It was just another generic gas station in Middle America on another sunny day. Sam was navigating the route with his map and compass, Dean was gassing the car up while listening to voicemail messages and Darcy was charged with buying lunch and paying for everything. It was boring and she hoped that whatever they were driving to would be interesting.
She walked out into the bright but bland scene of the two brothers and placed the food into the back seat. She slid in after and began sorting so that she could hand everything off to the correct brother.
"Okay, I think I found a way we can bypass that construction, just east of here," Sam said optimistically, "We might even make Pennsylvania faster than we thought."
"Yeah," Dean said. He was distracted and contemplative. Darcy picked up on the tone and watched her cousin as he walked around to the driver's side, "Problem is, we're not going to Pennsylvania."
"We what?" Sam had been working with his map for a good half hour rerouting after they heard about the construction in their way.
Darcy ignored him. "What's up?"
"Just got a call from, uh, an old friend. Her father was killed last night, she thinks it might be our kind of thing," Dean explained nonchalantly.
"What?" Darcy and Sam whispered at the same time.
"Yeah. Believe me, she never would've called, never, if she didn't need us." Dean slid into the car like he had just said that the sun was bright.
Darcy felt that the tone he was taking was familiar but she couldn't place it.
"Come on, you comin' or what?" Dean asked Sam.
Sam climbed into the car but was still focused on Dean who was clearly done talking for the moment.
Darcy's next question told her and Sam that they were now heading toward Missouri, to a town called Cape Girardeau, to help out an old friend.
"By old friend, you mean….?" Sam asked in elaboration.
Dean's answer was short and sarcastic, "A friend that's not new."
Darcy and Sam chuckled at this randomly quipping attitude. Darcy realized she hadn't dispersed the sandwiches and handed Sam his with a drink.
"Yeah, thanks," Sam said to Darcy as she also gave him some chips, too.
Something clicked in her head and she blurted out, "Oh my God. It's Cassie, isn't it?"
Dean's hands tightened on the wheel but he didn't say that she had guessed right.
"So, her name's Cassie, huh?" Sam prodded and at Dean's confirmation continued, "You never mentioned her."
"Didn't I?" Dean said hesitantly.
"No." Sam looked back at Darcy for more information but she became uncharacteristically absorbed in a pamphlet about a waterpark she found on the floor of the car.
Dean was trying to be casual. "Yeah, we went out."
"You mean you dated someone? For more than one night?" Sam was surprised. This was not normal for his brother.
Darcy nodded from the back seat and Sam laughed.
"Yeah, Dad and I were workin' a job in Athens, Ohio, she was finishing up college, and we went out for a couple weeks," Dean explained.
Sam looked at Darcy and could tell by her face there was more to the story. She remembered the job in Athens, Ohio. Dean was certainly smitten by Cassie who she met a few times. Cassie was a nice girl and even offered to take Darcy shopping but that never happened.
"And?" he prodded again, hoping that his brother would share. Dean shook his head and gave a small shrug.
"Look, it's terrible about her dad," Darcy finally said. She had the suspicious feeling that Dean was going there only because it was Cassie that called. He wasn't thinking practically. "But it kind of sounds like a standard car accident. I'm not seeing how it fits with what we do."
"Which, by the way, how does she know what we do?" Dean was silent. He glanced at Sam for a second before his eyes darted back to the road.
"You told her," Sam stated in a raised voice. He was exasperated at this new deduction. "You told her? The secret? Our big family rule number one, we do what we do, and we shut up about it. For a year and a half I do nothing but lie to Jessica, and you go out with this chick in Ohio a couple of times and you tell her everything?"
Dean still said nothing. He couldn't defend what he had done. Sam was yelling now and even managed to sound a lot like Uncle John by the end of his speech. "Dean!"
Dean didn't look at his brother. "Yeah. Looks like it," he answered.
Sam huffed and shook his head. Everyone was silent for the rest of the trip.
Cape Girardeau
The three hunters walked into the newsroom. Dean immediately spotted Cassie talking to two older gentlemen and put up an arm signaling the others to stop. Cassie's back was to them so she didn't know they were there yet. When she finished talking to the men she turned.
"Dean." She sounded surprised to see him though she had been the one who called. She walked toward him.
"Hey, Cassie," he said. Darcy and Sam watched the awkward silence build between the two. There was some history there and Darcy only knew a small bit of it.
"This is my brother, Sam," Dean introduced when the silence was too much for him, "And you remember Darcy." Cassie gave Sam a smile and nod. Darcy stepped forward to hug Cassie. It wasn't an awkward exchange as the girls had been friendly.
"Hey Cassie," Darcy said warmly, "I'm sorry about your dad."
Darcy broke the hug. "Yeah. Me, too." Cassie replied. She looked at Dean and they continued to stare at each other.
Cassie's Mother's House
Cassie invited the three back to her house to explain what was going on. She gave them tea and started talking about the strange black truck sightings and the two mysterious deaths on Route 6, her father and his partner. They were both prominent black men in the area. She was still skeptical about the ghost stuff as she put it. This earned an exasperated retort from Dean.
"If I remember," Dean said, "I think you said I was nuts."
"That was then," Cassie answered.
Dean nodded.
Cassie's mother came in and Cassie made introductions. She was sullen and somewhat frazzled woman. Also, to Darcy's surprise, she was white. Darcy realized that she hadn't expected that but shouldn't really have assumed one way or the other. People were people.
Dean wanted to learn more about the truck from the older woman but she wasn't in any shape to answer questions.
Darcy wondered over to the pictures on the wall. She saw one of a group of men standing together in front of a church. From the surrounding photos she figured out which one was Cassie's father. She touched the picture. Instantly, she regretted the move. She saw them. She saw all three deaths, one after the other. The second accident ended with the car driving into some construction and flipping over. The last car ran off the road and hit a tree at top speed. All of the cars had been pursued and assaulted by a large black truck that snarled and disappeared like a ghost. The visions were shocking and sad. Darcy was sure she knew what the first two were but didn't understand the third. Cassie told them only two people had died.
Motel Room
The next day Darcy got her answer. Cassie called Dean and told him about the most recent death that had occurred the night before. Cassie's boss, Jimmy was killed the previous night on the same stretch of road in a similar manner to the previous deaths. Sam and Dean went to investigate the site with Cassie and Darcy excused herself to go do some research.
In the afternoon, Sam came back to the room alone. Darcy had been pouring over archives and felt she knew everything about the history of the area and absolutely nothing of use. She had started her search in the late 1950's after a tip from the boys but only managed to get up to a fire that burned down an old church. She told Sam as much.
"Have you eaten yet?" Sam asked.
Darcy shook her head. She had grabbed a bag of chips and nibbled on them while she read but hadn't really stopped to go out.
"Why don't you take a break?" Sam suggested. Darcy eyed him suspiciously but complied.
Diner
While they waited for their food Sam caught Darcy up on the running theory and where Dean was. Darcy wasn't surprised.
When the food came Sam was quiet for a moment. He was trying to figure out the best angle to work this next discussion from.
"I learned something interesting this afternoon about Dean and Cassie." He finally stated.
Darcy was sure she knew what that was from the interest and hint of gloat in Sam's voice. "Really? What was that?" she asked trying to sound indifferent.
"How well do you know Cassie? Do you know about what happened with her and Dean?"
Darcy shrugged. "We talked maybe twice but not in depth. Hell, I rarely meet Dean's conquests but Cassie I guess was different. They were together until we had to leave. I could tell by Dean's chipper mood that the break-up wasn't so great and we never talked about it."
Actually they had talked about it but Darcy had been sworn to secrecy on the whole thing. She and Dean were good like that. They could be honest with each other but agreed that no one needed to know about their weak emotional moments. When something happened to one of them, they hashed it out and then let it go.
"Did you know that she broke up with him?"
Yes. "No but I suspected."
They didn't talk much more and after dinner retired to the motel and went to bed.
Motel/ In town
The next morning Darcy had Sam with her to help pour through the records but she could tell it was a waste of time. Dean hadn't come back the night before. After a few hours Sam suggested they go out and continue questioning the locals. It didn't take long to learn that there had been another accident. This time it was the Mayor. Darcy had her phone out in an instant and she hit Dean's speed dial number.
"Yeah" answered Dean.
"The road claimed another victim. The mayor is dead."
Dean sounded exasperated. "You're kidding."
"Oh I wish I was. He was run over by nothing."
Newsroom
Darcy and Cassie were looking again through the news articles. Cassie could navigate the tangled web of the archives better because she was familiar with them.
"So, I'm trying to find some link between those killings back in the sixties and what's going on now," Darcy explained, "but there wasn't a lot about it in the paper."
"Not surprising. Probably minimum police work, too. Back then, equal justice under the law wasn't too literal around here," Cassie answered.
Darcy's phone rang. "Yeah?"
It was Sam. He and Dean were suppose to be doing the leg work to help narrow down the search. "Okay, the courthouse records show that Mr. and Mrs. Mayor bought an abandoned property. The previous owner was the Dorian family, for, like, 150 years," Sam read to the phone.
"Dorian?" Dean asked from next to his brother.
"Yeah," Sam answered.
Dean said something to Darcy and she turned to Cassie. "Did the Dorian family used to own this paper?"
After Cassie confirmed that was true Dean took the phone and had Darcy run a search. She finally found an article that was interesting.
"Cyrus Dorian—he vanished in April of '63. The case was investigated but never solved. That's right around the time the string of murders was going on back then," Darcy said into the phone. Further investigation and conversation between the hunters and Cassie showed that the Mayor bought the Dorian property and bulldozed the house on it. The first killing happened the next day.
Cassie's House
That night Cassie called Dean in a panic. The truck showed up and terrorized her and her mother. Dean, Sam and Darcy were there in minutes. They started asking questions knowing that the two women were now marked by the ghost truck. Cassie's mother told them that her husband mentioned Cyrus Dorian was the driver of the truck.
"Is this Cyrus?" Darcy asked. She pulled out a copy of the article.
"Cyrus Dorian died more than 40 years ago," Mrs. Robinson stated as she read the headline.
"How do you know he died, Mrs. Robinson?" Dean asked, "The paper said he went missing. How do you know he died?"
Mrs Robinson was very guilty as she relived the painful memories of the past. "We were all very young. I dated Cyrus a while, but I was also seeing Martin. In secret, of course. Interracial couples didn't go over too well then. When I broke it off with Cyrus, and when he found out about Martin….I don't know, he—he changed. His hatred—his hatred was frightening."
"The string of murders," Sam whispered to Darcy. Darcy nodded.
Mrs. Robinson continued, "There were rumors. People of color disappearing in some kind of a truck. But nothing was ever done. Martin and I, we were, uh, going to be married in that little church near here. But last minute, we decided to elope, cause we didn't want the attention." She stopped clearly getting more and more upset.
"And Cyrus?" Dean urged her.
"The fire," Darcy whispered back to Sam.
"The day we set for the wedding was….the day someone set fire to the church. There was a children's choir practicing in there. They all died."
"Did the attacks stop after that?" Sam asked gently.
"No. There was one more. One night, that truck came for Martin. Cyrus beat him something terrible," she said in sobs, "But Martin, you see, Martin got loose. And he started hitting Cyrus, and he just kept hitting him and hitting him."
Dean asked, when she was finished, "Why didn't he call the cops?"
Mrs. Robinson looked at him as though the answer was obvious. "This was forty years ago! He called on his friends, Clayton Solmes and Jimmy Anderson, and they put Cyrus' body into the truck and rolled it into the swamp at the edge of this land, and all three of them kept that secret all these years!"
"And now all three are gone," Darcy surmised.
"So is Mayor Todd. Now, he said that you, of all people, would know that he is not a racist. Why would he say that?" Dean asked.
"He was a good man. He was a young deputy back then, investigating Cyrus' disappearance. Once he figured out what Martin and the others had done, he….he did nothing. Because he also knew what Cyrus had done," Mrs. Robinson answered.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Cassie asked in tears.
"I thought I was protecting them," Mrs. Robinson answered, "And now there's no one left to protect."
"Yes, there is," Dean said and Darcy noticed him look at Cassie.
Outside the house
"My life was so simple. Just school. Exams. Papers on polycentric cultural norms," Sam remembered reverently.
Dean chuckled, "So, I guess I saved you from a boring existence."
"Yeah, occasionally, I miss boring," Sam answered.
"Alright, so, this killer truck—" Dean opened.
Darcy laughed, "I miss conversations that didn't start with "this killer truck"." All three laughed at that.
"Alright, well, this Cyrus guy…" Dean tried again.
"Yeah."
"Evil on a level that infected even his truck. And when he died, the swamp became his tomb. And the spirit was dormant for forty years," Dean theorized.
The three continued hashing out theories. The ghost was awaked by the mayor demolishing his house. It had happened before in Illinois. The angry ghost and his truck were out for blood.
"You know we're gonna have to dredge that body up from the swamp, right?" Sam said.
Darcy grimaced, "Oh, man."
"You said it," Dean agreed.
"Yeah," Sam said.
Cassie came out and talked to Dean. They had a little back and forth and a kiss that made Darcy roll her eyes. He told her that she should stay in the house and told Darcy to stay with her. Darcy didn't mind missing the action this time.
In the Car
Late that night she realized that "missing the action" was what she really had done. The spirit had been mad that the boys tried to destroy it and Dean had to race it into the burned down church where it perished on holy ground. It was a stupid and risky move but it was effective. The ghost was gone and it was time for the hunters to move on.
Now it was afternoon and after cleaning out their motel the three were on the road. Darcy and Sam had said their goodbyes to Cassie and waited by the car for Dean. They watched the two kiss and hug before Dean walked back to the car. Now none of them were saying much.
"I like her," Sam said. He was driving while Dean rested and Darcy read a cryptozoology book in the back seat. "You meet someone like her, ever make you wonder if it's worth it? Putting everything else on hold, doing what we do?"
"Wake me up when it's my turn to drive," he said putting on his sun glasses and settling in for a nap.