Chapter 21 - Faith Part 2
After a long drive, we finally pulled into a muddy lot where a large white circus tent sat in the middle. The lot housed other things such as campers and tents, people were trudging through the mud to get to the tent.
We opened the Impala doors and stepped out. Sam tried to help Dean out fo the car, but he forced him off. "Man your a lying bastard." He spat at Sam. "I thought you said we were going to see a doctor."
"I believe I said a specialist." Sam defended as we made our way through the mud. "Look Dean, this guys supposed to be the real deal."
"I can't believe you brought me here to heal some guy that heals people out of a tent." Dean said angrily.
"Reverend La Grange is a great man!" A passing women with an umbrella smugly told Dean.
"Yeah that's nice." Dean yelled back sarcastically.
"Dean just give it a chance." I told him taking his hand from his pocket and squeezing it gently.
We passed an alteration between a protester and a cop just outside the tent. "I take it he's not part of the flock." Dean commented.
"Well when people see something they can't explain there's controversy." Sam explained.
"Well come on a faith healer?" Dean asked annoyed.
"Maybe it's time to have a little faith Dean." Sam answered back.
"You know what I got faith in? Reality. Knowing what's really going on."
"How can you be a sceptic with the things we see everyday?" I asked.
"Exactly we see them, we now there real." Dean said.
"But if you know evils out there, how could you not believe goods out there too?" Sam asked.
"Because I've seen what evil does to good people."
"Maybe God works in mysterious ways." A young blond interjected.
Dean looked her up and down and smiled. "Maybe he does. "I think you just turned me around on the subject."
I rolled my eyes and dropped his hand from mine, apparently since he was dying it was okay to flirt with another women in front of me.
The girl laughed. "Yeah, I'm sure."
"I'm Dean." He said sticking out his hand. "This is Sam and Bree."
"Layla." She said extending her hand too. "So if your not a believer then why are you here?"
"Apparently these two believe enough for the three of us."
"Come on Layla, it's about to start." Another women said taking a hold of Layla's arm.
"You know if you want me to kill you faster, just keep flirting with every women you see and I'm sure I could arrange something." I told Dean as we watched Layla disappear into the crowd inside the tent.
"Come on baby, you know your the only one for me." Dean said pulling me close to him and walking inside.
"Your lucky your dying." I said and Sam let out a laugh.
The crowd was large inside the tent. "Yeah peace, love and trust all over." Dean smirked pointing at a security camera to the right of us.
"Come on." Sam said grabbing Dean's arm as he went to take a seat in the back row.
"What are you doing, let's sit here."
"Were sitting up front." Sam said pointing to three empty seats.
"What, why?" Dean whispered loudly.
"Come on." Sam said pulling Dean with him.
"You alright?" I asked.
"This is ridiculous." Dean grumbled to himself before pushing Sam away. "Get off me."
The three of us took a group of seats right behind Layla as the Reverend took his place on stage. "Each morning my wife Suzanne reads me the news, never seems good does it?"
The crowd yelled out "no" in response to Roy's question.
"Seems like there's always someone committing some immoral unspeakable act, but I say to you God is watching. God rewards the good and he punishes the corrupt."
Roy continued and the crowd hung on every word the man said. People agreed, clapped, some even cheered. "It is the Lord that does the healing here friends, the Lord who guides me in choosing who to heal by helping me see into people's hearts."
"Amen." The crown agreed.
"Yeah and right into their wallets." I heard Dean whisper.
"You think so young man?" Roy asked and Dean's eyes went wide as he realized he had been heard.
"Sorry." He said trying to cover his tracks.
"No, no. don't be. Just watch what you say around a blind man, we got real sharp ears. ." Roy said and the crowd laughed along with him. "What's your name son?"
Dean cleared his throat. "Dean."
"Dean?" Roy said nodding his head and waving his fingers towards us. "I want you to come up here with me."
Everyone clapped and Suzanne held out her hand. "No, it's okay."
"What are you doing?" Sam asked.
"You've come here to be healed haven't you?
"Well yeah but uh, maybe you should just pick someone else." Dean said stubbornly.
"Dean, this is your chance." I urged but he waved me off.
"I didn't pick you Dean the Lord did." Roy said.
"Get up there." Sam said joining in with the clapping of the crowd. Dean stood up and I pushed him lightly to get him moving before joining in with the clapping as well.
"You ready?"
"No disrespect but I'm not exactly a believer."
"You will be son." Roy re-assured. "Pray with me friends. All around us people joined hands together and began to pray along. I grabbed Sam's hand and he squeezed tightly as we watched.
Roy lifted his hands and seemed to pray for a moment before laying them on the side of Dean's head. "Alright now, alright now." He said as Dean fell to his knees on the stage before his eyes closed and he fell so he was laying on the stage floor.
"Dean." I yelled and Sam and I ran over to the stage. Sam shook Dean and his eyes opened wide as he took a deep breathe of air.
"So you really feel okay" Sam asked Dean as we sat in the hospital waiting for the doctor to return.
"I feel fine Sam."
The doctor walked in reading off a clipboard. "Well according to all your test results there's nothing wrong with your heart. No sign there ever was. Not that a man your age should be having heart trouble, but still it's strange, it does happen."
"What do you mean strange?" Dean asked the doctor.
"Well just yesterday a young guy like you, 27, athletic, out of no where a heart attack."
"Thanks doc." Dean said looking at the ground and waiting for the doctor to leave the room. "That's odd."
"Maybe it's a coincidence." Sam said. "People's hearts give out all the time man."
"No they don't."
"Look Dean, do we really have to look this one in the mouth? I mean can't we just be thankful that the guy saved your life and move on?"
As much as I wanted Sam to be right, Dean did seem to have a point. coincidences didn't usually exist in our line of work.
Dean stood up qickly and looked Sam straight in the eye. "Because I just can't shake this feeling that's why."
"What feeling?" I asked.
"When I was healed, I just, I felt wrong. I felt cold and for a second I saw someone, this old man. I'm telling you guys it was a spirit."
Sam wasn't convinced. "If there was something there Dean I think we would have seen it too. I mean especially me, I've been seeing a lot of things lately."
"Well excuse me psychic wonder, but I think you need a little fate on this one. I've been hunting long enough to trust a feeling like this."
"Sam, I think Dean may be right about this one. I know that whenever I feel this strongly about something I have to pursue it, that's what we do." I said.
Sam looked between us and sighed. "Yeah, alright. So what do you wanna do?"
"Why don't you two go check out that heart attack guy, I'm gonna go visit the reverend." Dean told us before taking off.
Sam and I walked over to where the heart attack victim had been found, the local rec centre. "I'm telling you he seemed healthy. Swam everyday, didn't smoke, his heart attack kinda seemed bizarre." One of the workers told us as we walked through the centre.
"And you said he was running right before he collapssed?" Sam asked.
"Yeah he was freaking out. Said that something was after him."
"Did he say what?" I asked.
The worker shrugged. "Well I didn't ask what. I mean there wasn't anything."
"Alright thanks." I said and we turned to leave when I noticed the clock on the wall near the stairs had stopped. "Hey buddy, your clocks busted."
"Oh yeah, we can't get it working. It just froze there, 4:17."
"Isn't that the same time Marshall died?" I asked.
"How'd you know? The man asked eyeing us.
"Lucky guess." Sam said.
We left and headed back to the motel room to do some research. Not long after we had started, Dean walked through the door. "What'd you find out?"
"I'm sorry." Sam said not meeting Dean's eyes.
"Sorry about what?"
"Marshall Hall died at 4:17." Sam continued.
"The exact time I was healed?"
"Yeah. So we put together a list of everyone that was healed. Six people in the last year and I crossed checked them with the local obits." Sam said handing Dean."
I stood up and crossed my arms. "Every time someone was healed, someone else died and each time the victaim died of the same symptom of the person that La Grange was healing at the time."
"Someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer?" Dean asked.
"Somehow La Grange is trading a life for another." I said.
Dean threw down the papers. "Wait, wait, wait so Marshall Hall died to save me?"
"Dean, that guy probably would've died anyway." Sam said sounding like he was trying to not only convince Dean but to convince himself as well. "And someone else would've been healed."
"You never should of brought me here." Dean said angrily.
"I was just trying to save your life." Sam said.
"We, I'm just as much to blame as you Sam." I said as Dean stood up from his chair and looked around the room.
"Some guy is dead now because of me!"
"We didn't know." I said quietly.
"The thing I don't understand is how is Roy doing it, how is he trading a life for a life?" Sam asked.
"Oh, he's not doing it." Dean said. "Something else is doing it for him."
"Wat do you mean?" I asked.
"The old man I saw on stage. I didn't wanna believe it but deep down I knew it."
"You knew what? What are you talking about?" Sam asked just as confused as I was.
"There's only one thing that can give and take like like that, were dealing with a reaper." Dean said grabbing a book and sitting down in the chair beside me.
"You really think it's the Grim Reaper?" Sam asked from the other side of the table. "Like angel of death, clutch your soul, the whole deal?"
"No, no, no, not the reaper, a reaper."Dean said.
"There's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on Earth." I explained. "A hundred different names, it's possible there's more than one of them."
"But Dean, I thought you said you saw a dude in a suit?" Sam asked from behind the laptop.
'Oh what, you think he should have been working the whole black robe thing?" Dean asked. "Bree said that the clock stopped right? Reapers stop time, and you can only see them when there coming at you. Which is why I could see it and you guys couldn't."
"Maybe." Sam said.
Dean was getting frustrated. "There's nothing else it could be Sam, the question is how's Roy controlling the damn thing?"
"That cross." I said remembering the cross on the stage behind Roy, I had spotted it the second we had stepped into that tent.
"What?" Dean asked turning to face me.
"There's this cross that I noticed in the church, I've seen it before." I said flipping through an old deck of tarot cards, I found the one I was looking for and handed it to Dean. "Here."
"A tarot?"
"It makes sense, I mean tarot dates back to the early Christian era right when some priests were still using magic and a few of them veered into the dark stuff; necromancy, how to push death away, how to cause it."
"So Roy is using black magic to bind the reaper?"Dean asked.
"If he is he's riding the whirlwind." Sam said looking at the tarot card.
"Okay then we stop Roy." Dean said standing up.
"How?" Sam asked.
"You know how." Dean said.
"What the hell are you talking about Dean? We can't kill Roy." Sam said.
"The guy's playing God, he's deciding who lives and who dies. That's a monster in my book."
"Were not gonna kill a human being Dean." I said standing up angrily. "If we do that then were no better then he is."
Dean looked at me and sighed. "Okay so we can't kill Roy, we can't kill death, any bright ideas anybody?"
"Okay if Roy's using some kind of spell on the reaper we gotta figure out what it is." Sam said.
"And how to break it." I added.