I think that this is the first time in the history of this stroy that I have posted two consecutive chapters on two consecutive days. Milestone! Okay, with my last chapter I went from 28 reviews to 33, lets see if we can do it again. My goal is 50. I tried to make this chapter a little bit longer, sohappy reading! -Heather XOX

Disclaimer: I don't even own the computer I'm using, so what do you think the chances are of me owning Supernatural? Slim to none my friends, slim to none. (I do know that it's not nessesary to write a disclaimer for every chapter, but I like to think of all the different ways to say that I don't own what could quite possibly be my most favourite show!)

Sam gripped the rough wooden banister with all his might to keep himself from toppling over while running up the basement stairs of the Hannigan house. He couldn't fall, not now. Not when it was Dean who was depending on him to get them out of a jam, whereas it was usually the other way around. Sam would have felt proud were it not for the fact that his big brother was still chained to a wall and quite possibly being eaten alive bya pack of rabid/evilrats. Sam knew how much Dean hated rats. And, quite frankly, Sam had no love for the gross little creatures either.

Sam was shocked at the sheer amount of stairs that he was having to climb up to get to the main floor of the house. So far he had counted thirty-two. Sometimes Sam liked to make a game out of counting the stairs while he was climbing them. He had done that ever since he was a kid, maybe around five. Probably since he could count.He had gotten so good at it now that he could run up stairs at top speed and still count them exactly right. It came with years of practice, I guess.

The stairs stopped and turned into a narrow hallway. The corridor was so thin that Sam almost had to turn his shoulders sideways to make it through the passage. And Sam thought he was skinny! There were thousands of cobwebs stuck to the walls, so many in the one place that they all formed a kind of shimmering white gauze curtain over the concrete. He brushed the webs away with his hand, and kicked at the couple of stray mice that scurried along the floor at his feet.

And then, what he found at the end of the hallway made in cry out in frustration. More stairs!

"Come on!" He muttered, taking them two at a time, but making sure to still count them. Sixty-seven. That had to be a record. Sixty-seven stairs seemed to be all, but the door that looked like it lead to the main floor of the house was locked from the other side.

"It never stops... does it?" Sam said to himself, wheezing like an athsmatic as the rammed the door with as much force as he could muster. The contact between the wall and his shoulder hit him like a ton of bricks, but when the door didn't spring open, he gritted his teeth and tried again. With the second shove, the door flew off of it's frame, allowing Sam a clear passage through into what appeared to be the kitchen.

Sam stepped into the kitchen as quiet as a breath of air, not wanting to make a sound in case Mrs. Hannigan or Melanie were still about. They didn't seem to be though, all of the house lights were off, and the place was as silent as a tomb. Athough in his years as a ghost hunter, Sam had come to realize that tombs were anything but quiet.

He wandered around the house cautiously, trying to remember where the front door was. Sam bit his lip. How could he be so stupid as to not remember where the fucking front door was? The one moment when Dean needed him to come through, his one moment to shine and prove his worth, and he couldn't find his way out of a farm house. Un-fucking-believable.

Just then, hewas struck by a thought. A thought that made him seem like even more of an idiot than a person who couldn't tell a front door from a kitchen.

"Kitchens have knives!" He murmured excitedly, running to the counter and pulling open the first drawer that he reached. "Bingo."Sam plucked a small but sharp steak knife from the wooden block and turned to go back to his brother. He was hit by another thought, and he quickly grabbed another knife, just in case, before heading back down the stairs to the cold cement hell.

His head was throbbing hard, it was as though someone had a jackhammer and was using it to rummage around in his brain. The only time that Sam could remember having a headache that bad was one evening in collegebefore he met Jess, when he went out with a particularly talkative, yet extremely dull Stanford undergrad named Becka Wilson. He shuddered at the memory of the three hours of lectures about the benefits of going vegan vegetarian that he had endured that night.

"Dean!" Sam called when he was almost at the bottom of the stairs. It had crossed his mind more than once to do the whole Sylvestre Stallone punch the air thing, but he ultimately decided against it, considering that he could barely stand and couldn't feel his head. "Dean?" His only answer was a painedgrunt. "Dean! Are you... Oh god..." Sam stopped short at the sight.

In the short time that he had been gone, the rats had managed to bit a good bit of the skin on Dean's left palm off, not to mention that they had eaten a hole through his shoe, and were making their way up his shouldersto his face. "Sammy... Get them off!" Dean cried out, swatting at them the best he could with his bloody hand.

Sam took the initiative and kicked at the ferocious rats, making sure not to kick his brother in the process. Once the minisculefurry beasts were gone, Sam handed his brother one of the knives.

"Damn miniature Wendigos..." Dean grumbled, inspecting the cuts on his hand. Sam nodded in sympathy.

"I got down here as fast as I could." He said, almost completely out of breath.

"These aren't ours." Dean noted, as he expertly picked the rusty lock of the chain clamp. "Where did you get them?"

"Kitchen." Was all Sam said, as he put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

"Why didn't you get ours?" The elder asked, as he freed his ankle and flexed it multipletimesto get the blood flowing again.

"I couldn't find the door." Sam said this quietly, as though if Dean couldn't hear it, the fact would just go away.

"Are you serious? Oh man, you must have one hell of a concussion!" Dean laughed, standing up.

"Hey, it was dark, okay. And I was hit on the head with a pot. You can't laugh at me!" Sam said indignantly, as the shifted his weight, and headed back up the hell stairs with Dean. About halfway up, they were both panting like dogs on a summers day.

"How many fucking stairs are there? I thought I was in better shape than this!" Dean asked, stopping for a moment with his hands on his knees.

"Sixty-seven." Sam replied quickly.

"Do you still have that stupid stair counting tic?" Dean asked, looking at his little brother with a wary eye.

"It's not a tic! And yes. I do count stairs. Don't look at me like I'm crazy..."Sam warned his older brother.

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but Sam cut him off abruptly. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with it." He said. Dean put his hands up in a defensive position, and the two brothers reached the top of the stairs. (Finally!)

Dean was able to find the front door without difficulty, much to Sam's dismay. After turning and giving Sam a look that read You seriously couldn't find the door? He looked up at the sky, the darkness of which was slowly depleting.

"We've gotta find William Friedmont's bones and salt n' burn em before the sun comes up." Dean explained, looking around for his car.

"Well, thats just perfect. We have no clue where they are!" Sam cried out, wringing his hands in frustration.

"We just have to calm down and think."

"Calm down? Calm down? You just had half your hand eaten off by tetanus infected rats, and now we're both going to have our hearts ripped out of our chests by the revenge bent spirit of some old dead guy, and you're telling me to be calm? Wait, you're telling me. That's weird."

"Very weird. Now, where do you think his bones would be buried. Keep in mind that it has to be somewhere that Melanie and Mrs. Hannigan can be controlling it." Dean told him, scratching the stubbly hairs on his chin in thought.

"You just sounded so much like Dad there dude, it was a little freaky." Sam told him.

Dean looked horrifed. "You're not serious!" He asked, and Sam cracked a smile in light of the circumstance. "Less talking, more thinking, college boy. It's what you're good at."

"Right." Sam joked. "I'm the brain, you're the brawn."

"Exactly."

Sam and Dean stood there for a couple of minutes, occasionally giving the rapidly lightening sky a look of contempt.

"Graveyard?" Sam asked, but was shot down by his brother.

"No, too far away. There aren't any in the immediate vicinity."

"Barn?" He tried again. Dean snapped his fingers.

"You may be onto something there, baby bro. Lets go."

The barn was eerie at night, the painted cherry red walls almost glowing in the faint moonlight. The few cows and horses that were sleeping in their stalls gave a few grunts of protest when the door squeaked open, but went right back to sleep.

"Where in the barn would they be?" Sam asked his brother, peering into an empty stall. Dean's face was screwed up from disgust at the smell of fresh cow pies, and he didn't answer away. "Dean?" The younger Winchester repeated.

"I'm thinking!" Dean slowly pivoted on the spot until he was facing the farthest away stall.

"According to Sheriff Ed, that was the stall where the first animal was killed. Do you think his bones are there?"

"Worth a shot." Dean said, as he ran outside the barn, leaving his brother staring after him.

He came back with a pickaxe and a regular axe, and he handed the pickaxe to Sam. "You go for the wall, I'll do the floor." He said.

Sam nodded, and they headed over to the last stall, ignoring the monotonous moos of cows, and the shrill whinnies of the few horses that were left. Dean got to the stall first, and he raised his axe to take a whack at the floor when something caught his eye. Someone. A woman.

"Melanie?"

She responded with an evil laugh.

There, I'm done! This chapter that is. Many more to come!Don't forget to R&R, and thank you so much for all of your other kind reviews. They mean a lot. Keep on rockin'!