Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: see Chapter 1
LIVING LA VIDA LOCA
Chapter 2
Sam woke up and stretched just when Dean drove past the sign announcing they were within the town limits of Wakefield, Massachusetts (population 1,318), as if he had some internal alarm clock. Both brothers scoped out the area as Dean drove well within the speed limit into town in deference to the danger of over-zealous small town sheriffs. It was one of the downsides of the modern age and post-9/11 America – that speedy technology which meant being pulled over and having a make run on them only took five minutes instead of an hour and often led to all sorts of complications and stress-headaches. Twice already since that whole shape-shifter deal they'd had to make out that 'dead murder suspect' Dean had been a namesake, lookalike, black-sheep-of-the-family cousin.
Wakefield was a little agricultural dimple in rural Massachusetts. It had surrounding orchards and fields and meadows and prettily painted wooden houses and even a nice little lake off the River Connecticut. The sheriff's office was small and the white clapboard church large. It was Anywhere, America.
Other than agriculture, the town's income came from the main highway through it, and the truckers who stopped off at the picturesque rest stop. Without hesitation, Dean pulling into the lot and parked discreetly so it wasn't obvious to anyone looking out from inside that they hadn't arrived in a rig.
They walked up the steps side by side and stepped in to find it typically utilitarian but bright and clean. In a window booth sat a familiar figure with a round face, heavy whiskers and greying dark hair; as if metal to a magnet Dean immediately walked towards their father.
I drove all night, just get to you… the song lyrics echoed in his mind, though Sam Winchester did not admit to knowing the words of rock-chick songs even to himself – not with a brother who thought Metallica and music were synonyms.
He drove all night, just to get to you. Do you even notice that he hasn't slept in like, fifteen hours? Do you care? Sam had long since made keeping his face blank of his true thoughts an art form and now his face was bland as he slid into the corner of the seat opposite John Winchester. Dean waited until he was in and then slid in next to him. Dean would never take the corner – the corner boxed you in and this way he was between bad and his brother – he was always between bad and his brother.
John had only had coffee in front of him but now the waitress came and took their order. Apart from a developing five o'clock shadow Dean showed no signs that he'd been awake for over sixteen straight hours as he flirted with the waitress and ordered coffee and the breakfast special.
Sam made it unanimous for the three of them and settled back expectantly for their father's explanation, knowing that while their arrival in the small town would have been 'noted' there was little probability of trouble in the diner. Despite it being just past 6:00am there a couple of early bird rig drivers and their mates already eating. The diner staff (and passing deputies) would assume they were a trio of truckers who knew each other and think no more of it – it was one of the advantages of the fact that the three only superficially resembled each other; law enforcement types wanting to take a personal interest in the lives of 'John Winchester and two sons' tended to be looking for men with a much stronger mutual likeness.
Sam dropped his eyes momentarily as he sugared his coffee-with-cream, though Dean stuck to the macho credo of unadulterated black – or more likely he needed the undiluted caffeine hit to keep him awake. Sometimes when Sam was young and he'd had a fight with Dean or his dad about their lifestyle, he used to fantasise that he was adopted and that his real parents were Merle and Betty, accountants from New Jersey who would come one day to take him home to suburbia and actually be pleased that he had managed to achieve a law degree (for all the good it currently did him). Not that he knew for certain – he'd taken his exam a week before Jessica…but he'd done well, he knew he had. He hadn't got the paper, might never manage to get written confirmation, but Sam knew he'd passed the final exam.
But once a few years back he'd found some old family photographs, singed relics that John Winchester had taken from his home and just kept carrying around as they'd embarked on the perpetual road trip that was their life. Dean was a dead ringer for John's great-grandfather Colonel Thomas Oliver Winchester, a decorated veteran of Britain's 1899-1902 Boer War and cousin of Oliver Fisher Winchester of repeating rifle invention fame who had immigrated to America with his family in 1904. Sam in turn was the image of Mary Winchester's uncle, Corporal Samuel Daniels, a brother of her father Benjamin Daniels who'd been killed aged 19 at Omaha Beach in World War II. So that had put paid to that; one of his college classmates had later explained that in genealogical terms, it was quite common for a child to look nothing like either parent but be the very mirror of great-grandpa Joe or great-aunt Maud.
"What's the hunt?" Dean asked his dad softly – but clearly; the three of them were adept at having secret conversations in public places. Volume wasn't always necessary for distinct audibility of speech.
"Haunted house – possibly."
With a colossal effort of will, Sam swallowed a tirade and instead contented himself with pausing in the act of stirring his coffee and staring in obvious surprise at Winchester Senior. A haunted house? Something that Dean had been dealing with solo and in his sleep since the age of about thirteen? For this John Winchester had deprived Dean of a good night's sleep? He couldn't prevent the words slipping out, "At least tell me we're dealing with an Amityville Horror here?"
"I don't know –" John Winchester paused as the waitress came back with three large plates and a fresh pot of coffee that, by mutual silent consent, John and Sam let Dean monopolise. "That's what's got me worried."
He picked up his fork and they dove into the food, which was as good as the diner looked. Instead of the greasy cold rubber you got in a lot of places the biscuits were golden and light, the eggs hot and fresh, the ham thick and tender and the bacon crispy. Sam let Dean inhale his own breakfast and then swapped it with his own plate having left a biscuit, an egg and some ham for him.
With a grin Dean devoured it and then glugged down another cup of coffee. "Right, now I've kicked start my brain, tell us," he urged.
"The couple are Peter and Julie Hanson." John took a sip of his own coffee and leaned back against the booth seat. "They helped me out one time when I really needed it…they're good people, both of them. They have five children, starting from eleven down, but though their youngest is only just over a year old their marriage has been going down the toilet for years."
"Why?" Dean picked up a bit of bacon he'd missed from Sam's plate and looked wistfully at the denuded crockery.
John shrugged. "Nothing spectacular. They're both hard-working but career people. Over time they became just another latch-key family, a disconnected group of people who occasionally just happened to be in the same place at the same time."
"Not that latch-key," Sam pointed out, "if their youngest is only one."
"Tommy was the result of Julie recovering from stomach flu combined with spectacularly spiked punch and Peter's New Year's Eve office party – both of them admitted to me separately that neither of them had any real idea who…"
"…they were actually banging in the stationery closet when they were snockered?" Dean surmised with his usual sarcasm.
John winced but gave a confirmatory nod. "Basically, yes – the elder four are eleven, nine-year-old twins and a seven-year-old, which gives you some idea of how long their marriage has been falling apart."
"But what has a failing marriage got to do with us and what we do?" Sam asked while reasonably managing to keep the asperity out of his tone.
"Things came to a head when Emily, the seven-year-old, got a leading role in her junior school summer production of A Midsummer Night's Dream." John explained. "Not only did she not tell her parents, but she saved up all her allowance money and extra she earned doing odd jobs and actually managed to hire a couple of 'resting' agency model-actors to be her 'parents' on the opening night because she didn't want a mom and dad who were going to sit there and bicker through the entire play – assuming they turned up in time from work in the first place."
"Ouch." Sam muttered.
"Ingenious though," Dean praised.
John ignored their asides, "The teachers got suspicious when the 'parents' gave contradictory and vague answers and investigated because they were worried the pair were attempting to abduct the child. Once they'd got over the shock Peter and Julie realised they couldn't let things drift and so they both took a sabbatical; Peter's friend Arthur Wainwright III offered to rent them his family's home for a year and they came out here as a family to try and reconnect."
"And that's when the trouble started," Dean said knowingly.
"Yes – the usual manifestations of something seriously pissed off and possibly determined to get a body count out of it. Scratching in the walls; levitation; cold spots; telekinesis, crashing, banging, screaming, blood seeping down the walls, et cetera and so forth." John shook his head. "I've checked all the usual suspects and I've come up a complete blank. I just can't get a handle on it."
"How deep did you dig back into this Wainwright family?" Sam put aside his inherent tension with his father and applied himself to the situation – five terrified children in danger of being sliced and diced by low-flying kitchen knives and levitating TV sets that hurled themselves across the room was something he could relate to.
"All the way," John assured them, "and they're clean. In fact, they may be about the only family in America who combined wealth with genuine respectability."
"Seriously?" Dean asked. "How rich are we talking?"
"The current generation is heading towards eight figures at a healthy clip," John responded dryly. "Nathaniel Wainwright I immigrated from Hampshire, England in 1687 and moved back to Connecticut after making a fortune in silver mining out West. He then made another fortune in real estate and built Wainwright House, which his descendents have lived in ever since – Arthur Wainwright III is the current patriarch and he often comes back to live here in the summers."
"And these people have no skeletons in their closet?" Sam asked sceptically. "No murder, no scandal, no family intrigue?"
"Not that I can find." John shook his head. "Nathaniel Wainwright was big on philanthropy and was determined to instil a work ethic in his children. Nathaniel Wainwright II outdid Carnegie in charitable giving. In the three centuries since Nathaniel I set up here, there have only been four illegitimate children, each of whom was acknowledged and given a hefty whack of the parental inheritance, even though two were mulattoes and one was half-Indian. Several women married into the clan with kids from a previous marriage and there again they were accepted as part of the family. The Wainwrights tended to make late marriages after all the recklessness of youth had died down and so they were a lot more sensible about it – a lack of wife-beating, adultery, sexual deviancy, drunkenness and general debauchery is a recurring theme." He finished his coffee, "I double-checked, there has never been any incident of violent death at that house or on the grounds."
"You checked the ground, for anything like sacred tribal land desecration?" Dean began.
"It was No.2 on my list," John retorted wryly. "It was never used as unsanctified burial ground by a church for murderers and suicides; it was never a battlefield; no massacre of American Indians or anyone else ever took place on the spot. As for Indians, get this: the prime position for the house was about half an acre further up the hill? But when Nathaniel Wainwright I learned that position was part of a sacred Nannicato burial ground he ordered the house rebuilt from scratch at its current location and the soil damage to be repaired. The tribe made him an honorary member in thanks. In fact the Wainwright family consider that act of respect to be responsible for their good fortune ever since – the generation after Nathaniel Wainwright II made their third fortune on the railroads; they were one of the few families who didn't lose everything in the Wall Street crash of 1929 and made oodles of cash in the oil boom afterwards. Arthur III is on his way to becoming a tycoon. They're perennial supporters of Native American causes."
"And there have been absolutely no nasty, violent or unexplained deaths ever since the 1700s?" Dean pressed.
"The Wainwrights overwhelmingly tended to die as nonagenarians in their beds surrounded by fat grandchildren," John affirmed. "The closest thing the house ever saw to an unpleasant demise was in 1872 –"
"Ah-ha!" Dean straightened like a cougar hound hitting a scent.
"There was no mayhem - it was a freak accident," John vetoed. "Nathaniel Wainwright III's 23-year-old daughter Charlotte was walking in the garden when her foot slipped at the top of the stone steps leading down towards the ornamental fountain. It wasn't that bad a fall but unfortunately she landed on the edge of the rockery stones and it crushed her skull. It was a tragic fluke; she was wearing silk slippers and it had rained that morning – her foot slipped. Nothing diabolical involved."
Sam looked at his father, "So if it's not the house, and it's not the Wainwrights…"
"Peter and Julie are freaking out," John admitted quietly. "When all this kicked off they made discreet enquiries and expected to find the problem in the house or the Wainwright family."
"Could it be the kids?" Dean asked suddenly. "The telekinesis and stuff – physical manifestation of stress over mom and dad's marital meltdown?"
John sighed. "It's faintly possible, but highly unlikely. Peter and Julie's marriage wasn't imploding, just slowly crumbling – all very civilised and detached. Nothing like this has happened anywhere else they have ever lived or on any previous occasion, so why now? Besides, the sabbatical let's-take-stock-idea was working. By the time they'd been here a month Peter and Julie were a 100 more optimistic that they could work things out and come back together again."
"And that would send the kids' stress levels into freefall, not ratchet up the adrenaline." Sam acknowledged.
"That's why I want you both to do your own investigation," John Winchester said quietly. "I need a fresh pair of eyes. I've been doing this so long that maybe familiarity is breeding complacency and things are getting dangerous. Last night Julie Hanson nearly had her skull crushed in the kitchen by a flying fruit bowl and the stress is doing nothing for their attempts to save their marriage."
"Sure," Dean acceded reaching for the coffee pot.
"And what else?" Sam challenged.
John looked startled but he couldn't meet Sam's unwavering gaze. Sam wasn't overawed by his father now, and hadn't been for some time. Few things intimidated him now – he had faced his ultimate nightmare, the one horror amongst all the monsters he'd faced that still and always would torment his dreams…Dean is going to die, and you can't stop it.
Except he had…of course, he hadn't known that the faith healer's wife was in league with a Reaper, but if he was honest with himself, if he had known, he couldn't say he still wouldn't have done what he had. Dean didn't know about his little detour later, when they stopped in a tiny Midwest town for gas and groceries. For just five minutes Sam had slipped away into a small chapel, anonymous and deserted and yet in some way almost alive, where he'd offered a prayer of regret to the man dead in Dean's place…I'm so sorry, I truly didn't know. But I need him, you see; for me he's oxygen in another form. I hope you can understand, and forgive. If it's any help, I'll never forgive myself…and he never would, but by the same token Sam knew that he would do whatever it took to keep Dean alive again if he had to.
"I think I'm being followed," John Winchester admitted, "maybe even stalked."
"By what?" Sam asked, not entirely buying it.
"God knows." John blew out a breath of frustration, "Though I'm leaning towards who rather than a what. I've doubled back and set traps and tried to draw it out. I can't pick up any obvious paranormal residue and it's smarter than your average bogeyman."
"Feds?" suggested Dean with concern. "IRS? Paranormal groupie who believes all that website crap?"
John shrugged, looking faintly embarrassed, and Sam could finally if faintly empathise. As with all things, there were always people who were aware of what was out there, knowledgeable individuals who formed mini-cultures within mainstream society who knew the score and could advise, help or offer sanctuary – people such as Caleb, The German, Preacher Jim, Missouri Moseley, and so on. John Winchester and his sons were widely renowned and recognised for the work they did within that hidden community.
Unfortunately an enthusiastic debunker on the fringes who believed he knew far more than he did and thought of himself as the Howard Stern of the supernatural had run a 'demon hunters extraordinaire' exposé about the Winchesters on his website. Fortunately only the lunatic fringe read it (those whose brains weren't fried by one LSD trip too many) but it was out there in the cyber-ether, accessible to anyone who took the five seconds to Google JOHN WINCHESTER.
"I've no idea, and right now I've more important concerns." John said sternly towards Sam. "If we don't come up with a solution one of the Hanson children could be injured or killed."
Continued in chapter 3…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart