12:25
~25~ Manipulation
As with many in the hallway of the second floor, most of the rooms on the third were inaccessible. So far the brothers only came across guest rooms, which were lavish but not as much as those belonging to the Corvus family.
"You know, something's been bothering me," said Sam, rooting through one of these rooms. Dean was in one across the way, and with the open doors it was easy to communicate.
"Yeah? What's that?"
"Something Lilly Andersen told me. You know, Agnes' great granddaughter. She said Agnes was the youngest child of Judge Thomas' youngest daughter. The family tree showed she was the youngest, period."
"...Okay."
Done looking, Sam returned to the hallway. "We heard a baby crying in the master bedroom. I'm guessing the blood meant it didn't live long. If it had been somewhere else we could have assumed it was a servant's kid. But..."
Dean joined him, leaning against the door frame. "Ariel's ghost looked pretty old. Her kids were grown up and had rugrats of their own when they all died. So maybe the infant wasn't the seventh grandkid. Maybe it was Ariel's fifth, one that died long before this whole fiasco happened." He paused, recollecting the appearance of Ariel's ghost. She was in a white dress stained with blood. Her wrists were slashed open, but so was her stomach. Surely she was too old to have been pregnant at the time of her death...
Sam chewed his lip. "Yeah. Maybe. I guess...Thomas and Angelina looked pretty young in that vision we saw in the music room. Sounds like this 'fiasco' started years before 1844."
"So say if it was Ariel who found out her husband was cheating, bided her time, plotted her vengeance until poof – she summons a creature that turns people into homicidal fruitloops. Why would she then kill herself? Assuming she did."
Sam shrugged and started down the hallway again. "I feel like we're thinking in circles. Maybe we should focus on our leads."
"Leads? There's more than one?"
"The paintings, for one," said Sam, holding up a finger in tally. "We know we need to find some records of the family activities. Could be journals, newspapers, history texts, anything. And Tyson said something about a book being in a room full of plants. Probably some kind of conservatory. It's gotta be nearby."
"You know what would be awesome? If we had a skeleton key." Dean rattled a door knob a little harder than necessary, frustrated by the number of broken and engaged locks.
Sam snorted. "If only."
Static. Both men looked to Sam's middle. He pulled out the walkie-talkie, which continued to hiss and spit. Snatches of words blurted through.
"Bu... h... cht... ait... ult... ing... st..."
"Must be broken—" Sam's mouth clicked shut at Dean's angry gesture. So, despite the looming deadline, they listened.
Ω
"I'm pretty sure she hasn't left the morgue," said Garth, peering through the shutters to the morgue hallway beyond. He couldn't see much. He felt like he was trapped in a box.
He returned to the desk, to the heap of texts from the library. They were a mishmash of topics, from possession to curses to local fables. He'd looked through them all already, but he had to do something.
Lilly Andersen was half dozing in a swivel chair. She raised her head. "Maybe she's asleep in her office. You should go look for her."
Garth chewed his cheek, checked the time on his phone. It had been an hour since he last tried to call Dr Corrigan. He stood. "She must be. She wouldn't leave without locking up."
He was just reaching for the door knob when someone knocked. He smiled. "Speak of the devil and he shall—"
The door opened. His smile fell.
"Appear."
It was Detective Roberts. Head of the case, frustratingly suspicious of Garth and looking pissed. His radio was on the fritz but he didn't seem to care.
"Um...is there a problem, officer?" Garth squeaked.
Roberts had a way of controlling his eyebrows that would make everyone in a room feel like they were being scrutinized.
"What are you doing here, Ranger?" he demanded, peering over Garth's shoulder. Fortunately, Sam and Dean had already been returned to their coolers. But Lilly was an incongruous point in the room.
Roberts caught the scent instantly, and drilled "Ranger" Hank with a penance stare.
"Just...um..." Hank shuffled, didn't seem to want to back up and let Roberts through. So he pushed his way in.
"Wait! This isn't what it looks like."
Roberts scanned the room, staring at Lilly for several seconds before turning his attention to the desk. On it were piles of books. And none of them had anything to do with pathology.
He picked one up. "'Demonic Possession.'" He dropped it. Picked up another. "'A Study of Souls.'" Drop. Pick up. "'Cherokee Legends.'" He turned to Hank, eyebrow arched. "A bit of late night reading? Catching up on the latest trends?"
Hank had closed the door, looking nervous but steadfast. He was about to speak when Roberts' radio squealed through the static. Annoyed, he turned it off. It had been doing that all evening, ever since he staked out the place. It had been particularly finicky whenever he walked past this room, for whatever reason.
"I'm...working on a lead," said Garth. His nails were digging into his palms and he crossed his arms. "I'm thinking this was some kind of ritualistic killing. You know. Satanic worshippers or something."
Roberts looked more challenging than interested. "Oh? And you had to look it up here?"
"Library closed."
"Oh, right. And naturally you come to an examination room. Not a cafe or hotel suite."
Garth shuffled. "The smell helps me think."
With a sharp turn on his heel, Roberts marched to the stainless steel body refrigerators lining one wall. "Which ones are theirs?" He was reading the labels. Any second he would find them on his own.
"Who?" Garth slowly reached for his waistband.
"You know damn well who." He found Dean's drawer and pulled him out. He saw the bloodied sheets, from the strange, postmortem wounds no one saw him attain. "What do we have here?" He lifted the sheet, exposing Dean's arm and blistered face. "Mm hm." He turned, saw Sam's drawer next to his brother's. He pulled it out too, saw more blood. He turned.
"Care to explain th—?" He broke off, staring down the barrel of Garth's gun, aimed between his eyes.
"I'm sorry, detective. You shouldn't have come here."
The nervousness was gone. Hank still looked scared but Roberts could see the determination, the calm strength of a well-worn soldier.
"Why were you following me?" Hank demanded.
"Perhaps for the same reason that you're here in the middle of the night with a bunch of freaky books and an old woman."
"Oh? And what reason is that?"
"Something's wrong with this case. And I think you know more than you're letting on."
He wasn't going to say more aloud. Not because he didn't want Hank thinking him a nutbar, but because he didn't want to admit it to himself – that the world wasn't so black and white as the academy would have one believe. There wasn't just the real and the not-real. He never really noticed until he passed his exams and got the detective mantle, when he was permitted to think and puzzle things over. The weird ones were few and far between, but that made them stand out all the more: a perfectly healthy person whose heart exploded while they slept. A mauling in a public bathroom. A string of bloodless corpses in the lake. They blamed it on leeches.
And now five vics in one week, all appearing to have been scared to death. Roberts would have called a hunt for a serial killer, if there were obvious indications of homicide. The bloodless corpses of '07, however, had been the work of a serial killer, he was sure. They'd had no leads, but, funnily enough, a couple of feds rolled through, and suddenly, poof, the killings stopped and the feds vanished. No arrests were made. To cap off the weirdness, an abandoned shack was found full of decapitated drifters. At least, they were assumed to be drifters. They weren't in the database. And their heads were never found.
Although Roberts never shared his speculations with anybody, he doubted the suits had been feds. Probably some patriotic vigilantes with serious illusions of grandeur. And here, pointing a gun at his head, might very well be another one, whose companions failed to catch the killer and were killed themselves.
"Well," said Hank. "What are we going to do about this?"
Hank wasn't going to shoot him. Roberts stood taller, dwarfing the scrawny man. "First, I think you should tell me who you really are. Let's start with a name."
Garth paused, then opened his mouth. Before he could speak, Roberts' radio turned itself on and began to hiss at them.
All three stared at the device. When the detective switched it off, it turned on again.
"Damn thing." He pulled it off his belt, and was going to take out the batteries when Lilly got up from her chair, raising a shaky arm.
"Don't!"
He froze, staring at her. She waved between the two men.
"Give it to Garth."
Roberts looked to the other man. "So. Garth, is it? Garth, I'm arresting you for impersonation of an—"
"Oh, will you shut up! Shut up and give him the damn radio," Lilly snapped. "Hurry! I'm limited for time, you know." She had the look of a very angry grandmother, and finally, Roberts decided there was no harm in giving Garth the radio. He was also too curious to do anything once Garth took it, retreated, and put the gun down.
Garth looked to Lilly. "Now what?"
"Speak into it."
"What?"
"Speak. Now."
Still hesitant, Garth lifted the radio to his mouth and pressed the talk button. "Hello?"
Sputter. Hiss. Garble. Garth shrugged at Lilly, who gestured at him to try again.
"Hello. Can anybody hear me?"
Spit. Sizzle. Then...
"Garth?"
The man's face lost every drop of colour. He gripped the radio tightly.
"Dean?" He almost forgot to release the talk button.
"Holy hell, Garth, is that you?"
He had to sit down. "Man, it is so good to hear your voice...Where are you?"
"We're in Corvus Manor."
"We? Is Sam with you?"
A pause. Then. "Hey, Garth."
"Sam! How you doing, man? What—?"
"What the devil is this?" Roberts demanded. "Some kind of joke?"
"Who was that?"
Garth grimaced. "It's no joke, sir. Please, have a seat." He hit the talk button. "That was Detective Roberts. He found...well he found..." A muscle jumped in his jaw. "He found your bodies before I did...Over."
"Are they okay?"
"Yes. Well, no. Someone's been tampering with them. You've got a bite and a sliced shoulder. Dean's fist looked like it went through a window, his arm's cut and he's got some nasty burns. Both of your anti-possession charms were branded. Over."
A long pause. Finally, Garth spoke again.
"I'm sorry, guys. I should have been there. I'm sorry it had to end this way."
"Garth," said Dean, "we're not dead."
Garth shook his head. Denial was quite the hurtle to overcome. "I'm afraid you are. Your bodies are here, and we're speaking through a walkie-talkie. Classic trans-veil communication. Over."
"I told you, we're in Corvus Manor. Kind of."
"Kind of?"
"We're not really here." Sam again. "Nothing we see is...real. We're in the Collective Unconscious. Ever hear of it?"
Garth blinked, glancing at Lilly. "Yeah, but...that's lingo for psychics or whatever. It's not real, is it?"
"It is. Garth, we need your help, man."
"What do you need me to do?"
"We need you to go to Lilly Andersen. Get her to tell you everything she knows about what might have happened to this family a hundred and fifty years ago."
"No need, she's right here."
"Seriously? What are you doing?"
"Sitting at the morgue with your bodies...Don't take that in a weird way."
"Trying not to. Lilly, got anything for us?"
She took the radio, shaking her head. "I already told you everything I know. The only one who knows more than I vanished decades ago."
"Agnes. Right. Well we met her."
"What?"
"Yeah, she's been appearing to us as a child, or a crow. But only for a few moments at a time. It's like she gets tired. Kind of like a ghost."
"And what is she doing?"
"Trying to help us. But we're running out of time. We're supposed to solve clues to find a way out, and so far—"
"You." Lilly pointed to Detective Roberts. "Go find Dr Corrigan. Now."
"Who?"
"Dr Corrigan, the examiner. Just humour me, young man."
Although puzzled, Roberts obeyed, closing the door behind him. He was puzzled because, for one, he wasn't sure how an examiner would be of use right now, and for another, he'd never heard of this Corrigan. He knew most of the staff in this morgue, well enough to be on a first-name basis. Helped to get what they were really thinking.
"—haven't found the last painting, but even if we do, we have less than an hour left, and then it'll be too late," Sam finished, unaware of the interruption.
Garth stiffened, taking the radio from Lilly. He looked at the clock. Twelve thirty in the morning. "Too late for what?"
"We'll be trapped here, like George and his friends."
"George is with you?"
"Not really. He's around somewhere."
"Hey, Garth," said Dean. "Don't let anybody chop our bodies up, okay? We need somewhere to go once we get out of this place."
Garth tried to smile. People can hear smiles. "Gotcha covered, bud." He looked up as Lilly waved at him, gesturing for the radio. He passed it to her.
"I want you boys to listen to me carefully. And heed me. Time is a man-made construct."
A long pause.
"Okay," said Sam.
"You're perceiving it as you always have, in your subconscious. Your internal clocks are keeping time with clocks in the real world, thus affecting the time in the Collective Unconscious." She paused, letting them think that through.
"So...if we think time slower, time here will slow down?"
"I would assume so."
"And we'll buy ourselves more."
"Which you'll need, if you keep dragging your feet."
"Alright, we'll give it a shot."
"One more thing," said Dean. "Tie—"
Hiss, sputter, gurgle. Connection failed.
"Blast." Garth looked to her. "This complicates things a bit."
Ω
"...Garth...? Garth!" Dean looked at the walkie-talkie display. It was dead. "Dammit."
"What were you trying to tell him?" asked Sam.
Dean pressed a few buttons, but it was unresponsive. "To tie our bodies down. He said our anti-possession tattoos had been damaged. Means our meatsuits are plump for the picking."
"He also said our bodies were hurt." Sam put a hand to his shoulder. The cut still burned. "Which means that, whatever happens to us here, happens out there."
"Damn. Here I was thinking we were safe from death."
Sam released a breath, then headed back for the stairs. So far, the grandfather clock was the only keeper of time he'd come across, and he wanted to be able to see if Lilly's advice would work.
In the foyer, one look at the clock turned his stomach to ice. Twenty eight minutes left.
"Yikes. We're cutting it a little close," said Dean.
"Aren't we always?" Sam stood toe to toe with the grandfather clock, studying its yellowed face, curlicue numbers and ever advancing hands. As he watched, yet another minute clicked away.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
"Time is a man-made construct. Used to organize the past and plan and predict the future. It doesn't exist. It's just another way for people to try to make sense of reality."
Dean stared at the back of Sam's head, face lined with puzzled concern. Then he realized...the soft clicking of passing seconds was getting slower.
Tick...Tock...Tick...Tock...
Dean was in the same plane. He was probably hindering Sam's progress just by not thinking the same. But he couldn't wrap his head around the idea of time not being real. So he just thought of a clock ticking even slower than it was now.
Slower... Slower...
Tick...
Tock...
Tick...
Tock...
"We did it, Dean."
He'd closed his eyes. Opening them, he looked at the pendulum through the clock's dusty glass door. It was swinging less than a quarter of its normal speed.
"Huh. Does that mean...we actually have more time?"
"Ever get one of those dreams that seemed to last for hours, only to wake up and realize you've been asleep just a few minutes?"
"Yeah. Actually that happened when we had to sleep in the kid's room."
"Well if time's just a harness people put on the passage of motion in the real world, then it must be flexible here. As long as we keep thinking it that way," said Sam. "Everything's...moving the same way, but as long as this clock is slowed, we have a chance to finish what we started. That's probably why it wouldn't stay broken. It's the only one in the house."
Dean paused, then shook his head. "I'll take your word for it. Let's get on with this."