AN: Poor Janice...I've really inundated her lately. She's a rockstar, though!

As for the song that helped inspire this fic, I couldn't find it online, so either it was an original song by a local band or my memory is faulty, so you might as well not guess! LOL

* * *

Dean gently increased pressure on the gas pedal just to hear the Impala purr. It was so good to be back in his baby, and she ran smoother than she had before the accident. Replacing the carburetor, for example, had gotten rid of a hiccup he'd been chasing for two years. He let the smooth growl roll over him, mixing seamlessly with Pink Floyd's Brain Damage. He hadn't argued Sam's choice of tape when they hit the end of Ride the Lightning both because it was a good choice and because it was one of the few tapes they had that didn't remind him of Dad. He was 99% certain his sneaky brother knew the latter. Sneaky because despite everything (most importantly the fact that Dean was the older brother), Sam kept trying to find ways to take care of him.

Dean was fine. Dad was gone, but so went the life of a Hunter. And so what if Dean missed him almost every minute or if he'd left a horrible, heavy burden on Dean's shoulders? And so what if Sam was having some crazy psychic visions? Dean would handle it; the impossible was practically his specialty.

"Hmmm...found something kinda interesting," said Sam, who had the unfortunate tendency to spend too many of his zillions of brain cells trying to dig into Dean's brain.

"Geek interesting or interesting interesting?" Dean asked and smirked at the eye roll that earned him. "What? It's a valid question."

"Case interesting," said Sam primly, avoiding the question as neatly as any politician. "Paul wasn't kidding – a lot of people go missing in Centerville, even though the town is seriously tiny. And it's been happening for a really long time." Dean lifted one hand from the wheel in a minuscule version of a shrug. This was all information they knew already, information that had helped them decide to head to Georgia and Paul, about whom Dean still felt pretty ambivalent. (Yup, he helped save their lives. But not until after they'd been tied up and tortured. He'd argued on their behalf but hadn't really intervened until he'd had no choice. A big part of Dean felt like he should be in prison with the rest of his surviving family. Still...it had been Paul's brother who'd gone all David Koresh, and it wasn't always easy to see clearly when it involved your brother. That, at least, Dean kind of understood.)

"...listening to me?"

Dean smiled insincerely. "Wait, are you being actually interesting now? Let me know, cuz I'll start listening again." He didn't bother to dodge the smack to his arm. Sam wouldn't hit him hard when he was driving.

"I said the family actually had the house cleansed by priests twice because one of the children was convinced that the house was 'evil.' She had horrible nightmares and was so terrified to stay in the home that she eventually went to live with her grandparents where the night terrors went away. She never set foot in the house again and moved out of state as soon as she was old enough, even after the cleansings."

Okay, that was interesting. "So are we talking Amityville or Charles Manson's great-grandpa? Not another mythical egg, right?" Dean asked with distaste, partly to disguise his curiosity. He couldn't let Sam know that he was right about something being significant. He was really asking if this was more likely a haunting or human serial killer, though the last comment referred to the first time they'd met Paul, when the real culprit had been a monster egg hidden for over a hundred years in an old house.

Sam visibly fought a smile. "Well, the disappearances took place over way too much time for one human lifetime. And there's never been any evidence of anything, not even in modern times. Nobody heard anything or saw anything – and remember, it was the middle of the day, and this is a small town where everybody was really curious to see Don Minzou's nephew. There's also not a single hair or fingerprint. This Rodney Minzou case is a big deal, but it doesn't sound like police have any clue about what happened. Even his car was still parked in front of the house."

Dean nodded slowly. It would be next to impossible for some stranger to grab a high-profile visitor without someone seeing something. Of course, maybe the entire town was complicit and feeding people to a pagan god. Been there, done that. But if so, it was pretty stupid to choose such a high-profile victim. And they'd already established that there was no set time period between disappearances. "Okay...evil house. What do you know about the cleansings?"

Sam smiled at him like he was a student who'd answered a particularly difficult question. It should have been annoying but it was too familiar to actually bother Dean. "The first priest came out of the house 'with wild hair and eyes, declaring the devil himself was within' and told the family to move out. They didn't want to do that, so they sent for a second priest. He spent a whole week doing his thing, then said that he hadn't found anything and that the first guy's cleansing had done the trick. Some reports actually say that the first priest later disappeared, but it sounds like he just moved away."

"Oh, yeah. That worked just great." Dean tapped a thumbnail against his teeth as he passed a Buick full of white hairs. "Deaths in the house?"

"Yeah, Paul did a good job finding out about the really old ones." Sam focused back on his screen. The second time they'd talked to Paul, they'd given him one of their generic email addresses, and he'd forwarded everything he could. Dean knew that when they had internet again, Sam would double-check all of it, but he had a feeling that Paul had been pretty thorough. "Nothing stands out. A few kids from various childhood illnesses and the original master and mistress of the house, who each died in bed at an advanced age. But we wouldn't find any record of servants who died, unless it was some big scandal or something."

"Family have any obvious skeletons in the closet?"

"Nothing big." Sam sounded disappointed by the revelation. "One guy supposedly got two different women pregnant and married a third. One girl ran off with a black guy back in the 30's, which her parents apparently thought was the end of the world. Not so little it's weird, but nothing big either. Could be some family curse or something, but nothing jumps out about them. They came to the new world already rich from textile sales but even way back then were pretty generous with the community, so they were fairly popular all along."

Dean made a rude sound by flapping his lips. "Bo-ring," he announced. Every prominent family had some scandals over time, but none of these sounded particularly noteworthy. If they hadn't had anything at all, that might have been suspicious in and of itself, but this sounded pretty mundane. "No murders or anything? Bitter rivals? Satan worship? Nothing?"

"A few squabbles over inheritance, but mostly, I wanted my mom's necklaces, not her rings kind of stuff. I didn't find anybody who was left out completely except the lady who ran off to get married, and she never came back anyway."

"All that research and we got bupkis," Dean complained, as if he'd done much of said research. His stomach grumbled loudly. They had been on the road for nearly nine hours and had only stopped three times. Dean had driven all but two of the hours both because he wanted to and because he didn't really want to be the one to read through Paul's 4,000 pages of notes. (Yeah, the guy was thorough. Too damn thorough.) "I think it's a pissed-off ghost stashing people somewhere. Like, maybe they were walled up like in that Poe story and they're dragging people in with them. Maybe whoever investigates their death or something."

Sam's eyebrows went up. "Nice theory," he admitted. "Oddly specific, though. My money's on a cursed object. Somebody touches the...whatever...and just like that, they're gone." In the light of the laptop screen, Dean could see him smiling fondly as Dean's stomach spoke up again. "We can stop and get something to eat, you know."

"Nah. We're less than an hour out of Centerville. So where would your cursed people go? Transported to Timbuktu? Turned into dust mites? Dumped into a wormhole?" Sam's actually wasn't a half-bad theory, either, but it was a brother's duty to poke holes in the other's ideas. It was part of their process.

"Dude, why starve yourself? Just find some drive-thru. Then we can crash if we want to once we find some place to stay. And I don't know where cursed people might go." Sam closed the laptop. "Remember that witch near Salt Lake City who accidentally cursed her cauldron and anything she put it in turned into something else? How did that work? Who knows with curses and magic?"

"Oh, yeah!" Dean noted a sign for an exit. He really was hungry. "Then her cat jumped in and came out the size of a leopard. She would've died if we hadn't showed up and dumped her at the hospital." He chuckled a little. "Then we went back and burned her altar and melted that pot down. I think Dad put the whole thing in a curse box and buried it, too. I always wondered what happened to super cat." They'd never found the feline, so they didn't even know if it had eventually reverted back to its original size. Dean secretly hoped it had lived a long life away from its hapless mistress. "Hey, look! A Krispy Kreme! And it has a drive-thru!"

The rest of the way to Centerville, they ate too many donuts and argued about which kind were the best and wiped sticky fingers on each other's clothes (though that last might have been mostly Dean) and didn't talk about the case or anything else serious.

("I'm just saying, Dean, there must be some kind of donut out there that you don't like. Like, what if there's an onion donut somewhere? Or, wait, a shallot donut? You hate shallots."

"Impossible. Delicious is right in the definition of donut. They're all delicious and I love them all. Period.")

As delicious as the donuts were, they were only a small part of why it was far and away the best part of the drive.

WINCHESTER * WINCHESTER

They spent their night in a Motel 6 that was rather old but overall nicer than most of the places they frequented. Not a rogue bed spring to be found, and the water stayed hot through both of their showers. Dean Bonham was happy to sign up for a rewards card and take the resulting discount, thank you.

Dean was in a pretty good mood by the time they were heading out to meet with Paul, even if he wasn't sure he really trusted the guy. "I'm just saying," he'd commented (with his mouth full of hashbrowns because the expression on Sam's face was so priceless). "The case might be real, but we don't know a thing about the guy's motives. Why did he really want us here? Where he lives? Did he really clean up his act or are we walking right into another trap?"

Sam's eyes had dropped to his pancakes before he answered, which meant he thought Dean wouldn't like what he had to say. "You mean why call Dad," he'd said softly, like he wasn't sure if he could bring up their parent without getting his head bitten off. Which...wasn't entirely unfounded. But in this case, he was right. Paul hadn't tried to call them first. If this was some revenge plot, they weren't its initial targets. And if Paul really had given Dad cases in the past, he certainly was playing the long game.

"Where are we going again?" Dean asked as they turned out of the parking lot of the little diner.

"Camp Wa-na-to-ba," Sam reported for the third time. "He works there and lives on the grounds."

"Wanna what?" responded Dean, also for the third time. Hey, the name asked for it, even if it supposedly meant pure land or something like that. "You know, if he comes out wearing a hockey mask, I'm shooting him, witnesses or not. Hey, is that the house?"

Since the entirety of Centerville proper would fit in a handful of city blocks and the Motel 6 and Maude's Eats were just one street off from the main drag where the house where Rodney Minzou had last been seen presided, it made sense to drive past. Sam didn't bother to answer Dean's question, because The House, unlike its neighbors, had an honest-to-Jason-Vorhees pastel pink sign in the front proclaiming its identity. It was far from the only period house. The street looped back on itself, surrounding a green space with an actual fountain in the middle, and all the buildings on the loop were of a similar size and time period. This, apparently, was where the "haves" had lived in the early era of the town.

Dean slowed to a near crawl so they could look at it as they drove past. It was definitely the best kept of all the houses; none were decrepit or anything, but most showed their age. Not the Minzou house. Every shutter seemed freshly painted, the brass accents gleamed, and the lovingly-tended flower boxes overflowed with reds and purples. It could hardly have looked less like a haunted house. Actually, it looked more like an overpriced bed and breakfast.

"Yoo-hoo! Helloooo!" A quintessential little old lady waved from where she'd been watering those flower boxes. She walked toward them. With her white hair pinned back and her prim lavender dress, she reminded Dean of the granny who owns Tweety Bird, except this one stood military straight.

Dean stopped the car and Sam rolled down the window, but the woman stopped at the edge of the yard, just inside the fancy wrought iron fence. The road was wide and they hadn't seen another car in a while, so Dean just put it in park and they climbed out and walked over.

"Hello, gentlemen," the diminutive woman greeted. "Were you interested in the house?"

"Absolutely." Sam gave her the smile that made all old women love him to pieces. "It's beautiful and kept up so nicely. We're reporters writing about interesting little towns across the United States and understand this is one of Centerville's main attractions." (The only "attraction," Dean thought sardonically as he happily let Sam take the lead. He hadn't even seen a bar yet.)

"What a lovely thing to say, dear." Yup, she was already hooked. "My name is Miss Caroline, and I am the caretaker here. It is my passion. Would you like a tour?"

"Sam Jones and Dean Bonham," Sam introduced them. "We would love one, but we have a different interview scheduled out at the campground in a few minutes. Is there any chance we could come back later?"

"Oh, of course. That would be delightful. I do love to talk about the house. If you tell me about what time, I'll put on some tea. Did you know that the Minzou family started that camp for children whose families couldn't afford such things? Unlike many people of means, they are never stingy." The caretaker smiled beatifically as she bestowed her information.

"I didn't know that, no. Thank you. Dean, does 2:00 sound good? And Miss Caroline, would that work for you?"

Dean jumped a little when Sam elbowed him and belatedly pulled his attention away from the curlicues that adorned the eaves and gave the whole place a fairy tale vibe. Something about the roof of the place bothered him, but he couldn't have said what. "Huh? Uh, sure. Two."

Sam and his new friend made noises of farewell as Dean looked upward once more. He figured it out as they walked back to Baby. "No birds," he reported as they climbed in. "That's weird. There's birds on the other houses, but not this one." It was odd, probably a coincidence, but Dean still noted it. Sometimes the weirdest things had significance.

"Well, the ones of the other houses are certainly loud enough," Sam responded, waving politely to Caroline as they started off. "Besides, they probably don't dare poop on Miss Caroline's roof! I think she just might climb on the roof herself to clean it off if they did."

Sam wasn't wrong. Dean half wondered if she measured the grass with a ruler to make sure it was all the same length. "I didn't know the Minzous started the camp," he mused. "Must be why Paul said Don was a generous guy."

"Yeah. Sounds like they exist mostly on donations, and at-risk kids get to come for free."

"Hopefully Paul isn't there just to corrupt the next generation," Dean said darkly, mostly to keep himself from liking the man and potentially letting that cloud his judgment. He again ignored Sam's obligatory eye roll.

The camp was a ways out of town. Most of the drive was on dirt roads, which Dean hated. Fortunately, they were dry and in decent shape. Going over the washboards such roads tended to develop was hell on his baby's undercarriage. Finally, signs informed them that they were approaching the camp itself. The area was lightly wooded with old growth trees and full of small hills and valleys. It was a very camp-ish place, Dean thought.

The road split and became the entrance. There was a bar across their way and a box with a button next to it, similar to what you might see at a pay-to-park lot in a city. Dean pushed it and was rewarded with a tinny voice coming out of the speaker.

"Welcome to Camp Wa-na-to-ba! Who are you here to see today?"

"Bonham and Jones. Guests of Paul Damask."

"Wonderful! Just drive to the first building you see – that's the main lodge. Mr. Paul will meet you there." The gate opened.

They wound through the woods for a while before finding a large building that screamed lodge. On the way, they saw a few brightly-colored cabins in the distance, and down one incline was a small lake with what looked like large teepees dotting its edge. There was a long dock, too, with a giant inflated airbag type thing next to it. It all looked very cool and in pretty good shape for a place dependent on donations.

Paul was standing on the massive porch, easily recognizable. He was obviously older, more gray than blond now, and no longer wore a beard. He looked more weathered but also more fit, like he led an active lifestyle. His smile looked relieved as he hurried over to shake their hands before they were more than a few steps from the car. If he noticed that Dean hesitated a moment too long before reaching out somewhat reluctantly to return the gesture, he pretended not to.

"Dean. Sam. Thank you for coming. You don't know how much I appreciate it, especially when you boys sure as hell don't owe me anything." He visually sized them up and Dean could practically see Sam bracing himself for the inevitable you got so tall comment, but it didn't happen. "You I might have recognized," Paul nodded to Dean. "But Sam, never."

"I was fifteen when you last saw me," Sam answered with an insincere smile. Dean watched Sam gather himself and put on his dealing-with-witnesses mien.

Paul's smile dimmed. "Yeah. And I feel guilty asking you for anything after that. But…" He rallied himself and showed them where to park the car behind the building, then offered them a quick tour if they wanted to see the main parts of the camp. He had the limo of golf carts, with several rows of bench seats that they could use for that purpose. "All of the campers are eating breakfast right now, so it's a good time to look around."

Dean wanted to, he really did, because this place was so much nicer than he'd expected. It seemed like a dream come true for a kid. But that wasn't why they were here. "No, we better get on to it. Where can we talk?"

Paul led them to a picnic table in the shade. It was a nice, cool morning, but there was the promise of heat to come. At Sam's prompting, he explained that he started as a maintenance man and worked his way up until he was in charge of all of them. When Don Minzou learned that Paul was essentially homeless and lived in a tent deep in the woods, he offered him one of the decommissioned cabins to live in for free. Paul slowly fixed it up on his own time.

"Then one day, one of the campers started following me around. I never had any contact with the kids other than a wave or whatever, because I wasn't accredited," Paul explained. "I couldn't exactly pass a background check. Well, this kid wouldn't talk to anybody, but for some reason, he wanted to talk to me. So the head guy, Chris, set it up so I could talk to him – never alone or anything. And Chris decided I had a gift for kids. Go figure, right?" He gave the boys another rueful smile.

"He and Don helped me figure out a way to get the classes I need so I can do some of the camp stuff. I still do a lot of the maintenance too, because I enjoy it and I owe these people. And that first kid? He still writes to me, and he's about to graduate from high school!" The grin on Paul's face was full of pride. "He'll be the first one in his family."

Dean met Sam's eyes for a moment as they let Paul brag about how smart the kid was, how determined. They'd let him talk to get a measure of the man, and it was hard to argue with the good he was doing. They had been fooled before, but not often, and Dean saw the same conviction in Sam's eyes that he was feeling. Paul was as advertised, meaning he really did call them there because he'd cared for the old man and wanted his nephew found. The guy had taken his second chance that Dad and Bobby had offered him and really done something with it. Bobby would be happy to hear it the next time they talked to him.

"This is quite the place," said Sam when Paul finally trailed off. Before they could say more, the doors of another large building opened and kids began to stream out in clumps, each group with at least one adult herding them. They seemed to be grouped by t-shirt color. Many of the kids waved to Paul or called greetings. Then one little dude broke ranks and ran over.

"Hi, Mr. Paul," he panted. "Hi, Mr. Paul's friends!"

"Hey, Devan. This is Mr. Sam and this is Mr. Dean. Aren't you supposed to be going fishing this morning?"

Devan eyeballed them and grinned, showing off that he was missing his two front teeth. "You're almost as big as my daddy," he informed them. "He's as big as a giant. When he gets all better, we're goin' fishin' together! I bet we'll catch an alligator!"

They couldn't help but chuckle. "You know, Devan, I talked to some of the people helping your dad. He is working really hard and I'm very proud of him. He can't wait until he's better and can see you all the time."

"Then we'll go fishin'," Devan repeated confidently.

Dean leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs so he was of a height with the kid, who was way too cute. "I used to go fishing with my dad," he said, almost surprised by his own words. "He'd carry me on his shoulders, and I thought he was the biggest guy in the world. And you know what? Now I'm as big as him." He managed a smile, reliving the memory. Sam subtly leaned so his arm brushed Dean's back in a show of support. "And my little brother, who was only like this big – " Dean held his hands cupped to indicate a baby, " – he's ever bigger! Maybe you'll be even bigger than your dad."

Devan's face lit up at the thought. "Bigger'n this!" he announced, holding his hands as high as he could.

"Okay, Devan, we have to go," called a man wearing the same kind of green shirt as the boy. "If we're late for fishing, we'll be late for swimming too."

Devan's eyes widened comically. He obviously didn't want to miss any swimming time. "Okay," he called and ran off with a cheeky wave good-bye.

That solidified things for Dean. You could fake a lot of things, but the kid's affection for Paul was real. He was 99.9% sure that Paul was as advertised.

He didn't have much more to tell them, though. He confirmed that 'Miss Caroline' had been the last person to see Rodney. She had never left the front area of the house, which meant he couldn't have gotten down the steps without going past her. "She's been working there forever," Paul said. "I'm sure Don must have left her a nice bequest – she was practically family to him."

"Do you have any idea who the inheritance goes to now?" Sam asked. "Er, if Rodney is never found?" He was a little off his game, Dean thought, and acting like he had a headache.

Paul frowned in thought. "His mother, maybe? He's engaged but not married yet, and his dad has passed. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have any siblings, so unless his will has any big surprises, I guess it all will go to her. But from what I understand, his mother is very wealthy in her own right." He shrugged. "I mean, I guess money is always a potential motive. It just seems unlikely that it's a regular human thing given all the other disappearances over the years."

Dean nodded. "She live around here? Or likely to go in the house any time soon? We didn't go inside, but I didn't see any crime tape up and it seemed like the house is still open to the public."

"From things Don said, I think she lives in Boca and isn't in great health. I have no idea if she'll come here. And the house isn't considered a crime scene since there's no evidence of anything. No blood or anything." Paul shrugged, then looked up as someone called his name. "I have to go soon. Is there any way I can help? I don't hunt, but I can try to get more information or something. Oh, and you're welcome to stay at my place if you like. I'll just pitch a tent in a quiet area for myself. I know the gig doesn't exactly pay, and I don't have the means to give you much." He gave a self-deprecating shrug. "But at least I can save you the cost a motel."

The Winchesters stared. "You'd move out so we can stay in your house?" Sam confirmed incredulously.

Paul flushed. "It's not very big. And, uh, I figured you wouldn't exactly want to stay with me."

The lightbulb came on for Dean. "That was a long-ass time ago. Plus, we could handle you if we were worried, which we aren't. But we'll just stick with our motel. Thanks, though."

"Yeah, thanks. We'll let you know if you can help," Sam added, though they had no plans to involve him unless they absolutely had to. He was all but a civilian by now, if he'd ever been a true Hunter. "And we'll keep you updated."

Paul stood when they did and shook their hands again. "Thank you. I never would have called or asked anything of you, but I had no idea who else to ask, and I don't want anyone else to go missing."

"It's all good, man," Dean reassured him, desperately trying not to like the guy too much. Nobody was that squeaky clean, right? Yeah, he kind of thought Paul really was. He had the air of a man who was working out his own version of penance.

As they drove back toward town, Dean mused over what they'd learned – which wasn't much. Maybe Caroline could shed some more light on things or the house itself had some clues that the police wouldn't know to look for. "You wanna go to Maude's again or do you want to look if there's another restaurant around? Because the old lady'll probably give us weak tea and stale cookies, and this fighting machine needs more fuel than that."

* * *

AN: A little weird quirk of mine – Paul's new name actually comes from the experience of Paul the Apostle in the Bible book of Acts. This Paul too had a "Damascus moment" where he turned his life completely around, and I made up his last name as a play on that.

Krispy Kreme donuts are amazing, and some of their locations really do have drive-thrus. Someone who shall remain nameless says they're too sweet, but they are my absolute favorite.

Jason Voorhees is the antihero of the Friday the Thirteenth film series. He wears a hockey mask and primarily kills people at a summer camp.

Janice: Good! That's what I was going for!

sylvia37: Thanks! It's one of my favorite eras to write.

Jenjoremy: How could I resist? LOL You may say stuff about the Doctor Who ep if you want because it won't give away where the story is going.

Shazza19: Tom Baker was the first doctor I watched! But this is from much later. I hope you don't mind the way the creepy factor went down in this chapter.

Timelady66: Sorry about the email. That's next for me. Yesterday was just full of the unexpected. The Silence actually weren't my inspiration, but that's only because I didn't think of them. Crowley (okay, Mark) helped defeat them, right? Don't worry about the song...it must be very obscure because I can't even find it online.

sfaulkenberry: I'm happy when you're happy! And yeah, Sam is always under threat...especially when I'm writing.

muffinroo: Oh, thank you! I didn't think of Phantom Traveler, but I can see it. You *might* get the folk tale but I don't mirror it very closely until the very end, so probably not...

Colby's girl: That is very true about whippoorwills. A lot of early settlers to the US east coast thought of them as harbingers too...maybe learned from their indigenous neighbors. LOL that you can't wait for things to go wrong. Soon!

supernaturalsammy67: How nice to "see" you again! No need for apologies, ever.

stedan: To be honest, Paul felt a little two dimensional to me until I started writing him here. But now I like him!

Christine: My readers are smarter than I am -- I am very glad now that I listened and brought Paul back.