A/N: Sorry for the delay in updating guys, I got sidetracked by work and other fanfics, I'm still working on chapter 5 so hopefully it won't be too long before another update, but as usual, no promises. Enjoy!

Chapter 4: The Past Isn't in the Past

The phone was silent on both ends for far too long, even though in reality it was only a few seconds.

"You don't have...issues with them, do you?" Mike finally said, breaking the silence.

"Have I 'heard of Sam and Dean Winchester'? Mike, are you joking, who hasn't heard of them?! Hell, my dad-" I paused, catching myself bringing up things I didn't want to, yet I had to finish, "used to work with their father on some hunts, they weren't friends per se, but he did know their father. Besides, Sam and Dean are known by a lot of hunters already just because of how good they are."

"Honey, you aren't telling me anything I don't already know," Mike replied.

"Then why did you think I'd never heard of them?"

"Well, you don't normally care about working with other hunters, or really talking to any of them besides me, or even concern yourself with what they-"

"Alright, I get it, I usually don't give a crap about anything other hunters do, but this is different. I don't live completely under a rock. I sometimes do find my own cases from other hunters without you, word gets around fast because we all know hunters are like gossipy, high school bitches. When did they say they were going to be here?"

Mike told me it would be about a day before the Winchesters would get to where I was before he got another call and had to go. Knowing I couldn't waste a whole day sitting in the hotel room trying to research things I already knew I went back to the police station to get more information on the victims. At first they didn't seem to have anything in common, in fact I had almost given up, but after an hour of comparing their records I noticed one major similarity. Both of the victims had at least one person in their family that had attended the school at one point, Conner Atkin's grandmother and Annie Lyons' grandfather. How this piece of evidence was overlooked I had no idea. I took the records back up to the chief detective I had met the other day to ask about the connection.

"Detective, what year was it exactly that this accident happened at the school?"

"September 5th, 1956, it was closed down officially in 1960. It's just local history," the detective said.

"So, Conner Atkin's grandmother attended that school when she was ten, she didn't die in the accident, obviously, but she died in 1986 exactly thirty years later. Annie Lyons grandfather also attended the school when he was eleven and he died exactly thirty years later in 1986," I stated looking back at the records for confirmation.

"Coincidence?" the detective said.

Yeah, only they both died in fires no one could explain, I wanted to say, looking at the C. for each, but I held my tongue trying not to arouse suspicion of the police.

Instead, I jotted down the notes in my book, intending to save the information for the Winchesters.

"Yeah, I guess it just has to be, if someone killed them back then the same killer couldn't possibly have done this," I said trying to throw him off.

"That sounds about right, I'll leave you to it, just let me know if you need anything else."

"Actually, just one more thing."

Half an hour later I put Harry O'Donnell's records back where the detective told me to. The businessman had failed to mention he was only two-years-old when his mother was killed in the accident, neither did he look his age of fifty-two. This information started to make me wonder how he knew so much about his mother and grandmother's devotion to the school, and I eventually found that his father was still alive at the age of seventy-eight. Even if his father didn't know about the accident, if there was a demon connected to that school and its history, anyone alive at that time would be helpful. Of course I still kept in mind that James O'Donnell could have been the cause of an "accident" if he made a deal with this demon. Still, something nagged at me as I drove to James O'Donnell's home, it was all the conflicting reports of what had actually gone down that day. In all my years of hunting I had never come across a case like this, where hardly any of the reports matched one another, which led me to believe something else was going on. I was at the less-than-modest house on the outskirts of the town in less than an hour, having called ahead to make sure Mr. O'Donnell was there and willing to talk.

"What exactly do you expect me to tell you that the records cannot?" said Mr. O'Donnell, almost an aged mirror reflection of his son, after we had seated ourselves in the parlor.

"First of all, thank you for letting me come here. I just wanted to know the background of this accident, in the days leading up to it. Seeing as nothing import happened in those days they aren't kept in records, so, did you notice anything unusual in that week, anything out of the ordinary?"

"That was fifty years ago, dear, I'm already forgetting what I did last month. I can try my hardest, though, if it will help stop these people being murdered. Now, it may not have been in that same week, but I do remember about a month or so before the accident this stranger showed up in town. We usually have tourists come and go through here a thousand a day, he wasn't a tourist, at least he didn't act like one. He stayed for a few weeks and then right after the accident he was gone, vanished, I never saw him again. I only remember him because, well, one night I came home rather late from work, far later than I usually did, and I saw him standing at the side of my house with my mother. I ran up there, but they were just talking, it wasn't like they were hiding so I didn't think of it much until after the accident. After he visited my mother she seemed even more spiteful of Lillian, my late wife, and even showed her disapproval openly. My dear mother never approved of Lillian, as her family was just a regular middle-class family and my mother took pride in how successful and rich our family was. The second I decided to marry Lillian no matter what background she came from, my mother was never the same. I even became wary around her because it was right after we found out Lillian was pregnant that my mother talked to this stranger. I think the police would have thought my mother had something to do with the so-called accident if she hadn't also died. I loved my mother very much, however, I never liked the way she treated poor Lillian, who had never disrespected her in any way," as Mr. O'Donnell finished I saw his eyes were almost glistening with repressed tears.

I expressed my sincerest apologies before I moved on.

"So, your mother publicly showed her disapproval of your wife, but only after this stranger visited her?" I asked.

"It was like she just lost all control and manners when it came to Lillian. A few days before the accident she was real quiet, she stayed away from me and my father almost all the time. It all became too much for her I guess, the morning before the accident I think she was even hallucinating, and she was extremely anxious. I always feel I had driven her insane with disappointment, but now that I'm older I realize she had always been a firm-minded woman and Lillian had just been the last straw."

Everything seemed to now be falling into place in my mind, James O'Donnell had been my missing piece to this complex and tiring puzzle. I had been right, a deal had been made, but James O'Donnell wasn't the one who made it. After hearing what he had to say everything made a lot more sense, the stranger clearly having been the demon I was now looking for. I had almost lost track of the time, now hurrying back to the hotel in case the Winchesters should be early. Making a deal with a demon always had repercussions, that I was made sure of by my father multiple times, people not even involved could end up dead too, and I was confident that is what caused this "accident" at the school. One thing still stumped me, why would these people be killed fifty years later in the same place if in the past it truly was a deal? Of course there was the spirit I just killed, but then that brought up my fear that the demon could have controlled the spirit, somehow, to kill people. Demons could kill anyone they wished to without the slightest problem, however, demonic omens and sulfur surrounding the area of their kills would draw in hunters in only hours. My theory was that the demon used the spirit to hide itself from any suspecting hunters as the school just being spirit kills, but through the sulfur in the basement I had gotten too close and it attacked me. A spirit and a demon working together, now that was something any hunter would find crazy.

I burst through the front doors of the building, shotgun in hand, ready for the demon that was trying to kill my family and I. I hadn't heard from my father in over an hour, way longer than the check-in time he had established, it just wasn't like him. They had told me to stay outside to make sure no one came in after us, but I wasn't about to let the demon kill the only family I had left. We had been tracking this thing for weeks, following the omens, following its kills, my father was certain it was in this town. He had gone into the building almost an hour ago to see if he could gather any information from the locals that would lead to the demon. The building was dark, I could vaguely see the outline of a bar to the far corner with the many bottles of alcohol glittering in the dim lighting. I was just about to ascend the wooden, back staircase when I heard a thud on the ceiling above me, instinctively raising the barrel of my gun to the sound's origin. Two years I had been hunting with my father and he had yet to trust me with the particulars of the monster we were hunting. The only reason I knew we were hunting a demon now was because I had actually payed attention to the signs, to the signatures of a demon kill, and put my facts together. Once I deemed it safe to go upstairs, seeing as nothing had run down trying to kill me yet, I climbed up still holding a sense of caution. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard fast-paced footsteps coming from the room upstairs.

"Lara!" I heard a familiar shout. "Run!"

In seconds my brother appeared before me frantically running down the stairs at me from that room above.

"Go!" he yelled, every note in his voice being fear-ridden.

I turned around, lowering my gun to my side, and bolted down the stairs, even taking more than one stair at a time. Had I been younger my brother would have grabbed me up and carried me away, as he had done many times before, but now I was dependent on myself to get out of danger. Even skipping steps, my smaller strides barely kept me in front of my brother, who soon was right behind me. I jumped the last couple steps to the ground, never stopping my frantic pace. I felt my brother's hand curl around my one free hand and he started to pull me along behind him as we fled the building.

We threw ourselves through the building's doors headlong into the unnaturally cold night, our breaths colliding with the air in bursts of white. We distanced ourselves at least a few hundred feet from the building before my brother stopped. Terror gripped me when I was finally able to take a second to realize my brother was by himself.

"Where's dad?" I demanded more than asked.

"He's...he's back there, he's coming...he was right behind-" my brother said between heavy breaths until he realized our father was not right behind him.

I could see my brother now in the dull moonlight, his face was bloodied, his clothes were torn, but the most terrifying feature of him was his pale face contrasting sharply with his blood-shot eyes. His face was almost as white as the moon above, but was smeared with dirt. I only noticed the dirt so much because under his eyes the dirt was broken by thin lines of pale skin extending from the corners of his eyes down his flushed cheeks, as if he had been crying. I had never seen my brother, four years my senior, so unnerved, so undone, when he had only ever been the sturdy rock I had depended on all of my life.

"What happened!?" I screamed, frightened even more at the appearance of my brother, tears forming in my eyes.

"Shhh!" he hushed me sternly. "Be quiet! We have to...we have to be quiet."

He pulled me closer to him, I wrapped my arms around him in turn, feeling more secure that way as we waited for our father. It was only a minute, a minute that seemed to drag on for forever, before my father burst through the doors of the building. I felt my brother shift beside me and I moved away from him, ready to continue running. He was only feet from us before he stopped. I saw he was in the same state as my brother, bloodied, bruised, clothes tattered shreds, face flushed of color. My eyes widened as I realized something was wrong, he wasn't coming to us, he was standing there, an unfamiliar expression on his face. I didn't know why, but tears welled up in my eyes even more as I saw that expression on my father's face. It wouldn't be long until I wore that expression myself: the expression of utter surrender.

"Eric, take care of your sister," he said to my brother.

There was a chilling, paranormal howl in the darkness of the night before my father was pulled off his feet, being dragged back toward the building by an invisible force.

A scream tore from my lips, a yell of surprise from my brother's as we both bolted forward to help our father. We stopped short as my father let out a horrible yell of pain, his clothes and skin being shredded by the invisible thing pulling him toward the building.

"No!" he yelled at us. "No! Don't-!"

He was able to turn around to face the direction of the building and heave his shotgun off the ground despite the force. He fired the gun once, the shell exploding against something that was invisible to us, something that let out an ungodly, dog-like yelp as it released my father's leg. My brother and I looked on in total horror, unable to do anything as our father was being mauled by some invisible monster. Despite his leg being almost torn to the bone my father stood up, looking back at us.

"I'll keep them away from you, you just have to go. Eric, take your sister and get as far away from here as you can! Take the car and go!" my father said panic ruling his voice. "Lara, baby, I love you, watch after your brother for me, okay?"

I nodded, my eyes wide and uncomprehending. My father reloaded the shotgun and faced the building, looking all around for what I assumed was the invisible monster. I heard the chilling howl once more before something swept past my brother and I towards my father, who started to run. As my brother pulled me away, pulled me to the car, I looked back, seeing my father running back to the building. My brother forced me into the backseat of the car, running around to the front and taking the wheel. We drove off not a minute later, the building only visible through the back windshield. I looked out of the smooth glass only to see the building explode in a massive ball of fire and wood. I didn't think I ever would scream as terribly and loudly as I did that night, only the sad truth was that, eventually, I did.

I woke in a horrible cold sweat, my face drenched with both sweat and tears, tears that still slid down my face. The horrible nightmare was one of the worst memories from my past, a memory I sorely wanted to rid my mind of, yet, was the last memory I ever had of my father. Years of finally not being plagued by my past had obviously relapsed due to my first case involving a demon since then. I had clearly fallen asleep as soon as I got back to the hotel, though I barely remembered coming back to the hotel itself. I went to the small bathroom, ran one of the white washcloths under cold water and tried to return some of the color to my face while wiping the sweat and tears from my face. I decided against more alcohol, instead getting a glass of ice water, trying to calm my nerves. My hands still shook as I raised the glass to my mouth, some of the water spilling down my face due to my inability to steady my hand. It was almost a full hour before I was calm again and able to function normally. About the same time there was a knock on the door of my room, making me jump a little. I picked up my nearby handgun, tucking it into the back of my pants as I approached the door. Opening it with the bolt still secured at the top, the door cracked to reveal two men standing outside.

"Lara Wright?" the taller man asked me curiously.

"Depends on who's asking," I said cautiously.

"I'm Sam Winchester, this is my brother Dean," the tall one said.

There on my doorstep stood the Winchesters, arguably two of the best hunters I had ever heard of.

A/N: Hope that was worth the wait, sorry again and hopefully chapter 5 is on its way soon!