Chapter Eight ; Be As One With Me
Every time Sam shut his eyes, either to blink or test the reality of the moment, he could see that doctor hovering in front of him. It was clear as day, the shining black eyes, the yellow-green rot smile, the dripping saw, and in order for Sam's heart not to explode from fear he wouldn't allow himself to close his eyes. That didn't work so well, not when his eyeballs felt like they were being molested by sandpaper, but he hated the feeling of being expected even more.
Expected. That doctor, the one who was surely killing all the poor islanders, had Sam's name written down somewhere in his little black book. They weren't suppose to have met this soon, but if Sam had had his way they wouldn't have met at all – not when the main emotion, on top of the surprise and fear and shock, was relieved comfort. Comfort, for God's sake, like Sam should have known this doctor, like he was connected to the madman in some way. Worse yet, in the brief time that door had been open and the doctor had been standing there blocking the way, at the back of Sam's mind the feeling of belonging had awoken.
Sam belonged on the island, and that realization was the one that sent him sliding down onto the motel floor with the dead look in his eyes.
"Christ, Sammy, just tell me what happened."
Exasperated, that's what Dean was. His brother hadn't told him anything since the incident over on Arrowsic Island, at the Sanders's place, he had only marched out of the house with a grave look on his face. All Dean had found in the last hour – that's how long it took to make sure the house was clean of any trace of them and exactly the way it had been before the Winchesters set foot in it, to leave the island and find a place to spend the night in Georgetown – was that "there has been another one". That was all Sammy had been willing to say, just those five words over and over again, and it was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.
How were the brothers Winchester suppose to fight evil if they never talked about the evil they were trying to fight? How was Dean not suppose to feel fully terrified for his little brother if he was just going to lay there on the floor with that vacant look to his face?
Kneeling on the carpeting in front of his brother, hands on either one of Sam's knees and leaning forward so far they could have rubbed noses – but that would have just been awkward, let alone have a mighty degree of wrongness to it – Dean hissed.
"Sammy," he said loudly, like his brother was legally deaf instead of in shock, like the only way for the kid to come out of it was significant hearing damage. "What the fuck did you see, Sammy? What happened?"
A shiver ran down Sam's spine, one strong enough to make his entire body rattle. His eyes seemed to be glued to what little sliver of Driftwood Motel room door he could see, almost in anticipation for the doctor to pass through the wood and make shoe indentations in the plush tan carpeting of room number twelve. Maybe he was doing that right now, metamorphosising just in front of the peephole but Sam couldn't see it because Dean's big head was in the way.
"You're scaring the shit out of me, Sammy. Stop it!"
"I told you," he replied weakly, "that I wasn't ever going to answer to that name again."
Dean smiled, glad to see his brother hadn't had a psychotic break after all. "I don't recall you ever telling me that."
"Well, now I'm telling you that, so do you mind backing away a little? You're weirding me out with the closeness and the touching."
Doing as he had been asked, Dean scooted backward but not far enough to make Sam completely happy. "Tell me what happened, will ya? All I saw was you open the door and freak out, jump back far enough to crack the drywall. Thankfully you didn't, the last thing we need is to have cops busting through that door."
"I saw him," Sam put simply. "He was standing just inside the doorway to Adam's room."
"Saw who, Sammy?"
Sam shook his head, causing Dean to sigh.
"Who'd you see, Sam?" he asked, visibly annoyed with his brother's dislike of the childhood nickname.
"Your mad doctor, the one Gweneth says has never existed. I opened the door and there he was…. There's been another one, Dean. I don't know who or where or when, but it happened."
Since he had first learned of Sam's gift (or curse, whichever it was suppose to be), Dean had teased him about it. It was a mask, that joking, one to cover up the sincere worry Dean had been constantly feeling. It wasn't just the fact that Sam had once been possessed, had shot him twice with an empty gun, it was that his little brother could sense things that Dean couldn't. Could Sam handle that ability? Did he know how to work it, how to take control of it, how to not let it eat him alive?
"You've told me that about a million times, but thanks again – I know I can trust you if my memory ever goes down the shitter. But how do you know that? He didn't tell you, did he?" Dean frowned. "Did he tell you anything at all?"
Pausing for too long, Sam continued to stare at the motel room door. "No. No, he didn't say anything. Meyers was just standing there with a dripping saw in his hands, that's how I know he's killed someone else."
Rolling back on his heels, turning so he could look more intensely at the door than his brother ever was, Dean felt like he needed to punch something. Or at least be armed with a gun and rock salt bullets, if the mad doctor was going to bless them with his visit like he and Sam feared they'd better be prepared. "Why do we always have to get the experiment happy, lunatic doctors? Couldn't we mess with a rabid pink, cartoon bunny just once? I'm getting so sick of men in scrubs."
"You and me both," Sam replied glumly. "But seriously, Dean. I saw him standing in the doorway with a saw in his hand, dripping fresh blood. I knew we weren't going to find anything in Adam's room, at least I thought we wouldn't, so that's why I left. I'm sorry."
He shook his head. "Believe me, I'm just glad to hear you talking."
That comment was enough to peel Sam's gaze away from the only escape from the motel room (save a window that only opened to a wonderful measurement of an inch and a half, damn safety devices). He looked hard at Dean, at the deep lines starting to form in his face and at his sunken eyes. "When was the last time you slept?"
Dean shrugged one shoulder and got to his feet. "A while ago. I'd kind of like to be sure that I'll sleep throughout the night, that you won't come up to me when I'm fast asleep and empty two rounds into my head. You pulled that trigger twice, kiddo, and nothing happened, I'm sure it weighs on your mind real good and heavy."
"We're dealing with a doctor who's slaying young people in their homes, the place they feel the safest, and you bring up something that happened so long ago?" Sam sighed, rose shakily to his feet and sat down on his designated twin bed. "You know I didn't mean to do it, you know I never meant what I said to you."
In the amber glow of the desk lamp, it was difficult to ignore the pale sheen Dean's skin had taken on over the past weeks as he pulled his t-shirt over his head. He could act all he wanted to, but as Sam knew it was like trying to imagine the back of Dean's hair not sticking up from the friction and static that cotton shirt made when being pulled off – it just wasn't going to happen. Dean was still holding a grudge and all the charisma and sexual innuendos in the world couldn't cover it up.
"Do I?" he asked, staring at his hands as he tugged his grey t-shirt from his wrists.
Sam pulled his laptop to himself, flipped it open, pressed a button and waited impatiently for it to boot. "I asked you if you wanted to converse. I believe my precise words were, 'do we need to talk about this?' Dean, you sure do always pick the finest times to bring up your enmities."
His older brother saying nothing, just kind of snorting as he rolled his t-shirt into a ball and stuffed it into his carry-all, Sam assumed he had used too fancy a word. "Enmity, it means ill will." Not that he meant it to, but his explanation came out annoyed, like he resented the fact that his brother had never read an eight-hundred page book in his life.
Dean looked up from his bag, shot his brother the coldest look he had ever managed to create, it even looked like he was about to cry. "Go back to California," he said, voice shaky.
The laptop computer had loaded, the blue and green glow from the welcome screen attacking the normal pigmentation of Sam's face. On any normal night, like the short time he had spent in college what seemed like a hundred years ago, he would have had his beloved computer plugged into a phone jack already, would be at the Google webpage and just beginning his search for much needed information. On a normal night, in a comfortable locale, Sam would spend hours working the computer, until his shoulders stiffened up and well beyond. On a normal night Sam wouldn't be needed to search for information about ghosts and demons and maniacal doctors, but facts to mention in his thesis paper. On a normal night he had never needed to worry about having a fight with his brother, a very big fight that could change the face of everything, but this – like all of the millions of nights Samuel Winchester had seen – was anything but normal.
"What?" Sam asked as he absentmindedly unplugged the nightstand phone from the wall and stuck in his computer modem jack instead. He double-clicked the Internet icon and signed himself into his ISP account, looked back to Dean, who was focusing too much on his travel bag.
"Go back to California," Dean repeated. "You don't respect me, I don't respect you, so let's just save ourselves a lot of pain and anguish by you packing up and walking out that door. It'll be just like old times."
Sam laughed slightly, sadly ignoring the triple digit amount of e-mails waiting for him in his mailbox and going to his favorite search engine, typing in Dr. Meyers Arrowsic Island and hitting the enter button. "What are you talking about, Dean, that I don't respect you? Of course I do."
A few dating ads, an exiles of Maine guestbook, a breast augmentation specialist link (how that got there…), some University Archives, and what Sam had been looking for. It was a one liner description, the title only a web address, but it had a few key words; Dr. Jonathan Meyers, slayings, and Arrowsic Island. The link was broken, but at least Sam could refine his search, and boy did he get some hits.
"Our bastard's got himself a name," Sam said happily. "Jonathan Meyers. This newspaper article is dated 1946, when they apprehended him and his nurse wife, an Emily Reusch, on Arrowsic Island for a series of disappearances and murders that stretched back six years, so 1940. But before that, you'll be glad to hear, he worked in New York state at a sanitarium for the criminally insane. I guess these mad doctors, they just love you, Dean."
He seemed pained by that last comment, like it had sliced through his heart. "Yeah, well, I only wish you did."
Sam sighed. "What's gotten into you, Dean? You know I love you, that I'd die for you – you're my brother – and that I respect you more than anyone else. I'm sorry for what happened at the asylum and I regret not forcing you to talk about what happened there, but let's not get it in the way of finding this guy and flushing him out."
"Somehow I don't believe that, Sammy," Dean replied. "Somehow, what you said to me back there and how you said it made it seem like you meant every last word. Of course, I'm an idiot, so what do I know?"
Going to interrupt his brother with an important retort, Sam was only met with the palm of his sibling's hand.
"Don't you fucking dare talk over me, Sam," Dean warned. "I can't understand it, you never say one word to me about anything when I need to hear it – when you're so keen on being rid of me you try to shoot me, when you see another crazy doctor in some kid's doorway, when you're being kept awake by nightmares. But now, when I'm trying to spill my heart out here, you feel like actually talking to me."
"You really do want me to go, don't you?" Sam asked softly.
Dean was getting so upset he was having a hard time kicking off his boots. "Come off it, Sammy, you're happy with that. Just admit it, admit that you're thrilled with the chance to go back to your college and your friends, to a normal life without me in it."
"No," he denied the final part of the last accusation.
"Then at least be honest with me. I'm begging you here, Sammy, just… just tell me what happened to you in some dead kid's house when I ask about it, okay?"
Sam nodded slowly, skimming over a new article he had clicked on to. "I will, Dean, I promise."
From his position on the foot of his bed, Dean sighed. "I've always been able to tell when you're lying, Sammy, but all right…. What have you got?"
Happy that the fight hadn't been as bad as it could have been –"I don't need you, Sam. I can do this alone, so just go back to Stanford, to your worthless arrogant college. Leave, Sam!" – the youngest Winchester boy ummed and turned back to the newspaper article. Figuring his brother wouldn't want the entire thing laid out in front of him, Sam picked out the finer points.
"Meyers worked in upstate New York, at the Wade House for the Criminally Insane, from 1913 to 1940. He was a bit of a Brad Pitt there, became the go-to guy for everything from the child rapists to the mentally plagued–"
Dean laughed softly, mimiking Sam as he started peeling himself out of his jeans. "'Mentally plagued'?"
"Well, 'the other crazies' seems quite rude. But, anyway, it says here he married the nurse who worked at the sanitarium with him in 1936, that Emily Reusch I mentioned, they never had kids. They moved at the hight of Meyers's career to Arrowsic Island, reportedly because back home he operated on the general public in the living room of his house and couldn't take being the brunt of suspicion when they died or came out of the operations a little off."
"You see the irony in that don't you, Sammy boy?" Dean stuffed his jeans in his carry-all bag and traipsed across the room in his shorts to the bathroom.
Over the running water in the sink, Sam realized that not answering to his nickname was useless. "What, about the living room?"
Dean popped his head out of the bathroom, face dripping, and waved his wet and readied toothbrush at his kid brother. "Yeah. People used to put their families' dead bodies in there, final goodbye's or something like that while they snapped a few photos of dead ol' Grandma. Why do you think they started calling it the living room?" Dean paused, looked down at his blue toothbrush and disappeared back into the bathroom. "I don't know, I thought it would be interesting to point out."
Sam smirked, shook his head. "Okay, so they moved to Arrowsic in 1938 and bought a nice house on the far side of the island away from everyone else, you know for privacy and all that jazz." He cast a longing look at his brother, walking out of the restroom scratching an itch on his upper thigh, and yearned for a little bit of privacy himself.
"Privacy," Dean scoffed, throwing his carry-all bag on the floor along with a couple of extra pillows that he didn't need. "Where's the fun in privacy, eh Sammy?" He threw an enigmatic smile at his little brother, plopped down on his stomach on top of the motel's ocean blue sheets.
Sighing heavily, Sam cocked his head. "I don't know, I can see where they were coming from."
The extra pillows Dean didn't want were right below his nightstand, he reached down with his left arm and picked one up to toss at Sam's head. "Who's the sex fiend now, Sammy? And here I thought you were the innocent one."
"No," Sam protested and threw the pillow back with a good amount of force, "it's still you. I was talking about not having to listen to your Adriana Lima fantasies."
"Hey, one day it's going to happen."
"I thought you had a complex when it comes to women who are taller than you? Yeah, you do. You know if she ever wears heels, which is always, you'd have to look up, right?"
Dean smiled dreamily, arms folded underneath his chin. "For Adriana, man, I'd lick your s–"
"Oh, God, Dean. Don't!"
He made a rather unpleasant face. "Shoe, Sammy. For Adriana I'd lick your shoe. Lord knows how much dog crap you stepped in today alone. Look, I may be disgusting and vile, but that would just be an all time low for me. God, I'd rinse my mouth out with lye after just saying something like that. Have you no faith in me?"
Sam groaned his answer. "I'm taking a scaldingly hot shower after this, scrub off my skin."
Giggling shortly, Dean nodded toward the laptop computer. "So what else about our doctor friend?"
Rolling his head, trying to snap his stiff neck, Sam looked back to the computer screen. "Regular Cleaver family minus the kids; went to church, joined in and organized local festivities, even helped pay for the lighthouse repairs. They were the perfect neighbors, everyone loved them, and it seems like no one knew that back in New York they were wanted for plucking folks off of the street and experimenting on them. Uh," he went back to past pages to see what he had missed. "Around two years into their stay, he began taking Arrowsic residents from their bedrooms at night and carrying them gagged and bound to his basement. They ranged from thirty, the oldest anyone knew about, to thirteen, the youngest… most died, the ones who didn't were returned to their beds along with the dead and their families found them brain damaged beyond repair."
"Thirteen?" Dean asked, repulsed. "What the fuck was he doing to thirteen-year-old kids?"
Sam bit his lip shortly, reading over a section of the newspaper article that proved his earlier mentioned bad feelings true, but he decided it would be best not to mention it for Dean's sake. "Do you remember Ellicott's journal?"
"How could I forget?"
"Well, multiply that by ten and throw in a little extra depraved behavior," Sam explained vaguely, but the wave of sickness he was feeling was evident in his voice.
Dean propped himself up on his elbows. "You're kidding me. How could anything be worse than Ellicott?"
"Don't make me tell you, I just might throw up." But in actuality, Sam didn't want to have to tell Dean anything that might distract him from the task at hand, might make him worry about his own fate. "It was horrible stuff, I'll let you in on that, and in 1946 Meyers and his wife were finally apprehended and put in jail. They gave the cops the murder/suicide card the March night they were arrested, did it in their cell. It doesn't say anything else, that's all I could find."
Sam shut his computer down in disgust, pulled the modem jack out of the wall and reconnected the motel room phone. With a violent shudder, he got to his feet and began heading to the other side of the room.
"Where are you going?" Dean asked, not rolling onto his back to see that his brother was walking to the bathroom.
"Shower," Sam answered simply.
After a pause, one long enough to allow his kid brother into the bathroom and to start closing the door, Dean spoke again. "Remember what I told you, about being honest with me?"
Sam sighed, his fingers catching the bathroom door before it slammed shut with a crack. "Yeah, I remember."
"Good, so you won't mind telling me what he did to some of those people."
The shining white toilet was waiting for Sam to vomit his stomach contents into it, the seat still up from when Dean had used it when they first arrived. "You've seen Se7en, right?"
"I was the one stupid enough to take you along with me, yeah," Dean replied. "You threw up in my popcorn. It was just spit, actually, but it's still really gross."
"But you've seen it."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Yes," he said vexedly.
Sam couldn't stop staring at the toilet, like he was expecting it to talk to him (there was that word again), like he was waiting for the voice of Doctor Jonathan Meyers to call out to him again. "The scene for gluttony, where the killer tied the guy down to the table and forced him to eat until he died… imagine your organs being on the menu instead of cheeseburgers and pizza fries."
No reply came from the twin bed closest to the motel room door, their only exit if the doctor showed up to haul one of the Winchester brothers away to his basement room and to try to relieve a sibling of something that Meyers had announced on his arrest day was his main goal in life to conquest – a goal Sam hoped Dean would learn about no sooner than after they got out of this hunt alive. The only noise from the bedroom was a thick, repelled silence.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to scrub off my skin now. I'll be out in ten." And Sam closed the door to vomit in relative privacy.
There was a better than definate chance that one of them was going to die quite sooner than expected, of that Sam was far too certain.