Dean was sweating and covered in grave dirt when his shovel met resistance in the form of Benjamin's coffin. Sadly, it wasn't a plain old wooden one that he could have smashed his way through, so he cleared away the dirt that lay on top of the casket and then swung open the lid.
Inside the coffin was cheap material hiding the padding that held the decayed body of the dead fifteen year old, and Dean couldn't help the small grimace that crossed his face. The Benjamin kid was dressed in what he guessed would have been his Sunday best, but which was now covered in dirt and was simply a shell for what was left behind.
The smell that came with the dead had long since gone, and all that was left behind was the dry skin and the bones underneath them. Dean couldn't help but think that the now empty black eyes were staring at him and condemning him. Hell, it was more likely that this job was getting to him. All the more reason to get this over with and then get the hell out of town.
He put his hands on the side of the hole head created around the casket, and pulled himself up, swing his legs as he did. Once he was securely topside he went to pick up the salt and gasoline from where they lay in the cold grass. Dean twisted the cap off of the salt as he turned back around to the grave and began pouring it down the newly dug grave and over the dead boy's remains, a grim look on his face as he did.
Putting the cap back on the salt, he then pulled the lid off of the bottle of gasoline and began to drizzle the fuel over the remains and the salt. Just as he started however his whole frame was suddenly flung to the side, his head barely missing a head stone, the gasoline knocked from his hands.
Biting back a groan as he lifted his head up and turned over onto his back, he finally felt the signature cold of a ghost pass over him and he saw his breaths come out as wisps of white.
Dean looked up into the accusing eyes of the fifteen year old mugging victim, Benjamin Potts. The ghost child's black hair hung limply around his gaunt face, his icy eyes glaring down at him. Now fully alert, Dean saw the ghost kid's pale and steady hand rise up with confidence and shaped as if he had his hand wrapped around a gun, his finger placed obviously over the trigger.
Thinking quickly, Dean rolled to the side just as an invisible shot from the unseen weapon went off right where he had been lay barely a second before. Dean scrambled to his feet and turned to face the very pissed off ghost.
"You can't run. Not from me." Benjamin's voice rasped out. "I know what you've done."
"Oh yeah? And what would that be oh wise dead guy?" Dean said, clutching at straws trying to distract the ghost for just a minute. Long enough so that he could reach the grave side.
"You've not been there for your younger brother." He rattled out, black blood from his shot lungs dribbling out of his mouth and past his blue lips.
"Not been there for him?" Dean replied, just a little more than irked by that. "I've been there for Sam his whole life! When our mom died, when our dad was dragging us around to every hunt he could find and when we started hunting ourselves, it was me who protected Sam! Me! I've always protected him! Always been there for him!" Dean ended up shouting at the ghost, his rage at his brother and this damned ghost coming to the fore of his mind and his mouth.
How dare this ghost accuse him of not being there for Sammy? After everything that they went through as brothers growing up on the road. Dean's was the shoulder Sammy had cried on after a nightmare. It was Dean who had always patched him up after a hunt. Dean who Sam had come to when he had wanted advice on things. Yet this ghost had the nerve to tell him that he hadn't been there for his brother?!
Sure maybe not when Sam had gone off to college, but that had been Sam's choice to cut off all contact, not his! Sam was the one who had left, who had deserted his family. If it had been up to Dean, then Sam would have stayed with them. So this ghost could get up off his high horse telling Dean that he was an unfit big brother!
"And where is he now!" Benjamin wailed at him "If he is not here then you are not protecting him!"
As the ghost screamed those last words, he came sailing towards Dean in a fit of rage, his hands splayed out before him.
