Chapter 8

Dean groaned slightly, knowing that he was undoubtedly somewhere that he probably shouldn't be. Urrrgh. He felt the familiar throb of a knot at the back of his head, accompanied with the usual sick spinning feeling.

He'd done more than his fair share of waking up in odd situations, tied up and feeling like crap. Then instantly having to be on his game, think of a smart comment and get straight back to work when all he really wanted to do was to whimper, hold his throbbing head and miserably throw up his guts in a feeble attempt to make himself feel better.

This time was gonna be no different. Breathing in slowly, he prepared himself. Dean slowly opened one eye, the details of the hunt for Jimmy Nixon's spirit coming back to him slowly, and expecting to be faced with him. He knew he hadn't finished the burn. It was pitch black. And it smelled bad. Not too strong, but the years-old damp smell of stale death hit Dean's nostrils, adding to his panic. He breathed in deeper, trying to stop the spinning and the nausea, but as he breathed it just seemed to get blacker, darker, and oh my freaking God where the hell am I…

He retched, probably partly through his panic but mostly due to the huge bump on the head, shamefully puking onto himself and God knows whatever it was that was next to him. He wasn't sure whether he should call out; he was miserably aware that the disgusting choking noises he'd just been making had pissed any chance of him remaining hidden up the wall. He raised a shaky hand to the back of his head, surprised to find that this time, he wasn't tied up. Wiping a string of puke from his lips with the cuff of his jacket, he winced. The smell was familiar. Gross smells were something of an occupational hazard in his line of work. It was a dead smell. The remnants of stale decomposition; years after the initial stomach churning stench, this was what it died down to. Stale. Sometimes, morbidly, he was glad to know that if he died, he knew that Sam would only ever burn his body.

Spitting and gasping slightly, Dean's overactive mind suddenly realised what was going on. He was in a coffin. He knew it. Where else would it be pitch black, and the only other thing that he knew was in there, well, apart from a disgusting pool of his own vomit, was a years old corpse. Shit. He's buried me. I don't know how, but the bastard's buried me. I'm in here with him. He's buried me just to stop me burning his bones. Dean breathed faster, harder, knowing logically that it wouldn't help, wanting to believe that Sam would come and get him, wanting to stop breathing like he was about to give birth but he couldn't, he just couldn't, he was trapped… a scream escaped from his lungs, how, he didn't know, not having inhaled enough oxygen for the last two and a half minutes to produce such a substantial yell, but nonetheless, he heard his voice echo around him as he prepared to try and punch to the casket lid – what?

He kicked upwards, simultaneously punching and hit nothing. He wasn't tied up. He wasn't even confined. So where the hell was he? He did the only thing he could do and screamed his brother's name. He heard the echo again, his own panicked, wobbly voice, calling his brother over and over again. His breathing slowing slightly, he noticed a slight glow at the edge of his vision, and he rolled over onto his side slightly. What was that? A dancing orb in his peripheral vision. Something dug into his hip – the flashlight!

Digging frantically into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the small torch and cast it's beam of light, his heart sinking as he realised where he was. Feeling somewhat sheepish for having convinced himself he'd been buried, his flashlight hit red, corrugated metal. The inside of a container.

But not just any container. His fading beam of orange light fell on an old radio, an assortment of cassette tapes stacked beside it. He sat up carefully. A stack of magazines was next to that, a flat security-style cap laying on top of them. He flicked the flashlight slightly, this time illuminating what looked like old fast-food wrappers and a crushed Pepsi can sporting the logo that Dean remembered from being a kid. He gingerly got to his feet, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as his stomach threatened to flip out again. Someone had been living here. A long time ago. He knew who. There was a large door at the end of the container. All I've gotta do is open it and get the hell outta here. It'll all be over when I burn Nixon. He pulled at the bar on the back of the door. It hadn't been moved in years. Bastard thing's just rusted. He tugged harder. Come on… he started to kick the door, kicking until his feet hurt, punching until he felt like he was ready to cry and his knuckles were bleeding. Let me out you bastard…. I just wanna get out… His shouting was interrupted by a gentle voice behind him.

"You're not going anywhere, Dean."

He spun around. Not the gruff tones of a security guard that he'd imagined he would hear when the spirit inevitably showed up. A pretty blonde girl sat behind him where the orb had been a few moments earlier, her oversized knitted sweater secured with a wide belt around her slim waist, leaning back in a relaxed manner. She was visible through the darkness, a somewhat silvery glow surrounding her. She smiled at him. He gasped as he swung the weakened flashlight in the direction of the apparition, recoiling slightly as his light seemed to travel through her, falling instead on a decomposed, skeletal form, the remnants of her blonde hair still evident, her leather ankle boots still weirdly preserved.

"Emma Carragher?" His head was spinning as he pressed his back to the door, still kicking backwards with his workboots. Thank God. "It's okay, Emma, I'm going to sort this out. I promise. It'll all be fine and then you can….well, go wherever it is that you need to go."

"I'd save your energy. That door won't open. Not for you anyway." Dean looked at her grey eyes, sure that he saw a gleam of enjoyment, a flash of arrogance. She stood up, moving away from her body as Dean sank down the door to a kneeling position.

"What?" Dean's green eyes widened in confusion, and before he knew it Emma was standing over him, gripping him by the chin. An ice-cold shiver ran through his body as he realised what was going on. Just freakin' fantastic. Got it wrong. Again. The bitch isn't on my side.


"We're waiting for someone." Emma roughly dropped his chin.

"Well, I think they're late." He snarked. About twenty years freakin' late….

"No, a new someone." Emma flashed Dean a smile. An ice-cold smile. He shuddered. "I gave up waiting for Jimmy a long time ago."

"Waiting for Jimmy?" Why would she be waiting for Jimmy? "He stand you up, Emma?"

"Don't be cute. You know he let me down. Jimmy Nixon's an idiot." She prowled around the container, casting a silvery light as she moved. "You know, he's not even actually my uncle. Just a friend of my Dad's who was always around."

"Emma?" Dean rubbed the back of his head. What the hell had she done to him – surely a ghost wouldn't (couldn't?) have whacked him on the head? "What happened between you and Jimmy?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." She wandered around him, seductively fingering her blonde curls. Shit. This was a girl who knew how to play a guy. How did a quiet choirgirl learn that? He suddenly realised, she looked different. Not the grey-skinned, stony-eyed spook he'd seen when he first woke up. She was… brighter. Her skin was clear, smooth and radiant, her eyes a deep, electric blue.

"Maybe I would." He did his best to flash her a patented Dean Winchester grin but feeling his hands shaking far more than he'd like. Flirts like to be flirted with. Hell, he knew that better than anyone. Takes one to know one. Emma reached out and touched Dean on the cheek, the cold of her touch cutting through him like a knife. He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, the pain taking him by surprise. "Jesus, sweetheart, you touch all the boys like that?"

She laughed, a cold, humourless laugh. "You really want to know about me and Jimmy? He was an asshole. Took it all too serious and left me here."

"All what?"

"Come on, Dean, you're a worldly guy. Why would a girl like me ever go for a guy like him? It was just a bit of fun. He adored me. I knew he did. I could make him do anything I wanted him to. He had no wife, no kids, no-one to spend his cash on. He was so much fun to play with… then he got mad when I said I was going to New York. And even madder when I started seeing Troy at school."

Ha, knew it! Okay, so maybe it wasn't quite right, but almost.

"Thought it'd be funny to teach me a lesson, you know the kind of thing, that if he couldn't have me, no-one could have me. Yadda yadda yadda. I never thought for a minute that the bastard was actually screwed up enough to actually do it."

"So… he left you here?"

"Damn right. Thought he was just playing a game to start with; he turned up with food and stuff for me... for us both. Then he obviously thought better of it. Just stopped turning up." Emma's apparition rushed towards Dean. "And I'm gonna make sure he pays for it too. Starting with his stupid friends."

Dean's head started to spin. Make sure he pays for it? She thinks she was left here to die. Holy crap. Nixon didn't mean it. The moron was probably killed in the forklift accident and nobody knew that Emma was there. So it was a kidnapping. But not a murder. Well, not murder one, anyway. I've gotta get out of here, gotta find Sam. He jumped up and kicked at the door again, shouting for anyone, knowing that there had to be a security guard on duty.

"No-one can hear you, Dean. You know that. Don't you think that if they could, maybe I wouldn't still be here?" She raised her eyebrows. "Relax. We're waiting. I've got a new toy to play with."

"What the hell are you talking about?" His chest hitched; the exertion and the panic quickening his breathing.

"Someone new to play with, who needs someone to love and hold on to. Lots of guys do, you know. It's like having a puppy." She ran her tongue over her teeth, bending down to whisper into Dean's ear, sending a shiver down his spine as she breathed her icy cold breath past his earlobe. As he shuddered, a soft, melodic voice echoed into his ears, cold and terrifying. "Say you'll love me every waking moment... Turn your head with talk of summertime... Say you need me with you now and always..."

Her voice was beautiful. There was no denying it. But the eerie echo of the lyrics was accompanied by a cold feeling of dread spreading through Dean's body as Emma's lips closed into a sinister smile. Dean shakily looked into the electric blue eyes.

"Okay sugar, I get it. I'm guessing that's another Phantom tune. You've gotta know though, Christine does nothing for me; I'm more of a classic rock guy."

Her voice became steely and aggressive once more, her smile fading. "You've got me all wrong, Dean. I'm not just Christine; I'm Raoul. I'm the Phantom. I know the whole score."

"That's admirable darling, that really is but I'm sure we ain't got time for this..." My God, she's a freak. Come on Sam. His teeth were gritted and he willed himself to stop shaking.


"We've got plenty of time. We're past the point of no return, Dean. You know we are."

Jeez, that probably means something and I haven't got a freaking clue what. This girl was cracked; what kind of girl spent all her time talking in quotes from some show? He turned back into the dark trailer, gasping a little and consciously facing away from Emma. So her thing was the quiet guys, the ones she could dominate. Hell, the girl was more than a control freak. She was a psycho. "You do you know Nixon's dead, don't you?"

"Oh yeah, I know. He couldn't bear to see me with someone else. He thought that by locking me away, he'd make sure that no-one could have me. Imagine him having to watch me with someone else. Forever."

"And the guards?"

"They're dicks. They'd have to be stupid to not know that he was up to something, that he had a secret. But I'm not interested in them."

"So you just killed them? The same way as you died?"

Emma raised her eyebrows. She didn't speak. She smiled. Dean continued, his nerves getting the better of him.

"So we're waiting for your date? Don't you think now you're dead you should stop trying to corrupt the poor class geek? Who's your next little lap dog gonna be then?" Dean's voice was a little shaky. She wasn't scared. She wasn't even close to being as scared as he was. She pressed herself back against him, the cold somehow not as painful as it had been, grinding her stupid, sexy, dead hips against him. He gulped. This wasn't a victim. She was a predator. She wasn't Christine. She was the Phantom.

"Your brother."