Zachariah Kline, who would agree to rent his attic room for much more than the musty place, with its one large, sagging bed, deserved, made much of the fact that he wasn't like those Klines.

What exactly those Klines did that so offended Zachariah's sensibilities, Sam couldn't quite parse, for Zachariah never went into detail, but only made sure to mention how he stood apart from them every other sentence, as he bragged about his business as the owner of Dunwich's single gas-station. "I brought the modern world into this dump," he said, with a smarmy grin. "It came along kicking and screaming, but I did." He had, he assured Sam and Dean, a degree in business from Harvard; and, it became clear, though Zachariah never quite spoke of it, that he'd once had the ability to leave this town—and all intentions to do so—before his fortunes had turned and dragged him back to the place of his birth.

He was a widower, and wore a thin gold ring on his finger. A few old photographs showed him with a vapid-looking blonde woman who had presumably been his wife; there was something about her mouth, Sam thought, that reminded him uneasily of his mother.

This, he and Dean were subjected to before and during dinner (meatloaf, baked by the neighbor—Zachariah didn't cook) and then it was too late to do anything else, unless they wanted to traipse around looking for mutilated cattle in the dead of night. Sam felt that the entire last half of the day had been wasted with Zachariah's ramblings, and Dean, he could see, felt the same.

They'd brought their duffles in and, since there was no table to put them on, threw them on the floor at the foot of the bed and just hoped there weren't too many bugs. When Sam sat down on the edge of the bed it creaked alarmingly, and he felt springs poking through.

"That bastard ripped us off," Dean said, pulling off his flannel and jeans and shoving them crumpled inside-out into his duffle, leaving on only his t-shirt and boxers. He grabbed his bag of toiletries and beat it to the cramped hallway at the head of the stairs. A moment later Sam followed, having pulled off his own sweat-sticky shirt, leaving him bare-chested in the stifling heat. It barely made a dent in the muggy atmosphere. He barged into the bathroom to find Dean shaving with a disposable instead of his electric razor, and only then realized there was no outlet in the bathroom—or, indeed, in the attic. While it was hardly a surprise, it was a sharp disappointment; even though he doubted he'd get any signal all the way out here he'd been planning to at least charge his computer.

There was electric wiring in the house, and must be outlets downstairs, but somehow Sam didn't feel comfortable leaving it down there with Zachariah.

Sam closed the door behind him and leaned back against the old wood, which let out a protesting groan. He crossed his arms as he waited for the sink. "Wish there was a shower," he said.

"And I wish the mattress didn't suck," Dean said. "I've seen better in two-hour motels."

"You wanna check out the mutilations tomorrow?" Sam said.

"That's the plan," Dean said. "Why? You have another idea?"

"I was thinking of checking out the hills," Sam confessed; seeing he'd soon have room for the sink, he fished around in his own bag, grabbing his toothbrush and squeezing a blue, gelatinous glop of Crest onto the bristles.

Now Dean glanced over at him, puzzled. "The hills?"

"The round… things," Sam said. "The mountains," he finally clarified, though unwillingly; there was something in him that rebelled against calling them mountains.

"What for?" Dean said.

Sam was loathe to mention the strange flashes of mountaintop he had seen on their way, and the circles of stone atop them; he knew that Dean would either brush it off as a weird daydream or try to say it was one of Sam's visions. But he knew it wasn't a vision. If he'd seen something that wasn't there, it wasn't because of any second sight peculiar to him, but because of some aspect of the mountains themselves.

"I started thinking, about the sightings of the demons on the hill," Sam said.

"That?" Dean scoffed.

"It's the same place the earthquakes were," Sam said. "The hills. Maybe it's connected. Look, if it's nothing, it's nothing—we'll follow the mutilations. I just don't wanna leave it untouched just because we're looking at an obvious omen."

"Okay," Dean said. "Cattle first, then we'll check out the hills. We can grab some stuff from the store and make a day of it—I don't wanna be round here at lunch time."

/

Sam was up at six, and the sun was already bright. Dean was still sound asleep, turned onto his side and snoring quietly, his arm curled around the bulk of his pillow. Sam fished for his sweats and an undershirt as quietly as he could, bringing his running shoes with him and shoving a health bar into one of the pockets and a water bottle, warm and smelling of plastic, in the other. He made it out of the house without waking their host, and sat on the back stoop while he tugged on his shoes. Though he couldn't see them, the whiporwills were making a low, continuous chatter in the air.

He took off in a slow jog, past the Impala parked in the old converted barn, down the dirt track toward the main road. He didn't really mean to go all the way into town, but when he'd reached the main road—he glanced at his watch—he still had some time left, so he jogged past the houses and under the shadow of the old church. A few people were up, even this early, and Sam nodded at them as he passed; then took a loop back the way he'd come. Even in the high of adrenaline and the burn of his muscles working, his unease hadn't lifted; but it was easier to put out of mind now than it had been yesterday, as though he was acclimatising to the sensation. Thoughts about the case, and the town, flew through his mind in fragments. A curse? Quite possible. He was no longer as sure as he had been that the culprit was demons; though perhaps demons had been drawn to the underlying unrightness of the place.

By the house again, Sam paused, did his cool-downs, ate and hydrated. He was aware, as he did so, that at some point Zachariah must have gotten up; for he could see through the window their host's judging gaze.

When he came in, Sam had an air of apology about him; his shoulders, which had opened during his run, hunched over as he tended to do when around other people, aware of his height and uncomfortable of it. He flashed an awkward smile at Zachariah. "Hey; sorry if I bothered you, I like to run in the morning."

"Oh, I wasn't bothered," Zachariah said. "The early bird gets the worm. What did you say your paper was called again?"

"Weekly World news," Sam said.

"Never heard of it," Zachariah said dismissively, with a sharp glance down Sam's ratty attire. With that, he seemed to categorize Sam as beneath his notice; and he slipped off into another part of the house. Sam wandered into the kitchen, where, Zachariah had told them the night before, they could find eggs in the refrigerator, and make their own breakfast.

/

The cattle, of course, had been disposed of long before the Winchesters arrived; and when they tried to inquire about the mutilations, everyone in Dunwich was remarkably tight-lipped. It wasn't the first time they'd been told that cattle mutilation was nothing but a natural occurrence, but the way these people talked about spoke more of a concocted story than any real belief in the idea.

"You wouldn't want to see them anyway," one man said at last; "With that kind of sickness, s'no wonder they died."

That lead them down a more fruitful path, and soon Sam and Dean learned that the afflicted cattle all shared the same weird blight; malnourished and covered with strange sores. They had also, it came about, belonged to those Klines.

"I bet it's witches," Dean muttered, as they swung back into the Impala and drove away from their last interview back toward town. "Fuck. I hate witches."

"Yeah, maybe," Sam said. He almost agreed with Dean. It wasn't even unlikely. Though most of the Salem witches had almost certainly been innocent women who'd never touched dark magic in their lives, there were enough that had been real that the town still cropped up with cursed objects to this day—and Dunwich had been settled from the same people. Still, there was the hills to think of. The nearest, they said, was Sentinel Hill, and from the looks he'd gotten when Sam had asked about hiking it, he was sure they'd find stone circles when they got to the top. Despite the revelations about those Klines, they took the detour.

The trek up the small deer path was buggy, dense with brambles and long; it was nearing the golden hour by the time they reached the top, when the almost-impassable track opened out onto a grassy area. It didn't have the look of a mountaintop, Sam thought. There were no stretches of bare rock, no bushes crowding toward the sun; just that almost perfect circular lawn between the trees and the upper reach of the mound.

And there were the stones.

Standing ones in circles, huge enough that even from the treeline the shadows almost reached their feet. They stepped forward onto springy ground, deep and soft enough that their feet left imprints behind them; and in that strange hush that seemed to have descended, walked below the lintels toward the one large, flat stone lying in the center.

There were no markings on the stone. It almost would've been easier if there were. Given Sam something to puzzle about; put the stone into some kind of conceptual framework as a black altar. But this weathered, blank expanse looked more like it had just been placed there; for some purpose now forgotten. It was a real weight of age that Sam had never thought he'd find before. He had thought the fact Dunwich had buildings dated definitively to before 1700 was to say that it was old—but that was nothing.

Dean touched the stone, letting his hand rest gingerly on its flat surface. "Cold," he said; and Sam looked up at the bright sunlight that was filling the air around them, and became aware of the pounding of his heart; the warm, wet pull of waterlogged air into his lungs. It was hot enough under the sunlight that a trail of goosebumps had passed across his arms as they walked into the open. He felt sticky; gross with it, and too new. Like he didn't belong.

"Let's get out of here," Sam said at last. Dean nodded tightly, and they turned back toward the downward slope.

/

It was late; even by the standards of endless summer days. Almost dusk. The Impala rolled up the drive of the Kline place; there were lights on in the downstairs windows, though the windows on the upper floor were boarded up. Worth a look.

It smelled like the marsh had. Not really like something rotting, nor yet like blood. It reminded Sam of piles of leaves, soil, the sour, full tang of air; midgets filling the late sky like flying clouds. The whiporwills were out again. He and Dean grabbed their guns, tucking them into the waistbands of their pants, pulling their shirts over the telltale shape. He had witch-killing bullets in the chamber. An iron knife in a hidden sheathe. Beyond fallow farmland, a grey shed hunched low against the earth, as though hiding from the clear slice of sky above it. In the distance, the trees; and the mountains. Sam saw the distinct image of stone pillars on the crown; glanced away from the deep expanse that stared down at them, and took a breath through his mouth. The Kline place was built half into the hill, and the sagging porch made a sharp sound under their boots; a snap that ought to have startled the birds silent—nothing reacted. Even the herds, far on the hillside, merely grazed in uneasy apathy, thin, stretched creatures. When Sam reached to knock on the door it opened only a second later; someone had seen them come up the drive, and been waiting.

"Hello," the Kline said.

He was of ordinary height, though to Sam, he felt small. He tilted his head; regarded the brothers with a curiously intense stare. "You must be the reporters."

"That's us," Dean said. "And you're—?"

"Castiel Kline. Welcome in."

.

.

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