Chapter 35: Letting Go

With my hand in Sam's, I marched across the road, hoping my walk showed just how irritated I was. I felt a little knot of discomfort in the pit of my stomach. I shouldn't have been surprised really, knowing Dean, and having known his father. They both had some pretty old fashioned ideas about manliness. So did my father, for that matter. And, well, most people say something homophobic every now and then, don't they?

But it's different when you actually hear it. When someone you know, and have been sleeping in a room with, night after night, actually says something that makes you realise they have certain opinions. Dean was "just joking", but it's hard to tell how much someone means what they say. There's a thin line between joking and being serious. Maybe Dean really did have a strong opinion about who should sleep with who, and that made me very uncomfortable.

"It's okay," Sam said. "He says stuff like that sometimes. I'm not offended."

I let go of Sam's hand as we climbed the stairs onto the porch.

"Well… I am."

I pretended to look at the pumpkin, as Sam straightened beside me. I wasn't really looking at anything, a hazy cloud of fear had settled across my vision for a second as I realised that maybe I should not have said that.

"But you're not…" Sam started. "Are you?"

"That's a pretty personal question, Sam." And way too difficult to answer in a few moments.

"Uh… yeah," he said. "Sorry. So… should we knock?"

I finally let my breath out, hoping that he really would leave the conversation there. Dean came up behind us as Sam knocked on the door. Trying to avoid him, I peered in the window, but everything looked normal inside.

Sam knocked again and I thought I heard something inside, maybe a voice shouting? It might have been a TV? But if someone was home, why didn't they answer?

Dean picked the lock pretty quick and easy. He went in first, followed by Sam before I finally went in after them, pushing my discomfort down as deep as I could. We fanned out, each of us moving in a different direction.

There was a bang, not loud, but as though someone had dropped something, perhaps. Sam and Dean drew their guns, and I got the knife from my belt. The sound had come from the next room, maybe? Sam was closest to the door, and began to move towards it when a voice called out.

"Help! I'm in here!"

He ran through, and I followed him, Dean close behind. We came into the kitchen, perfectly ordinary and like you might see in any house. Except for the girl handcuffed to the oven. She was a pretty blonde, maybe sixteen, dressed in torn sweatpants and t-shirt. Her arms were all bruised, like someone had grabbed her by them and squeezed her hard. Some of them were more faded than others too, so it seemed like it had happened more than once.

There was more bruising on her wrists, where the handcuffs had rubbed against her.

"Hey! It's okay!" I told her, getting down on my knees beside her.

"You have to help me! She's a lunatic!" said the girl.

"Dean, the lock picks!" I told him, and he fumbled for a second but got them to me pretty quick.

As I started looking for the right tool, I kept talking to her. "What happened? Who did this?"

"My step mom, she just freaked out!" the girl told me. "Screamed at me, beat me, chained me up."

"Where is she now?" asked Sam.

She didn't know. I grabbed something that looked the right size, vaguely aware of the boys moving behind me.

"I'm Ellie," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder as I peered at the handcuffs. "It's gonna be okay. I'll get you out real quick."

I can pick handcuffs while I'm wearing them, so to get them off someone else is a piece of cake. I had to lean into the poor girl a little bit to get a good angle, but a few little clicks and I had one hand out, and then the other.

With both hands free, she grabbed me and held onto me tightly. I looked up at Sam and Dean, then, to find they had both left the room. Wherever they were, it didn't matter. It seemed like wicked step-mom wasn't home and I'd freed Cinderella. I sat with her a minute or two, rubbing her back, until Sam came back in.

"Ellie…" he muttered, urgently. "Ellie…"

"She's okay," I told him. "But I better call the police."

"Yeah," he said, obviously not picking up what I was putting down.

"I'm going to ring the cops," I said. "And the cops will come here."

"Oh," Sam said. "Yeah, okay. Do that."

Poor Cinderella (real name: Becky) was still crying when the cops and paramedics arrived. Sam and Dean, with their criminal records and posing locally as detectives, had long since disappeared, saying they'd meet me back at the car.

I had to stay and explain to the cops that I'd heard Becky's shouting and broken in to try and help, a story they believed, as she corroborated it. I'd already pocketed the lock picks and Becky, bless her, just said I had gotten the handcuffs off without explaining how, or that I'd had other people with me. After making my statement, I was free to leave and I hurried down the street to where the boys were waiting for me.

Dean was leaning against the Impala, while Sam sat on the hood, turning a red apple over and over in his hands, like he was trying to decide whether or not to eat it.

"She's okay!" I said, as I got near them. "She's headed to hospital."

"So… we saw the kid," Dean said. "Little girl, pale skin, dark hair."

"In the house?" I asked.

"Yep," said Sam, as he got his feet back on the ground. He handed me the apple. "Gave us this."

Dark haired and pale skin? Of course! Maybe with the apple, she was trying to make something clear to Sam and Dean.

"So, our ghost is Snow White?" I asked. "Great. But how does that help us? Still gotta find the kid."

"Sam says the poison apple puts Snow White into a really deep sleep," Dean said. "Right?"

"Right," I agreed.

"So… maybe our ghost isn't dead. Maybe she's in a coma," said Sam.

"Can… can comatose people be ghosts?" I asked.

"Astral projection," Dean said. "That's a thing, right?"

"Right."

"So… hospital," said Sam.

Dean opened the back door for me, and I wondered if it had something to do with my obvious offense at his earlier remark. He even shut it for me again after I got in, something he would never normally have done. He didn't say anything about it as he got into the driver's seat, though. But Dean didn't tend to be one for a verbal apology. I frowned at the back of his head, not sure how I felt about it. Maybe he was sorry. But maybe he wouldn't be, if he understood why I was offended.

I had to let the "detectives" do the talking when we got to the hospital. I hung around in the waiting area, watching them talk to a nurse. When they were done, they came back to talk to me.

"So get this," Sam said. "No little girls, but there is Doctor Garrison's daughter."

"How old is she?" I asked.

"Adult," Dean said. "But she's got dark hair and the nurse says she's been here a while. I mean, years…"

"Okay…" I said. "So maybe her spirit is the form she was in when she went into the coma. That makes sense. Where is she?"

Sam led the way along the corridors of the hospital, towards the room the nurse had given. It was in a quiet corridor, away from the bustle of the new patients coming in. We passed several silent rooms in the same corridor, and looking in, I saw sleeping patients. Maybe they were comatose, or critically ill. Many of them were elderly.

We heard Doctor Garrison's voice as we got near.

"…and the huntsman stepped inside, and in the bed lay the wolf."

Looking through the door, we saw him, sitting beside a bed. His daughter, Callie, was indeed very pale, and she had a lot of long, black hair. She was hooked up to the monitors, but she looked peaceful, lying so still as her father read to her from a book.

"So the huntsman took a pair of scissors and cut open the wolf's belly."

I nudged Sam and he nodded, understanding my meaning. Even Dean knew enough to recognise that Callie was hearing fairy tales while she slept.

Doctor Garrison noticed us, and he put the book down and came over to the door. "Detectives? Can I help you?"

"We just… we heard Callie is your daughter," Dean said.

"And we wanted to say how very sorry we are," Sam added.

This seemed to surprise Doctor Garrison, and he responded with just a nod and a "Well, thank you."

He was obviously headed out, and we followed him, walking along with him. As we walked, we asked him a few questions, trying not to seem like we were prying too much. He said that she had been in hospital since she was eight, after swallowing some bleach, though he didn't know how she could have gotten the bottle. His wife had brought her in to the hospital. He was surprised when I guessed that his wife was Callie's stepmother. Apparently she had passed away, but she was the only mother Callie had ever known.

He had gone back to work then, leaving us to contemplate everything we'd learned.

"So, obviously step-mom gave the kid bleach, but why?"

"Could be like Mischa Barton," said Dean. Sam and I both stared at him. "Sixth Sense, not the OC."

I had never seen the Sixth Sense, since I hated any movie with a remotely supernatural theme. Apparently Sam hadn't seen it either. He was as confused as I was.

"You know fairy tales, I know movies," said Dean. "She played the pasty ghost. You know, the… remember? The mom had that thing, you know, where you keep the kid sick so you get all the attention?"

I had never heard of "that thing". Who would do that? Harm their own child for the sake of attention?

"Oh, yeah yeah yeah!" Sam said. "Um… Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Could be."

"It's a real thing?" I asked, and he nodded.

"So, say all these years, Callie's been suffering silently because nobody knows the truth about what mommy dearest did?" Dean suggested.

We had reached the entrance to the hospital now, where the nurses triaged patients coming in to the ER, and people sat and waited to hear news on the uncomfortable plastic chairs.

"Okay," I said. "So, maybe she's angry?" I suggested. "Her mom poisoned her and got away with it and it's like nobody knows or cares? So she's mad… lashing out?"

"Right," Dean agreed. "Meanwhile, she has to listen to Dad tell her these deranged stories about a rabid wolf or a cannibalistic old lady. It's enough to drive anybody nuts."

"How do we stop her, though?" I asked. "Can't burn her bones, she's still alive."

"Yeah, that's definitely not an option," said Sam.

The whole area become a flurry of activity as paramedics came in, wheeling through an old lady on one of those ambulance stretchers. A doctor came over right away, while the nurses stood around ready for anything. I tried to listen in, but didn't understand everything the paramedics were saying.

I understood "multiple lacerations and puncture wounds" well enough, and definitely understood when they suggested she might have been mauled by a dog or a wolf. Hadn't Callie just heard Little Red Riding Hood?

They covered over the old lady, and I realised she must have died. But… what about her granddaughter? There probably was one, somewhere, and she was about to get attacked too. I pointed that out to the boys, who immediately rushed over to see if they could find out who the woman was and how we could get to her granddaughter.

They came back with an address. "Ellie, you gotta find a way to stop Callie," Dean said.

"Me? Where are you going?"

"We gotta go stop the Big Bad Wolf," said Dean. "Which is the weirdest thing I've ever said. Come on, Sam!"

I watched them both hurry out the doors together, leaving me alone, and wondering how I was supposed to stop a ghost who wasn't dead. Maybe I could go and talk to Callie? Tell her I knew what had happened to her?

It was worth a shot. I quickly made my way back through the hospital, down this corridor and then that, until I got back to that sad, silent stretch of hallway. I found Callie's room again and peered in. She was alone, still lying back in that neat, pristine bed. I tiptoed in, awkwardly, but then realised I shouldn't. It wasn't like I could wake the poor girl, and anyway, even if I could, that would be a good thing.

Grabbing the chair, I sat down in it.

"Um… uh… Hi, Callie. My name's Ellie. I know what you're doing and I know why you're angry. Your stepmom hurt you, right? And you want someone to make it right? Well… I know and I can make it right, but you need to stop what you're doing, okay? Because you're hurting people, Callie."

How would I know if it was working? Maybe she'd appear to me? Talk to me?

"I know you can hear what people say to you," I said. "And I know you've been trying to talk to people. You appeared to my friends, gave them an apple. Cos you want someone to listen to you, right? I'll listen, Callie. If you come, I'll listen, okay? Please…"

"Hey!" I looked up, it was Doctor Garrison. "What the hell are you doing in here?"

Of course he was pissed. I'd be pissed if I found a total stranger leaning in close to my comatose child and talking urgently to her.

"I'm… Doctor Garrison, I have to talk to you…"

"Who are you? You're with those detectives?" He came into the room and I quickly got up from the chair and came to meet him.

"This is hard to explain," I said. "But the attacks that have happened in town. The three builders, the old lady cannibal and the woman that got mauled just now. We think it might have something to do with Callie."

"That's ridiculous!" he said. "Get out!"

He tried to walk past me to get to the bed, but I grabbed his hand. "Please," I said. "Please… just listen. Do you believe in ghosts?"

Just about to snatch his hand back, he stopped and stood still, looking right at my face. There was a moment of silence, as he looked at me, obviously trying to get a sense of who I was.

"You… have you seen her too?"

I shook my head. "But my friends have. She had a white dress, and a red ribbon in her hair."

"I sensed her," he said, as I let his hand drop. He moved towards the bed, looking at his still, lifeless daughter as he spoke. "Her presence, her scent. I even saw her standing at the foot of my bed but I never believed it. I thought I was dreaming…"

"No," I said. "Callie's trying to tell you something and she needs you to listen."

"What?" he asked. "What could she be trying to tell me?"

I sighed. This was going to be awful for him to hear. "I think… I think maybe what happened with the bleach wasn't an accident. Maybe your wife… maybe it was deliberate…"

He turned to look at me. "No. That isn't possible. Julie loved Callie!"

How could I explain to him how it was possible when I didn't know how it was myself? I didn't understand how anyone could poison a child, let alone their own. "I don't know. But… Doctor, Callie is angry and frustrated. She wants you to know the truth but no one will listen. Please listen to her."

"I don't believe it," he said. But he looked more like a man who didn't want to believe it.

"She's killing people," I told him, as he dropped heavily into the chair. "She's lashing out because she doesn't know how to make you listen. Please, tell her you'll listen."

He sighed and turned into the chair, to look at his daughter again. Picking up her hand, he held it in his. "Callie? Callie, it's Daddy. It's me, Daddy. Is it true? Mommy did that to you? I know I wasn't listening before, but I'm listening now. Daddy's here. Please, honey, is… is there any way that you can tell me?"

She appeared beside him, just as Sam and Dean had described her to me. A pretty little girl, but very sad looking, with such beautiful shiny black hair. Her white dress and red ribbon really did remind me of Snow White, and given what had happened to her, it was no surprise the story had resonated with her as she lay comatose. She looked so sad as she stood beside her father.

"Look," I said. "She's here."

Doctor Garrison looked up. She was right there, in broad daylight and he couldn't fail to believe his own senses. "Is it true?" he asked her.

She nodded, as tears started to form in her father's eyes. "Oh, I'm so sorry, baby. But listen to me. You gotta stop what you're doing okay? You're hurting people. I know everything now. I know the truth. It's time for you to let go. It's time for me to let you go."

I had to blink repeatedly to keep myself from crying as he leant over Callie and kissed her on the forehead. As he straightened himself up, her monitor flatlined. She had heard him and understood, and now she had chosen to let go.

I stayed with Doctor Garrison for a while, offering him a hand on the shoulder and someone to talk to, if he wanted it. He didn't, and soon enough Sam and Dean returned, reporting that the little girl was okay, and the big bad wolf had come to his senses. The police had picked him up, poor guy, and surely he'd be charged with the murders he'd committed under Callie's influence. I felt bad for him, but what could I do about it?

I felt bad for Doctor Garrison too, as we left him in the hospital. "I should've let her go a long time ago," he'd said.

"That's some good advice," Dean said, once the three of us were alone.

"Is that what you want me to do?" Sam asked. "Just let you go?"

But Dean still had not answered by the time we got back to the car.