Chapter 7
Sam, Dean and Kelly started toward the shack. An unexpected growl came from beside them and stopped them dead in their tracks.
"John, please tell me that was your stomach."
Dean looked at Kelly with a serious face.
"I'm offended."
Before any of them could say more, a long green crocodile slithered out of the tall grass. Its teeth were showing as it snarled at them menacingly. Sam and Kelly gathered behind Dean with fear.
"Why do I have to be your body guard?"
"Because Dan's scared of them and, frankly, so am I."
Kelly grabbed Dean's arm to hide behind.
"Well, what am I supposed to do with the thing?"
"I don't know! Get rid of it", Sam answered.
"I'm not the freaking crocodile hunter!"
"Dean!"
"Dean?"
Kelly looked at Sam with confusion.
"I mean John. John, do something!"
They backed away slowly as the reptile moseyed forward. Its bright yellow eyes stared them down. It opened its pointed jaws to reveal countless rows of sharp jagged teeth. They snapped down startling the two behind Dean.
"Oh this is enough."
Dean reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a silver handgun. He shot twice at the scaly beast, disturbing all other wildlife in the area, and watched as it made its last movements of struggle.
"You killed it!"
Kelly hit Dean in the arm she had been holding.
"What?"
"You killed it!"
"So?"
"So, it's dead! Crocodiles are endangered!"
"Every animal's endangered."
"No! Not all of them, but they are!"
"Who cares? I saved your ass, didn't I?"
She went quiet. Sam pulled out his gun now too. The two walked up to the crooked door of the shack. Kelly stopped them before they went in.
"Wait. Why did you call him Dean?"
"Well… you know when you call people by other names by the slip of the tongue, or…"
"Sam, just tell her", Dean interrupted.
"Sam?"
Kelly crossed her arms waiting for an explanation.
"Okay. We haven't exactly been very honest with you…"
"Damn right."
"Anyway, the truth is… we're not FBI agents. In fact, we aren't officers of any kind."
"Yeah, we're probably the opposite of law enforcing… people", Dean added.
"Yeah. And I'm not Dan and he's not John."
"I'm Dean and he's Sam."
Kelly was in shock.
"So let me get this straight. You're not officers?"
"Nope."
"You're names aren't Dan and John?"
"Nope."
"Then who are you?"
"Like we said, I'm Dean and he's Sam."
Kelly shook her head frustratingly.
"Then what are you?"
"We're um…"
"Um we…"
The brothers exchanged glances of uncertainty. They couldn't think of the right way to tell her the truth.
"We… hunt… things."
Kelly had now grown to a new level of annoyance with the two.
"Things. What kind of things?"
"All kinds of things", Dean explained vaguely.
Kelly took a deep breath.
"Like what? Crocodiles? People?"
"Actually, that was my first animal. Except for that squirrel I once ran over. Oh yeah, and then there was that dog… or wait… wasn't that a cat?"
"Then what do you hunt?"
Sam and Dean looked at each other again.
"Can we trust you to tell no one?"
"Depends on if it's legal."
"You said you don't care much about the law."
Kelly considered Sam's statement for a while.
"True enough. Okay. You can trust me."
"Do you believe in ghosts?"
Kelly shook her head again, this time to make sure she was hearing correctly.
"What?"
"Ghosts. You know, spirits, demons… do you believe in them?"
"What kind of a question is that?"
"Just answer it."
"Okay, sure. I believe in them. I believe something other than us is out there."
"Alright, well, we hunt them. It's what we do. Sam and I are brothers. We go around killing them and saving people from them. And this case that we're on… we think it might be supernatural related."
"Are you kidding me with this crap?"
"Do we look like we're kidding?"
Dean showed a serious expression. So did Sam. Kelly sighed.
"You're not lying. Either that or you guys are just really good liars. Besides that… I'll believe you. I mean, you haven't tried to kill me yet, so… I think I'll be okay. But if you pull a fast one, I'll call headquarters."
"Ha. I'm not scared of the police. I mean we did escape jail once and…"
Sam nudged his brother hard in the ribs. He shut up from there.
They continued into the old house. The inside of the shack almost seemed larger than the outside. It was separated into many rooms of various sizes. Ratty, torn sheets hung from the frame of the door. The other doors had curtains of beads in front of them. Used vanilla candles were placed all over the dusty furniture. Cobwebs were in all corners of the walls and tables, along with other items in the hut. In the main room was a single round table with a few chairs seated around it and a crystal ball in its center. A large bookshelf covered the entire back wall of the room.
In the other rooms were beds, couches, tables, and chairs, normal furniture that was just old and dusty. Books and candles, and other unknown trinkets were scattered throughout the place. Dean stepped up to the table that held the crystal ball and tapped on the glass.
"I guess we can rule out normal living from our hostess's vocabulary."
Sam scanned the books on the shelves at the back.
"Definitely. Check out some of these titles. Book of spells, How to master the art of telepathy, Brews, Potions and What Not, Contacting the dead? This Moira person must have been really choked up about her husband's death."
"Why do you say that?"
"Well look at some of this stuff. Most of it is black magic and spells dating back to before Christ. And looking through some of these, they might actually work, but they require a lot of time and energy, and she would have had tons of that after his death. She gave up everything and probably turned to this as a way to contact his spirit or something."
"So what, you think she's a witch?"
"Could be, before she died, anyway."
"Or maybe she didn't die."
Kelly signaled them over to her side.
"What do you mean she didn't die?"
"The food's still hot and the water's fresh."
A bowl of stew containing what looked like cabbage in a dirty greenish broth sat on the supposed dinning room table along with a silver goblet of clear, liquid.
"Someone must have been here."
Sam turned to Dean with wide eyes.
"She's right. And the records we looked at never specified how she died, when or where."
"So maybe she took up witchcraft to find a way to bring back her husband and doing so found out that she could live longer and faked her death to stop people from getting suspicious."
"Exactly."
Dean gave the bad boy grin he usually did when he thought of something using his downstairs brain.
"What a sly dog."
Kelly came into the conversation now.
"But how could she fake her death?"
"Well she is a witch. I guess she made a replica of herself or something to distract people from actually looking for her."
They stood quiet for a moment. Kelly came up with another thought.
"Wait, how do the murders tie into this?"
"Oh yeah. I almost forgot about that."
"By the way, we came here to check out a dead body, right? Where is it?"
All three of them began to worry at Dean's discovery.
"Um, Kelly?"
"Yeah?"
"Who exactly was on the phone?"
"I don't know. They wouldn't tell me their name. It was a guy, I think. The line was too fuzzy to tell."
Dean and Sam exchanged looks as if communicating silently. Kelly didn't quite catch on to their brain wave and asked,
"What?"
"It's a trap."