To my amazing reviewers: Brookey Babe, wcfan, naleysocute23, SupernaturalPirateGirl, Alyssa43, and Rae Artemis.
Adiana held an EMF meter in her hand, her eyes following its direction around the walls. Her face was grim. She couldn't believe Dean was letting Jo stay. Sharing a room with her for a few days was definitely not Adiana's idea of fun. The EMF hummed steadily like a drone of a bee, not letting out even the slightest beep to indicate something supernatural. Adiana had elected to look around the apartment building with Sam, after Jo had stolen Dean away. Adiana shook the EMF and wished it would beep.
"Should I be looking for anything in particular; more ectoplasm or something?"
"Unless there's another attack there shouldn't be any more ectoplasm. We just have to hope the EMF meters pick up something," commented Sam, holding his EMF up near the ceiling.
"Which could take a while."
"Hopefully not."
Two hours passed, and Adiana and Sam had swept everything without any success. They returned back to the apartment defeated. To their surprise, they found Dean and Jo already looking over the floor plans of the building.
"When did you get back?" asked Sam. Dean checked his watch.
"About forty-five minutes ago. Find anything?"
"No. You?"
"Jo picked something up in a vent. I felt around and found this." Dean held up a bloody clump of blonde hair. Adiana felt her stomach twist unpleasantly and glanced away. Great now Jo looked good, and she just seemed useless. At least Sam seemed put off by the hair as well.
"That's gross man. You think it's from one of the victims?"
"Probably."
"So it's living in the vents?" inquired Adiana.
"We're not really sure yet." Adiana glanced over the plans. The women's rooms and the vent were circled in red marker.
After three hours of pouring over the plans, they still hadn't found any helpful information. Only Jo and Adiana remained awake. Dean had fallen asleep on the large armchair, a curled up map of the first floor in his hand. Sam slept too, his back to the chair with a map of the third floor beside him.
The first rays of light were seeping through the window. A few cars drove down the streets below, an occasional horn blasting through the early morning. Adiana gazed blearily down at the plans for the sixth floor. She brought her hand to her mouth, stifling a yawn.
"If you're tired should go to bed," suggested Jo. Adiana shook her head. She propped herself determinedly on her elbows. "Suit yourself." Adiana eyed the knife Jo was twirling before looking back at the maps. The silence dragged on, both girls gazing down at the table. Adiana strained to keep her eyes open. The floor plans became hazy and seemed to meld together.
"Hey." Adiana's face had almost been pressing against the map, but she jerked up.
"What?"
"I just wanted to apologize."
"What for?" asked Adiana, her head tilted in confusion.
"I guess we got off on the wrong foot. I'm sorry I snapped at you in the bar. I thought…. Well, it doesn't matter what I thought. The point is that we should at least try to be friendly to one another while working on this case. Truce?" Adiana thought for a moment. This didn't mean she'd have to like Jo, did it? No she supposed not, and she had to respect Jo at least for putting their differences aside.
"Truce." The women shook hands. They turned as Sam stirred and stood up. He stretched and picked up the map beside his foot. Placing on the table, he looking down at the women hunched over the table.
"Have you two slept at all?"
"No," they chorused.
"Figure out anything?"
"Yeah, apparently you snore when you sleep sitting up," Adiana joked.
"I've got nothing either," said Jo with a smile.
"Well, I'm going to get some coffee." Sam grabbed the car keys off the counter. They women went back to the plans on the table. They looked over the maps for almost another hour before Dean finally woke up. He shifted and looked over the top of his chair.
"Mornin' princess," greeted Jo.
"Where's Sam?"
"He went to get coffee." Dean moved his legs over the arm of the chair and sat up. He stifled a groan.
"My back." Adiana hid a bemused smile behind one of her hands.
"Easy there, grandpa," joked Adiana.
"How'd you sleep on that big soft bed?" asked Dean, standing up.
"I didn't," stated Jo.
"You?" queried Dean, turning to Adiana.
"Nope."
"We've just been going over everything," explained Jo. Dean eyed the knife in her hand. He picked up his bag and rifled through it, pulling out another knife. He handed it to Jo.
"Here."
"What's this for?"
"It'll work a hell of a lot better than that pig stick you're twirling around." Jo gave her knife to Dean. He turned it around in his hands. He frowned at the name written on the blade.
"William Anthony Harvel." said Jo, her normally passive voice taking on a tinge of sadness. Dean ran his fingers over the name carved into the knife.
"Sorry, my mistake." They traded knives, and Dean put his knife back in his bag. Adiana watched quietly.
"What do you… what do you remember about your dad? I mean, what's the first thing that pops into your head?" Dean silently shook his head. "Come on, tell me."
"I was six or seven and he took my shooting for the first time." Dean sat down in the chair beside Jo. Adiana was too interested in what he was about to say to feel jealous. "You know, bottles on a fence, that kind of thing. I bulls-eyed every one of 'em. He gave me this smile like… I don't know."
"He must have been proud." Dean smiled sullenly.
"What about your dad?"
"I was still in pigtails when my dad died, but I remember him coming home from a hunt. He'd burst through that door like Steve McQueen or something… and he'd sweep me up in his arms, and I'd breathe in that old leather jacket of his. And my mom was sour and pissed when he left, but she started smiling again. And we were… a family. You want to know why I want to do the job? For him. It's my way of being close to him. Now tell me what's wrong with that?"
"Nothing." There was a moment's pause before Sam barreled through the door, startling everyone. "Where's the coffee?" asked Jo. Sam jerked his head toward the window.
"There are cops outside. Another girl disappeared."
"I'll go check it out," offered Dean, "You three stay here." Adiana stood up, as did Jo.
"The hell we will," quipped Jo.
"They won't let all four of us in the apartment." Adiana gave Dean one long hard look before sitting back down. Dean pulled a fake cop id out of his bag and left. Sam took a wad of papers from his back pocket.
"I got these from the library. They're old photographs and articles about this apartment and the area before." Adiana, Jo and Sam began riffling through the papers.
"Theresa Ellis, apartment 2F. Her boyfriend reported her missing around dawn."
"Her apartment?" asked Jo.
"There's cracks all over the walls, ceiling. There's ectoplasm, too."
"Between that and the tuft of hair, I'd say this sucker's coming from the walls," concluded Sam.
"Yeah, but who is it?" muttered Dean. "The building's history is totally clean."
"Maybe we're looking in the wrong place," said Jo.
"What d'ya mean?"
"Check this out." Jo handed a photo to Sam. Adiana peered at it. It was a picture of a vacant lot.
"An empty field," said Sam.
"It's where this building was built. Take a look at the building next-door."
"The windows," commented Adiana surprised, "There are bars on the windows."
"We're next-door to a prison," recognized Dean. Jo hurried over to the phone. She began to dial. Adiana continued to stare at the photo. Did a ghost from the neighboring prison get here? But how and why? Adiana picked up another photo. Yes, there were the bars again.
"Okay," Jo hung up the phone, "Moyamesing Prison. Built in nineteen thirty-five, torn down in nineteen sixty-three. And get this; they used to execute people by hanging them in the empty lot next-door."
"Well then, we need a list of names of all the people executed there," said Sam. Jo nodded.
"Ash is already on it. I told him to send the list to your computer." Sam grabbed his laptop from off the floor and placed it on the table. Dean, Jo and Adiana circled around him. Sam clicked on a few keys and entered his account. The e-mail from Ash was already waiting.
"He's good," mumbled Adiana. Sam clicked on the e-mail. A list of names popped up. Sam began to scroll down. It was a very long list.
"One hundred fifty-seven names," said Sam once he reached the bottom.
"We got to narrow that down," remarked Dean.
"Yeah."
"Or else we're gonna be digging up a hell of a lot of stiffs." Sam scrolled down the list, slowly this time. He stopped and clicked on a single name. Adiana bent forward for a better look.
"Herman Webster Mudgett." Sam looked over his shoulder at Dean. "Wasn't that H.H. Holmes' real name?"
"You gotta be kidding me. Let me see that." Sam got up and Dean slid into the chair. Sam pulled out a printer and plugged it in. Websites flashed across the screen. Adiana pulled out papers as they came out of the printer. There were pictures of Holmes, articles about the murders and one article about a place called the Murder Castle. The more Adiana saw, the more came back to her. She'd read a book about Holmes once, and from what she could remember he was a very, very nasty man. A few more clicks on the keyboard and a newspaper headline popped up. It read 'Multi-Murder Meets His Match'. "Yup, Holmes was executed at Moyamesing Prison May seventh, nineteen eighty-six." Sam shook his head.
"H.H. Holmes himself. Come on, I mean what are the odds?"
"Who is this guy?" asked Jo.
"The term multi-murderer, they coined it to describe Holmes," clarified Dean. "He was America's first serial killer, before anyone even knew what a serial killer was."
"Yeah," Sam cut in. "He confessed to twenty-seven murders, but some put the death toll at over one hundred."
"His victim flavor of choice was pretty, petite blondes." Adiana ran her fingers through her hair, almost without thinking. But she wasn't short enough to be considered petite. Jo though… "He used chloroform to kill them… which is what I smelled in the hallway last night." He looked up at Jo, then back at the computer screen. "At his place, the cops found human remains including bone fragments and long locks of bloody blonde hair. Boy, you sure know how to pick 'em."
"But we just find the bones, salt them, and burn them, right?" confirmed Jo apprehensively.
"Well, it's not that easy," corrected Sam, "His body is buried in town, but it's encased in a couple tons of concrete." Adiana picked up another article, detailing that particularly nasty death of one Elisa Hemmingway.
"What? Why?"
"Story goes," voiced Dean, "That he didn't want anyone mutilating his corpse because that's what he used to do."
"You know something," Sam began rifling through the papers on the desk, "We might have an even bigger problem than that." Jo looked at him skeptically.
"How does this get bigger?"
"Holmes built this apartment in Chicago. They called it the Murder Castle." Remembering the article, Adiana picked it up and handed it to Sam. "Thanks. The whole place was a death trap. They had trapdoors, acid pits. He had these secret chambers in the walls. He'd lock his victims in for days. Some he'd let suffocate. Others starved to death."
"So Theresa could still be alive? She could be inside these walls."
"We need sledgehammers and crowbars. We need to smash these walls anywhere it's thick enough to hide a girl," decided Dean. "We'll get that out of the car." Sam, Dean, Adiana and Jo hurried downstairs and out the front door.
Night had already fallen. The dim glow from the streetlights lit up the street. Dean unlocked the trunk of the Impala. He handed a crowbar to Adiana and Jo and pulled out two sledgehammers for Sam and himself. He then pulled out four flashlights, handing one to each of them. Once inside, Dean laid out the plan. "Jo and I will take the second floor. You two take the first. Call Jo when you're done." Sam and Adiana nodded. Jo and Dean rushed up the stairs. Sam and Adiana turned down the hallway. They crept past the office where Ed was asleep in his chair and stopped at a closet. Sam jiggled the doorknob. The closet was locked.
"Here." Adiana pulled a bobby pin out of her hair. She stuck it in the lock and moved it around. After a few seconds, the lock clicked and Adiana pulled the door open. "Thank you freshman year roommate." Once inside, Adiana switched on the light, and Sam closed the door. The closet was filled with cleaning materials. Sam moved aside a couple mops and tapped on the wall.
"Hollow." Sam handed Adiana his flashlight. "Stand back." Adiana backed against the opposite wall. With any luck, Ed was a very heavy sleeper. Sam swung the sledgehammer. It hit the wall, splintering the wood. He swung again and a small hole formed. Adiana stared silently as the hole in the wall became bigger and bigger until with a mighty CRACK a huge chunk of wood fell away leaving a gigantic hole in the wall. Sam wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. Adiana approach the hole.
"Damn," she muttered. "That was awesome. I could never do that without a cast, forget with one." She put down their flashlights on a shelf and used her crowbar to yank some large, sharp pieces of wood out of the way. After they fell, she peered around the corner and into the darkness. "Humans one, wall zero." Adiana gave Sam a small smile which he returned.
"Let's go." Adiana handed him his flashlight back and turned on her own. She stepped into the wall behind him, their flashlight beams cutting through the darkness. They began a careful trek through the space between the walls avoiding pipes and large spider webs. It was eerie, hearing the muffled noises from apartments as they passed by. Adiana ducked under a particularly large cobweb that had almost hit her in the face. She felt badly for Sam who was taller and having a much harder time navigating the small space. At one point, Adiana felt something brush her leg and let out a small shriek. Sam whipped around, his flashlight pointing to Adiana. She looked down and Sam's flashlight followed. A small rat skittered away into the darkness. Adiana let out a sigh of relief.
"Sorry." She shook herself slightly. "We should tell Ed he has a rat problem." They pushed onward finding nothing of particular interest and finally they had to turn around. "You sure they're here?"
"Where else would they be?"
"I don't know." Adiana nimbly jumped over a pipe. She could see a dim light ahead. They were nearing the closet. Sam pulled out his cell and dialed Jo.
"We're nearly done down here."
"Alright, meet you at the apartment," crackled Jo's voice on the other line. Sam clicked the cell off and shoved it back in his pocket. Adiana followed Sam out of the wall back into the closet. They walked out, Sam carefully locking the door behind them before they went up to the apartment. As they were almost there, Dean came barreling down the hall, knocking into Sam. He stopped only for a moment.
"It's got Jo," he managed to get out before he kept walking. Adiana and Sam hastened alongside him.
"What? How'd that happen?" asked Sam.
"I wasn't with her. I left her alone. Damn it!"
"Hey, hey we'll find her, alright?"
"Where?"
"Inside the walls."
"We've been inside the walls all night. None of the other girls are there. She won't be either."
"He's got a point, Sam," noted Adiana. Dean shoved open the apartment door. Adiana hurried to the bathroom. She had had to go all night. While inside, Adiana could hear Dean's conversation with Ellen. She was really angry, Adiana could tell from Dean's tone of voice. Adiana ran her hands under the sink, rinsing off soap and dust and god knew what else from her journey through the walls. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked tired and very dirty. Awesome.
Crack! What was that? Adiana froze, staring at her widening eyes in the mirror. Slowly, she looked up to the ceiling. A thin crack had appeared. It continued to spread across the ceiling and down the wall. Adiana followed its path to the vent in the wall, slowly backing up towards the door. Ectoplasm was oozing out of the vent, in large black streams. Adiana reached behind her for the doorknob. The ectoplasm flowed toward Adiana. She grabbed the handle tried frantically to open the door. The lock was jammed or something was keeping the door closed. From the other side, Adiana could hear the boys calling her name. A grubby, twisted hand came out of the vent. Adiana screamed. The ectoplasm pooled around Adiana's feet. She tried to step further back against the door and slid in the ectoplasm, a streak of white appearing momentarily in the black ooze. She fell forward, her head slamming against the floor. For a moment Adiana's vision blurred and then she blacked-out.
