Trapped in a basement, and there's no way out
I'm my papa's favorite, without a doubt
I haven't seen the sun, for 24 years
But now, my time is here
-Black Lips, "Trapped In A Basement" (2009)
"Shit," Dean cursed, pushing himself out of the room. "Bethany!"
"Here," a small voice said to the right. She was bundled up at the end of the hall in one of the corners, as far from the main basement and the laundry door as possible. "I just...I couldn't stay, not when..." Her hand rose to her own throat, and her eyes pleaded with Dean to understand.
He did, he completely did. "Don't take off," he told her anyways. "You hear me? He's gonna kill you the same way he killed her if you don't stay close."
Fuck. It wasn't as bloody as what he'd done to Rita, but the escalation of violence was still easy to follow. God knew how Tony had died.
Tony, his brother. Dean's gut clenched, and his grip tightened around the damn diary. God he wanted out of here.
"What did you find?"
Dean raised his eyes to meet Sam's gaze and immediately wished he hadn't. Sam's look was solemn and knowing. Shit. "Stuff," Dean said, delaying the inevitable.
Sam pursed his lips. "You didn't like it when I lied to you," Sam said, voice low. "Don't lie to me now. You found something."
Dean didn't want to have this conversation, not now with a psychotic poltergeist on his ass, not ever. There'd been enough things said between them, things that wormed their way deep inside and cut where it would hurt the most.
"Dean-"
"Rita said William thought she was having an affair," Dean said. He took a deep breath before he added, "With the other guy that was there with them. With William's brother."
Sam's eyes widened, and even in the dim light of the flashlights Dean watched the color disappear from his face. "His brother," Sam said, his voice steady but so soft Dean wouldn't have heard it if he hadn't been waiting for it. He had to give Sam credit for keeping it together so well.
Dean nodded, barely. And he'd been the one to lay out the time line, too. The brother had died first.
Jesus, William had killed his brother first. That had been the catalyst to all the other deaths. Even now, William couldn't let go, angry at his brother for the supposed adultery. God knew if it was even true.
Bethany had risen and taken a few steps forward, though she still kept as far from the laundry door as possible. "So...what, this is all about betrayal?" She didn't seem to notice the way Sam and Dean winced at the word. "William thought his brother and wife had betrayed him, and decided to kill him for it?"
Sam's eyes had shut, his face completely devoid of any color now. "Pretty extreme," Dean tried to throw out there, but Bethany had found her voice.
"You said they were so happy, him and Rita. The cops said they were four happy people. To think that they were sleeping around behind his back...he could be angry enough to kill." Bethany paused, looking at the both of them earnestly. "I mean, if one of you was betrayed by your brother, wouldn't you be angry enough to kill him?"
The words hit like a punch, effectively stealing the breath from Dean's body. Sam jerked like he'd been physically hit, and had to take a step back into the laundry room to catch himself. His eyes were open now, but they were cast to the floor, not looking anywhere near Dean.
And god, were they ever going to be able to leave this behind? Two steps forward, three backwards, always taking them right back to square one. They'd started getting back together, goddammit, and yet here they were again, two brothers separated by distance, by betrayal, by the memories of blood and demons and angels. It was never going to leave them. Ever.
Not unless one of them managed to break the hold of the past, and since when were the Winchesters any good at that?
But the look on Sam's face was damn near crippling. It physically hurt to see the fear, the guilt, the pain on Sam's face, and suddenly Dean was so done with it. Fuck the demons, fuck the angels, fuck all of them. Everything that had happened...it wasn't worth losing Sam over. Not when he'd fought so goddamn hard to keep his little brother.
He cleared his throat, watched Sam flinch slightly at the sound. "No," Dean said, quietly but firmly. "I wouldn't. I wouldn't have cared what my brother had done: I'd never be angry enough to kill him. Ever." And prayed that it was enough. Sammy, please.
Slowly Sam's eyes rose from the floor to meet his, surprise and still a little fear but god, a touch of hope too. "What if he almost ended the world?" Sam asked, like a whimsical joke for Bethany's sake.
Dean grinned. "No way," he said. "Still take a hell of a lot more for me. Guess I'm strange like that."
Sam huffed a shaky laugh, and just like that, Dean knew they were taking two steps forward. If they took any steps back now, it'd only be one. They'd keep moving forward a step at a time from here on out.
His sigh of relief came out misty, and the temperature drop was unmistakable. The flashlights flickered briefly, then began to fade. "Shit," Sam muttered. "Dean, we've gotta-"
"Find the brother, I know," he said. "He's here in the basement, somewhere. William couldn't have gotten very far with the body." If the body wasn't in one of the other rooms, if the body wasn't in the laundry room, then where? That only left the floor, walls, ceiling, or the main basement.
The floors were a no go: cement. The walls and ceiling were cement as well, all the better to make a solid foundation with. That left the main room of the basement.
"Mention finding more than one body in the furnace?" Dean asked. Sam quickly began flipping through the newspaper article, before shaking his head.
"Just her: there was still a lot of her left, I guess." He grimaced even as he spoke. Still, Sam was right: it took awhile for bodies to burn, so if William had shoved Tony in there, then the cops would've found him when they found Annie.
"Main area," Dean said at the same time as Sam.
Bethany shook her head. "Wait, what? No, what are...oh god, what are you doing?"
"We've got a spirit somewhere around, if the temperature drop's any indication, and the only place that William could've stashed his brother was in the main area of the basement," Sam explained. "I'm betting if we find him, if we torch him, we'll probably get rid of William."
And that would make Dean's night a hell of a lot brighter. Personally, Dean wouldn't have minded putting this particular sonuvabitch on the rack and giving him a full Alastair treatment.
Since he couldn't, though, he'd settle for torching him. It'd work.
They moved out, cautiously but with determination. The cold was starting to become biting, and Dean's eyes couldn't help but scan every corner of the room, watching for Rita or William. Or, god, Annie or Tony. Though Dean had a suspicion that if Tony's spirit were around, William would've suppressed it. Controlled it. Destroyed it.
"What if he...what if he cut the brother up into pieces?"
Bethany's voice made Dean pause, but Sam shook his head. "I don't think so. I think this was more a crime of passion, of convenience. He didn't really plan this out."
Dean raised his eyebrow. Sam flushed, the first real color in his cheeks since the whole brother revelation. "I took a psychology class," he said, voice defensive again. "I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong-"
"How'd it go?" Dean asked simply. No anger, no suspicion, nothing but honesty. If anyone could piece it together, if anyone could think outside the box and see the people instead of the murderous spirits, it'd be Sam.
Sam only hesitated for a second before coming back with his reply. "The axe in the laundry room. They went down to do the laundry, right?" He scanned a small cluster of objects, then headed down a path towards the center of the room. "Imagine that they talk. The brother says...says something stupid about Rita," he added softly, but continued to search.
"I can relate to that: I say a lot of stupid shit," Dean said, and the hint of a smile on Sam's face was all he'd wanted.
"He says, I don't know, Rita's ass is nice or something. William's overcome with rage, finds the axe on the wall, grabs it, wham, takes his brother out."
Dean, still searching, picked up right where Sam left off. "Annie comes in, finds William standing over his brother's body, starts screaming."
"William...he didn't mean to kill her?" Bethany asked, following behind Dean. Her eyes peered through the darkness, searching as best she could.
"I don't think so, no," Sam answered. His flashlight's beam, though flickering, still scanned the room, and Dean's eyes followed it, using it to mark his brother's progress through the basement. "She was a murder of convenience. He was angry at his brother, probably gave him a few hits after he died even, and then she showed up and found him with the body and the axe. He saw her as a target and a witness and killed her."
No one had to say anything about Rita. It was pretty obvious that after killing the first two people, William had gone off the deep end. Rita had been the next available, and possibly only option left to William.
Sam's flashlight went out completely. "Sam?" Dean called out immediately, and when he didn't get an answer, felt panic fly through his body. "Sammy?" he called again, louder this time, already moving towards where he'd seen Sam.
Just as he cleared the row and headed along the back wall, he heard a gasp for air, and watched as Sam flew across the room towards the elevator. "Sammy!" he yelled, turning his fast walk into a straight out run. Sam was pushing himself to his feet, but he was wincing as he did so, and it was taking too damn long to get up. "Sam-!"
Then Sam was flying again, this time hitting the closed doors of the elevator before slumping to the floor. "No!" Bethany yelled from behind Dean, but Dean was already sliding to his knees to get to his brother. Sam, who wasn't getting up.
"Sammy, c'mon," Dean murmured, dropping the flashlight and tugging Sam until his brother was face up. There was blood streaming from his forehead, and he'd have a killer bruise come the morning. If they got to see the morning. Dean glanced back briefly where Sam had flown from, but saw nothing. For the moment.
That let him take care of Sam. What was most concerning at that point was the fact that Sam's eyes wouldn't open. "Sam, wake up," Dean said, tapping Sam's face. Nothing.
The fear in Dean's chest was rising straight up towards panic again, but he resolutely pushed it down and tried to wake his brother up the hard way. "Sam, wake the fuck up, right now," Dean said, pushing his knuckles down on his brother's sternum. Sam whimpered under the painful assault, but Dean forced himself to not care, so long as Sam woke up. "Sammy!"
Slowly Sam's eyes began to flutter open. "That's it, keep going," Dean praised, putting his arm beneath Sam to prop him up. "You stay awake for me, all right?"
Sam blinked a few times, trying to reorient himself. "Wha-..."
The next time he blinked, his eyes widened and stared beyond Dean's shoulder. Whatever it was had obviously come back. Dean whipped around, hand on his gun. Six rounds, all he had left. But if he was going to use them, then he'd definitely use them to keep Sam and Bethany safe.
Rita stood before him in all of her gory glory. Blood cascaded down every part of her, and Dean grimaced as he watched her lungs beneath her ribs try to move. She wasn't moving towards them, though, only gazing sadly at them all.
"She throw you?" Dean asked, never taking his eyes off the ghost.
"Yeah," Sam said weakly, before coughing. "Twice."
Yeah, Dean remembered that part just fine. "She do anything else?" he asked, thinking back to the silence before Sam had been thrown.
"She...she touched me."
Dean whipped around to his brother at that. Sam looked exhausted and just as bloodless as Rita did. "She touched you?" Dean asked, stunned. "She actually managed to-"
"I don't know how," Sam said. He was still gazing at Rita, though not as apprehensively as before. "It felt...wrong. Cold." He shivered. "She was trying to tell me something, but all I got were garbled, mixed images. In my head. She touched my head."
That's what she'd been trying to do upstairs, on the fifth floor. "Why you?" Dean asked, then immediately regretted it. Sam just gave him a look, one that was one-fifth annoyance, one-fifth resignation, and the rest all fear. Why not Sam, was the real question these days.
"What did she show you?" Bethany asked softly. Her eyes were locked on Rita, staring at her and almost through her at the same time. Dean knew that feeling.
"I couldn't really make sense of it all, it...it went so fast," Sam admitted, his hand absently rubbing where Dean had knuckled him.
Dean turned back to Rita, all but feeling the lightbulb going off in his head. "You know where Tony is," he said, and wasn't even surprised when Rita nodded. "Where?"
The flashlights went out all together. Dean reached to where he'd set the flashlight down and switched it off, then on, hoping it'd come back. After a minute, it flickered, then came back on, and he turned it towards Rita.
And couldn't help the gasp of terror that left him. William was standing over Rita, axe already descending. "No!" Dean yelled, unable to help himself, because he knew she was dead, dammit, but-
Rita screamed as the axe cut through her. Blood spilled and spattered, and the crunch of bones was audible. Bethany cowered against the wall, hands over her ears, but eyes locked on the gruesome death. Rita was shaking, flickering in and out so fast as William hit her again and again and again-
With one last terrified, awful scream, Rita seemed to melt into a bloody puddle and into the concrete floor itself. William's form shivered and shook, and then he was straightening and turning towards them, sightless sockets empty and haunting.
"Oh god," Sam whispered, fear in his voice. "Oh god."
Dean slowly raised his gun, his hand trembling. "Eat this, you sonuvabitch," he bit out. One bullet slammed through William's form as he moved forward, then another, and another. The third bullet pulled a scream of rage from the poltergeist, and he faded away. Dean swallowed hard, his eyes burning. Jesus. Fuck.
"He really killed her."
Dean turned to Bethany, who was still leaning against the wall, tears streaming down her face. "He did that to her," she whispered, biting her trembling lip hard. "He's still doing that to her."
He had nothing for her, nothing to say that would make it better, that would get them any closer to getting out. He slid his gaze over to his brother, who looked just as scared and shattered as Bethany did. "Sam?" he said softly.
Sam looked at him, eyes haunted. Then he shut them, took two deep breaths, and when he opened his eyes again, his brother was determined and unwavering. "I think I know where the brother is," he said.