Have you run your fingers down the wall
And have you felt your neck skin crawl
When you're searching for the light ?
Sometimes when you're scared to take a look
At the corner of the room
You've sensed that something's watching you.

-Iron Maiden, "Fear of the Dark" (1992)

Dean raced out into the main room to find the man with the axe, William, steadily approaching Bethany's cowering form. "God, please," she whimpered, already pressed against the floor. "Don't...don't kill me, please no, I just want to go home, and I-I want my brother's watch, I don't want-"

"Hey!" Sam bellowed, neatly catching everyone's attention. "William!"

Sightless, empty eye sockets turned to regard them both, and Dean had to fight off a shiver. He was looking into an empty skull, an empty soul, and it left him feeling sick.

Then Sam spread his arms out, and his next words brought Dean's heart to a stop. "Come get me," he taunted, though his voice wasn't as strong as before. He moved quickly to a corner of the room, away from Dean and Bethany.

Dean started forward, diary dropped in deference to his gun. "Sammy, no-!"

"Get Bethany out of here, and do not leave that diary!" Sam shouted. "Dean, go!"

Like hell. Like fucking hell. "Bethany, head for the stairs, now!" Dean yelled, and Bethany was off like a shot. The shadow of William was already stalking towards Sam, hands gripping the axe even tighter. Sam wasn't even reaching for his gun, instead busy shoving the roll of newspaper into his jacket, and Dean pulled his gun and fired straight into William's shadow.

William shuddered and winked out of existence for all of three seconds. Then he slowly melted back into the room, empty eyes gazing straight at Dean.

Dean's jaw dropped. Sam pulled his gun out and fired twice into William, and William disappeared. As soon as Dean began to see a shadow of the axe forming on the floor, he knew they were fucked. "Sam, c'mon!" he yelled, bending for the diary. "Sammy!"

Sam bit his lip but took off for the door as fast as he could, racing through. Dean hurried out right behind him, grabbing the door and slamming it shut. Even before it closed, he could make out the dark figure of William's ghost, still forming but slowly turning towards the door.

Shit.

Bethany was already in the stairwell, waiting where she'd paused before. "Move!" Dean shouted at her, slamming the door to the fifth floor shut. It wouldn't hold him off for long. If the iron rounds weren't even keeping him out, then shit, they were so fucked-

"Where?" Bethany shouted back, startling the brothers. "Where, exactly, are we supposed to go? You said we were after the wrong guy! They found Will upstairs in the bedroom, which means that the fourth guy, the missing guy, isn't our murderer!"

"We know!" Sam yelled, his free hand sliding through his hair in a typical Sam-Winchester-is-freaked-the-fuck-out manner. "I don't...I don't know, Bethany, I'm..."

This wasn't Sam. Sam didn't get flustered, Sam didn't second guess himself, Sam was his dependable in a crisis. But Ruby and Lilith and the angels had battered him, and Dean hadn't realized how much he'd relied on his brother's solid standing until just now, when Sam began to break.

The diary had to have a clue. "Look, the diary means something to him, and not in a good way," Dean tried to rationalize out loud. He forced himself to ignore Sam and Bethany, both of whom were looking at him for an answer. No pressure, right? "There's something in here that terrifies him, makes him back off." He had a pretty good idea why, and it had to do with the woman who'd written it, the woman he'd married and been happy with and yet had still managed to tear apart, literally. The hell had happened?

Maybe the answer was in the pages, but it wasn't Reading Rainbow hour, and they had a frickin' poltergeist to outrun.

Annie and Tony were the unaccounted bodies, the ones they'd vacationed with. Dean shut his eyes and exhaled through his nose, trying to get a grip. If he could get a timeline of what had happened-

The thoughts began to hit him, and they came one right after the other, things they'd read, things they'd learned. His voice, Sam's voice, Bethany's voice. Rita's.

"Two bodies, those of Mr. William Deventon and his wife, were found in the bedroom of the Executive Suite of the hotel, while another woman was found in the basement."

Will left to do laundry with...

"The cops said that the four nice people in the fifth floor had left three bloody corpses and one had vanished."

and I stayed upstairs to let them figure it out on their own, settle it like men, but they were gone so long so I sent Annie down to

"Mr. Deventon's body was discovered in the main room of the suite, just near the door. The axe in his hands was soaked with blood...Dean, we've been after the wrong guy."

don't know what's taking them so long, it doesn't take that long to get to the laundry

"The basement," he murmured. When he opened his eyes, Sam was frowning, and Bethany was tugging anxiously at the sleeve of her sweater.

"What?"

"The basement," Dean said, more firmly. "They found the other body in the basement. Rita, the wife, she wrote in her diary that she sent the other woman downstairs to find the two guys, who'd gone to do laundry."

"We didn't find a laundry room," Sam said.

"We didn't look down all the halls," Dean countered. "There were two hallways left, remember? And then William popped up and we had to get the hell out of dodge."

"Oh god no," Bethany whispered, horrified. "We're going back down there? To the basement?"

Not like it was Dean's first choice, either.

Suddenly the door splintered behind them, and the tip of the blade from the axe shone through. The three of them raced down the stairs as fast as they could, using the flashlights to make sure they didn't trip. As soon as they hit the ground floor they flew out into the hallway, pushing into the kitchen.

Eerie, empty sockets met them in front of the hacked down door to the basement. Dean didn't even waste breath telling them to go back, simply ran out the door and into the lobby. "Where do we go?" Bethany cried, racing for the front doors. She grabbed the handles for the front doors and pulled, desperately trying to get them to open. "Oh god, let us out!"

Dean really didn't want to wait around for the tapping to start. "The other stairwell," he told Bethany, and she detoured away from the front door to the other door, where Sam already was. Except Sam was pushing himself into the door, hands sliding on the handle.

"Sammy?"

"It won't open," Sam grunted, eyes turning back to Dean, wide with fear. "Dean, I can't-"

Tap.

"Oh god," Sam breathed, eyes searching the lobby desperately. No shadow was visible, even with the flashlight.

Tap.

Heading away from the stairs, towards them. Dean scanned the lobby, but this time for a place to hold their ground. If they could hold him off, maybe they could get to the basement stairs from the kitchen. Except they were down to only a few rounds in their guns, and digging in the bag for more was going to take time. Way too much time.

Tap.

The loud ding in the lobby made them all jump, right before the doors slowly began to open. Go, the woman's voice, Rita's, whispered in their ear. Go!

"Everyone inside, now!" Dean shouted, and all three raced across the back of the lobby for the elevator. The tap, tap, tap, became quicker, closer as they scrambled inside. Bethany had barely begun to reach for the button to the basement before the doors began to shut. Just not fast enough. The shadow of William appeared, right in front of the doors, startling them all and sending them slamming back into the wall. His lips curled into a snarl, but he made no move to enter. Dean froze against the wall, watching as the doors began to shut on his terrible face.

Slowly the car began to descend. All Dean could hear was the pounding of his heart in his chest and the panting breaths from everyone in the elevator. All too soon the car shuddered to a stop, and whatever breaths Dean had managed to take were swiftly brought to a halt as he watched and waited. Waited as the doors began to open, watched as Sam's gun rose to match his.

The basement was dark and empty. No William to be seen. No Rita, either, but Dean had heard her.

"Did you hear that?" Sam asked. "From before?"

"Rita," Bethany said, nodding. "It was her. But she tried to grab Sam, didn't she?"

Dean shut his eyes tight. Maybe she'd been trying to lead him. Maybe she hadn't meant to scare Sam. Or maybe she'd been trying to kill him swiftly before William could get a hold of him, to spare Sam a gory death. Ghosts didn't make a whole lot of sense when they got trapped in places for years. Especially when they had to contend with a psychotic freak in the afterlife.

Laundry. They had to find the laundry. Dean cautiously began to move out, stepping over the banged up bottom of the elevator. Sam was right: it looked like it'd been dented sometime in its lifetime. Just like the rest of the hotel should've been.

The basement was as silent as a tomb, a thought Dean really wished he hadn't had. "Anything?" Sam asked, voice quiet.

Dean scanned the place with the flashlight, half afraid that it would land on a bloody axe. When it didn't, he let himself breathe a little easier. "Not yet," he said, equally as soft. William would be back. There was no doubt about that. It was just a matter of finding the laundry before he did.

As resolutely as he could Dean made his way through the wreckage that was the basement towards one of the hallways, hearing the steps of Sam behind him. When he glanced back, he found Bethany tip-toeing as softly as she could, barely making a sound compared to Sam's sure but quiet steps. Dean found himself almost grinning at the picture she made, then turned his focus back to his search. The hall lay straight ahead, empty and dark.

Broken glass from the emergency lights crunched under his boots as Dean made his way down the hall. Thankful that Sam had a flashlight on him as well, Dean let him light up the handle as he quickly pushed the door open. He aimed his gun around the empty room, finding more supplies, but nothing worthwhile. No laundry.

That left the other hallway, the one between the two staircases. The only door left.

Dean moved slower and even quieter across the basement to the other hallway, uneasiness making his gut spin and twist. "What's the matter?" Sam asked softly, catching onto his hesitation.

"I don't know," Dean admitted, but he still felt apprehensive as he approached. "Maybe because we've only seen two ghosts out of four. Maybe because William with the axe is probably still hot on our ass, and about that: why the hell didn't he get into the elevator with us? God knew he had the time and the chance."

"I'd wondered about that as well," Sam said. "Maybe there's iron in the elevator?"

Not like that had kept William down for very long before. He was adapting, learning. The iron would still do its job, but not for very long. If they had an unlimited supply of iron, sure. They'd be fine. But Dean was down to a few rounds, and god knew how many Sam had left.

They paused at the mouth of the hallway, staring down at it. One lone door on the right had a small window near the top with something dark across it. When Dean cast the flashlight's beam at it, painted letters became visible. LAU DR was all that was left. That was it.

"Ten bucks it's locked," Sam muttered, rubbing absently at his shoulder, the one he'd been throwing into all the locked doors above.

Dean quirked a tight grin. "No bet. I wanna reload before we do anything."

"He's going to come back," Bethany whispered from behind them. When Dean turned, her eyes were locked on the laundry room door. "This...he killed down here, too."

"Yeah, he did," Dean said. Sam was already digging through the bag on the floor, searching for the iron rounds. "But if we can find the other missing body, we'll be a step higher. Hell, if we torch the body, we might even be able to get out of here."

"Dean's right, Bethany," Sam said softly, rising. He handed the case with the iron rounds to Dean, who quickly started popping them into his gun. A handful of the bullets were put into his pocket as extras. "I think there's a reason we haven't been able to find the body."

"And you think it might be in the laundry room," Bethany said. "The body."

"We know he killed one person in there," Dean said. Sam had already finished reloading his gun, a few extra bullets tucked away on his person as well. "The other woman."

"Did you get a name from the diary?" Sam asked.

Dean handed the bag over to Sam, then pulled the diary from his jacket. None of the torn pages yielded anything. "No last name, just Annie," Dean said, replacing the book. "The other guy doesn't get a last name, either. Not that I can see so far: the diary's pretty damn thick, and we don't really have the time to go through it-"

Something clattered in the basement, and all three spun around, frozen and silent. Dean's flashlight moved quickly through the darkness, but his own beam of light found nothing. "Sam?" he asked.

"Nothing," Sam replied after a moment, reluctantly turning his own beam back down the hall. "We walkin' or talkin'?"

Possibly one of their dad's favorite sayings from when they were kids. "We're walking," Dean said, giving the standard response. The chill of the basement ruined the moment, and Dean shivered slightly. Cold was bad. Cold was very bad. "Laundry room."

Together the three made their way down the hall. Once they got there, Dean carefully shone his light through the window, but found nothing. Or really, no one: there were quite a few shapes in the room, but they looked like typical washing machines from the 60's. Dean grasped the knob – cool, but not frozen – and twisted fast, sliding into the room with the gun and flashlight both raised. Empty room.

"Guess it wasn't locked, after all."

"Good thing for your shoulder," Dean tossed back, scanning the room. Five large washing machines filled the left wall, while the dryers were on the right. Abandoned laundry carts were lined up on the back wall, a few haphazardly pushed into place. Through the windows of the dryers, there was nothing but darkness. The washers had their doors shut, no windows to peer inside.

Oh Dean so did not want to open them and peer inside. Especially not when the very obvious blood stain on the floor had caught all his attention.

"No walls broken," Sam said. His eyes, too, kept moving warily back to the large blood stain on the floor. "Nobody could've been shoved inside." He made his way across the room, carefully peering inside the baskets. "Nothing," he said, sounding relieved.

Dean turned around in the room, flashlight shining. When he reached the doorway, he found Bethany standing outside, not even close to stepping inside the room. "Remember that whole 'we need to stay together' speech?" Dean told her. "Get in here."

Bethany began rapidly shaking her head. "I'm fine out here," she insisted.

"Bethany-"

"I...I can't," she said, voice shaking now. "I can't go in there, I can't-"

"It's okay," Sam spoke up, soothing her frazzled nerves. "Just stay close then, okay? Don't wander away. Just stay here."

Bethany nodded, but didn't look relieved. If anything, she seemed even more nervous.

When Dean turned to his brother, Sam gave a small shrug. "She's done pretty good so far," Sam said, and Dean heard a tone of defensiveness in his voice. "I'll keep an eye on her-"

"Hey, it's fine," Dean said, his voice doing the soothing now. "You did the right thing. It's good. We'll just...keep an eye on her."

Sam nodded, his shoulders dropping slightly. God but Dean had forgotten how many bridges they'd needed to mend between them both. Since when did Sam's helping lead him to defending himself against Dean? At least he wasn't looking as tense now, so Dean must've said the right thing for once.

"On the wall," Bethany said softly, catching Dean's attention.

"What?"

Bethany pointed beyond Dean's shoulder. "The wall," she explained, and as one the two brothers turned to the back wall.

Sure enough, there was a small red door in the wall, glass wall still intact. The door was ajar, and the dust and grime didn't completely cover all the words. Emergency Fire Axe, it read.

"Okay, so the killing frenzy did start down here," Dean said. He dug in his pocket for the diary again. There had to be something in there, something to give them a clue. "It doesn't make any sense. They were a happy couple, things were fine, and then wham, he starts smacking them all like Lizzie Borden? There had to be a reason."

"Maybe there's something in the newspaper," Sam said, reaching inside his coat. "Bethany, do you see anything out there?"

Bethany shook her head. "You think if you solve the mystery, you can get us out of here?" she asked. "I mean, we'd need a...a time line first, right? That's what they always need in the mystery novels I read at school."

Time line. Dean could do a time line. "Okay, time line. The diary says that the two guys went down first, on their own, so William must've killed the other guy, Tony, first. Then Annie, whoever she really was, died next when she'd come down to find them. Then Rita, before William bit the dust, however the hell that happened." Maybe he'd had a heart attack: that much anger wasn't good for a body.

As he began flipping through, one of the words caught his eye, and he paused, staring at the entry.

April 11th, 1963

I'd really hoped that the vacation would stop this fighting between the two of them. But now, now I know why they're fighting, and it's stupid. Doesn't William understand that I love him? How can he possibly think I'd sleep with Tony? If I'd loved his brother, I would've married him, but it's William I wanted, William I lov

"Oh god," Dean murmured, shutting his eyes. The 'brother' had drawn him in, and now he wished it hadn't. Why did it always come back to this?

"Jesus."

Seemed like they were all turning religious. He opened his eyes and found Sam looking over the newspaper, eyes wide. "What?" Dean asked, refusing to look at the diary.

Sam slowly raised his eyes from the paper. "They found the other girl in the basement and the laundry room. Her head was in one of the washers, and they found a piece of her skirt hanging out from the furnace, where he'd tossed her in."

Something made a sound out in the basement, pulling Dean's horrified gaze from the dryers to the doorway. Where Bethany no longer was.