a bigger wave flew over him and dragged him under, Dean welcomed the escape of awareness.
0o0oo0oo0o0o0o
Alexa needed to get out. She'd been cooped out inside that house for close to two days and she was starting to go stir crazy. She didn't like being closed off like that.
Dean had been driving her insane with his whimpering and moaning the whole night, until she had finally given up and flushed some more medicine down his throat.
He'd grown quiet for a while after that.
Before, he was having some kind of nightmare, something about the sea, if she had understood his mumblings right. Why would Dean be dreaming about the sea?
As far as she knew, the boys had never even been to the sea, Sam being the one who probably got nearer in his time at the Stanford. But not Dean... or maybe he had, in the years prior to the beginning of the books. There was a twenty-two years gap in the story after all, peppered with small pieces of information like the small reference to Dean hunting alone in New Orleans, back in the first book.
Still, there were too many places and situations that were never mentioned in the books. Maybe Dean did had some experience at sea, or maybe it was a fear of his, like flying... either way, he had quieted down some when she had thrown a glass of water over his face.
Alexa grabbed her keys and went to check on Dean one last time before going out. Quietly, she opened the table's drawer and pulled the tiny camcorder from inside. The battery had died some time ago, but all that she needed had already been taped through the drawer's hole, where the handle was missing.
Alexa smiled, remembering what was in that recording.
The hunter was still out, still asleep with his mouth opened and his head turned away from the light of the window. The rattle of his breathing was the only sound disturbing the otherwise quiet room, along with the occasional whimper, that is. It sounded pathetic and out of character for him and she was not sure how much more of that she could stand.
There was some stuff that she needed to pick up before Dean woke. She had an idea on how to make Dean feel more at home there and he definitely needed a change of clothes. His bag was missing from the Impala's trunk, so that meant that she had some shopping to do.
Plus, there was Sam to consider. He should be closing in by now.
Making sure that she had the videotape and everything else she needed with her, Alexa closed the door behind her. The trap was mostly set, but she still needed to feed the video and make sure that the motion detector and the gas canister were working as they should.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
The phone call to the mental institute where Alice was supposed to be left a grim satisfied smile on Sam's face. Part of what they told him, Sam had already guessed. Alice was no longer there, discharged and off their grid, some six months ago. Another part of what they said, Sam really wished he hadn't heard.
Passing himself off as Alice new psychiatrist, it was somewhat easy to get the rest of the information that he needed to understand that woman and get Sam one step closer to find his brother. The man on the other side of the line was, fortunately, eager to help him.
The fact that Alice spent her days reading came as a surprise. Not that Sam was imagining a psychopath doing little more with her day other than skinning kittens and plotting the end of the world, but the amount of attention span and devotion dedicated to someone else's work seemed off in Sam's meager knowledge of the insane mind. Then again, his major had been law, not psychiatry.
The mention of the stolen books had been almost an afterthought on the psychiatrist's part. It was, apparently, something the man obviously gave little importance to, save for the fact that Alice had showed an attachment to them like she hadn't ever before shown towards anyone. They had been just books, the other man had said, clearly not counting that connection as progress.
Sam had to wonder why Alice was even out, when her psychiatrist clearly thought that she had gotten nowhere with her therapy, but Sam refrained from asking that. He still had a couple of questions that he needed answered before antagonizing the man.
Sam needed to understand this woman's reasoning, understand why she was doing this, why Dean. Sam needed to be sure that Alice was not going to hurt Dean while Sam searched aimlessly for his brother.
"What about her violent behaviors, doctor? Should I be concerned?" Sam asked directly, trying to sound as clinical and detached as he could. It was easier on the phone. "I have a public office, you see, and I would like to be sure that my other patients are safe."
The other man took his time answering, probably weighing his personal morals against the institution's credibility and reputation from letting out a dangerous patient. In the end, the institution won, but Sam already had his answer.
The younger Winchester could feel his heart pounding inside his chest, hitting his ribs like a hammer trying to get out. It wasn't a figure of speech anymore. Dean was truly in the hands of a dangerous psychopath.
Sam's anger at the moment, though, was exclusively directed at the man on the phone, for allowing someone like Alice back on the streets, for whatever reason he had. He'd almost ended the phone call right there and then, disgusted as he was at the doctor's lying and weasel voice.
Sam would've hated himself to no end if he had hung up without asking the weasel-doctor what sort of books Alice had grown attached to. If Sam had given in to his urges, he would've missed his biggest clue.
Because Sam could not understand why some random woman, insane as she was, would go to the trouble of kidnapping Dean; because, no matter how big the list of his brother's conquests were, Dean had his own set of values and Sam was pretty sure that none of those conquests would have felt the need to go all 'Fatal attraction' on his brother; because other than demons, angels, pissed off hunters, and evil creatures, Sam could not think of anyone else to have such a dark and invested interest in his brother.
But then the psychiatrist told him about the Supernatural books. Alice's obsession.
And if Alice had somehow been able to relate Dean with the character from those books... Sam shuddered at the implications.
He needed to find Dean. Fast.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
There was music playing. Dean smiled. He'd recognize that guitar solo introduction any time, anywhere; AC/DC's Highway to Hell.
There was something missing from the music, though. The low rumble of a car's engine.
Ever since he could remember, Dean had listened to that song in his car, in his home. He'd listened to it in the back seat, staring at the back of his father's head, while John drove them through the night, Sam's soft baby body tucked away against his. He'd listened to it seated at his father's side, road map unfolded on his lap, feeling like such a grown up for directing his father towards the next turn or exit. He'd listened to it driving, Sam's too-large-for-comfort frame all folded up like a pretzel by his side, trying to sleep through his nightmares. He'd listened to it and felt safe, head leaning against the cool window and trusting Sam to drive them safely to their destination.
Dad was gone and Sam was no longer baby-size to be safely tucked away beside him. Even confused as he was about everything else, Dean knew those two facts. What he couldn't figure out was why the engine was silent.
Dean opened his eyes to be face with a pair of moss-green orbs staring right back at him and Dean gasped. Gone was the feeling of home and safety. He was still hurt; he was still trapped and in the hands of the lunatic. Nothing had change but the soundtrack.
"I see you like it," Alexa's voice broke through the song's lyrics, crashing the last remnants of the illusion.
The hand that snuck behind his neck to help him slightly raise his head, felt cool and pleasant. When the glass touched his lips, Dean instinctively opened his mouth, desperate for the liquid relief so long denied.
The cool and soothing effect of fresh water going down his throat, the missed droplets that fell from his lips and raced down his burning neck; those were possibly some of the best things that Dean had felt in his whole life. Or maybe it was the fact that he was feeling so miserable that it only appeared that way. He didn't really cared which. He didn't even mind when his throat rebelled against the foreigner and forgotten feeling of cold water and his body shook with the painful coughs and gasps.
"How are you feeling today?"
Dean blinked, pushing the sweat out of his eyes, and looked around. The water stain on the wall, the one that had driven him insane until he'd finally lapsed into a delirious stupor earlier, was long dry. The sun was high in the sky outside. Dean wished that the windows were at least open, so that he could smell something other than the flowery scent of the pillow and the copper and acid stench of his own unwashed and blood covered body.
Dean tried focusing on his objectives first and foremost. It was not an easy task, not with a sluggish mind and thoughts that skittered away as if they were racing on ice. Still, Dean had the best incentive in the whole wide world to keep him focused: he was fighting for his life.
"Better," he lied. He could play the injured card with her; play the wounded hero that she so seemed to like. But Dean needed to get out of that bed and that would never happen if she thought that he was too sick to move.
Dean wet his lips, forcing himself to relax and talk in a smooth, pleading way. First things first, he needed a way out of those cuffs before anything. "Alexa... I need you to do me a favor."
The woman looked at him, waiting, suspicious.
Dean paused, trying to judge her countenance. He couldn't just outright ask her what he really wanted. After all, someone asking to go to the bathroom as a way of escaping was the oldest trick of them all. No... Dean had to come up with something better than that, something she wouldn't expect from him, something that played with her obsession for the characters in Chuck's damn books. Dean went for honesty.
"The smell," Dean said, wrinkling his nose. The rusty smell of congealing blood was making him nauseous enough as it was and the remains of the last time he'd upchucked weren't helping matters. "I would really love to wash some of this away."
She was silent for a long time. Time enough for Dean to start sweating all over again at the prospect of his plan back firing and she offering to do the washing for him. "Also... I kind of need to... I need to go," he hastily added, figuring that there were some things that she couldn't do for him. He hoped.
Dean hadn't really given much thought to it until now, occupied as he was with other matters as he had been, but in the whole time that he'd been there –going on one, two days?- this was the first time that his full bladder had even made itself known. And it wasn't even all that full. Unless the lunatic had been sneaking in to empty his bladder when he was out -which Dean really, really hoped she hadn't- that would mean that his body was already shutting down on him. Dean really needed to hurry.
Alexa was under no such need for haste. She was still pondering, it would seem. She was pondering his request with enough care to make Dean wonder if, by mistake, he'd asked for world peace instead of a trip to the bathroom.
"Why?"
Dean paused. Why? Why what? Why did he wanted to empty is bladder in some other place other than the bed he was currently strapped to?
"Why does the smell of blood make you uncomfortable? It didn't before," she eventually said, catching on the confused look on Dean's face.
Dean snorted, for a fraction of time allowing his real feelings about the whole situation to surface. How the hell would she know if the smell of blood bothered him or not before? She'd read Chuck's books, and all of a sudden she figured that she knew every single one of his quirks and whims? Annoyingly enough, she was right about this one though... the smell of blood didn't really used to bother him that much before.
"Tell you what," she said in a cheerful tone. "You tell me, in all honesty, why the smell of blood bothers you so much and I'll let you use the bathroom... all on your own."
Dean closed his eyes, taking solace in the black privacy of the back of his eyelids. 'Highway to Hell' gave way to 'Back in Black' and over it Hannibal's guttural tone of voice whispering Quid pro Quo to Clarice in 'Silence of Lambs' wormed itself in to Dean's mind. He almost laughed out loud. Just his luck, to pick up the psychopath that was all bent on psychoanalyzing him.
The Winchester way: it was either bad luck or no luck at all.
Maybe he could feed her some crap, just to keep her happy for now and give him what he needed. Dean was king of feeding people crap after all. He could do this.
"Well... hum... when you get seriously hurt a couple of too many times, the smell kind of grades agai-"
"The truth, Dean."
Dean's mouth opened and closed again. He silently cursed Chuck once more, for robbing him of the chance of easily lying his way out of this.
"The last time I saw my dad... the smell remi-" Dean tried again, plastering the most honest expression on his face. Painful as it was talking about John, it was still better than giving this stranger the real reason behind it.
Alexa was anything but convinced. How could she even know that he was bull-shitting her?
There was in fact one smell that Dean couldn't stand anymore after his father's death, but it was hardly blood. Growing up with John Winchester as a father meant that you learned the smell of your family's blood even before you learned how to drive... and Dean had learned both pretty young.
Not blood... burned flesh.
It was the smell of burned flesh that made him gag ever since John had died. The smell of human burned flesh never failed to take him back to the day he had lit a fire under his own father's dead body and had watched him burn. Both parents killed by the same demon, both parents reduced to nothing but a memory by fire. Dean hated that smell.
But how could she know that Dean's newfound aversion to blood wasn't from those days, from those memories? He was pretty sure that Chuck had written all about John's death in gruesome details...
"I know you Dean... give me an honest answer, or you're staying right where you are."
In that moment, Dean hated her even more than he hated Chuck. If only he could get but one hand free, wrap it around her neck and squeeze... only, for that he needed to get off the bed, and the trip to the bathroom was his best chance. His only chance.
"It reminds me of Hell," Dean whispered, knowing that his voice sounded as sincere now as it had before, but his eyes... there was no way of faking or hiding the haunted look that Dean knew took over his eyes when he talked about that, when he remembered that other life, that haunted existence.
"The smell of blood was the only thing that I could recognize down there, it was the only thing human enough to stand out as odd in Hell and there was so... there was so much of it."
At some point Alexa had sat down by his side, a fact that had escaped Dean's perception until she opened her mouth to speak. "So you remember all that went on down in there?" She asked, soaking up his misery like it was vanilla ice cream. "Go on," she urged.
Her eyes were glittering like beetles in the back drop light, lustful of pain and misery. Was his torture that much of an entertainment for her? Was this why people liked Chuck's books, because they enjoyed reading about all the suffering that he and Sam had endure their whole lives?
Dean swallowed against his dry throat. He'd told Sam some of the stuff that had happened down there, in that place, but what little he had confessed to his brother was just the tip of the iceberg. The things that were done to him, the things he was forced to do...
"I don't remember all of it," Dean quickly backtracked. The last thing that he wanted or needed was to be forced in to retelling every single hour of every single day of the 40 years of... living hell that he'd endured. He stuck to the slightly less painful, slightly less gag-inducing memories.
"I remember that there were children in there," he went on, "not many, but enough for you to notice them and realize the oddity of their presence. I never thought that there would be children in Hell, but there were, and they were the most blood thirsty of them all. The demon's children. They play in blood, they bath in it, they worship it... and the souls trapped there have only to supply it, to keep them happy. We're their milk cartons, we're their bubble bath and their chewing toys and they always wanted more, they always came back for more..."
Dean couldn't go on. The fever and pain were eating away at the wall between then and now, reality was becoming a confusing mesh of memories and feelings and already could Dean feel himself being dragged under by the weight of them all. One more word and he would be back in there, unable to free himself.
The sound of a key turning in a lock and sudden absence of tension in his trapped limbs caught him by surprise.
"I'll help you up," Alexa said, her eyes glinting with satisfaction. Apparently, he had bared his soul enough to appease her.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Gordon's name on the papers he'd found in the car finally made sense to Sam. The psycho-hunter had not miraculously returned to life to haunt them again. This woman, this Alice Gean, had picked his name right out of books.
She'd picked the name of a hunter to hunt them down. And if she'd use one, odds were...
Sam grabbed a piece of paper and started to write the names of everyone that he or Dean knew and that could have possibly been mentioned in Chuck's books.
Sam grabbed his hair in despair when he was done. For an life on the road as they lived, the list was too damn long. In between friends, enemies, contacts and people they'd help, there were just too many names to even get him started.
He decided to try the important, more recent, ones first. Top of his head there was only Ruby, Bobby and Castiel. Remembering that Chuck's books had stopped right after Dean's trip to Hell, Sam scratched the angel's name out. Alice wouldn't know about him.
Sam didn't even try to do a search on Ruby's name for house rentals and recent purchases; he knew the only thing he would get back were porn sites and strip clubs.
Robert Singer, on the other hand, came up with too many valid hits. Seemed like, as a norm, Bobby's name was associated with respectable men who bought and rented respectable real state in respectable places. Singer's Salvage Yard was there too, but no other recent rentals or purchases in the area under his name.
Scrunching his eyes shut, Sam squeezed his brain for more names, important names, people that they knew or had known. He looked at the car's papers again.
She'd pick a hunter to hunt them down... maybe she had picked someone who meant home for them to rent herself a place.
With some trepidation, Sam tried Jessica Moore, sighing in relief when the name brought up only a yacht sell that had nothing to do with his Jessica. Mary Winchester and John Winchester drew blanks too, but Sam had figured as much. If Chuck had never written their last name in any of the books, Alice would have no way of knowing them to use their full names like that.
Sam tried James Murphy's name, the hunter priest in Blue Earth, the first real house that Sam could remember, but came up with nothing. Same thing for Missouri Mosely, the psychic that had helped their father get started in the hunting business.
It was Ellen's name that sent Sam's heart racing with renewed hope. There was an 'Ellen Harvelle' who'd recently rented for a month a house right there in Peru, Ohio, just shy of twenty-four hours after he and Dean arrived. Unless Ellen had decided to open a new Roadhouse in the middle of Peru's suburbia...
Sam smiled. This had to be the place where Alice was keeping his brother. Dean didn't have any time for him to be wrong.
0o0o00o0o0o0o0
As soon as he got his life back, Dean was erasing this whole experience from his memories. File it up under the 'stuff that never happened' box. The Dean book of deleted memoirs.
Though it didn't really rate up there with a faceless demon clawing his eyes out, one at a time, and force feeding them back to him; it was still coming disturbingly close.
Alexa had picked clothes for him. A set of purple pajama bottoms and a –goodLORD!- pink t-shirt to replace his dirty jeans and his missing shirt. Or maybe it was a salmon shirt. He didn't really give a rat's ass about it. In the yellow light cast by the ceiling bulb in the bathroom that was making his eyes water, all colors looked like crap anyway.
Dean couldn't even remember the last time he had even worn actual pajamas. Probably back when he was young enough to still need a bench to reach the top cupboards in their rented apartment's kitchens. And even then, his thrift store purchased Thunder-Cats pj's had more class and style than that purple assault against nature.
There was also the weakness; that wet-spaghetti strength to his legs and arms, together with the quivering jell-o party in his stomach and the cotton candy feeling of his head, made Dean feel like a two course meal with extra dessert.
No matter how anxious he had been to get out of that uncomfortable mattress-less bed, the minute Dean had tried a more vertical position he'd felt so sick that he considered giving up on his whole plan in favor of laying still right there where he was, where the walls didn't move and the floor didn't wave like the frigging sea.
The fact that he found himself forced to accept Alexa's support to get to the bathroom, and that she too was eyeing him as extra dessert, wasn't helping matters.
It had taken some wordy convincing, standing on one leg and almost all of the damn inebriated drunk-driving tests, for her to even leave Dean alone in the bathroom, for her to trust him enough to not keel over in the bathtub and crack his skull open.
Dean had a feeling that even that was more because she didn't want to deal with the mess of a dead body in the tub than any actual concern for the un-smashed condition of his head.
She wasn't even that much concerned about him escaping from the bathroom. There was simply no way.
Once the door closed and he was alone, Dean sighed and rubbed a shaking hand over his face. He was sure that she was standing just outside the door, gun still in her hands, listening for any suspicious noises, counting the seconds that someone would normally need to rid himself of puke and bloody clothes, ready to bust in the minute the sand-clock ran out.
He needed to hurry the fuck up.
Opening the right side faucet, Dean hungrily drank more of the fresh cold water that never seemed to be enough and splash some of it on his burning face.
Not bothering to wipe the excess water off, Dean looked around the bathroom and his shoulders sagged in frustration. There was a window there, but the only way he was getting out through that was if he was frigging Umpa-Lumpa size. A very skinny, very tiny, baby Umpa-Lumpa.
The world spun around him one more time and Dean made a quick grab for the white porcelain of the sink, eyes closed and taking deep breaths, anything to keep himself from meeting the black-tiled floor. If he went down, Dean was sure he wouldn't be able to get back up again, like a turtle on its back.
Swallowing back the bile in his mouth, Dean finally looked up, focusing on the blurry image in the mirror in front of him.
The image reflected back was not encouraging. God, he was a mess!
His mouth was a thin line of disgusting crust and dried spit and the sand dust that he could feel in his eyes was almost visible in the red-rimmed bags and the bloodshot whites. His mouth was colorless, his face was grey... Dean felt like he was looking at a black and white version of himself.
His gaze slid down, at the bloody piece of gauze tapped to his shoulder. Dean entertained the idea of peeling the bandage away and take a peek at the damaged that the woman had done, but there was no time for that now.
There was something missing, Dean noticed then. Without his shirt on, Dean's chest was a mess of dried blood and pasty white skin that made his freckles looks like sprinkled brown pepper. But that was not what had caught Dean's attention.
There was no black cord around his neck and no familiar weight of the metal pendant that was suppose to be hanging from it. It was gone.
The old amulet that Sam had given him on Christmas Day, in what seemed like a lifetime ago, wasn't there anymore.
Dean felt his eyes water. It was a stupid, pointless reaction to losing something that was, for all matters, just a piece of junk, but he couldn't help it. It wasn't a piece of junk to him. Dean felt more naked without it than he did without his clothes on. And it was gone.
Dean wasted a good frantic couple of minutes looking around the bathroom floor for the golden piece, cursing every time his eyes unfocused and he had to grab the wall for support. But it was of no use.
He knew he had it before, he was sure of it, same as he was sure that he had not taken it off. It simply wasn't with him anymore and there was only one person around that could've taken it.
Dean cleaned the irrational tears from his eyes and cursed. He was going to kill that woman. There would be no plea of insanity in the Dean's court of law. She was going down the worst possible way... just as soon as the dizziness went away... and maybe after he'd found a way to get free.
The whole idea of getting himself away from the bed and alone in the bathroom was to find a way out or, if that was impossible, to get something to work those cuffs out as soon as he was strapped back in to that bed.
All he needed was a piece of wire small enough and rigid enough to popped the lock on the cuffs. And possibly stick it in Alexa's eyes when he was done with it, on the off chance that she refused to give him his amulet back or had –God help her- had damaged or destroyed it.
Deans fevered eyes searched the bathroom. On the sink there was only a bar of soap and the cabinet above it was empty of anything but space and dust bunnies.
The bathtub proved to be just as deserted. There was a bottle of bathing salts, some used shower gel and shampoo and nothing else. The bathtub's plug's metal chain was broken, as it was, but the tiny metal balls it was made of were of no use to him. Even the rings in the shower curtain, plastic as they were, could not be of use.
The toilet paper supporter was screwed to the wall and impossible to remove.
Dean gripped the sink tighter and fought the urge to smash the mirror in, just for the sake of ruining Alexa's perfect, tidy bathroom. His knees didn't appreciate the idea, threatening to bent out of shape on him if Dean tried anything more strenuous than blinking.
Dean willed his knees not to bend under the weight of despair and took a deep breath, hissing when even that hurt his broken bone. There had to be something in there, anything.
In a moment of desperation, Dean was starting to consider reaching for the ceiling light and strip a live wire, or even take his chances with the gun and fight Alexa off, when his eyes landed on the toilet water-tank.
Dean would've slapped his own forehead but he figured he'd probably knock himself out with the action. How could he have forgotten about all the nice and thin wires that usually made up the water's discharge system? It wasn't like he hadn't had to fix a couple hundred of them in some of the seedy motels they'd stayed in before...
Placing the bathtub's plug in its place, Dean opened the cold-water faucet for background noise. Then, carefully taking a seat on the toilet lid, he went to work.
The older Winchester cursed against his trembling hands that forced him to work twice as slow, everything swimming so out of focus on occasion that he was forced to rest his heavy head against the cool ceramic of the water-tank until his vision came back on-line. His mind, however, refused to stay focused on the actions of his hands alone.
Between the drugs and the fever, Dean's sense of time was a bit askew, but he was pretty sure that more than a day had already gone by since he'd been caught by the crazy. Why hadn't Sam found him yet? Was he even searching for Dean?
Of course Sam was searching for him!
Sam might have taken to lying to him, treating him like an idiot; Sam might think that Dean was weak and that he was slowing him down, but Sam was still his brother and still loved him. Dean was sure of that.
But in the odd event that Sam would take too long to find him, Dean had to fend for himself. It wasn't like he hadn't spent his whole life doing just that.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
When Alexa's internal clock told her that Dean already had enough time to wash himself and change, she burst in to the bathroom with her gun leveled on his chest.
Dean plastered a quiet smile on his face to hide his startled reaction and finished pulling up the purple pajama bottoms. His hair was dripping wet, from his hasty dip in the, now empty, bathtub's water, and the piece of wire was safely hidden in a place that, Dean hoped, Alexa would never look.
"All done," Dean said, looking as innocent as he could muster under the circumstances. There was a new bruise on his forehead, from when he'd made the mistake of looking down when he was taking off his pants and his head had sort of crashed against the sink before he caught himself, but other than that, he looked spit-polish clean.
The woman's eyes were still judging though, still roving around the tiny room, looking for anything out of place, any clue that Dean was deceiving her.
When she was, apparently satisfied, the tip of the gun moved sideways, beckoning Dean to move out.
Dean was sweating and he knew that most of it wasn't even the fever's fault. It was uncomfortable to walk around the hidden wire and if he lost his balance... Dean shuddered to think of the consequences, of where the wire might bury itself. Still, it was a way out, his only way out.
He couldn't afford to wait for Sam.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
AN: Once more, many, many thanks to all that have reviewed so far :D A special thank you to Monkeymuse, for pointing out the correct wire that Sam used to chop Gordon's head :)
And as always, a huge hug for Jackfan2, for her beta-skills and support :X