Chapter 14 History Lesson
Norris, Tennessee 2016
Dean and Sam found Stephen Millsaps where Mr. Ogle said they probably would – at the county courthouse, laboriously sorting, annotating, and cataloguing bits of history. Not for the first time, Dean wondered how anyone could stand to spend their life poring over documents and photos and scraps of paper covered in barely legible writing. The effort sounded worse than any monster he and Sam had yet to encounter. Dean was not, however, lacking a high level of appreciation for the Stephen Millsaps of the world. The Winchesters were frequent benefactors of their compiled records, especially when it came to troubled historical events or burial locations.
"Mr. Millsaps?" Sam spoke to the man's bowed head as he sat at a table in the basement of the courthouse, a laptop opened in front of him and a cardboard box beside him from which he had just removed a large, dusty ledger book.
The man looked up from the moldy book, and Dean and Sam were both surprised to see a young face, possibly late twenties or early thirties.
"Yes. Can I help you?" The man asked, his eyebrows rising quizzically at the sight of the two official-looking strangers.
"We had a few questions for you, Mr. Millsaps," Sam said, as he and Dean both showed their FBI badges. "I'm Agent Riggs. This is Agent Murtaugh." Stephen Millsaps' eyebrows rose even higher, but he waved at the empty seats across the table in invitation.
"Uh, yeah…sure, agents. Have a seat. You can just call me Stephen. What can I help you with?"
"We were told you know a lot about the history of this area," Dean answered gruffly as he and Sam sat. "You seem a little young to know a lot about the history of any area." Stephen smiled, unoffended by Dean's assessment.
"Yeah, I get that a lot. But I'm pretty good at what I do."
"And what is that exactly?" Sam asked.
"Well, I sort of specialize in areas that may have lost a lot of their collective history due to natural or compulsory removal of people."
"Like people forced off their land by the government?" Dean asked.
"Exactly. I've been working around here for about thirteen months now, researching Beech Grove, Buffalo, Rosedale, White Pine – all communities here in this county that were displaced for the TVA dams program. My research grant…"
"Great," Dean interrupted. "Well, we happen to be interested in the White Pine community." Stephen's eyes lit up, clearly the subject of White Pine had piqued his interest, but then his brow furrowed in confusion.
"Well that one has been particularly intriguing," he began, "but the FBI wants to know about a community that was abandoned over 85 years ago?" Stephen's question was incredulous. "I don't see how…"
"Why was White Pine displaced for the dams program but then never flooded?" Sam asked. He felt certain that if he could just get Stephen started, the historian's urge to tell the story would overcome his understandable skepticism. And Sam was right – clearly the mystery of the "ghost town" was too good not to be expounded upon.
It remained a geographical mystery that White Pine had not flooded. And surprisingly little effort had been made to resolve the mystery. It seemed that the Tennessee Valley Authority had simply abandoned the area for over seventy years. Only in the last ten or so years had someone decided that the little community might have some tourist potential.
"The records from the TVA were amazingly sparse for White Pine compared to records that were maintained for other displaced communities," Stephen reported. "Most of them had very detailed information about payments that were made for land, when property was officially vacant, police actions that had to be taken in some instances, all those types of records. For White Pine, practically nothing."
"Nothing?" Dean repeated. "Like, nothing nothing?"
"There was a list of property owners and one date when the entire community was declared officially vacant," Stephen answered. "That was it. Now, I've found plenty of other historical records for White Pine prior to the displacement, of course. All the usual public records were here at the county courthouse, and there were also journals and letters and other memorabilia scattered here and at the library. But so far…"
His voice trailed off, and Dean and Sam could see him struggling to continue. They waited silently as Stephen grappled with his thoughts. After a moment, their patience was rewarded.
"Okay, truth is I'm really pretty confused about the White Pine community. Like I said, this sort of research is my specialty," Stephen continued. He described how most small communities in an area would have very intertwined histories. Marriage certificates, and property deeds, and letters, and hundreds of other pieces of paper all bore evidence to the links that existed between the populations. When communities were displaced, the evidence links were often lost or scattered even though the relationships remained.
"So when I say I specialize in displaced communities," Stephen told them, "a lot of what I do is try to tie together the fragmented links." He held his hands out in front of him with fingers splayed.
"You had ties back here where the communities existed," Stephen wiggled the fingers of his right hand, "and you have those ties continuing where the people resettle." Here he wiggled the fingers of his left hand.
"My job is to connect those links back together," Stephen said, sliding his fingers together so that they intertwined. "And I've had a lot of success doing that with the other communities in this area. But White Pine…" He pulled his hands apart again and dropped the left hand to the table. "It's almost like there's nothing there to connect to. It's unbelievable, like the people of the community just vanished."
Sam and Dean exchanged looks. It wasn't quite what they had expected to hear, but it was a possible explanation for the abandonment of the community. Unlike Stephen, Sam and Dean did not consider the idea of a vanishing community to be beyond the realm of believability. They had seen small communities wiped out even in recent history. Plus, witchcraft had a way of backfiring on its adherents, so that might explain what happened.
"I don't guess that's helped you all very much…" Stephen began, apologetically.
"No, actually you've been a lot of help," Sam said. "We just have a couple more questions. Was there any history of witchcraft in the White Pine community?" Stephen blinked in surprise.
"Uh…yeah…yeah, a little bit. A couple of families that supposedly brought the practices over from the 'old country', mostly Scotland and Ireland for the settlers in this area. The most recent records I could find prior to the displacement mention an Eleanor Caughron who was still practicing some good luck charms and things like that." Sam and Dean both nodded, sounded like what they might be looking for.
"And what can you tell us about the Bledsoe curse?" Sam continued. Again, Stephen seemed somewhat taken aback, but his historian's love of a good narrative came through for them once more.
"I have found some references to that. Only on this side of the displacement, though. It doesn't seem to be something that was ever mentioned when the White Pine community was actually in existence. The idea of the curse seems to be attached to the homestead of Jonas and Ellie Bledsoe…"
"So the whole idea of a curse started when the community was abandoned?" Dean quickly interrupted what he could see was about to become a very scholarly discourse.
"Looks like," Stephen answered. "But no clues as to why that site got such a particularly bad reputation. Nothing seems to have happened there that didn't happen to the rest of the homesteaders."
"And what does the curse supposedly do?" Sam asked.
"Well, it kills people, just out of the blue it's supposed…" Stephen's eyes grew suddenly wide. "You're here about the mysterious deaths, aren't you? The FBI considers rumors of a decades old curse to be a lead?"
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Millsaps," Dean said as he and Sam both stood abruptly. Dean handed the young man one of his cards. "Let us know if you have come across any additional information."
"You think Eleanor is our gal?" Dean asked as soon as they were in the Impala driving away from the courthouse.
"I think she's probably our gal, and I think she either deliberately or accidently caused the spell to backfire," Sam answered. He had already begun poring over a stack of papers that Stephen had given them, copies of lineage that he had pieced together for the White Pine community. Stephen's best guess for burial locations had been either at a home burial site or in the graveyard behind the church building. "The spell succeeded in keeping the area from flooding, but the townspeople apparently didn't survive to continue living there – or anywhere else. And for some reason the spell has been continuing to pop up through the years."
"So I guess you know what we have to do, right?" Dean continued, and Sam nodded glumly.
As soon as they had left Julie's house the night before, Sam and Dean had discussed their next steps. They felt certain they were dealing with a witch's spell, but based on what Julie and the Ogle's had told them it didn't look like the witch was still alive. So the question was how to break a dead witch's spell – a dead Scottish witch's spell. Sam had been in favor of doing more research on their own, but Dean eventually got him to concede that their best option was just to call on the resource they had.
Now Sam suggested Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who would have to call her.
"No way, man," Dean said emphatically. "Rowena is all yours to handle, Sam-u-el." He stretched the name out into three distinct syllables the way Rowena pronounced it, and even added a horrible Scottish accent to boot. Rowena, mother of Fergus McCloud aka Crowley aka King of Hell, was a Scottish witch herself – a Scottish witch who was well over three hundred years old at this point. If anyone could help them in this situation, it would be her. But asking Rowena for help was always grating. She delighted in exasperating the Winchesters, particularly the tallest one.
Sam gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders as though preparing for battle. He thumbed down his contact list, ignoring his brother's obvious enjoyment of the situation.
"You got her listed under B for 'Best Witch'?" Dean asked, grinning at Sam as he waited for Rowena to answer. "Or maybe P for 'Pain in the Butt'?"
"She's under R for 'Redheaded Bitch'. Now shut the hell up. No…no, not you Rowena…"
Dean could barely contain himself as he listened to Sam's end of the phone conversation and the muffled voice from the other end of the line.
"It was like listening to you argue with an angry Scottish chipmunk," he laughed once Sam had ended the call.
"So glad to amuse you," Sam snapped as Dean tried to compose himself but continued to chuckle. "Anyway, if you feel like getting back to work…I sent her the pictures I'd taken, and she recognized the carvings on the crucifix. She finally agreed to send us an ingredients list and an incantation. She thinks it will break the spell if we do that and burn the witch's bones, just like we suspected – and the crucifix."
"What did she say about what happened when we tried to burn that thing before?"
"She said – and I quote – 'well, obviously Sam-u-el, that's because you didn't do it right the first time, ya great dumb moose." By the time he finished reporting Rowena's words, in his own horrible Scottish accent, even Sam was laughing.
"Now we just have to figure out where we're digging," Dean said once they were back at the motel. "Give me some of those pages to look through."
They had been scouring the lineage pages for nearly a half hour, when Dean let out a low whistle.
"Look at this, Sammy, this might explain the connection to the Bledsoe place," he said handing over a sheet of paper. "Jonas and Ellie Bledsoe owned the cabin, right? Well, Ellie Bledsoe was a Caughron. Eleanor was her grandmother."
"Maybe that's it – maybe Eleanor was living with them when she did the spell or when it went bad," Sam mused. "People eventually just associated the place with bad things and started calling it the Bledsoe curse."
"Could be she's buried there," Dean said. "And we have to get the crucifix anyway, so I guess we're starting the night back at that cabin."
They spent the afternoon gathering ingredients from the list Rowena sent and preparing them for the required incantation. After that, they returned to Julie's house where the Ogles had come to pick up Isaac. The little boy had been having sleepover night at Grandma and Grandpa's house since the dreams had started. His mother's yelling and thrashing had terrified him, and they all knew it was likely to continue. Tonight, though, Isaac was not remembering how frightened he had been, he was just grumpy and unhappy about leaving his home and his mother again.
"Don't make me go, Mommy," he begged. "Can't I just stay here with you? Whatever the bad thing was that scared you, I won't let it happen again, okay?"
Julie and Anne both looked heartbroken at the little boy's pleas. Dean knelt down in front of Isaac where he stood with his arms wrapped around his mother's legs.
"Hey buddy, I heard you had a couple of guinea pigs that I didn't get to meet last time. Can you introduce me?" Isaac immediately released his hold on Julie and grabbed Dean's hand, pulling him towards the basement door. "You guys talk," Dean said as he was pulled away.
While Dean and Isaac were gone, Sam explained to Julie and the Ogles everything he and Dean had discovered and what their plan was now. By the time the little boy returned he was ready to leave with his grandparents.
"Mr. Dean says I might only have to have a couple more sleepovers, Mommy!" he announced excitedly. "I can be a big boy and do that if it's only a couple more."
"You are my big boy," Julie said, giving him a long good-bye hug. "I'll see you in the morning."
"You boys let me know if you need anything else tonight," Mr. Ogle said as he left, a hopeful look on his face.
"Be careful," Julie said, her gaze moving from Sam to Dean as they prepared to leave. "Isaac and I would be really upset if anything happened to you." Dean just smiled at her and winked.
"Don't worry," he said, "we're professionals."