Chapter Four
A sense of wrongness brought Dean out of sleep. He blinked up at the tent's pointed ceiling, getting his bearings as quiet gasps wheezed like rotating pinwheels through the quiet morning air. He turned immediately toward Sam, and found his brother shuddering, head arched back against his sleeping bag while his long hands opened and closed over his stomach like he was trying to push something away.
"Hey, hey. What is it?" Dean was crouching over Sam in an instant. "Are you hurt?" They'd camped far back from the mountain man's boundary, but you couldn't be too careful with spirits. Glancing around the tent, Dean noted that the salt circling the inside of the tent hadn't been disturbed.
Sam's arm stretched out, fumbling blindly until his palm connected with Dean's elbow and hung on. Eyes squeezed tight, the kid was coated in sweat. Had he been awake all night?
"Sam, give me something. What's going on?"
"S-stomach."
"Your stomach hurts?" Had Sam been getting sick and he had failed to notice the signs? Except this came on suddenly. The canned stew last night hadn't been that old, but Sam did have a more sensitive stomach.
"Intestines. P-pulling out my intestines."
Damn. Dean lifted Sam's shirt and laid his palm over the flat abdomen. "Can you feel them being pulled or just saw it?"
Eyes still scrunched tight, Sam nodded. "Feel."
Shit. "Sam, listen to me. It's not happening. You're fine. My hand's on your stomach. Can you feel my hand?"
A long shudder traveled through Sam. Cautiously, he moved both of his hands to cover the one Dean had on his belly.
"Is he gone?" Sam still wouldn't look.
"Is who gone?"
"The baby."
Oh God. Dean's throat tightened. He knew that torture technique, the surrealism of having a child cut you up and play with your insides. It was a true reality of Hell, but Sam couldn't know that, his mind couldn't fill in details like that if his memories were blocked behind a barrier. Shit, shit, shit, shit. Everything inside of Dean plummeted over the edge. Shit! The wall wasn't holding, the memories bleeding out somehow.
He rubbed his other hand across his face. He had to pull it together. One crisis at a time. He took a deep breath. "There's no baby here, Sam. Just me. Open your eyes."
"Dean?" Sam sounded like a friggin five-year-old. He hated this.
"I promise, bro. Just me."
Sam's eyes finally cracked open. He stared at the canvas walls for a while before lifting his head to glance around, his hands still tightly holding Dean's to his flesh.
He sat up, frowning and then all at once his features crumbled. "I feel like an idiot." He looked down, released Dean's hand.
"No need for that," Dean reassured. "None of this is supposed to be easy."
Sam just nodded. "I shouldn't go on this hunt. If I'm seeing things that aren't real at a bad time, it could be dangerous."
Dean had started thinking the same thing, but he still needed to bolster Sam. "I won't let anything happen to you."
"To you, Dean. Dangerous to you. How can I have your back when I'm not even sure of what's real?"
Dean wanted to argue the point, to tell Sam it would be okay, but stopped himself. He didn't know what to think. Sam was right. Having an episode in the middle of a hunt could be disastrous, but a Sam without a purpose, without something, anything, to occupy his mind, would leave his brother with nothing else but to close himself in his own brain and stare at that wall.
It was like choosing between evil door number one and evil door number two. And Dean didn't think they could just walk away from this particular game show without one of those doors imploding and spewing gore all over them.
Sam's head was hanging again, though Dean could tell he was trying to take several little glances at Dean without him knowing it. Dean blew out a breath. He wasn't ready to give up on this. Not on helping Sam. Not if it took a lifetime. They were raised as hunters. When things didn't go as planned, they modified, came up with a Plan B, sometimes a Plan C. Point is, they never gave up. Not 'til the fugly was dead.
So this fugly was a big bad fiery piece of real estate down under. It still wasn't badass enough to take down the Winchesters.
So they'd modify. Adapt how they hunted. Let Sam do the research, keep his mind focused, maybe scout out a few jobs before the actual hunt, and then leave the confrontations to Dean. It wasn't perfect. Sam would hate being left behind out of the hunt, worrying about Dean not having backup, but even worrying was a better place for his mind to land than on the alternative, because anything was better than leaving Sam without any focus but to scratch at the wall.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Until we get a handle on what is going on with you, taking on this mountain man probably isn't our best idea."
Head still lowered, Sam nodded. Dean knew the posture. Kid was relieved because he was scared he'd make things worse, but he was also feeling useless. "But since we're already here, I think we should still look around."
Sam did look up then, brows squished together over confused eyes.
"Just hear me out. We go in, see if we can make any sense of what's going on, maybe we'll get lucky and find the dude's remains. If we can, it's an easy salt and burn. If it's more complicated we leave and give Bobby all the information we got on it and let him call in other hunters to take care of it."
Sam's lips curved down. "So you're saying we just look around?"
Dean nodded. "That's all."
"Yeah, okay." Sam seemed to shrink in on himself and Dean's heart shriveled with him. He'd given up hunting for a year when he was with Lisa and it had been like cutting his arm off. Of course he'd been mourning Sam at the same time so what was the loss of a limb in light of that?
"Maybe you'd be better off looking around on your own." No. Sam was closing down on him. Dean couldn't allow that.
"I would, but I need you, man." You have no idea how much. "Your freaky mind sees things I miss." Dean winced, wishing he had phrased that better. "Always has. Face it, you're good at this research crap."
"Research crap?"
Dean grinned at the slight huffiness to Sam's tone. "Yeah, the boring part of a hunt."
"Boring part?" Sam's lips were twisted, his forehead furrowed tightly until his gaze settled over Dean and saw the full blown grin. It took only a second for the kid's pearly whites to make an appearance. "So you think this will work?"
"Work?" Now it was Dean's turn to question.
"Keeping my mind occupied with research to keep Hell from breaking through."
The moisture evaporated inside Dean's mouth. "See what I mean. You saw right through that." Sam only looked at him, watching. Dean sighed. "I don't know, Sammy. But it's worth a try, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Yeah. It's worth trying."
#
They'd been in the mountain man's territory for more than an hour, near the area Matt had been attacked. They hadn't found anything useful to go on, just more of the same low scrub, grainy boulders and trees.
"I think this research is a bust, man." Dean nudged a stone with the butt of his shotgun. "There's nothing here."
Crouched down over one of the hiker's prints, Sam glanced up. "Big area. We knew just stumbling upon something wouldn't be easy." Sam went back to the print, bracing his own shotgun on his knee. Just because he wasn't actually hunting, didn't mean he'd be stupid enough to go into a ghost's territory without salt rounds. According to the prints, Matt had been running.
"Got anything?" Dean crouched down beside him.
"Just Matt's trail. It'd be nice if ghosts left footprints, huh?"
Dean snorted. "Wouldn't it though."
Sam straightened. "I'm, um, just going to follow these, see if maybe something shows up when he got out of the magic circle." Sam grinned at that. Naming an area was just so Dean. "Maybe signs of a last struggle to grab Matt back, ya know like how ghosts attack us every time right before we toast their bones."
"Last ditch effort. Good thinking."
They began walking side by side, both tracking the footprints across the sun-dappled ground. "So, um," Dean hedged. "Has everything been good?"
Sam stopped. "Are you asking if I've had any hallucinations in the last hour?"
Dean stopped, swung around.
Sam looked down, shook his head. "No. Guess your keep-Sam's-brain-occupied plan actually works."
A smug smile lifted Dean's features. "Sure it has. Sooner you realize what a genius I am, we'll both be better off."
"Ri . . . ight." Sam grinned, then immediately lost it, seeing a figure flicker past Dean's shoulder. A Native American in full warrior's garb, loincloth over buckskin breeches. Had his brain really conjured up Tonto just because they talked about him? Except blood poured down the warrior's face, into his eyes from a half-peeled away scalp and he was shaking his fist, shaking long strands of brittle yellow hair that trailed between clenched fingers. "Um, Dean?" His voice squeaked. "Now that you mention it, I'm seeing things again."
"No, Sam, not this time. I see him too."
How bad did his life suck that he was relieved to see a real ghost instead of an illusion? "Native American?" Please be seeing the same thing.
"Yup. Looks pretty pissed too. Did either Matt or Kevin mention something about Indians that I missed?"
"No."
"Okay, then." Dean swung up his shotgun, but before he blasted Tonto, an enraged scream came from behind them. Both hunters turned to see the mountain man, running toward them, axe swinging. Dual shots rang out as both Sam and Dean fired. Mountain man, axe, fur pelted hat and coat all disappeared in a swirl of light.
Sam looked back to find the Native American was also gone.
"Well." Dean lowered his shotgun. "That was fun. Anything you can make out of that, research guy, so we can get out of here, 'cause I got nothin."
Sam squinted his eyes at the spot the Indian had just been. If he was correct, it was just outside of the magic circle. "No. Maybe." He sprinted across the ground, stopped where the warrior had stood and scanned the ground, scanned the trees, searched the craggy boulders.
There. It had been right here where the Native American stood. Setting the shotgun against the rock, Sam pulled his knife from his belt, and started scraping moss off the largest boulder.
"Wanna share with the class?" Dean came up behind him.
"Look at this." Sam pulled a large swath of moss from the stone.
"Hieroglyphics?"
"Yeah. Like heavy duty shamanic glyphs. Dean, I think this is what is holding our trapper inside. There has to be several of these markings spread out around the area."
"So, what, we scratch out a few of these markings and bad guy goes poof."
Sam scraped his teeth along his bottom lip. "I don't think that's a good idea. The Shaman trapped him in here for a good reason. We shouldn't mess with that."
"How do we know their reason is a good reason?"
"We don't, but Dean, the warrior isn't the one killing people."
"Right." Dean pushed his hand back through his hair. "Good point. So where does that leave us? Still no bones to burn."
"Um?" Sam shrugged. "Post warning signs? Dean, look out!"
Sam shoved Dean out of the path of the swinging axe, caught it by the handle, coming nose-to-nose with the mountain man. Chilled breath wafted over him. Muscles straining, they held to the all too solid weapon, neither giving an inch. Sam knew if he let go now the axe-head would continue its arc into him.
"Sam!" Dean called.
Sam couldn't look, couldn't do anything but hold onto that rough handle. His arms were shaking. The mountain man grinned, showing darkened rotting teeth. Blood dripped down the sun-weathered forehead from beneath a fur cap and a little redhead girl without eyes played peek-a-boo behind the trapper's shoulder, shocking Sam so bad, he wrenched the axe and it ripped from both their grasps, flying across the Shamanic boulder and out of the magic circle.
The ghost roared. No longer with an axe, the mountain man rammed into Sam. The ground came at him in a rush.
"Sammy!" Dean was there, running between him and the enraged trapper, shotgun high. The shot exploded salt into the air, but the mountain man had blinked out, then reappeared behind Dean, tossing the gun aside and wrapping long arms around Dean's chest, crushing the life from him while a clown with no legs slithered beneath Dean's dangling feet and the girl with red hair played cat's cradle with strips of skin she scratched off her own arms.
TBC