9: Junipus


Sam pushed his chair away from table with the laptop and blinked a few times to get the gritty feeling from his eyes. Six disappearances over the last ninety years in this county. Actually not much considering the time span and the vast Montana forests.

'No, I guess,' Bobby nodded when Sam vented his thoughts. 'An unexperienced person easily loses his way in the forest, might get eaten by a bear, wolves…'

Dean, attacked by a bear? Sam shook his head to chase that image away. No. There was still hope. He had to be out there somewhere. Sam wasn't ready to accept that his brother might not have survived the past four days. That's how long it had been, and every hour that passed made him more uncomfortable. The trail was getting colder by the minute. He and Bobby had been driving around for hours, they had contacted sheriff Grady but to no avail. Dean was gone. Vanished.

'So the storm was just natural phenomenon then,' Sam said and yawned.

Bobby threw him a granola bar. 'Eat. I don't think so. Too sudden, too much. Is there some kind of weather report you can find that matches the times of those disappearances?'

Sam tore the wrapper from the bar. 'Ninety years is a lot of time to go back. Earliest weather report that I can find here is dated… May 1951.'

'There's a lot of farmland here too. Sometimes farmers keep records of weather conditions. That was in the good old days when computers didn't exist and demons were just honest filthy villains.'

Sam chuckled. 'Maybe we can check at the local newspaper? There might be more records on those missing persons as well. That's on…' he looked it up: 'Junipus Street.'

'All right. Junipus Street it is then.' Bobby said.


A sign above the door said The Winchester Daily. At the reception sat a thirty-something woman, who stood up the moment the friends came in. She eyed them as if they were a walking talking bag of M&Ms.

'Well hello there. How can I help you fine gentlemen?'

'We'd like to see some old newspapers, if that's alright,' Sam said.

'Well of course, that's why keep the archives, that's what they're here for. Come in, gentlemen. My name is Brenda Brocking. What did you say yours were?'

'We didn't,' grunted Bobby, but Sam, recognizing an opportunity when he saw one, produced an award-winning smile and said: 'I'm Sam Winchester, this is my uncle Bobby.'

'Your name actually is Winchester?' asked Brenda incredulously, taking the bait within a second.

'It is. We're doing research on towns called Winchester, for obvious reasons. So if possible, we'd like to know a little bit more about this place. Its history, remarkable events that have taken place here, famous people, birth houses...' Sam summed up.

'The first Winchester Daily originates from 1927,' Brenda said and walked the men to large archive in the back of the building. She showed them shelves full of old, yellowish books with thick grey covers. ''These are all the copies we have. We're working on digitalizing them, but that does take a while, so I'm afraid you'll have to do with leafing through them books. Will that do?'

'It's a fine place to start, miss Brocking,' Bobby said.

'Call me Brenda, Bobby,' the clerk said and flashed Bobby a smile.

'She likes you, Bobby,' whispered Sam.

'Shut up,' the older man grunted.


'There's not much out of the ordinary now, is there?' Bobby said after some time. 'Two of the six missing persons you found, haven't even been mentioned in here.' He tapped on a page with a story about a new book collection for the local library. 'Have you seen this? This name keeps popping up. Junipus. Like the street.'

'The name of the library across the street.'

'There's a drugstore over on Main Street. I think it's also called Junipus.'

'Maybe we should ask your new best friend,' Sam said. Brenda Brocking had been eyeing them quite conspicuously each time he looked up. 'Wait, here she comes.'

Brenda had decided that the way to a man's heart was probably through coffee and donuts, because she put a tray down on the table, right in front of Bobby's nose. 'Now there. Such hard workers - you need to take care of yourself, Bobby.'

'Oh. That's very kind of you, Miss Brocking,' Bobby stammered.

'Brenda. Just Brenda,' she said. 'Is everything to your satisfaction?' She put so much emphasis on that last word, that Sam could hardly keep himself from bursting out in a laugh. Bobby looked kind of uncomfortable.

Sam nodded. 'Now that you ask… what or who is Junipus? We've come across that name in the papers, seen it a few times here in town. The library, the street, the drugstore…'

Brenda didn't correct him on that last suggestion, so he assumed he was right.

'Junipus? You mean you don't know? Talk about the town's history… now there's a story you want to hear. You mind?' Before either man could say a word, she sat down on the chair next to Bobby. 'I love red beards. Reminds me of strength. It's very masculine. So handsome. Very strong.'

'Err… Junipus?' Bobby cleared his throat. Sam swallowed away a giggle.

'Ah yes. Of course.' The librarian crept a little closer to Bobby, then leant forward over the table to incorporate Sam in the conversation. She lowered her voice. 'It's very, very sad. Still brings tears to my eyes, when I think about it.'

She pushed her glasses a bit higher up her nose and began. 'Once upon a time, long long ago…'

'It's a fairytale?' Bobby asked, producing just the right amount of disbelief even though he was always very interested in the bizarre, even if it meant listening to fairytales. He moved a little away from her, ever so unnoticeably but Brenda only moved in a little closer. She put her hand on his and said: 'Oh no, you silly! Fairytales! Fairies don't exist!'

Suddenly Dean's face appeared before Sam's mind's eye. His brother would have shrugged and said something like: believe me, lady - you're so wrong. Or he wouldn't have said anything at all and just rolled his eyes.

'At the end of the nineteenth century,' Brenda said, not noticing Sam's face, 'a young couple came to live in Winchester. Terence was a handsome young doctor, Molly was his wife. They were the loveliest couple, you know. He was a doctor and set up a practice in his house, she was his right hand in almost every field. Equally skillful in medicine, kind, caring - and very charming too. In a couple of years they had established a name for themselves. People came from miles around for a consult.'

'So what was so sad? That they couldn't watch Days of our lives back then?' Bobby couldn't hold back a mocking tone, but Brenda didn't notice or chose not to.

'Patience, Bobby. Taste some of them donuts, they're really good.' She looked at him with clear lust in her eyes. 'If I would have known you came, I would have–'

'Miss Brocking, what was the sad part?' Sam interrupted.

She tore away her eyes from Bobby. 'The doctor died. There was an explosion of some sort in his house. It was an accident, he was killed in the fire. It was a black day for Winchester, of course. Junipus had been very kind to the community so his death was mourned by everyone.'

'But surely being a kind doctor is not a reason for naming a street, a drugstore and a library after him?' Sam asked.

Brenda nodded. 'You're absolutely right. It wasn't just good medicine that gave him fame. Junipus had been rich, old money, you know. He founded the library, and gave money to the elementary school and such. Putting his name on the library was a tribute the town council never meant to happen posthumously, I guess.'

'What happened to Mrs Junipus?'

'That's where the story gets really dramatic,' Brenda said with glistening eyes, obviously enjoying telling about sad and dramatic things. 'The Junipus mansion had been damaged beyond repair by the explosion and the fire that followed. The doctor and his wife had a small summerhouse a few miles outside Winchester. Mrs Junipus, completely heartbroken by the loss of her beloved husband, moved there. She kept very much to herself, didn't open the door to visitors and withdrew further and further from the village she once felt so comfortable in. A few weeks after Junipus' death, she found out she was pregnant. Just imagine what she must have felt like… all alone, in the early stages of pregnancy...'

Despite her sensation-ridden tone, Sam found himself mesmerized by Brenda's story.

'The next months are a bit unclear, she lived in the hills, every now and then seen by a local when she bought food. But she appeared in town on a Sunday, seven months after her husband's death, with in her arms a small bundle. A baby. A boy. It was dead. She asked for a burial in sacred ground, but since the baby wasn't christened, she was refused this request.'

'I thought you said the villagers loved her and her husband?' Bobby said. 'Talk about getting the door slammed in your face.'

'It wasn't the community that refused - it was a local priest. Because what she told him, he was convinced she was possessed by or had done dealings with a demon. The fact that the baby died was a clear sign from God, he said. Mrs Junipus told him that, with still two months to go, she woke up with severe pains. Instantly, she knew something was wrong with her baby. In pain and utter despair, she screamed out for her husband and – according to the story – her cry went beyond the boundaries of death. The doctor appeared and operated on her, saving her life. The baby was stillborn.'

'Really?' Bobby's eyebrows sank a little. 'A ghost performed a Caesarian?' If only Brenda had known why he furrowed, she'd probably not looked as delighted as she did.

'What happened?' Bobby asked. 'What did she do with the baby?'

'No one saw it happen, but she buried the baby in the garden of the Junipus house. That fact only became apparent about sixty years ago when a realtor bought the estate and tore down the ruins of the place to build a new house there. He found the remains of a baby, heard about the story of Junipus and his wife and gave the little boy a proper burial.'

'And what happened to Mrs Junipus?'

Brenda smiled. 'No one really knows. She left the town and never came back. She must have died in the hills, perhaps perished in the river. Some people say they still see her ghost wandering the hills from time to time, trying to reunite with her dead husband. That does sound ever so romantic but of course that just local folklore.'

'Where did you say that summerhouse was?' Sam said with a deep frown on his forehead.

'The village was called Hoggevean, but there's nothing left.'

'Why not?'

'It's been completely wiped away by the great storm of '64.'

'Hoggevean? Which direction was that?'

'Up north. In Errep Forest.'

Sam's eyes flashed to Bobby. Errep Forest.

The spot where the boys had the accident.


(to be continued)