Chapter Ten

"Never believe anything you see on Halloween."
-Reverend M. Goodman

The "little salt and burn" was a vanishing hitchhiker type. Unfortunately, instead of catching rides, the ghost was appearing in the road causing accidents. No fatalities yet, but that was just a matter of time.

Sam had continued to gripe and bitch, but had finally agreed that they would go and check it out.

The story on this ghost -as best as Bobby could find out- was that it was some teenager in the fifties run down by a bunch of drunks, who then panicked and buried the body in the woods nearby. Unmarked, of course. One of the drunks in question had made a tearful confession to a sheriff while arrested on a completely unrelated incident years later, but he had been unable to remember where on the highway the accident had occurred, much less the location of the burial. If not for that confession, they wouldn't have any idea at all about the ghost's history.

The spirit hadn't made an appearance until a developer started clearing land for new housing about three years ago and apparently woke it up. Seemingly the ghost had liked its woodland home. But the accidents were piling up, and since the people were unlikely to leave, the spirit had to go.

Locating the grave had been surprisingly easy. Sam had given her a run-down on finding unmarked burials during the drive out to the site. It was interesting; when she thought of "graves" it pulled up a pretty generic idea of a coffin, and a six-foot pit -maybe with a tasteful headstone at the top. But she had to agree with Sam that a couple of guys half-drunk in a panic were probably not going to manage six-feet before they rolled the body in. Sam said that the easiest way to stop animals from immediately digging the body back up was to pile rocks on top, and hopefully the guys who had done the burying had had the wits to realize that much -since they wouldn't want their victim showing back up and all. Otherwise, if the corpse couldn't be located intact, Sam wasn't sure how they were going to go about banishing the ghost.

Luck had been with them. By pinning all the sightings on a map they had been able to set up a fairly reasonable search area, and literally tripped over the uneven jumble of loose rock not even three hours after they started looking, despite the thick drift of leaves that had built up around it over the decades. By then the sun had been going down, so Sam tied a bright strip of plastic flagging to the closest tree, then to a few more on the way back to the car so they would be able to find the site again in the morning.

Opening the grave the next morning was fairly quick work, moving the stones covering it had almost taken longer.

Sam had generously allowed her to do half the shoveling.

Jess was appalled at how much sheer work it was, her back aching and palms stinging by the time she was halfway through her turn. She was grateful Sam had brought along some work gloves in her size, but the way he hovered beside the slowly developing trench, waiting expectantly for her to give up, was irritating. She finished her half just to spite him, and watched enviously as he seemed to effortlessly excavate the rest of the shallow grave.

He looked up when done to find her staring at him. Sam flashed a grin, "Like what you see?"

"Next time, take your shirt off."

"Not in this weather, even with the work-out," he demurred. "Ready for the next step?"

Jess held up the bag of salt and tossed him the lighter fluid. She had been keeping a paranoid look-out for the ghost when they had first started digging, but the late morning sunshine and calmness of the surrounding forest had lulled her into a sense of security. Distracted by backbreaking work and her fiancé's muscles, her attention had wavered somewhat.

Sam didn't seem concerned about it.

"Why don't we just make a big salt circle around the grave to begin with -for protection?"

"The ghost is tied to the bones, if we draw the circle around them, it will just manifest inside with us."

"So the answer is no circle at all?"

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Did you notice that doing us a lot of good last time?"

Jess poured the bag of salt out onto the weathered bones lying partially exposed about three feet down. "It's sad."

"What is?"

"He was killed by lowlifes, and no one knew where he was, we still don't know who he is, and after this he won't even be a ghost to remind people he existed."

"He's been dead a long time, Jess. Saving the lives of the living is more of a priority than keeping around the memory of someone who died more then fifty years ago."

"Still, sad."

Sam nodded in agreement and squeezed the lighter fluid out over the bones to mix with the salt. "Have the matches?"

"Yep." She bent to rummage them out of the rucksack. A new one, borrowed from Bobby.

A choked sort of noise brought her head back up with a snap. "Sam?"

He was on his knees beside the grave, clutching his head with both hands, his face locked in an expression of agony.

"Sam!" She scrambled to his side, his nose was bleeding and he didn't respond to her with anything but ragged gasping. She flashed back to the motel where she had found him in much the same state, but couldn't be sure this wasn't some kind of attack by the ghost, and so was fumbling with the matches in her hand to light the bones up when the wind began to blow.

The first hard gust sent the entire book of matches flying out of her hand and somewhere into the dense leaves. Sam had fallen to the ground behind her, still moaning and clutching his head.

"Sam! Sam we aren't doing this again!" Jessica screamed over the howling wind.

Wind was suddenly blowing so hard it was all Jess could do to stand. She was going to be black and blue from being pelted with sticks and other forest debris. She didn't think she could keep a match lit in the gale, but it was the only option she could see.

She dived for the rucksack and another matchbook, snagging the bag with her fingertips just as the wind tried to fling it away. The matches wouldn't stay lit even long enough for her to drop them into the pit, and the wind was getting even stronger.

She about jumped out of her skin at the deafening thunder of a gunshot from feet away. The pit she was leaning over exploded into flames, sending her tumbling onto her back to avoid getting scorched. The air went flat still, and she clawed tangled hair out of her eyes to see what had happened.

Sam was lying on his side where she had left him, his face smeared with blood and deathly pale, but one hand was extended towards the grave, holding a revolver he had fired into the pit full of kerosene fumes. He was holding his head up, looking for her. When he saw her sit up and blink at him, he dropped back completely against the earth and lay still.

Jess took a moment to collect herself, then walked around the burning grave to sit next to Sam.

"Don't hit me this time," he mumbled.

"Not while you look so pathetic," she agreed, pushing his hair off his forehead and giving him a good look-over.

"Did the ghost do this?"

Sam grimaced. "Had a vision."

"Your visions have some bang-up timing."

He tried to nod, but cringed at the movement. "Let's not do this again."

"Yeah, next time Bobby can salt his own damn ghost. What was the vision about?"

"Not really sure. It had Dean, and some girl. Kinda confusing. Let me not think about it for awhile, and it might make more sense later."

Jess nodded, but her concern sharpened when a fresh line of blood trickled from his nose.

"Are you going to be okay?"

"I'll live."

"How about walking? We didn't haul the camping stuff in with us, I guess I could go back and get it, but I don't really want to leave you alone out here if you can't even sit up."

"Let me lay here for a bit?"

Jess fished some forgotten aspirin out of the interior pocket of her coat, and didn't say anything about the wait. Even when almost five hours went by before Sam felt able to make the hike back to the car.

/

Sam scowled and threw the pencil across the room.

Jessica looked up from her magazine and raised an eyebrow. "That's a novel way to draw."

"This isn't working. My talents don't extend to drawing accurate depictions of people."

"Let me see what you have." She tossed the magazine onto the couch beside her and slid into a seat at the table to look.

"Wow."

Sam glowered.

"No, I mean it's really... really... Is that Big Bird?"

"Jess!"

"It's fine, Sam." She patted his arm. "Not everyone can be da Vinci."

"It isn't fine. This is the only clue we have, some fragmented vision of this woman - and that she is related in some way to Dean. But if I can't get her image out of my head and onto paper, we aren't going to be able to find her," he growled, frustrated.

"And this didn't work out with that sketch artist friend of Bobby's why, again?"

"I can't hold her face in my mind like that. I can see her, but when I try to describe her, it never comes out right; the image keeps shifting." Sam rubbed his hands over his face in exhaustion. "I just can't ...this is more frustrating than having no clues at all."

"Go take a nap."

"What?"

Jess stood up and closed the sketch pad. "We've been here a month now, and I think Bobby is starting to feel crowded. He'll call us if he finds anything, but you need to get a little sleep, and then I think it's time you and I hit the road again."

"And go where, Jess? This woman, and my brother, could be anywhere in the country! Anywhere in the world even!"

She shrugged. "I've always kind of wanted to see New England."