Chapter 2

Sam glances up as the motel room door opens and Dean steps inside, carrying a paper bag which Sam presumes contains either coffee, food, or both.

"So this old woman at the diner a block away said that Katie Evans and Kristen Grey weren't the first to go missing."

"There's more?" Sam asks as he closes his laptop.

Dean slings his leather jacket onto one of the beds. "Five more. Two weeks ago a bunch of High School kids were camping out in the woods and two of them disappeared during the night. Their friends found their bodies the next day. And last month there was some guy called Richard Bough and, a couple of months before that, a young couple from out of town."

"Any connection between the victims? Other than that they're all being murdered in these woods?"

"Well old Barbara got a little less chatty when I asked if she'd heard of the Headless Horseman story."

Sam looks at him incredulously.

"What?" Dean asks confused.

After all these years of hunting, Sam couldn't believe Dean would mention something like that to a normal person, even if just in passing. His brother wasn't stupid, but sometimes Sam could swear Dean had been born with absolutely no sense of logic whatsoever. Well, now they'd lost any hope of getting more information from this woman seeing as she probably though Dean should be locked up. This was exactly the reason Sam preferred books and research to talking to witnesses and townspeople. Books didn't look at you like you were crazy and threaten to call the men in the white coats.

Sam realises that Dean is still staring at him, waiting for an answer, and shakes his head in response. "Forget it. So I've been reading some of the accounts of these witnesses who supposedly saw this Headless Horseman."

Dean sits down, giving his brother a pointed look when he fails to continue. "And?"

"Well the stories vary but most of them mention a man on a black horse with no head." Sam shrugs.

"So if he's just a spirit, all we have to do is find his bones and torch them, right?"

Sam gives his older brother a look. "If what we're really looking for is a spirit."

"Can't you find where he's buried?"

"Where who's buried? Dean, we don't even know whose bones we're looking for."

"Yeah we do, that Crane guy."

Sam struggles to hold back the urge to laugh. Saying that Dean was jumping to conclusions would probably be an understatement in this case. "Ichabod Crane?"

"Dude, I only saw that movie once."

"The legend is set in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Why would the spirit be in Canada?"

"Maybe the legend was wrong. How do we know it didn't all happen here?"

Sam sighs and picks up his jacket.

"Where are you going?"

"To the library."

Dean raises his eyebrows.

"I'll look up death's in the area, see if there's any violent deaths, anyone beheaded, anything that could lead to a pissed off spirit."

"So you don't think it is this Itcha Crane guy? Even though everything we've found out suggests it is."

"Until I know all the facts, I'm not counting on it." Sam replies, exasperated. He walks out of the room.

When Sam leaves the library, Dean's '67 Impala is already parked outside. A confused look crosses Sam's face but he shrugs it off as he crosses the street and climbs into the passenger seat of the car.

"Miss me or something?" Sam smirks.

"You wish, Geek Boy." Dean holds up a notepad. "Might have found a lead on the Headless Horseman story."

"Yeah, me too. Apparently a…" Sam scans his notes. "Thomas Priestley was murdered a few years ago. No one seems to know what actually happened but he was found in the woods, missing his head. Police searched the woods but nothing…" Sam looks up to see Dean's crestfallen face. "…What?"

Dean expression instantly changes, as he shoots back "nothing." Sam had always been better at research than him and it didn't really bother Dean except for times like these when he'd just spent an hour at the police station trying to convince an officer that he worked for Homeland Security, just to get a look at their files.

Sam glances at the reporter's style notepad in his brother's hand and then looks inquisitively at Dean. "What did you find out?"

"Remember the group of High School kids I mentioned that had a run in with old Heady a couple of weeks back? Well one of them lives just a couple of blocks away from here. Bethany something."

"So we talk to her, find out if she saw anything?"

Dean nods as he starts up the engine.

After the third knock, the door opens to reveal a teenage girl, about seventeen years old, with long blonde hair. She's wearing sweats and looks as if she hasn't left the house in days.

"Yes?"

"Bethany Young?" The girl nods.

Dean flips open an FBI badge. The girl, Bethany, leans forward to read it but catches nothing more than a glimpse of the photograph as Dean quickly returns the fake badge to one of the back pockets of his jeans.

"I'm agent Bill Hodgkin's, this is my partner Jack Lawson…" Dean gestures to Sam. "We're here about the incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. In the woods?"

"I already talked to the police."

"We though this was more of a matter for the Bureau," Dean replies with a confidence in his voice that could only come from years of telling the exact same lie. "May we come in?"

The girl nods and steps back, opening the door wider for the two brothers to enter.

Bethany walks out of the kitchen, carrying two cups of coffee, which she hands to Sam and Dean before sitting down in an armchair across from them. Dean leans forward slightly.

"So, Bethany, you told the police you saw something, right after your friends disappeared? Something strange?"

Bethany looks away and nods slowly, long-held back tears starting to glint in her eyes, but doesn't offer any further information.

Dean glances across at Sam. He'd never been good at this part. Comforting people who had just lost friends and relatives was yet another thing Sam surpassed him in. Sam catches Dean's eye before shifting his gaze back to Bethany.

"Bethany, is there anything else you remember, anything you didn't tell the police? Even if it was something that didn't seem important at the time?" Sam asks softly, in what he hopes is a comforting tone. It works because Bethany looks at him, her face screwing up in concentration from both trying to recall what happened and holding back tears.

"I can't really remember. I think… I think I heard…"

"Just take your time."

Bethany sighs before continuing, her voice full of scepticism. "I heard… hooves. Like there were horses even though it was the middle of the night."

Dean sets his cup of coffee down on the table. "Did you see any horses?"

Bethany shakes her head. "Not really, only…" She glances up at Sam and Dean, both watching her intently, waiting for her to continue. "Only the one he had."

"He? You mean the Headless Horseman?" Dean clarifies.

"Yeah, but I mean, I was panicking at the time. I was seeing things. I must have been seeing things?"

Sam and Dean share a look.

"Bethany, do you think you could remember whereabouts in the woods you were?"

"This is a waste of time. It's dark already and even if there was anything to find out here, we won't see it now." Dean boredly scans the surrounding woodland with his torch, as if to justify his comment.

Sam doesn't look up from where he is knelt on the ground, examining something unknown to Dean. "Well it seems like this spirit – if it really is a spirit – takes people at night. Maybe it'll come after one of us."

"Yeah, maybe it'll tell us where its bones are buried and hand us some lighter fluid and a book of matches too. You know as well as I do, Sammy, it's never that easy."

When Sam doesn't reply, a look of concern passes over Dean's face. "Sam?"

"Come and see this."

Dean walks over to his little brother and crouches down beside him. Sam points at the bloody stump of flesh lying on the ground, partly hidden by the grass around it.

"Is that…?"

"A human hand. And there are bite marks around the edges."

Dean narrows his eyes. "What kind of spirit eats people?"

"Maybe one that isn't a spirit?"

"What about all the survivors, the ones that claimed they saw the spirit of the Headless Horseman?"

"Just because people saw a spirit, doesn't mean that's what took the victims."

"So you're saying there's two evil sons-of-bitches out here? A spirit and whatever took all those people?"

Sam nods. "I know it's unlikely but it's not impossible, right?"

"Then what are we after? Some kinda of flesh-eating demon maybe?" Dean pauses before adding, with a sceptical expression on his face, "a zombie?"

"I don't know but whatever it is, it's a cannibal."

Dean makes a face. One encounter with flesh-eating crazy fuckers was enough; he wasn't looking forward to the prospect of more.

Sam tenses, not unnoticed by Dean. "What?"

"Did you just hear something?" Sam slowly gets to his feet, scanning the trees ahead with his torch.

Dean squints in the darkness; trying to make out something more than just the dark shapes of the surrounded trees as he reaches for his torch. He hears the footfall behind him a second too late before the wood echoes with a resounding thud – the sound of a heavy object colliding with his own skull he realises – and everything goes dark.

I'll try to finish the third part this weekend and get it betaed and up a.s.a.p. next week,hopefully by about Monday/Tuesday but I'm on holiday from next weekend so I have packing and everything to get done too.