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ELEVEN

Waverly Hill Sanitarium
Louisville, Kentucky
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
4:24 PM

"Dean," Sam said finally, sliding out of the freshly-dug grave he and his brother had been working on and tossing his shovel aside. "She's not here."

"What d'you mean, 'she's not here'? She has to be," Dean groaned, shoveling aside another mound of dirt and wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "The professor said she was probably buried in an unmarked grave on the grounds. There are only two unmarked graves, Sammy, and the first one was a bust. This one has to be the jackpot."

Sam took a minute to consider Dean's words. It was true; Professor Dyer had told them on the way to the Daze Inn Diner that Elizabeth Sloan was most likely interred in an unmarked grave near the train tracks at the bottom of the hill, but she had made a point to emphasize "most likely"—meaning she wasn't sure. Dean, however, seemed to take it the opposite way and interpreted the woman's words to mean that she was almost certain the nurse had been buried there.

After dropping Professor Dyer off at the diner, then changing into more hunt-appropriate clothes and picking up a few supplies from their room, Dean had taken them straight to the sanitarium and promptly began searching for the area the professor had indicated—which had been an easy find considering there were only two there and both of them were significantly blank. Dropping his bag and taking off his plaid overshirt, Dean had begun shoveling, giving Sam a dirty look when he realized his brother hadn't joined in. Sam had expressed his concerns about this being nothing but a waste of time, but Dean wouldn't hear it. Just like with everything else, when Dean made the decision, it was final, so Sam had reluctantly began digging alongside his older brother.

The first grave had been empty with nothing but a decayed casket underneath rock-hard dirt, which had taken a long time to break through. At the discovery, Sam had shot his brother an I-told-you-so glare before climbing out and gazing up at the sanitarium. Dean had taken a moment to do the same before deciding to start on the second grave, even though Sam knew they wouldn't find anything different than they had with the first.

Suddenly, the sound of wood splintering came as Dean plowed the pointed end of his shovel into the aged wood of the coffin under his feet. Glancing down at the hole, Sam could see a skeleton through the cracks of the lid, and as Dean continued to destroy it, it became obvious that these remains didn't belong to the person they were looking for.

"Not her," Sam sighed, getting to his feet.

"What? How do you know?"

"Female skeletons have a wider pelvis bone than we do," Sam answered, his eyes scanning the remains, which only had the remnants of a few articles of clothing: a shirt, shoes, and a pair of tattered pants that hung low. "Plus, the shoulders are wider."

"You can tell all that from there, huh?" Dean asked, his skepticism obvious.

"Well, no. But what I can see is that right around his finger. Simple gold band, wide. Not something a woman often wears," Sam said, jumping down to pick up the piece of jewelry he was appraising. The metal had been soiled over the years, but it still held the same shape and size of a normal wedding ring. Flipping it over, Sam peered at the engraving inside. "Huh."

"What?"

"'Forever, Shelly,'" Sam read, then handed it to Dean. "I think this skeleton belongs to Dr. Edwards."

"Wonder what happened to him," Dean frowned, pocketing the band. "Anyway, I'm lighting the not-so-good doctor up for good measure. Don't want to take any chances."

Sam sighed and clambered out of the hole. "Yeah, alright. Just don't use all the lighter fluid. We'll need some for when we actually find Elizabeth Sloan's remains."

"Yeah, yeah," Dean said, waving his brother off before climbing out of the grave and retrieving the salt from the duffle bag he had carried with him down the hill.

While Dean worked, Sam glared up at the sanitarium. Even from where he stood down by the train tracks, he could feel the pulsating anxiety the Timor Animi cast over him and his brother—though Dean was making a job of trying to prove that the sensation wasn't bothering him and that their prolonged exhuming hadn't been an attempt to delay going inside.

As they had made their way up the sloping drive that lead to the hospital, Sam could tell that the Animi had gotten stronger since their last trip there, as if feeding off of the death of the detective and the girl. Getting out of the car, Sam had shivered once as a tremor ran down his spine, before following Dean and his concerned look down the hill.

The spark of a match caught Sam's attention as Dean lit the book he was holding and waited for the flames to engulf one another before tossing it into the pit. There was a sudden audible roar as the blaze caught the lighter fluid-soaked clothes of the corpse and the brothers stood beside each other as they watched the fire lick the dirt siding of the grave. After a few moments, the orange and red glow simmered to a steady flicker and Dean looked up at Sam.

"I guess we have to go inside that thing now," Dean sighed, gathering the duffle bag and its contents that had been littered around his feet.

Sam smirked at his brother's words, but said nothing as they began their trek uphill. By the time they reached the back entrance of the building, it was obvious to both of them that something about the hospital was wrong. The Timor Animi had become placid, turning into nothing but a dull beat of unease.

As Dean reached for the door handle, Sam could tell that his brother was suspicious of the lack of activity by the pause of his hand upon the knob. Yanking it open, a cold breeze flew past them before, suddenly, the two were pulled inside and thrown to the floor just as the door slammed shut behind them.

"Should've seen that coming," Dean groaned, propping himself up on one elbow and shooting an appraising glance at Sam.

Sam frowned in response. "Guess she couldn't wait."

"Okay. But why?" Dean asked, getting to his feet and helping his brother up.

Shrugging, Sam said, "Probably because we robbed her of killing Professor Dyer."

Dean sighed and looked around the emptiness of the first floor atrium. The dimness of the room seemed thicker than usual, as did the air. Though all the windows were smashed out and there was more than one door leading to the outside—though only one of them had an actual door in its frame—Sam couldn't help but feel strangely claustrophobic.

Pushing the thought away, Sam waited for Dean to hand him a clip of wrought-iron rounds to change out the ones in his 9mm. As he did so, Dean deposited the normal bullets back in his duffle, then pulled out a shotgun and two flashlights.

"I think we should split up," Dean said finally, handing his brother the police-grade Maglite. "You check down here and I'll check upstairs since you can't make it to the fifth floor. I don't want to stick around inside here for long, especially after the yanking."

"Hold on. Are you sure that's a good idea?" Sam asked, grabbing his brother's arm just as he was about to turn away. "The last time we did that, I almost killed you with your own gun."

"Yeah, well, try not to get possessed," Dean smirked, clapping his hand on his brother's shoulder before turning and heading toward the stairs. Pausing half-way up to the second floor, Dean leaned over the railing, his duffle clanging against the metal, and grinned. "And, uh, yell if any ghosts start whispering to you or whatever."

Before Sam could respond, Dean was gone. Turning on heel, Sam groaned and headed toward the front entrance, fully aware that Dean's vibrato was to cover up the fact that his brother was actually worried. He had been doing the same thing since they were kids: whenever things got sticky, Dean began picking on Sam in order to make it seem as though he was oblivious to the situation.

Passing the door, Sam could see the Impala parked outside and the vast gravel lot that surrounded it. From inside, the barren landscape looked inviting and spacious, but Sam turned his thoughts away from their car and toward the task at hand. They had to find remains—hopefully the corpse—of Elizabeth Sloan before she could go after the descendants of anyone else who might've been distantly related to the women who hung her. Sam knew, though, that that was going to be tricky. The professor said that the woman was buried somewhere on the grounds, which could mean anywhere from inside the hospital to back down by the train tracks. Finding her was going to be time-consuming at the least.

Starting in the empty room on the opposite side of the morgue, Sam began pounding his fists against the walls, looking for an inconsistency in the sheetrock. By the time he had finished searching—his hands feeling numb after slamming them endlessly against the hard surface—he found himself face-to-face with the swinging doors of the mortuary and sighed.

Here we go.


Dean stomped his feet and knocked his knuckles against the wall as he searched for a hidden room or cubby hole somewhere in the depths of the second floor. During their first trip there, Sam and Dean had overlooked this level due to the fact that it seemed unstable, but now realized that looks had been deceiving. Though there were holes in the floor—where Dean could see Sam below him, though he doubted his brother knew that—there had been nothing to suggest that it was going to collapse beneath him. Even after stamping his steel-toed boots against the cement with as much weight as he could muster, the ground held strong.

After clearing the second level, he moved onto the third, doing more of the same despite the fact that his feet were throbbing from the force in which he was pounding them. As he reached the end of the first hallway, the sound of Sam's voice echoed up the stairwell at the mouth of the corridor, causing Dean to pause. "DEAN!"

Knowing the panic in his brother's voice, Dean abandoned his station between the doors of room 312 and 314 to race down to the ground floor. Reaching the last stair, he finally saw what had Sam sounding so alarmed. Standing in front of his brother was the ghost of who he could only guess to be Elizabeth Sloan: straggly brown hair, tattered clothes, and a hand pinning Sam by his neck to the wall nearest the front entrance.

Loudly dropping the duffle bag from his shoulder in an attempt to get the spirit's attention, he waited for the woman to whip around. When it didn't happen, he rolled his eyes and tried again just as she tightened her grip on Sam.

"Hey!" he called, cocking his shotgun and holding it ready. Finally, the spirit dropped his brother and whipped around to growl at him, her teeth bared in a feral grin. "That's more like it." A second later, Elizabeth blinked in and out of sight before reappearing in front of Dean. Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger and watched the spirit evaporate in a hazy cloud of smoke. "Eat salt, bitch."

Coughing, Sam used the wall to pull himself to his feet and rubbed at his throat. "Thanks."

"What happened to your gun?" Dean asked, his eyes scanning the ground for the aluminum-plated 9mm Sam had taken from him before heading down the hill to the small cemetery below the sanitarium.

"Knocked it out of my hands," Sam answered, heading in the opposite direction of Dean's eyes to pick up the pistol that had skidded toward the doors to the morgue. "She's strong, man. I didn't even see her coming."

"Well this isn't the first time a spirit's got the jump on you," Dean smirked. At Sam's aggravated look, he cleared his throat and changed the subject. "You find anything down here?"

"Yeah, actually," Sam answered as Dean neared him, excitement betraying his calm tone. "I think it's the reason she attacked me, to be honest."

"What is?"

Reaching behind him, Sam retrieved a book about the same size as Dad's journal—but that was the only thing the two had in common. The black leather cover was warped and cracked, and the pages between were yellowed and water-stained; on the spine was a monogrammed E.S. in faded gold letters.

Sammy's done it again.

Smiling to himself, Dean watched as his brother flipped open the book and pulled out a silver necklace, which he then wrapped around his thumb and palm for Dean to see the charm at the end. Taking a look at it, Dean saw nothing that stuck out to him. The trinket appeared to be a large, flat Y with an extra leg in the middle. "What is it?"

Sam sighed and unraveled the necklace from around his hand. "You ever hear of the Necro Cross?"

"Is that like some kind of morbid motocross?"

"No," Sam groaned, shooting his brother a glare. "Dude, do you ever crack open a book or do you just wait for me to—"

"Yeah, whatever. Get to the point."

Groaning again, this time with an added eye roll, Sam squared his shoulders and said, "A Necro Cross has been used by witches for decades as a means to ward of reapers. If they keep this hidden in a place they have some sort of attachment to, it keeps their spirit around until their body is salt and burned. Most of the time, they use it if they have some kind of revenge they're hoping to exact and don't think they'll be able to finish while they're alive. Sometimes they wait decades for someone to enter their haunt before starting up where they left off. All it takes is a little blood of someone related to the intended victim."

"So you're thinking this Elizabeth chick knew she was going to meet her maker before she could get the word out about her and Dr. Edwards?" Dean asked with a frown. "Man, this must have been some angry bitch to want to use that kind of mojo."

"She was angry," Sam nodded, flipping a few pages in the diary. "I was reading some of this before her spirit showed up. Apparently the woman wasn't just pregnant with Dr. Edwards' kid, but the kid was a byproduct of rape, and that was the foundation that started their tumultuous relationship."

"Stand up guy," Dean muttered, shaking his head. "And she got the noose for it."

"Well, actually," Sam said, his eyes focused and scanning back and forth. "It says here that the day she found out she was pregnant with Samuel's child, she tried anything and everything short of abortion to get rid of it—apparently abortion was against her religious beliefs. One day, in the midst of her anger, she went to see a friend of a friend who introduced her to witchcraft. Ultimately, though, there wasn't a spell to get rid of a baby."

"But I bet she learned a few tricks along the way," Dean commented.

"I'd say. There are spells written in the margins—some of them are pretty dangerous, too. Like the binding spell she used the day she died."

"Let me ask you something," Dean said, glancing at the Necro Cross in Sam's hand. "Can that thing resurrect someone?"

"I'm not sure," Sam answered with a frown. "Why? What're you thinking?"

"Well, it's just the way these girls died. First one's body doesn't get found, then the second one turns into a corpse. It's like in The Mummy when that dude is resurrected and starts killing people until he's whole again."

"Maybe," Sam shrugged. "This place does seem to be feeding off of the death of the girls. The Timor Animi is definitely stronger. I guess the same could be said for her spirit."

"Yeah, well, I don't want to give her any more juice than she's already got by sitting around here and twiddling our thumbs or whatever. Let's find her corpse and torch it before we have ourselves a dead professor to add to the pile," Dean said, then nodded toward the stairs. "If you're done down here, I'm pretty sure we can get the top floors cleared faster working together. I'll even let you stand guard on the fifth if you play nice."

"Whatever," Sam said, rolling his eyes at Dean's sly grin. "Let's go."