Better Be Home Soon
Chapter 4
Juliet followed the Gunoil-Leather-Cheap-Denim-and-Flannel smell of the Winchesters encased by their Metal-Gasoline-and-Leather stinking car through the small midwestern town of Lebanon Kansas.
But when she attempted to follow their trail further down the road, out past the Midway Co-op grain elevators and on into the open farmland beyond, Juliet found herself unaccountably turned around and confused. Every time she followed the road north she would stumble on the blacktop ribbon and find herself with her nose, once again, facing south; dashing back down the same stretch of road she had just traversed.
Juliet stopped, and shook out her coat from snout to tail, as though she was shaking off water. Then attempted to follow the road at a more cautious pace. But, once again, she found herself turned around.
Using her brain as Papa would have wanted, Juliet left the road and set out cross country, trying to dodge the Dizzy-Chasing tail-Turned around sensation, and loop back to reach the Winchester's trail on the road beyond.
But she hit the disorientating sensation again and again. Stubbornly, she ranged out further, and tried again.
And again.
And again.
Eventually tracing out a wide circumference that crossed the road's continuation dozens upon dozens of miles north. Finding it devoid of the Winchesters Gasoline-Metal, Gunoil-Leather-Cheap-Denim-and-Flannel stink.
Juliet doggedly continued in her investigations until she came full circle.
Back at the beginning, on the road on the opposite side of the grain elevators from where the Winchesters trail had begun, Juliet gazed north.
Perhaps another hound wouldn't have been able to puzzle out the meaning behind the scent trail, but Juliet was Papa's clever girl. She knew that somewhere within that miles wide circular zone of Dizzy-Chasing tail-Turned around, the brothers Winchester had made and warded a safe, secure den.
With a rumbling sigh of weariness, Juliet sprawled herself down beside the road leading north past the grain elevators and lay her head down across her paws to wait. Certain that the Hunters Winchester would leave their den sometime soon, by the same route which they had entered.
…ooo0ooo…
Night came and Juliet felt a gnawing hunger in her belly, urging her to leave and go out and hunt one of the many corporeal creatures she could hear going about their nocturnal business' in the fields out beyond the grain elevators. But still she stayed, still she waited.
An hour after dawn, Juliet was rewarded with the deep bass rumble and the Metal-Gasoline stink of the Winchester's black muscle car as it came tearing back down the road with both the Moose and the Squirrel in its front seat.
Juliet took to her paws and followed, chasing along behind the car like a common canine.
Eventually the Winchester's noisy stinky vehicle pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. Parking up beside a smaller, less noisy vehicle.
Much to Juliet's surprise, the little Prophet of The Lord climbed out of that second vehicle and proceeded to dig about in the soil beneath a giant billboard depicting something obviously supposed to be a demon.
Juliet watched from her place on the road, head cocked, unseen by mortal eyes, as finally the boy unearthed something that filled her sensitive nose with a stinging stench of Ozone-and-Power. A God rock. A piece of a God rock.
"You hid the Demon Tablet underneath the devil? Seriously?" the Squirrel asked, looking amused.
The Prophet shrugged. "What? I was delirious."
Pulling a second piece of God rock from inside his jacket, the Prophet placed the two pieces together, sparking an eye watering flash of power. In the Prophet's hands the God rock rejoined itself and was whole once more.
The prophet handed the God rock off to the Moose.
"You sure this is gonna work?"
The Moose sighed and shook his head. "What choice do we have?" he asked morosely.
The Squirrel then fished a small box out of his pocket and pulled out a key. "All right, listen, this is a secret lair. You understand me? No keggers." He warned, holding it out.
The prophet took and pocketed the key.
"I don't have any friends," he answered, looking away from the hunter with a sour expression.
"Yeah, well, just lay low. Who knows? You'll be a mathlete again before you know it."
Soon after, the little Prophet and the Winchesters parted ways. The Winchesters driving off towards the interstate, and the Prophet driving back the way the Winchesters had come from. Remembering the Squirrel's words about secret lairs, Juliet assumed the Prophet was heading back to the Winchesters' den inside the Dizzy-Chasing tail-Turned around zone.
…ooo0ooo…
The Winchesters drove for a long time and eventually even Juliet's infernal stamina began to flag. She dropped further and further behind, but comforted herself that it wasn't really a problem, she could follow the Gunoil-Leather-Cheap-Denim-and-Flannel stink which the Winchesters left in their wake for weeks after they had passed. Eventually the Winchesters course would cross with Papa's.
Juliet followed the Winchester's scent to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and from there to the familiar but far more rundown site of what had once been Singer Auto Salvage yard.
Weeds and tall grass straggled rampantly between the rusting hulks of half cannibalised car bodies, the house Papa had once visited Bobby Singer in was little but a burned-out shell.
Unwillingly Juliet found herself screeching to an untimely halt outside the chain-link fence of the Singer Auto Salvage yard. Puzzled, she paced the line and sniffed at the unexpected boundary. Only to fall back pawing at her stinging nose and whining in agony.
Someone had packed a plastic pipe with Goofer dust, then buried it just inside the property's boundary fence.
Stymied by the damnable marriage of modern plastic and Haitian spiritualism, Juliet was once again dismayed to realise she couldn't follow the Winchesters.
Her sensitive nose all but disabled by proximity to the ghastly voodoo concoction, she was forced to fall back upon her sight and hearing to track the Hunter's progress within the salvage yard and puzzle out their purpose there.
"Nice try, Squirrel. Moose is doing these trials. Moose signs."
The voice was Papa's! And the sound of it set Juliet's tail wagging with delighted eagerness.
"No, no. He's not signing anything until I read the fine print." The Squirrel growled by way of a response from out of sight, beyond the damned fence and the mountain of rusted car carcasses.
Juliet stopped dead, guilt roiling in her gut. Papa was conducting a business agreement.
Papa had bid her stay in Hell, and she had disobeyed.
"I can read it." The Moose grumbled.
"Hey, you wanted me here. I'm here. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna let him screw us even more." The Moose's brother snapped back.
"What's this? Trouble in paradise, boys?" Papa chuckled in delight, obviously enjoying the disharmony between the Winchesters.
Now Juliet was beside herself with conflicted emotions.
Pent up gambolling joy at hearing Papa's gruff gravelly tones, warred with the tail tucking, belly crawling guilt and shame at the knowledge she had disobeyed and was a Bad Girl.
"You're gonna move your lips the whole way up here, aren't you?" Papa goaded the Winchester hunters. "You know why I always defeat you? It's your humanity. It's a built-in handicap. You always put emotion ahead of good, old-fashioned common sense. Let's have the big galoot sign it now, shall we?"
Suddenly there was a scuffle and a yelp from that unseen place beyond the fence, and Juliet felt the shockingly sudden cessation of the whispers of Papa's infernal power ripple outward, like loss over her pelt.
But, just as Juliet thought her heart would cease beating from horror and grief, Papa's voice came to her ears once more.
"Is this a joke? You realise all I have to do is..." he said, and there was the oh so familiar sound of Papa's fingers snapping. But nothing happened.
"Uhh-uhh-ahh. Demonic handcuffs, jackass." the Squirrel elaborated smugly. "No flicking, no teleporting, no smoking out— oh, and... no deal. Which pretty much means that you're our bitch."
"Fine. You want to play chain gang? Let's —" Papa was mad now, Juliet cringed in response, even though the anger wasn't aimed at her and neither was the blow which came after his words.
The Squirrel grunted in pain.
"You saddled yourself to the wrong bull, mate." Papa enthused, his voice sharp, and cutting as a torturer's blade.
Then, there came the sounds of a series of meaty thwacks, and more sounds of bitten off pain. Sounds, which horrifyingly, appeared to emanate from Papa.
"I can do this all day, 'cause you know what? Damn, it feels good!" the Squirrel enthused manically. "But sooner or later, you're gonna have to face it — you're ours. Which means that your demon ass is going to be a mortal ass, pretty damn quick."
"What's he mouthing on about?" Papa asked, his voice high and tight with sudden suspicion.
The Moose just chuckled in response.
"You're the third trial, Crowley," he responded, after what seemed like a deliberately vindictive pause.
Horrified by the Hunter's words and what they could mean for her master, Juliet threw herself at the impassable barrier. Snapping and snarling in fury, determined to reach and save her master.
But it was no good, nothing she could do allowed her to force her way through.
By the time the Winchester's great black monster of a car rumbled back out the gates of Singer's Auto Salvage yard, Juliet was utterly battered, burned and bloody from all her useless efforts.
All she could manage afterward, was to trail behind the Winchester's Gunoil-Leather-Cheap-Denim-and-Flannel scented departure, at a limping, dogged trot.