Red Ribbon

"Hey Roger! Rog! You home man?" Gerald Belton asked as he walked into the apartment, taking off his coat and dropping his keys in a dish by the door. He headed to the kitchen, having not eaten in awhile.

"Yo Roger! How'd your date go last night?" he called as he opened the fridge. He took a sip out of the milk carton and pulled an apple out of the bin. Taking a bite he headed back to Roger's bedroom, where he expected to find his brother asleep.

"Why do you keep putting the apples in the fridge?" Gerald asked as he opened the door.

He dropped his apple and ran for the phone.

Sam was feeling pretty good. It was late in the morning as Dean slept soundly in the passenger seat (making soft snoring noises,) and Sam was driving down the Ohio highway. He really value those moments when Dean was too tired to drive, or at least when he admitted it. When Sam got behind the wheel of that car he confessed, he felt pretty cool. The affect of a nice looking car on the human mind was generally astonishing. The looks he got from the girls in other cars weren't that bad either.

"Hey," Sam was displeased to hear his brother grumble.

"Morning."

"Where are we?"

"About an hour into Ohio," Sam answered. Dean groaned as he tried to stretch his arms in the confined space.

"Can we stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" he asked suddenly. Sam glanced at him, surprised.

"What? No. We're not even going to Cleveland," Sam told him.

"We could swing by."

"I want to be in Richdale before sunset."

"What's in Richdale?"

"Twelve decapitated men in the past two years," Sam explained. Dean nodded, maybe that was more important than seeing Elvis's bunny slippers.

"Anything unusual about them?"

"Besides missing their heads?" Sam asked. "Nothing. No odd markings or writing, no weird smells. Just one quick chop through the neck."

"One chop?"

"That's what the article said, why?"

"It takes a lot to sever a head in one stroke. Even trained executioners needed to take two on occasion. Unless they used a good sword… Was a weapon found?"

"Never. There wasn't even any sign of someone else being there. No fingerprints, footprints, nothing…"

"This should be fun," Dean grinned slightly.

"Do you believe these prices?" Dean said as he filled the Chevy with gas. He gawked at the gas prices in awe. Dean had seen a lot of strange and unbelievable things in his life, but almost four dollars for a tank of gas was just mind blowing. It didn't matter to Dean that he was paying for it with fake money; it was just the principle of the thing. Sam sighed from the passenger seat, where he had been pushed.

"Does it really matter?" Sam asked. Dean walked around to his window.

"These companies should be arrested for grand larceny…" he explained as if he were some great champion of the people.

"It's called supply and demand, Dean," Sam told him. Dean snorted slightly.

"Yeah well, I demand they supply us with lower prices…" he said as he stood up and walked back to the rear of the car. Sam thought for a moment… wondering if what his brother had just said made any sense.

Ten minutes later the brothers where in Richdale's city limits. To describe Richdale as a 'city' is rather generous, as it barely met the qualifications. It was a generally nice, quiet place to live, despite the occasional mysterious beheading.

"So where are we headed?" Dean asked as they drove toward downtown. The amount of garbage cans along the street suggested it was garbage day.

"The latest victim was about a week ago, David Pellnat, 28. He was found in his car off the local highway by some state troops," Sam told him, already getting a map to the family's house up on his laptop.

"Alright. We'll check out where they found the car first," Dean said. Sam sighed and started a new search.

"Yeah, over there. That tree's in the picture," Sam instructed, looking back and forth from a picture of the crime scene on his laptop and the approaching area off of the road. Dean stopped the car twenty feet away and grabbed his EMF meter before they got out. The gravel surrounding them grew wild with weeds but the recent heavy traffic was still visible. Car tracks, footprints, even a set of horse tracks were discernable. Nothing showed any sign of the gruesomeness that had been found there.

"How do you decapitate someone and get away without leaving a blood trail?" Sam asked casually as he looked through the brush by the roadside. Dean was crouched down and was running his meter across the gravel.

"Maybe if your coporealbility is optional…" Dean suggested. Sam stopped and turned around to look at his brother, confused.

"'Coporeability?'"

"Yeah," Dean shrugged, "the ability to be corporeal."

Once again, Sam tried to pretend his brother had said something wise and powerful.

"Hey, I got something here," Dean said as he moved the walkman over a section of gravel. The EMF sounded high in his ears. With some difficulty (and looking rather like a crab,) Dean followed the high static sideways for a few feet.

"That looks like a trail," Sam said following him. Eventually Dean stopped and moved the meter in a large circle. Finally he sighed and stood up.

"It's gone. Whatever it is must have vanished."

"So we're thinking ghost?" Sam wanted to clarify. Dean shrugged and headed back for the car.

"Let's go visit Mr. Pellnat's family," he said.

Sam already had the map.

The black Impala sat across the street from the Pellnat family's household. A news van was parked in the driveway and they could make out strong lights through the porch window.

"And that's just perfect," Dean sighed. If there was anything he hated more than authority (besides spooks, monsters, and things that go bump in the night,) it was the media.

"Twelve mysterious deaths so close together, I'm not surprised," Sam shrugged.

"It should be awhile before we can get to them. Who else can we talk to?"

"Um…" Sam looked through his notes, "there's Roget Belton's family. He was killed three months ago."

"No one in between?"

"Well, there was Randy Sheehan. But he and his buddy were just driving through. No one they knew was local."

"Okay, then, tell me about this Belton guy."

"Uh. Roger Belton, 24, was found in his bedroom by his brother."

"In his bedroom? Not his car?"

"No, his bedroom. He and his brother had an apartment downtown," Sam answered as Dean started the car.

"Damn it, I thought we might have had another White Lady," Dean steered the car for the tallest building in sight.

"Since when do they decapitate?"

"You never know. They could be expanding their practices," Dean suggested. Sam looked at him.

"They're ghosts, not lawyers…" he said. Dean chuckled slightly, now having the image of a White Lady in a defendant's chair in his head.

Three months ago Gerald Belton had moved back in with his parents, not willing to stay in that apartment and still a little too shaken up to try and get one on his own. In a way he would never admit to, he was glad for the two deaths that had followed Roger. Because of them the media had begun to leave the Belton family alone, and Gerald was finally able to breathe and try to move on with his life.

He was mulling over this on the living room sofa with a bottle of beer when the doorbell rang. Mrs. Belton, ever the stereotypical housewife, was baking bread and was up to her elbows in yeast, so Gerald sighed and answered the door.

"Yes?" he asked the two men standing on the front porch. Sam stared at him for moment, his mouth agape. He thought back to the picture he had seen of Roger Belton, and the man standing before him. Same brown complexion, same braided hair, even their eyebrows were the same.

"I-I'm sorry. Are you Roger Belton?" Sam asked. Gerald snorted slightly, almost amused by the confused dismay on Sam's face.

"We're twins," he answered and Sam sighed in relief, "you two must not be very good reporters…"

Even though Dean wasn't a reporter, he was still a little hurt by the comment.

"Oh, oh I'm sorry. Can we come in?" Sam apologized. Gerald motioned his beer bottle to some benches on the porch. The media still upset his mother. He closed the front door and the three of them sat down.

"If you're looking for a new angle, you're 360 too late," Gerald told them.

"We just want to hear everything from you. The pure, unaltered stuff," Dean sounded very professional. Gerald sighed and leaned back against the house.

"Roger told me he had a date that night, and, well… That it'd be best if I had some place else to spend the night," he explained, "I came home around noon, called to him, he didn't answer, so I headed into the bedroom and there he was."

"Where, exactly?"

"Lying sprawled out on his bed, kind of Jesus like," Gerald held his arms out to his sides as if on the cross. Sam and Dean glanced at each other.

"But his neck…" Gerald continued, slightly more melancholy, "it'd looked cut, like on all of those cops shows, and there was so much blood…"

"Did you hear anything weird? Smell anything?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, the smell of the blood just filled my nose!" Gerald acted like it was a stupid question.

"What about sounds?"

"Just my heart in my ears," he answered. They could hear his mother calling for him from inside the house.

"Anything else?" Gerald asked them as he stood.

"No, that's fine, thanks," Sam said. Dean looked at his brother surprised. As Gerald walked off Dean stood.

"Wait! This date of his. What do you know about her?" he asked. Gerald shrugged.

"Some White chick he met at a bar. He didn't tell me a name or anything," and with that Gerald went inside.

After leaving the Belton household Dean and Sam rented a hotel room with a dirty coffee maker. Dean sat backward in a chair staring at it as the coffee gurgled. It sounded ill. Sam sat not far off clicking away at his laptop as usual. His eyes narrowed as he searched.

"I don't believe you forgot to ask about the date," Dean asked as the coffee died.

"I was thinking about something else he said," Sam explained. Dean stopped mourning the coffee and looked at him.

"What?"

"This…" Sam said spinning his laptop around to face Dean. On the screen was slideshow of pictures from the twelve crime scenes. As they went on, Dean noticed that every man had his arms out to his sides, as if on the cross.

"That's important…" Dean said walking over and getting a better view. Roger Belton flipped up onto the screen.

"It means we're not dealing with a demon," Sam told him. Dean nodded.

"Unless it's one with a wicked sense of irony."

"At least this narrows our options down to a religion," Sam said. Dean watched the bodies flip by again; making sure it couldn't be some fluke coincidence.

"Do a search for White women who have been decapitated in the area, I bet you'll come up with something," Dean instructed. Sam nodded.

"I wouldn't bet against you."

It must not have been easy for young Sister Mary Yvette. To be at prayer one morning in front of her Lord and Savior, to be cut down by a psychotic confessor. Father Harrington had called for an ambulance and read the Sister her last rights, but she couldn't have heard any of it. She couldn't have heard anything after the axe hit.

"Did they catch the guy?" Dean asked, looking over Sam's shoulders. The younger Winchester scrolled down a bit.

"Yeah, he wasn't hard to find. Guy walking the streets covered in blood carrying an axe?" Sam answered. Dean nodded and leaned back.

"A nun, though? Jesus Christ…" he sighed and Sam looked up at him. They both realized what Dean had just said.

"It would explain the positioning."

"Yeah but not the murders…" Dean told him. Sam shrugged.

"Who says nuns can't have vengeful spirits? Call it 'divine justice,' if it makes you feel better," Sam told him. Dean rubbed the back of his neck, not sure what to think. A killer nun would certainly be something new.

"Okay, okay. So our ghost is a nun out for, what, revenge?" Dean asked.

"Like I said, they caught the guy."

"Well, what do our victims have in common?"

"Well…" Sam turned back around to look at the screen, "they're all male, between the ages of 17 and 40… They all have really bad driver's license photos…" Sam offered. Dean frowned at him.

"I don't think that's it, Sammy."

"Well, that's everything they have in common. Race, jobs, homes, religions, everything else is all different."

"Well, maybe they've all sinned!" Dean suggested. Sam just looked at him for a moment.

"Sinned?"

"It's possible!" Dean defended himself.

"They're men between the ages of 17 and 40, it's more than possible!" Sam corrected him. Dean fell quiet.

Sam had a point.

"Well I doubt she picks these guys at random," Dean said and they both thought for a moment. After a long enough time Dean shrugged.

"Well, Roger Belton's brother said he met her at a bar, that may be our best bet."

"To go bar hopping?" Sam questioned. He wasn't quite sure Dean had the right reasons behind that suggestion. It didn't help that Dean had begun checking himself out in the mirror. Sam sighed, shook his head, and wondered what he had done wrong in a past life.

It was almost midnight when Sam found himself nudging in between happy, intoxicated people at the Duchess, the bar closest to Roger Belton's apartment. Bad dance music filled the bar but somehow people seemed to communicate. Sam frowned as he finally spotted his brother seated at the bar, talking to a brunette who was probably out past curfew. Once Sam reached them he tapped on his brother's shoulder.

"Mary Yvette is a blonde," he had to yell into Dean's ear.

"Who?" Dean yelled back. Sam just glowered down at him.

"Oh!" Dean remembered, "oh yeah! Right! Well, too bad. Bye!" Dean told the brunette and headed off into the crowd with his brother. The girl sighed and frowned down at her drink. Stuff like this always happened to her.

"I don't think she's going to show up here," Sam told Dean.

"Let's just wait a little longer," Dean suggested and frowned suddenly, "this music really sucks!"

"You're getting off the point!"

"So wh-? Hey, Sam!" Dean pointed toward the front door. Sam turned around. Entering the bar was a young woman with pale blonde hair that didn't seem to reflect any of the bar's lights. She wore a long, rather concealing black dress and looked almost to be in mourning. Tied around her neck was a long red ribbon in a bow under her left ear.

"I think we found our nun," Dean said and Sam nodded. They each took a step closer to her and she saw them almost instantly. She looked scared and took off back out the door. The brothers tried the best they could to maneuver through the crowd. Dean pushed people aside and Sam excused himself and got past. They reached the door at the same time and their hands collided as they reached for the knob. They both pulled back to allow the other. After a moment they both reached forward again and their hands collided. Again they pulled back to let the other, and again their hands collided.

"Oh would you just open it!" Sam yelled and Dean wrenched the door open. They raced out onto the dark street and found nothing.

"Damn it!" Dean yelled and hit his thighs with his fists. Sam was still looking around.

"Where'd she go?"

"I don't know!"

"Well where could she have gone?"

"I don't know!" Dean repeated.

Several clocks in Richdale turned to midnight, and the Winchester brothers could hear church bells. They looked at each other and grinned childishly.

Sam and Dean stopped running once they found themselves standing across the street from St. Denis's Church. The last bell for an hour rang as the men caught their breath. It was a large, looming church of white stone and tall steeples. There were several tinted glass windows depicting religious stories, including St. George and the dragon and Christ at the cross. Behind the grand church, almost hidden by the darkness of night, was what looked like a dormitory, simple and moderate. Just the place for nuns to live and pray.

"I don't suppose this is her church?" Dean asked, his breath successfully captured.

"St. Denis's? Yeah, this is it," Sam answered. Dean nodded, almost as if they should have expected it.

"She kills drunks by her church, that figures."

"She kills men who try and sleep with her by her church," Sam corrected.

"Okay, okay. After you," Dean offered.

The inside of the church looked much like anyone who had seen the inside of a church would suspect. The typical tall ceiling, long rows and pews, and an elaborate alter at the end. Against one wall were a few confessionals, and everywhere there seemed to be bowls of holy water. A giant crucified Christ watched over the entire scene.

"Look," Sam whispered nodding his head down toward the alter. Dean obeyed and found a kneeling blonde woman praying to her god.

"She's a sad sight, isn't she?" a man suddenly said out of nowhere. Dean and Sam turned around to see a small, elderly priest walking over to them. His bespectacled eyes were on the silent woman.

"Do you know her, uh, Father?" Dean asked. He was never sure how to appropriately address clergymen. The priest nodded.

"She comes here to pray every night. There is much trouble upon those shoulders," he told them. Sam and Dean glanced at each other.

"Well," the priest sighed, "I wish you both solace," he told them and walked back to where ever he had come. Once they were sure he was gone they turned back to each other.

"What does he mean, 'solace?'" Dean asked. Sam shrugged.

"We have more important things to worry about. Come on," Sam said and they quietly made their way down the middle aisle to Sister Mary Yvette.

Once they found themselves standing directly behind her, they weren't entirely sure of what to do. They had sort of been winging the entire operation and it now seemed to catch up to them. They stared questionably at each other in silence, as the praying figure hadn't seemed to notice them. Each brother wanted the other to act first. Finally, without any other ideas, Dean placed his hand in a bowl of holy water and flicked the substance at her.

There was no burning, no horror, no screaming. She turned her head and rather calmly looked at him.

"Hi," was all Dean could say and smiled at her. Sam rolled his eyes, suddenly getting the feeling they were both doomed. She continued looking at Dean with empty eyes.

It was then that Sam really noticed the red ribbon tied around her neck. While it was long and beautiful, there seemed to be something else about it. Almost the feeling that it was flowing, almost the feeling that it was… blood.

While the ghost's eyes were still burrowing into Dean, Sam stepped forward, grabbed one end of the ribbon, and pulled. The bow came undone almost instantly and the bells suddenly began to toll once again in their belfries. Sister Mary Yvette closed her eyes as her head feel back. Back, and off of her neck.

Before her head hit the ground, it and the rest of her body faded away into nothing.

Dean looked at his brother and smiled, secretly proud. Sam was too surprised it had worked to notice.

"Come on, let's get out of here," Dean said heading back down the aisle to the door. Before Sam joined him, he took a step forward and placed the long red ribbon on the alter.

It was sunny the next day as the Winchesters drove northeast into Pennsylvania. Dean noticed a nice, cool scent in the air as he drove along with his window down. He glanced over at his brother, who seemed rather interested in the screen of his laptop.

"What are you looking at?" Dean asked, in the back of his mind wondering it was girly pictures.

"I'm reading up on St. Denis."

"Anything interesting?"

"He was a patron saint of the demonically possessed," Sam told him. Dean grinned.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously. And get this," Sam paused for dramatic affect, "he was beheaded."

Dean looked at him.

"Now you're kidding," Dean said. Sam smiled, shook his head, and told his brother about the life and times of St. Denis.