Chapter Fourteen

Sam didn't want to be working a case. But that didn't mean the case disappeared.

He wanted to keep on liking this school, since it had been good to him. He had sharp teachers and interesting classes, a friend in Kappie and a girl who passed him notes in Latin. Then he corrected her grammar and passed it back, and she corrected his and tossed it onto his desk again. Sam had kept one of those notes that passed back and forth for the hour of class. It was in his sock drawer so no one would find it.

Yet liking this school didn't mean its secrets went away, and Penworth had a lot of secrets. The deeper he dug, the more he uncovered. Even the most innocent, throwaway comments had deeper stories, such as Lucy's offhand tale about her sister winning the lead in the school play last year by default. The competition had been Sabrina White, a senior who blew everyone out of the water with her audition. Although she had been at this school since her freshman year with no health conditions to speak of, not long after winning the part she came down with a case of severe allergies that only alleviated when she left the area.

Sam had gotten the rest of the story. Allergies meant mushrooms literally growing in her throat! He saw the pictures and wanted to throw up at the thought of those clotting his airway. Sabrina nearly died in the cafeteria. Now she went to a college in Connecticut. Without allergies. The strangest part about it was that the mushrooms started drying up and dying on the ambulance ride to the Stonebridge Hospital across town. Once the hospital cut them out and released her, she'd come back to school and they promptly grew back. After she nearly died a second time, she stopped coming back.

If two first generation students at this school hated each other, they avoided one another, spread gossip, or had a fistfight. If a first generation and a third generation squabbled, it was only more of the same but with more ostracizing, since the first generation had few to back him up. Lenny Richards and Elliot Jacom were fourth generations who made each other's lives hell, carrying on a conflict that started with their third generation fathers.

Nothing weird happened to either of them. It was just regular school stuff. The weirdness happened much more often when one of the people involved was a Fifth Gen. Like Hilary Warwick, who wanted the part that the second generation Sabrina White won. On his notes of weird incidents, Sam was adding stars by Fifth Gen names if one was involved.

If a student wanted something that Lucy did too . . . Sam was overcome with dislike for himself at the thought. Whatever this was, it didn't involve her. Nor did it involve a nice Fifth Gen like Stuart Miller. And what about Calvin and Rebecca Dillinger? They were Fifth Gens and cousins, but perfectly pleasant people.

There was something here that Sam wasn't seeing. Actually, at the moment there were plenty of things that he wasn't seeing. Holding the flashlight steady while Dean clipped the chains, Sam looked around nervously. He didn't want a demerit, and Dad was going to be in a terrible mood if they got expelled for vandalism.

Tossing the clippers aside, Dean unwrapped the chains and then popped the flashlight out of Sam's hands. That was rude. Sam bit back a comment since this wasn't the time and followed his brother down a steep flight of stone stairs. This place wasn't used regularly, judging from the layers of cobwebs strung along the ceiling.

At the landing was practically an acre of storage. Long tables were stacked with boxes, and more boxes were under the tables. Filing cabinets lined up along one wall and opaque plastic tarps covered old computers. Dean ran the beam carefully over everything. Then he found the light switch and flipped it on.

"Not promising," Sam said in the dim yellow glow.

"I'll take this end, you take that end," Dean said.

"What am I looking for?"

"I don't know! Anything!"

Anything. That was a pretty broad category. Having the flashlight snatched away put Sam in an antagonistic mood. He swallowed it down and went as bidden to the far side of the basement. Boxes and more boxes . . . popping off a lid at random, he inspected the contents. Books. Nothing spooky, just old educational codes atop financial files. He put the lid back on and opened a second. It looked like retired sports equipment. This basement was just a catchall for the effluvia of the school above.

Although packed, the room had been kept fairly tidy over the years. The dust was thick, but narrow paths wound through the mountain ranges of tables stacked unevenly with boxes. Sam walked along, peeking into boxes to find ancient yearbooks and yellowing receipts. A broken copier had been moved down here as well. He passed it and pushed into the last aisle.

Boxes. That was all. They ran up almost to the ceiling. It was time to get back to his dorm room, pretend he had had an upset stomach if Kappie woke up and asked where he'd been. Sam started to turn away, and then a small oddity caught his eye. Some of the boxes were stacked within the aisle itself at the far end, even though there was space under a table to contain them. He walked over and lifted the lid of a shoebox on the top. It was just more receipts. Wondering why the boxes were there, Sam crouched down and looked under the table.

It looked like there was a door to a crawlspace. Rather than call over his brother, who he was still mad at for being a jerk, Sam slipped under the table and pushed cautiously at the door. Cracked open slightly, it gave. Within was a strange light, which flickered over the stone floor like the changing images of a screen at the theater.

"Sam?" Dean called.

Without giving him the courtesy of a reply, Sam crawled inside.