Chapter Nine - Dead Line

Sam felt a chill run through him, immediately back on edge at the sound.

His head turned fearfully to look towards the phone sat on the table. The line didn't even appear to be plugged into anything as far as he could tell, and that realisation caused another cold swirl of fear to churn in his gut. What did he do? Answer it?

The alternative seemed to be to just let it keep ringing until it stopped, and Sam wasn't sure how much more his nerves could take of the shrill noise grating against his eardrums. Even if the thought of what might be on the other end of the line scared him, he wasn't a coward. He needed answers; some sort of clue as to what was happening here, and so he was just going to have to answer the phone and find out.

Having made his decision, Sam crossed purposefully over to the telephone and reached out an unsteady hand to grasp the receiver, before finally lifting it to his ear. At first he could only hear faint static at the other end of the line, and in an uncertain sounding voice, Sam tried to prompt whoever might be there. "Hello?"

Initially, there was just more crackling of static, and Sam wondered if the line was dead after all, but then a voice managed to break through the white noise.

"Sammy?"

Sam felt his heart leap into his mouth at the word. "Dean?" That had definitely been his brother's voice, and Sam felt a stab of anxiety and fear over what it meant. He crushed the receiver to his ear, his attention focused entirely on what he could pick up on the other end of the call. "Dean, where are you? What happened?"

More white noise crackled on the line and Sam could tell the call was breaking up, but he listened as intently as he could to decipher what his brother was saying. While he was so glad just to hear the sound of Dean's voice, the faint snippets of words he could make out only scared him more.

"…sorry, Sam…couldn't…Cas was…make…I'll be…"

With that, the line went dead, leaving Sam just as confused and even more frightened than before.

"No, wait…Dean!" Sam yelled into the phone, but was met only with the dial tone ringing cruelly in his ear. "Dammit," he growled, slamming the receiver angrily back down into its holder. What did it mean, if Dean was trying to make contact him? Was he in trouble? Could he be stuck somewhere in this place too? And perhaps that meant all of this wasn't just in Sam's head.

Sam stood leaning against the table, breathing heavily as he felt a renewed sense of panic and urgency. He couldn't just be trying to get himself out of here now; he had to help Dean first. But what was going on? His hand fished in his pocket for the screwed up note he'd found earlier, and he flattened it out to read back to himself:

"I'm sorry Sammy"

That was all it said. Sorry… The first word Dean had spoken on the phone. But sorry for what, Sam didn't know. What have you gotten yourself into, Dean? Sam found himself wondering as he re-pocketed the note. What have you gotten me into?

He took another deep breath as he tried to figure out what to do. The phone in this place seemed to work, to some extent, although Sam couldn't figure out how. Did that mean it was worth trying to call out? Well, he didn't think it could hurt to try. Or maybe it could, but it was worth the risk.

He had Dean's cell numbers memorised – well, the three main ones – and he thought that if he was trying to make contact with Dean again they were worth a shot, although he didn't know what his brother had called him from in the first place.

Again, Sam lifted the receiver, his hands shaking significantly more this time, and began the long process of dialling the number on the old-fashioned interface. He wasn't really expecting the call to go through at all, so when he heard a click on the other end as if someone had answered, he felt a sudden rush of hope.

"Dean…" he began urgently, but was immediately cut off by a fiercely loud, high-pitched ringing erupting from the phone.

Maybe that was a bad move.

The receiver tumbled from his grasp as he let go of it in shock, and as it clattered to the floor Sam clutched his hands to his head, realising that the noise wasn't just coming from the call. It was everywhere: the piercing shriek reverberating throughout the room and growing in intensity as if it originated in the very walls. He cried out in pain, the sound seeming to set his nerve endings alight, but he couldn't even hear his own screams above the noise. There was the taste of blood in his mouth; vessels burst from the intensity of it, and Sam felt more liquid dripping down his face from his nose and eyes. He felt almost sure that the noise was going to shatter his skull, and that his brain would liquefy and stream out of the cracks. What's happening here…? He didn't know, couldn't even think straight anymore. He just wanted the pain to stop.

No relief came. Sam didn't know how long he endured the agony of the ringing – it could have been seconds, or hours – but at some point he realised the light seemed to have turned red - although maybe that was from the blood in his eyes – and there was a cold rush of air blowing past him. Defying explanation, he felt as though he were falling sideways, yet somehow not moving at all, and being pulled backwards along a long, dark tunnel towards some inescapable end…