Part 14 – Dean

One thought clanged through Dean's mind.

Not again.

Not again, not again, not again…

Not only had being in the Otherworld been a lot worse for them as far as monster quotient, but Sam had nearly had his face melted off and Castiel had been reduced to a weak, shaking mass Dean was forced to cart around for twenty minutes.

This was bad.

As the walls were stripped down to the burnt and dark version of the Otherworld, the siren blaring loudly from outside, the situation quickly got a whole lot worse when Jonah suddenly took off back upstairs.

"Jonah, wait!" Sam called after the mechanic, but Jonah was practically sprinting up the stairs. It didn't seem to be in fear, but more like urgency to get somewhere, not just urgency to get away from whatever might lay in wait for them outside.

Like that not-quite-man with the pyramid shaped helmet. The one that made Dean think too vividly of blood and torn tissue and screaming souls.

Dean shook the thought off. They had to keep their wits about them. Jonah could run into any number of nasties upstairs without help. So he, Sam, and Castiel hurried after Jonah's quickly fleeing form to try and stop the fool before he could get too far away.

"Just hang on a second, man!" Dean yelled, hating that his voice might alert more creatures to their whereabouts, but not sure what else to do, "Where do you think you're going? We have to stay together!"

"He is returning to the room," Castiel said from beside Dean, not as out of breath as Dean would have expected, but certain in his deduction.

"The room we came in through?" Sam questioned, "Why?"

"I do not know," said Castiel, ashamed it seemed that he could not give them a better answer.

Dean hated being surrounded by such brooding martyrs. "Doesn't matter. We gotta catch up to him before he does something stupid."

They followed after Jonah all the way back up the stairs and down the long corridor toward the room they had first entered the building through. More and more of the world around them burned away to reveal that strange mechanical version of itself as they ran, becoming bare-boned and menacing all over again.

Despite being brought into the Otherworld, Dean could not believe their luck that they did not run into any of those acid creatures this time, or anything else for that matter. When they reached the room Jonah had returned to, Dean had the most nauseating feeling that what was about to happen was going to be much worse than dealing with those previous monsters.

"Jonah, what are you doing?" Sam started with some caution after they had burst into the room.

Jonah was standing near the mantle of liquor bottles, staring at the bed with the mannequin atop it. Only now the mannequin, the whole room, was different, changed in the Otherworld. Now, the mannequin looked like a corpse, fresh and gooey with melted tissue, its sinew coating the worn mattress like it was glued there, looking gaunt and disgusting.

"Jonah," Sam said more firmly, walking closer to the man who was still just staring, his hand on the mantle, touching one of the bottles with his fingertips.

"I didn't think I'd had too much. I hadn't. I was okay to drive, I hadn't had too much," Jonah said in a low-toned rant, "I hadn't. I hadn't. But then…that truck came out of nowhere and I didn't know how to avoid it. The…the boys were in the backseat…"

Dean didn't know how he should be reacting to this. What exactly was Jonah confessing? And what did it have to do with that corpse?

"I should have stopped then. I should have stopped. I didn't need to drink them away…after losing them both like that."

"Jonah," Sam tried again.

Slowly, as if finally hearing Sam, Jonah turned his head to look at them. His expression was hollow, haunted. "Afterward, my wife, she…she killed herself. Took a handful of pills and just died there on the bed. I didn't find her until morning, I was so…so far gone."

"You said your family was waiting for you back home," Dean stated the obvious, remembering when they had first heard that Jonah had a wife and sons, just like their own father.

"No one's waiting for me anymore…" Jonah thrashed out at the bottles on the mantle, sweeping them all to the floor. "I should have been the one that died, not them!" he cried, "It should have been me!"

The shattering of glass and spilling of liquor made Dean flinch back, but at the same time he was ready to rush up to Jonah and hold onto the other man as tightly as he could until he finally calmed down. They didn't have time for this, even if Silent Hill was set on torturing them all and it felt wrong to rush such grief.

Dean glanced only briefly at Sam and Castiel before starting to move forward, but he didn't manage to grab onto Jonah at all before a sudden noise had him stopping in his tracks.

There was an awful creaking sound, an screech of metal against a wooden floor…from the bed moving.

Dean was certain in his hatred for Silent Hill when he looked over at the bed and saw that gooey rotten corpse atop it pulsating with life.

"Dean!" Castiel called out.

A strong grip from two hands, one from the angel and one from Sam, grabbed Dean by his arms and pulled him back. They got him out of the way just in time as the bed lurched up, folding grotesquely into something like a wild animal but still a bed. The corpse attached to it was alive somehow, in some twisted way, but it was also one with the bed, some awful creature made from Jonah's past horrors suddenly come to life.

Jonah screamed at the sight but did not move out of the way. The bed crashed into him, knocking him hard against the mantle.

Dean could not even begin to think of how to fight this thing. It was more than just a monster, it was personal, personal for Jonah, maybe even the actual corpse of the guy's wife for all they knew. But personal or not, they had to take this thing down before it tore Jonah apart. The body's boney and shredded arms were already reaching for Jonah, calling out to him practically, like a god damn siren.

Dean readied his shotgun.

Sam pulled a pistol.

Castiel had his borrowed knife.

All at once they acted.

Dean thought he had aimed well, but his first shot ricocheted off one of the metal posts of the bed, as did Sam's, and Castiel, who had lunged forward, was only able to stab at the thing's legs before it whipped about and sent him flying across the room. The angel crumbled too human-like to the floor.

"Aim for the body!" Dean shouted at Sam as he rounded around the other side of the bed, gauging carefully to be sure he didn't accidentally hit Jonah, who remained pinned against the mantle amidst all that broken glass.

Sam could barely get around to aim at anything above the midsection, but he got in a few lucky shots, while Dean tried his best to get closer to the head. These creatures did not go down easy, and this…thing they were fighting now was obviously stronger than the acid monsters.

As they took shot after shot, darting back and forth to avoid the arms of the corpse or the legs of the damn bed, Dean could hear Jonah sobbing, not trying to escape his fate but remaining willingly pinned.

Castiel appeared with the knife again, pushing passed Dean to get dangerously close to the head of the creature and those snaking, summoning arms. The angel leapt up and jammed the knife to the hilt through the creature's right eye, finally getting the thing to thrash in pain and eventually start to still.

Black, old blood as if to prove that this creature was alive and also not alive, sprayed like droplets of gore onto Castiel's face and the front of his white button down shirt.

He didn't look at all anymore like the angel Dean was used to.

A scream erupted from Jonah, noticing that the creature was dead, and that he was still pinned by half the bed. He stared horrified at the body, molded as it was to the mattress, a great mess of torn muscle, blood, and gore.

"You should have let her kill me," he said in a low whisper, closing his eyes tightly as he remained pressed to the mantle, "You should have let her kill me…"

God damn did Dean hate martyrs, deserving of retribution or not.

He stalked over to Jonah, pushing around Sam, and began forcing the bed creature out of the way to free Jonah whether the guy wanted freedom or not.

"Enough of this bullshit," Dean said, "This place is trying to mess with us, get inside our heads. Don't let it. You did wrong by your family, fine, but you're still here. Now get a hold of yourself and move your ass. We need to find a safer place until the Otherworld passes by again. Now." Dean grabbed Jonah and pushed him toward the door, making the man stumble over the broken glass of the liquor bottles.

He looked so broken himself, and Dean understood that kind of pain, he really did, but they did not have time for sympathies.

Sam and Castiel came up beside Dean, neither countering him, though Sam looked like he wished he could offer a shoulder for Jonah to cry on. And Cas, damn, he just looked so human, worn and tired and covered in blood.

"Let's go."

Dean led the others back down the same path they had already gone before, slower this time in case fresh monsters decided to rear their heads. It was eerily calm and quiet for the Otherworld, which worried Dean as they made their way back downstairs. Jonah was quiet too, sluggish but moving, and the others were dead silent beside him.

This place really was some great depth of evil, striving to drive them mad before it killed them. The Otherworld was still all around them with its darkened and red surfaces like living embers. Dean approached that same door they had almost escaped through before, and readied for the worst.

"Are we really heading out there while it's like this?" Sam asked, quietly and close beside Dean so Jonah wouldn't hear, "What are we supposed to do with Jonah like this, Dean? He's in no condition to fight anything. I think I'm starting to see what we have in common," he added forlornly.

Dean was starting to get that too. Death. Guilt. Grief. Just what Dean always wanted to have in common with other people.

All he could bring himself to do was shrug. They had to keep moving. They needed to find Lilith, find the seal and get the hell out of there before they became permanent fixtures.

"Everybody ready?" Dean asked, checking to make sure everyone had a weapon on them, even Jonah, who was clinging loosely to his bat.

Dean hardly felt like everyone really was ready even after they had all nodded, what with Sam still burnt by acid, albeit seemingly okay, Jonah acting completely out of it, and Cas winded and sluggish, but they had little choice.

When Dean thought it was as safe as it was going to get, he opened the door and checked quickly for immediate enemies. There was no way to be sure if there were creatures hidden behind the large exit door, so Dean checked as well as he could for enemies and when he found nothing but ash he motioned for the others to follow him.

Castiel went first, then Sam, and finally Jonah. They just had to move, as quickly as they could, for another building where they could regroup and set out for clues on where Lilith and the seal might be. It should have been easy enough without any immediately visible monsters.

But when Dean paused before beginning their trek to make sure all of his companions were with him, he saw Jonah still standing back by the door, looking defeated, like he didn't want to keep going, like he didn't care anymore what happened to him. He looked up at Dean and his eyes were filled with a tiredness that Dean recognized only too well.

Jonah would not be going with them.

As that awful thought struck Dean, he saw too late that there was nothing he could do. As if having come from nothing but the ashen black air itself, the too large man with the pyramid head was suddenly there, right there, his long large blade already half raised behind Jonah as he appeared.

"No!" Dean cried out, trying to run to Jonah, but kept from that foolish task by Sam and Castiel hanging onto him for dear life and holding him back. They were pleading and screaming at him, but that awful monster, so much worse than any of the others, was already swinging.

Jonah just stood there, not even bothering to turn and look, simply accepting that his life was over because that was what he wanted.

But Dean wasn't really looking at Jonah as the blade swung cleanly, cutting the mechanic into two grotesque halves. He could only look at the pyramid helmet, the muscled body, the joy in which the knife like a sword was wielded.

"No…"

"Dean!" rang out Sam and Castiel's voices, but Dean was not listening.

No…

tbc...

A/N: Muwahaha! ...reviews? ;-)

Crimson