Chapter Nine ; Acid Rain and the Death of Innocence
It had never seemed hazardous before, not when it had first started to happen. Sammy would dream reading a line in a book he had never read before or dream doing something specific during a certain part of a certain verse of a particular song, and a few weeks later it would happen, down to the finest detail. It had been weird, yes, that constant feeling of deja vú, but certainly not dangerous. But one day, the harmlessness of it all slowly began to turn.
Overnight it didn't happen, though Sam sometimes wished it had. He had ignored the warning signed before, all those years of warning signs, so if it had just slapped him in the face….
He had been six when he dreamt an orange tabby cat crossing the road in front of his friend Jimmy's house, going from a red mailbox to a grass clippings pile – left to right diagonally – and stopping in the middle of the pavement with its right front paw in the air as someone's lawnmower fired up. Fourteen days later, as little Sammy left his best friend's house to walk home, it happened exactly as it did in his dream. Hit left toe on raised piece of flagstone on front path, mutter made-up curse word and look up, see cat run run running across the road, see cat stop just in front of a large pot hole, watch cat stiffen from the sound of a starting lawnmower. Turned out, five minutes after that encounter the cat was struck by that same lawnmower and acquired fatal injuries.
At eleven his father came home two days late from a hunt, a gash across the side of his face and his left arm held tenderly in his right, stumbling over the foyer runner just as Sam had dreamed he would a month before. His father's prey, a modern day headless horseman, had been fairly upset with the whole concept of being vanquished and took its rage out on poor ol' John Winchester. His arm had shattered, the cut in his cheek so deep Sammy had sworn he could see his father's teeth through it, but the job had been completed.
Dean had a baseball accident when Sammy was eight, one bad enough to convince their father that the time was finally over for normal boyish activities. The training had started up to a full, well oiled swing and Dean hadn't minded at all – that baseball gave him a black eye for what seemed like two whole months – but Sammy had been the one left to wonder, "If I hadn't had that dream, would it have still happened?"
The answer, as Sam had concluded long ago, was one not to dwell on. No one had control over their dreams, so it was rather inane to sit around and ask questions about that sort of thing. Sam had dreams, sometimes in which good things happened, sometimes in which very bad things happened, sometimes in which neither good or bad things happened, and he couldn't ever change that. But maybe if he had paid a little more attention to them (certainly he should have, what with having had them for the whole of his twenty-two years), maybe if he hadn't kept them all locked down deep within himself, Jessica would still be alive.
He couldn't rewrite history, wasn't smart enough to build himself a time machine and go back in time, had a hard time dealing with only having Jessica with him in his dreams (as horrifying as they were). But for the moment that wasn't the main item on his overly served plate. Sam didn't save his beloved Jessica, but maybe – as terrible and painful as it was to even think – he wasn't suppose to.
Maybe fate had it in for him to lose her, to have Jessica ripped from him like that, so he could save Dean. Granted, Sam had never actually believed in fate, not wholly anyway. He had always been the kid who groaned inside when someone mentioned "fate", like it was a bad joke someone had told, but lying on top of his bed sheets in that Driftwood Motel room – the air still stinking of disgust and paranoia – he might have believed in fate just a little bit more.
According to the clock/radio residing on the nightstand between the two twin beds, fate had slapped him across the face somewhere around one in the morning. Currently it was 3:21AM, meaning that Sam had been lying on his back staring at the ceiling for close to two and a half hours now and counting. The left side of his face still stung something like fire, as if that fate slapping hadn't happened two hours and twenty one, two minutes ago but two seconds ago. Whenever the metaphorical bitch slap had occurred, the snoring mass of blankets on the other bed was positively clueless as to what movie reel in Sam's mind refused to stop playing.
Though the youngest Winchester brother was awake, fully aware of the fact that he was at least somewhere in the Land of Limbo (between sleep and wakefulness), he was able to see the dream that had woken him play itself out on the ceiling. It was being beamed onto the white ceiling by the projector of Sam's mind's eye, a cruel gesture to ensure that little Samuel Winchester wouldn't be ignoring anymore warning signs… not that he could ever look away from these.
Way back when, the police had come to the death plagued island with a firm step because they had finally figured out what was going on, had a clue to who was depraved enough to do such heinous things to their good spirited neighbors. The people in New York State had read the newspaper articles, had seen the film footage as they sat in the movie theatres waiting for their Audrey Hepburn film to begin. Those suits had sunk into their seats with dread every time something new came up, every time someone else died and they had to hear about it, and they had been overwhelmed with the feeling of familiarity. That was why they had called the frantic police force of Sagadahoc County, that was why the first words Chief Lieutenant Graver had said into the phone when he called up Sheriff Lunday were, "So that's where that sick son of a bitch ran off to."
That conversation must have been an embarrassment to Lunday, his cheeks burning scarlet for not realizing the newest resident to Arrowsic Island was a madman with a pension for blood. How much shame must he have felt for allowing the deaths to happen? To know that all those people could have been saved? Lunday watched over the county after all, it was his duty to know how many lunatics were walking around his land.
It was as if Meyers had attacked those kids right in front of Lunday's eyes, like he had watched this guy force a woman to eat her own uterus – "I shall cure them, I shall cure them all from this disease of whores!" – and he had simply chosen to look away.
Hadn't he felt like crap.
Lunday should have known what was going on, that's what he might have been convinced of as he kicked himself, he should have realized the monster walking his streets and done something about it. Eventually he did, do something about it, but not soon enough to quell a beast's thirst, not soon enough to protect Dean Winchester in any way possible.
From the grave, propelled by the urge to continue his life's work whether dead or alive, doctor Jonathan Meyers plucked out all of the bad seeds. "The Infected", that's what he had called them, "the Afflicted". He would watch them, was most definately watching one right now under the cover of darkness, and would comprise his list as the infected slept soundly in their beds. Black eyes melding with the dark shadows, nigh impossible to pin down even if one was staring directly at them, simply watching, waiting. A face, paler than light, glowing angrily as it took stock of sin.
Meyers, not so much a ghost as a collection of hate and misconstrued notions, had been convinced since day one of his abilities. It was his duty and his alone to cure the world of what he considered a disease, of something not natural that slowly turned people into piles of rotting flesh. And on the ceiling, being played over and over, was one brother's death.
It was another secret operation room, one buried under a house and hidden behind a padlocked door. One small room and though it had one exit, it was without a single option of escape. In life the Infected had been bound with rope, gagged with socks, and carried to this room to meet something far beyond their worst nightmares. Much alike in death, the doctor's victims were taken to the room in their dreams, something out of the Matrix, and that began the ticking of the deathwatch. It came from their very core, the ticking clock, and it was the loudest within Dean.
He rested under the milky glow of a light that seemed not to have a place in the room – a cone of dusky hope that danced down from the spot of dark ceiling above Dean's head, keeping the rest of the room in blackest shadow. What lay beyond the feeble ray of hope, of faith, Dean seemed not concerned. With eyes still closed, rhythm of breathing slow and steady, he looked unaware of the situation he was in. Naïve to the leather straps around both ankles and wrists that tied his body down to a rusting surgical gurney, blind to the metal bit passing between his teeth and fastened securely to the device locking his head into one and only one position, dead to the other longer leather fasteners around his torso that further secured him to the ancient gurney – Dean was the epitome of that old saying, of ignorance being bliss.
Alone in the basement room, that's what Dean was, but then again the farthest thing from it.
He knew this, for Dean's hands balled into fists, rolling over so that each thumb faced the now forgotten night sky.
Creaking wheels carried a surgical tray to the Infected one's death table, with no visible force behind the movement. Tools that went uncleaned for centuries waited in tense excitement for their moment to shine, to cut and to slice and to obliterate. They vibrated oh so slightly, that was how wound up they were to be used, to destroy a perfectly good life. Maybe, though, they shook because they were under the radar of two shining orbs.
Beyond the cone of Dean's unconscious and feverently denied faith, the doctor stood waiting and watching. It was more sensed than seen, Jonathan Meyers and his twice dead eyes, but they were there sure as stone. Possibly because of Dean's adamantly disaffirmed faith, Meyers dared not approach the young buck so soon. Faith, admitted or denied, was a very nasty thing to mess with. Spoken verses, unfortunately, weren't yet out of the equation.
Jerking lightly, as if the doctor's words came to him on the stinger of a bee, Dean pressed his eyes closed to the point where his face no longer looked soft and calm, but like a choppy sea beneath thunderheads. He was waiting for that first thunderclap, the one right above him that would scare him no matter how prepared for the noise he was. Garbled words stripped of sound escaped his gagged mouth, prayers to a God Dean never once declared his belief in.
"Worry not, Mr. Winchester," the doctor stopped his gibberish poem to say far too softly for a man with such a harsh and hate filled face. "Worry not," he stated again, almost singing his words.
Dean's body went rigid, every muscle one was able to see above and below his boxer briefs become tense enough to tear with ease.
"I'll take very good care of you, Dean." For a madman, Jonathan Meyers had a nice, albeit terrifying, bedside manner. "I'm going to fix you, cut this disease from you, make you as you should and deserve to be. Dean Winchester, I'll give you what you've always wanted if you'll simply cooperate with me. If you would just relax for me, if you would allow me to take this sickness from you, you'll finally be able to have what you've wished every night of your life to obtain."
The Infected one, a moron of a man but with a heart of gold, went calm without so much as a moment's hesitation. His eyes opened, a shining hazel brilliance meeting the hazy glow of hope, and his silent prayers became no more.
"Yes," the doctor read his victim's thoughts as he stepped out of the shadows and into the cone of light. "Yes, Dean, you'll finally be able to have that. It wasn't that you could never grasp hold of it before, dear boy, but with this disease tainting your blood you simply couldn't reach far enough to wrap your hand around it. But I will help you, Mr. Winchester. I promise I shall cure you, and I am not a man to go back on my word."
Dean's cone of murky light, whether he was aware of it or not, became brighter. It was still not enough to light the entire chamber of death, but it was strong enough to erupt Jonathan Meyers's black eyes with fire and had enough strength to light what horrific operation was to come.
Meyers stepped up to the gurney, pulled the cart of surgical tools closer to his left hip, and along with the creaking wheels came his frayed-looking nurse.
"The pain," Doctor began placidly, "will be but a small price for you to pay, Mr. Winchester. For you, I assure thee, it will be more than worth it."
Pressing the palms of his hands into the rust pooled gurney, Dean softly closed his eyes.
"No, no, Dean, I won't do that to you. I'll make this most comfortable for you, because I know how this disease is something you do not embrace warmly at all. It's as you say, Dean: with it you'll never be able to truly have what you so desperately want. That's how you got it in the first place, this sickness, is it not?"
It was impossible for him to nod, but the idiot with the heart of gold tried.
Jonathan Meyers held out his right hand and his nurse wife, an Emily Reusch who at one point in time might have been beautiful if she hadn't fallen into the lot she had fallen into, firmly placed a twittering scalpel in his palm.
"This might sting a little, boy," he explained in a voice that suddenly turned hard and cold as a gravestone. Meyers raised his head, looking forward at nothing but boring into Sam at the same time. "Hurry, Samuel, tick tock. You know what happens to everyone you ever love."
And the deathwatch grew louder, faster.
Sam rolled over onto his side, forcing himself to look away from the film rewinding itself on the ceiling, soon to be played again. He focused now not on the lumpy mound of blankets that hid his older brother's snoring body, but at the shadows behind it, at the two small gleaming orbs that were close to impossible to lock down on.
"Go away," Sam demanded strictly.
The black, glossy eyes moved as if the doctor had shifted his vision to the youngest man in the room. For a moment they disappeared, but when the shining resumed Sam concluded that the sick bastard had merely blinked.
"I told you to go away, Doctor Meyers. I won't let you hurt anyone anymore, most importantly my brother, so get the fuck away from here. I'd tell you to go to hell, give you a little direction as to where to go, but even that place is too good for you."
The eyes moved to a diagonal line, most likely because Meyers had smirked – Sam could see the shine from the rotting teeth in what little light there was in the motel room – and cocked his head to the side.
Sam sat up, placed his naked feet onto the plush sand carpeting, and bared his pristine teeth in a sneer. "Don't make me tell you again, you vile fuck."
He didn't need to, for the doctor left the motel room and went back to whatever final resting place the police had fixed him up with.
Dean groaned under all his blankets, shifted around on the mattress, but didn't wake.
Unfortunately for Sam, he wasn't able to settle back down into bed like his brother for the rest of the night – day, rather. He didn't so much as flinch from his newly found sitting position, couldn't even register the pain in his hunched shoulders or slouching back. Sam had more important things to acknowledge.
His brother was in serous danger now, far worse than a baseball to the eye or an injured rib or diaphragm during a hunting incident long since past. Dean was going to die if he wasn't careful, surely even if he was. That was enough to assure that Sam wasn't going to ignore his feelings anymore, wasn't going to shrug off his dreams for a second time to sit back and watch as this sick bastard of a doctor carted Dean off to a basement room to do God-knows-what to him.
So Samuel Winchester sat until dawn at the edge of his bed, keeping a vigil on the room for a return of the doctor and listening to the loud ticking of his brother's deathwatch.