{\\SN//}
Dean was on his knees, scrounging around in the kitchen cupboards looking for a suitable container for a spell breaking concoction. Cheryl kept orderly cupboards and the woman had a utensil and bowl for every occasion.
"Hey, I think I found something!" It was Sam, who'd been assigned to look in the pantry. He emerged, holding a spectacular wooden bowl that included forks. It was just what they were looking for. "Maple," announced Sam after studying it some more.
"Terrific. Bring it over here and we can start mixing."
"Ahem."
Dean turned around and saw Cheryl standing in the room. With her arms crossed.
"What do you think you're doing with my good salad bowl?"
"Gotta mix us up some potion." Dean didn't bother to explain much more, just took the bowl from Sam. "Sam, go up to my room and grab my knife. Decide where you want me to stick you."
"Not on the hand. I can't type properly after you've sliced me," huffed Sam.
"That's not all you can't do," said Dean, with a waggle of his eyebrows.
"You can talk, jerk-off."
"Oh, good one, Sammy. I feel really cut-down to size by your stinging double-entendre retort."
"Seriously, Dean. Who's been feeding you the dictionary? You're using big words. Even if they're not the right words."
"You know, I can actually read without moving my lips."
Cheryl held up her hands in despair. "Okay, enough! Will someone explain to me why my kitchen utensils have become vital to this job?"
Sam grabbed his laptop from the kitchen table, showed her the spell. A half empty bottle of Jack Daniel's also sat on the table.
Cheryl skim read the list of ingredients. "Great. Remind me to throw out the mixing bowl afterwards. As to the blood - how were you planning to get it?"
"We use a knife and cut a finger or across the palm," offered Sam.
She rolled her eyes towards the Heavens. "Had your tetanus boosters lately?"
Sam and Dean nodded simultaneously. "Two years ago," said Sam.
"No one is slicing anyone open with a knife that's been God knows where," she continued. "How much do you need?"
Sam thought a moment. "We tend to guesstimate, I mean the spells usually don't need it to be in pints-"
"-Unless it's demonic," interrupted Dean.
"About this much?" Sam mimed out a small puddle.
Cheryl frowned a little and said, "Looks like maybe a couple of milliliters. Okay, wait here, I'm going to get my test kit and draw some blood from both of you. Hygienically."
Dean pulled a face. "I hate needles. Can't we just use a knife?"
"No! There will be no sticking of anyone with a knife! Now, wait here."
Cheryl headed at a fast pack towards her surgery at the back of the house.
Dean watched her go, shook his head. He really liked her, thought in some ways it felt like a school boy crush, but it wasn't and he found himself idly wondering whether she would like some roses to say thanks for all the assistance.
"She totally told us off," he said admiringly.
"You have a thing for bossy older women?"
"No! Dude. No, she's just..." He stopped, shrugged. "You know."
"Yeah, actually I do."
And it seemed by the way Sam was smiling as he watched her, that he did understand whatever it was that they were both going through.
Oh. Now it felt all weird and gross.
He broke his wandering brain away from strange thoughts of roses and chocolates and a gift card with bunnies on them and went back to the task at hand. Which was finding a suitable stirring utensil. He guessed one of the salad forks would do in a pinch.
He was leaning against the counter when Cheryl came back with a plastic tray that was holding things he didn't really want to think about. What was so wrong with the knife idea?
"Who's first?" She sounded cheerful in the way that pushy nurses at hospitals always sounded cheerful. All positive and encouraging right before something painful or embarrassing happened.
Dean pointed at Sam. "Him."
Sam pursed his mouth, did his bitch face thing. "You are going to pay for this."
Cheryl just gave them both a long suffering sigh. "Roll up a shirt sleeve and let me see if you've got any good veins."
Sam did as he was told, rolling up the sleeve on his right arm. She stared at the crook of his elbow for a minute, palpitated it slightly. "That's a respectably big vein there. Good."
"Hear that, Sam. Respectably big. Probably better than a small one. You should be happy." Dean was trying to keep a straight face.
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up."
Cheryl put a tourniquet on, instructed Sam to open and close his hand a few times, swabbed the skin with an alcohol wipe and then she expertly slid in the needle attached to the vacuum tube. Then she slipped a plastic capped test tube onto the other end. She released the tourniquet and blood began gushing into the tube, filling rapidly.
"I'll do a second tube, just to be safe." She popped the tube out, replaced it with a second one. It filled as rapidly as the last one. She took the tube out, placed it on the bench with the second one, and then withdrew the needle, placing a small wad of cotton on the arm, with a strip of tape.
"Press down on that for a moment while I take care of your brother."
Dean pulled a face, rolled up his sleeve. He really didn't like this.
"Don't worry, Dean. She was very gentle. You'll hardly feel a thing." It was Sam's turn to rag on his brother.
"Be quiet. You know what needles do to me."
Cheryl put the tourniquet on, got him to make a fist and release his fingers. She pushed her fingers into his forearm, looking around for something.
"Hmmm... The veins in this arm aren't exactly cooperative. Let me look at your left arm."
Dean stuck his left arm out for inspection.
"Your left arm looks better. Let's do that."
She swapped the tourniquet over, got him to repeat the procedure, felt around on his forearm until she hit pay dirt. Wiped his arm with an alcohol swipe and then slid the needle into his arm. He screwed his eyes shut because he just couldn't look at the next bit.
"Ow!"
"Baby," said Sam.
"Did that hurt?" Cheryl seemed surprised.
"Sorry. Automatic reaction."
"Just how many bad experiences have you had?" She was asking in that neutral way that she did, but he didn't really want to answer about all the times he'd gritted his teeth through bad blood draws. Sam didn't seem to have the same problem.
"Remember when they sent that new technician to draw blood when you were seventeen? She kept sticking you and moving the needle around for like, half an hour. You started yelling at her and Dad thought you were being attacked. He ran in ready to deck someone and just finds this tiny slip of a girl being screamed at. It was pretty funny."
"Funny for you. Dad made me sit still while that little bitch of a girl drilled my arm for blood for another five minutes. It looked like someone had smacked it around with a baseball bat. Then she gave up and tried this arm instead."
Cheryl changed over the tube while no one was paying attention. "It sounds like she should have been supervised, or had the good sense to call for some assistance when she couldn't find a vein in the first two minutes."
Sam continued, getting into the swing of things. "What about that time they drew about six tubes of blood and then the guy tripped and dropped everything? Three tubes cracked and they had to do it again."
Cheryl rolled her eyes, took out the needle, put a small amount of cotton on his arm, taped it up. "What happens now?"
"We go upstairs, mark out the pentagram and sigils, then apply the potion, say the spell and hey, presto, entity free," said Dean.
"Hey, presto?"
"Sam, stop laughing at everything I say, or I'm gonna kick your ass from here, all the way over to Bobby's."
Cheryl tried to be the adult one in the conversation. "The tubes contain an anti-coagulant, so they'll be fine. Let's go upstairs."
"Okay, just let me grab the whiteboard markers on the way past my room," said Sam.
"Those had better not screw up my hardwood floors," said Cheryl.
"They won't," said Dean. And Sam. Together.
{\\SN//}
Cheryl cracked the door and they entered. Cheryl was carrying the salad bowl, the tubes of blood rolling around gently in the bottom, the whiteboard markers there too. Dean carried the Jack Daniels in one hand and a bag of salt in the other, while Sam had the laptop bag slung over his shoulder and he carried the other bag of salt. They all walked quietly into the room, Dean and Sam putting the salt down. Emma was curled under the blanket and didn't stir.
"Is she going to wake up?" Sam was slightly dubious as Cheryl's confidence that Emma would remain asleep for the entire event.
"No. I put a tiny amount of Valium in her orange juice," replied Cheryl.
Sam looked appalled. "You drugged a little kid?"
"I sedated her. Lightly. So keep your voice down. She's drowsy enough to keep sleeping but not so drowsy that shouting won't wake her."
Dean pulled a face but didn't say anything, or back up Sam on his personal opinion on the wrongness of sedating children, even if they were possessed. Instead, he set the bottle on the floor, gestured to Cheryl for the markers.
"Sam," Dean whispered. "Show me that pattern I need to mark out."
Sam got the laptop out of the bag, opened up the lid. It powered itself back up from its hibernation cycle, back to the e-mail and scan that Bobby had sent.
"Okay, let's mark this sucker out."
Sam watched his brother study the scan and then eye the floorboards, and carefully begin to draw the pentagram and sigils out in sections. As always with Dean they were a damn near perfect scale up of the picture in the scan. It was one of those oddities about his brother that seemed to point towards hidden talents that had either been forgotten or ignored except when on a job. The sort of skills an architect would need, or even an artist. Sam, of course, always kept these observations to himself because to observe them out loud seemed to set Dean's teeth on edge. Later it would dawn on Sam, as it always did, that when he spoke of these things, it reminded his brother of a different life and possibilities squandered.
As Dean marked out the floor, down on hands and knees, busily sketching with whiteboard marker, Sam followed, tracing over the lines with the salt.
It took about 20-minutes but at the end of their session, the results looked spectacular. Thankfully Emma remained dutifully asleep, even when Dean had accidentally bumped into one of the legs on the bed.
They just had a couple of steps to complete.
Sam set the bowl on a chair by the wall, Dean emptied in the bottle of whiskey. He nodded to Cheryl, who cracked the seals on the test tubes and poured in the blood. Dean gave it a brief stir with the wooden salad fork then carefully pouring a little on each sigil in the pentagram.
With that part completed, Sam dutifully reeled off the long and strange spell, paying careful attention to the pronunciations before passing off the last half of the spell to Dean to chant.
As he watched Dean conclude, he felt himself tense up, waiting for it to start. The signs that things were about to happen. Bad things. Good things. Something. But as yet the entire room remained silent and quiet, except for their breathing.
Dean must have been having the same thought. He caught his brother's eye. "Okay, we drink that potion and maybe it gets unleashed after that."
Sam nodded, closed his eyes, and tried not to gag as he gulped down mouthfuls of the mixture. He should be used to drinking blood by now but Dean wasn't a demon and Dean's blood mixed with alcohol didn't taste good at all. Not that demon's blood tasted good, but it did taste different. He almost immediately felt good after drinking it. No such luck with this brew.
He wiped his mouth on the back of his shirt sleeve, passed the bowl to Dean. Dean wrinkled his nose, but took the bowl.
"I hate this part," said Dean. Then he took a couple of quick swigs. Seemed surprised by something. "This tastes wrong."
"Like you're some kind of connoisseur," said Sam. He sounded tense. He wondered if Dean had noticed.
"Blood is blood. It's got a slightly different taste. I dunno..."
Cheryl saved his ass by interjecting a little science into the conversation. "It's probably the alcohol. It will have changed the taste."
Dean nodded at that, seemed to have forgotten about it as he waited. And waited. He glanced at his watch. Nothing.
"Well, so much for the scary light show."
Cheryl moved towards the still sleeping form of Emma. "Do we try and take the locket off?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah, I guess so." Then he moved to the sleeping girl, but seemed to hesitate, glancing back at Sam.
"Hey, Sam, you wanna do the honors here?"
He did as he was asked, leaned over the little girl, worried she might wake up and was careful to try not to fumble with the chain. He managed to undo the small catch and then pulled back, relieved when the locket simply came away like it was any other piece of ordinary jewelery.
"That was..." He paused.
"Too easy?" Dean finished for him.
"Yeah. Now what do we do?"
"We do a salt and burn on whatever is in that locket, tell her that it got stolen or lost or something. Clean up the mess. Like I said we should do, at the start."
Cheryl nodded, pulled the blankets from Emma. "I'll shift her to Ben's room. I don't want her waking up while you two are sweeping up salt and blood from the floor. By the way, the broom is downstairs."
She picked up the little girl easily, Emma not stirring and walked out of the room, down the hallway.
Sam went to fetch the broom and a dust pan. He also got some garbage bags. They cleaned up. Nothing happened.
Neither brother knew whether to be relieved or disappointed.
{\\SN//}
Cheryl's fireplace was gas and didn't work and she didn't have a wooden stove, so the salt and burn had to be performed outside. They inspected the locket. Gold, with an ivory insert scroll work. Sam popped the small catch and inside there was a neatly braided lock of hair secured inside with a small dollop of gold.
"Bingo," said Dean.
They made their way down to the back of the garden, to the tool shed. Cheryl opened it up and dragged out the barbecue. The neighbors would think they were nuts but at least they would think that the three of them were collectively drunk nuts, as opposed to people trying to destroy a ghost by burning their mortal remains on a Friday night.
Dean tossed briquettes onto the small barbecue. Sam allowed himself to be hugely relieved that this particular exercise in supernatural extermination didn't involve digging up any graves. That part of their job was sufficiently gross enough that he still couldn't get used to it. It was down to timing, temperature, soil conditions and just how much formaldehyde an undertaker used. Consequently it was anyone's guess on the condition of the coffin's occupant when they cracked open a grave. They both breathed a sigh of relief every time they encountered skeletal remains. They held their breath when they encountered putrefaction.
After one particularly bad exhumation, Sam had remarked to Dean, "Dude, did you know cadaverine is poisonous? I read about it on Wikipedia."
"I don't even know what that is."
"Wikipedia or cadaverine?"
"Hah, funny. Cadaverine."
"It's one of the molecule that causes the stench."
"It's poisonous?"
"Yeah. To rats."
"Then remind me not to bring any rats on our next job."
Sam snickered at the lame joke because he was desperate for any kind of laugh after what he'd seen.
Dean was liberally spraying lighter fluid onto the briquettes. He made to toss the locket onto the barbecue but Cheryl stopped him.
"I've been thinking," she said. "Can't you just destroy the hair? That way we could put the locket back on and she'd be none the wiser."
Dean frowned, stopped throwing around the lighter fluid. "I dunno. We've never actually done that before. Sammy?"
"He's right. Usually we burn it all. Just to be safe."
"Oh. Okay. I'll think of a good excuse."
Dean tossed the locket onto the pile, threw some salt around and chucked a match at the pile. The briquettes caught fire in spectacular blaze and the locket was hidden by the flames.
Cheryl gazed at the flames. "Is that it?"
"I guess so," replied Dean.
"It seems a bit anti-climatic."
Dean nodded in agreement. "Yeah but, I guess that's a good thing. Definitely low level crap. About time we got a job that was easy."
"I'm with you on that," agreed Sam. It felt incredibly satisfying to have pulled off a job where they hadn't been stomped, beaten, hit, cut, or traumatized. The last time that had happened they'd banished some leprechaun creature and spent the entire job laughing. Much to the leprechaun's chagrin.
"What are we going to tell Emma?" Cheryl asked.
Dean considered the blazing contents of the barbecue for a moment. "Okay. Maybe it will work. After the flames died down, maybe we can clean-up the locket and give it back. Tell her it fell off or something and we found it out here in the garden."
Cheryl raised an eyebrow, "She's not that dumb."
Dean returned her raised eyebrow with one of his own. "Don't look at us, we just make the bad guys go away. We're usually gone before the questions start."
They went back inside.
{\\SN//}
Dean had crashed into his bed at around midnight and he couldn't sleep. He was wired from the exorcism, or whatever the hell it was, and he was wired because he was waiting on all-hell-to-break loose and that hadn't happened either. He'd taken the diclofenac before going to bed, and his back was great, and he wasn't listening to his joints protest when he was prone or when he was upright. He even felt a tiny bit happy, and calm, except for the whole not-being-able-to-sleep thing. Consequently he hadn't bothered with the prazosin. Seemed pointless taking it if he wasn't going to sleep anyway.
He wondered if Cheryl could give him some Valium to take the rest of the edge off and he could crash and sleep like Emma had been sleeping. Totally and utterly oblivious.
If he knew Sam well enough, he thought Sam would be wide awake too but something stopped him from wandering across the hallway to talk to him.
Nothing for it. It was time for a snack and TV. He could have watched the TV in his room, but there were no snacks in his room. Besides, the TV in the living room was bigger and the thought of falling asleep in front of the TV was comforting. He'd fallen asleep in front of a TV more times than he cared to remember, and his father had made a habit of it. So if nothing else, he could sleep sitting up, lying down and although he had never tried it, he could probably sleep upside down.
He rolled over, tried closing his eyes and gave it one more try. But his brain wouldn't turn off as it rampaged around with thoughts of evil little girls, Spider-Man, cookies, cupcakes, and the Impala needing the air filter changed.
"Fuck it," he said. He sat up, flipped the covers back, got out of bed. He pulled on his jeans, pulled on his t-shirt, threw on a shirt over it, tucked his M1911 into the waistband and wandered down to the hallway, shuffling downstairs in his bare feet.
He wandered into the kitchen, turned on a light. Inhaled at the smell of baking and desserts and chili and pizza combining together to make its own heady perfume. It made him think that maybe his real home, the one he barely remembered as a four-year-old, smelt like this. Like people lived there and loved each other and didn't fight all the time.
The fridge seemed to be the place to start. He opened it up, the light illuminating the interior and the goodies that lay within. There was some cold pizza, and that was as good as just about anything as far as Dean was concerned, as long as it was heated up in the correct way.
In a pinch, it was a microwave, but correctly done it was a gentle warming in a fry pan. He went straight for the cupboard that held all of the pots and pans. Bent down to take one out.
When he straightened up again and turned around, he found himself sharing the kitchen with a tall man. A man with a beard and mustache, dressed in 19th century clothing.
The man stared at him. Dean stared back. The man was definitely a ghost, or spirit, although not a very vengeful looking one, or scary. Just seemed to be standing there, a small smile on his face, like he'd just popped in to pay his respects.
He should have expected this. 'Cause you just didn't go and do a spell and then absolutely nothing happened and everyone lived happily ever after. That's not how it worked. Never how it worked. It's just that he didn't expect the shit to hit the fan when he was about to reheat pizza in a frying pan.
He was just about to react and hit the guy with the frying pan, and hope like crazy that the pan happened to be iron when the formerly non-threatening guy seemed to have a change of heart. The temperature dropped, and the mood in the room gave way to something dark. Dark and sick.
"A son should obey," pronounced the ghost and then Dean found himself lifted and thrown backwards to the floor to the sounds of something in his back creaking. Or maybe it was snapping. Either way, it hurt like a bitch.
The ghost moved towards him, Dean tried moving away from him and going for the gun at the same time. Difficult with the pain but he could do it, because he'd become adept at ignoring pain through decades of hunting. He moved his feet, moved his legs, yeah he was still mobile. That had to be a good sign at least. With that thought, he started to propel himself backwards, trying to get some traction, and aiming the gun.
Couldn't move fast enough when it came to a ghost. The man reached down, grasped him by the shirt, lifted Dean easily to his feet, pulled the gun from his grasp just as he hit the trigger. The shot went wide, the bullet buried itself in one of Cheryl's kitchen cabinets.
"You are a wicked son. An abomination. You need to learn."
A hand went to the back of his neck, sending chills down his spine, seeming to suck the warmth out of his body. It was the same sort of hand used by his father on occasions, as a warning, but this wasn't the same. The hand was tighter, the fingers like claws on his skin.
He tried twisting from the hand but the darkness and sickness washed over him and his body was paralyzed by the familiar. He knew this feeling, he recognized it from hell. From the souls on the rack. The stench that pervaded the place, oozed its way into every corner, mixed with sulfur and blood. The unbearable sensation of evil. The wrongness of those souls, who had been banished to hell for good reason.
Dean opened his mouth to yell for help, any help at all, but he didn't even get that far. The ghost smiled at him, and Dean's vision blurred and then they weren't in the kitchen.
{\\SN//}
Wake up, Sam. You've got a job to do.
His father was standing in a clearing in the woods. On a rock. Sam didn't know how or why they had wound up here, but there was Dad. Standing on a boulder, his black coat wrapped around him, surrounded on all sides by tall pine trees.
Sam was down on the ground, stared up at him like he'd done as a child.
He wanted to speak, but his mouth wouldn't work. He wanted to tell his father that he was sorry. Sam wanted to make amends, say he understood the need to make the hurting stop and the only way to do it was with revenge. Revenge consumed everything. It consumed grief. It consumed guilt. It consumed worry and it consumed doubt. It consumed you.
His father was looking towards the tree line, looking and not finding.
Sam. Go get your brother. He needs you.
He doesn't need me, Dad. He doesn't. Dean doesn't need anyone.
Dean needs more than he's willing to admit. Go get your brother, Sam. Take your brother and run. Don't look back.
There was a noise, like a gun shot and both Sam and his father looked around for the source of the sound. Sam was about to say that it seemed strange that his father was telling him to run but right about then he abruptly woke up.
He could feel it then. The tendrils wrapping around his spine, his own private little demonic alarm.
He sat up, quickly got out of bed, headed for Dean's room. Already knew that he'd find the room empty. Also knew as he checked the bathroom, and checked downstairs that he wouldn't find him.
What he did find was Dean's Colt on the floor of the kitchen.
Crap. Okay. So it had started. But he had no idea what it actually was.
{\\SN//}
