Author's note: I resisted releasing this chapter early for about twelve seconds, but I finally decided to go for it.

Chapter 10

The front door wasn't locked, though it was closed. John opened the door on hinges that moved more silently than he would have expected in an abandoned house. The door opened onto what real estate agents tended these days to call the 'great room,' basically an oversized living room. To his left there was a doorway leading into a dining room, he'd guess, and no doubt beyond that into the kitchen. To his right there was an inset doorway that appeared to lead into the private rooms of the house. He edged that way and eased the door open.

An appalling smell hit him full force then, and he knew they had the right place. Why the reek hadn't pervaded the whole house, he couldn't imagine, but he swallowed his gorge and continued further down the hall. The first door let into a bathroom where he saw bloody footprints but nothing more. Two more doors led into empty rooms, then the last opened on what had to be the master bedroom. The walls and windows were painted black, and glyphs had been painted on the walls in livid red paint, screaming down from all sides. The floor had not yet been carpeted, but so much blood had been shed in this room that the wooden subfloor had soaked it up. Four squares of pale wood formed the corners of a long rectangle, roughly six and a half feet by three.

The amount of blood horrified him. No way could Dean have lost that amount and survived the experience. Jars of a brownish substance sat in corners of the room, and he had to control his stomach so he didn't throw up. He backed out. Where was Sam? What else might be in this house? Was Dean dead in one of its rooms?

He turned and hurried towards the back of the house.

In stunned astonishment and growing nausea, Sam walked into the center of the room and stared around. Running footsteps alerted him to his father's approach. "Sam? Sam!"

Sam was entirely unable to respond. The red stamps on the sides of the pine beams shouted out to him. Melo's Lumber. Three with the tops of the letters towards the right, one with it towards the left, then two towards the right. There was even an outline in the sawdust on the cement floor to show where the black box had been . . . marks on the floor from where Dean had lain and blood had seeped through the mattress. A faint crosshatch pattern in the blood from the bars of the cage.

"Sam!" His father came in through the open door. "What are you doing in here?"

"Dean was here, Dad," Sam said. "I saw him here."

"What do you mean, you saw him?" John demanded, staring around blankly

"Dad, I know this sounds crazy, but it . . ." Sam realized he was shaking. "I saw this room in my nightmare. Every detail."

John stared at him. "Sam, what are you saying?"

"There was a cage, a metal cage right . . ." Sam realized he was standing where the edge of the cage had been and stumbled sideways into the wall. "Right there," he said. "Long enough for Dean to lie down and tall enough to sit up in, but no bigger than that. And . . . and the guy, the demon, I guess, he came in and . . ." Sam shook his head. "Dad, what's going on here? This is nuts, but it's all . . . see that outline in the dust?"

He pointed and his father looked down. "What outline?"

Sam could see it so clearly, but then he'd seen the box. "There was a box along here, about the size of a coffin –"

"Sam, your brother is not dead. We know that."

"I know!" Sam shook his head. "You don't get it, Dad. We're too late! In my dream, earlier, I saw the man – the demon – coax Dean into the box and shut it on him because they were moving. Ever since, I've been dreaming of blackness and movement and noise. Dad, what the hell is going on here? Am I dreaming what's happening to Dean? Because if I am, we have to find him. We have to find him now!"

His father grabbed him by the arms and stared at him intently. "Sam, calm down. We need to talk about this."

"Dad, if my dreams are real . . . you don't know . . . I didn't . . ." Sam stared off into the distance, seeing the image of a metal rod being tapped into Dean's body again. Seeing hands slicing into the skin of Dean's back. He brought his hands up to cover his eyes. It had been weeks. He'd started having these dreams in August.

"What, Sam? What don't I know?"

Sam gulped and clasped his hands in front of his face, looking at his father's chin because he couldn't meet his eyes. "I've been dreaming about something terrible happening to Dean for months. All those nightmares – the stress dreams I told you about, they were all about Dean! If I'd just realized – if I'd only known . . . we could have . . . we might have . . ."

"Sam!" His father gave him a shake. "People have dreams, and they can be startlingly vivid, but you're reaching. Your mind is playing tricks on you."

"Is it?" Sam demanded. "You found another room, didn't you? One with the windows blacked out. The walls have been painted black, and there are red symbols drawn on them." The poleaxed look on his father's face was answer enough. "I saw it, Dad. I saw Dean strapped down to a table in that room. I saw the . . . why would a demon look like Jeff Bridges?"

"You think a demon possessed Jeff Bridges?" John asked incredulously.

"No!" Sam exclaimed. "He looked like Jeff Bridges. Maybe a little shorter, with darker hair, but . . . Jeff Bridges."

"That's good to know," John said. He squeezed Sam's arms. "Sam, you're hysterical, you need to calm down."

"Calm down?" Sam broke away from his father's grasp and walked over to the other side of the room, aware that he was avoiding walking where either the box or the cage had been. "I've been dreaming of my brother being tortured by a demon for weeks, Dad, and I didn't know it."

John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "What else did you see?" he asked.

The box hadn't moved in a while. Dean knew that meant he should get out soon, but he always worried that he'd be forgotten in this tight enclosure. It was only his fourth time in the box, but once had been more than enough. He struggled to keep his breathing even so he wouldn't pass out again. Waking up in the box was almost worse than getting shut inside in the first place. Keeping calm was difficult, though. His bladder was full to bursting, and his throat was parched, and he could feel the weight of all creation pressing down against him.

The lid came up, and his eyes were abruptly assaulted with blinding light. He sucked in lungfuls of fresh air, not caring that the chill was making him shiver. The air was new and clean. He squinted up, trying to see what there was to see. After a moment, a bearded face came into view, and Dean struggled against the desire to thank the demon for letting him out of the box. For one thing, he wasn't actually out of the box. The lid could close at any moment, sealing him back in forever, and there would be nothing Dean could do to stop it. He clenched his teeth on the pleas that suddenly threatened to burble out. Not that it mattered. Azazel owned his ass, and Dean knew it.

"Heya, Dean," Azazel said, and Dean managed a sort of dry gulp. "How ya feelin', kiddo?"

All Dean could think was 'you've got to be kidding,' but he knew that wasn't the answer the demon wanted, and over the course of the past eternity, he'd discovered that doing what Azazel wanted grew more important every day. He loathed himself for it, but he kept his teeth closed on the sarcasm. Unfortunately, that meant he didn't say anything else.

"Cat got your tongue?" Azazel asked with an indecently amused grin.

"Kinda," Dean croaked after a moment.

"Sounds like you need some water, my boy," Azazel said. "Let's get you out of there."

Dean was all in favor of that. He craned as much as he could to see Azazel open the cuffs on his wrists, and as soon as his hands were free, he brought them up to cover his face. He could feel tears forming, tears of relief that Azazel would no doubt take for gratitude. He forced them under control while Azazel freed his ankles. There was silence then, and Dean moved his hands to find that Azazel had offered him a hand up. Dean gazed up at the demon nervously for a moment, then took the proffered hand. The jerk that pulled him to his feet was excruciating, but then most things were right now. He let out a gasp, and then gulped down on the groan that followed.

Azazel put a hand in the middle of Dean's back and gave him a gentle push, chuckling at the way Dean winced away from his touch. The cuts there were the oldest, but they still hadn't truly healed. Dean wasn't sure they were supposed to. Tapping Dean periodically to let him know what direction to go, Azazel guided him to a bathroom. Dean almost ran through the door and positioned himself in front of the toilet. A full bladder could be agony, and he still had enough dignity left not to want to pee himself. Not so much that he couldn't take a leak straight out in front of the demon, who watched with fascination. Most of the time lately, Dean forgot he was naked. He hadn't had any clothes on for longer than he could count. Of course, the fact that he hadn't seen either the sun or a clock in all that time made it more difficult.

He gave it a shake, then went to the sink automatically to wash his hands. Strange that such a normal, ordinary habit hung on under these circumstances. The mirror was gone. When there were bathrooms like this, the mirror was always gone. Like Azazel didn't want to see himself, or like he didn't want Dean to see his handiwork. It didn't make much of a difference, and Dean didn't want to know why badly enough to ask. Cupping his hands, he took a drink of water that felt cool and fresh all the way down. His stomach gurgled a little, but Dean just took another swallow.

"You're bleeding," Azazel said, and Dean looked down at the cuts on his left side. They were oozing blood and a strange, greenish pus that made Dean feel sick at his stomach, but then the true import of that statement hit home.

He looked back up at Azazel and saw the light of pleasure dancing in his eyes, the yellow wash that came over his irises. "No!" Dean said, backing away. "No, no, God, please, no!"

Azazel raised a hand and Dean froze in place. "Come now, Dean," he said, walking around behind him. "We can't have you bleeding everywhere and making a mess. That would spoil everything." Dean unfroze, and he started to move away from Azazel, but the demon's hands came down on his shoulders, and Dean closed his eyes. There were no cuts that high on his torso, the skin the demon was now touching was whole, unblemished, but everything was connected. Pressure in one spot made pain spike in another.

Dean resolved not to speak further, not to beg, but when Azazel began to propel him forward, his resolution faltered and broke. "Please, I don't think I can take any more." He could hear the whine in his voice, the desperation.

"Do you want to die?" Azazel asked in a pleasant tone, like he was asking if Dean wanted a shave. Dean wasn't honestly sure of his answer. Death seemed like an easy way out of this nightmare sometimes. "If I don't treat you, the blood will flow unchecked, and gradually it will drain you dry." Unlike most of the options Dean had for death right now, that sounded relatively painless. "But if you die, who will look after your brother?"

"I'm not talking about Sammy," Dean said staunchly. It was the one thing he clung to. He didn't care what the demon did to him, he wasn't telling him a damned thing about his brother.

They had reached a doorway that had marks on either side of it that Dean recognized. He stopped, or tried to. When he ceased moving forward under his own power, the demon gave him a calculated shove at waist level. Dean let out a cry and stumbled through the doorway. Passing between the sigils caused his body to tingle painfully, but it was a passing sensation, and not one that merited much notice.

He felt a slow tickle down his left side as the blood continued to ooze from the suppurating wounds. He looked around himself in surprise. "What happened to the black walls?" he asked. These walls were a filthy, mottled gray-brown, like they hadn't been cleaned in years, but they did have the familiar glyphs on them.

"This is a temporary abode, we won't be here more than a few days." Which meant the box was coming all too soon again. "The decorator hasn't been by."

The table was there, however, and the tools. Dean began to panic at the thought of being up there again, at the thought of what was coming.

Azazel never tried to get him to climb up voluntarily. He just manhandled him onto the surface and strapped him down in whatever position was needed. Dean struggled wildly, but it was pointless. All it did was make things worse. "Now look what you've done," Azazel chided. "One of the ones on your front is open now. Hold still, my boy, or I'll have to treat every one of your wounds."

Dean held as still as was humanly possible with his breath coming in sobbing gasps. He wound up on his back, his arms strapped down above his head, his legs bound tightly together. Azazel moved away, and Dean could hear jars opening. "Here we go," Azazel murmured, and he began to pack Dean's wounds with his 'treatment.' Dean suffered through it for about ten seconds before he could no longer hold the screams in.

Author's note: I'm sorry. Another cliffhanger, I know, but at least Dean has entered the story. The next chapter should be out on Sep. 1.