Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: see Chapter 1
LIVING LA VIDA LOCA
Chapter 4
Flying through the air with the greatest of ease…I am the king of the circus trapeze!
Sam blinked blearily and shoved his head further into the pillow as the clock's LED read 3:47am. One of the disadvantages of an early night was obviously waking up chipper and chirpy an hour before dawn – with nonsensical rhymes permanently looping through your brain.
He yawned, trying to clear his head of the fanciful dream this time, a nice change from the searing revelations of mayhem and feeling as if someone had buried an axe in his head. Thinking of which, it had been lucky with that photograph hurling across the room…hurling…across…across…
Sam's drooping eyelids snapped back up. Wait a minute…
He sat up and shoved back the covers; they had just disrobed to their shorts and he began to pull his pants and shirt back on.
Dean instantly came awake and frowned, sitting up and glancing around alertly in warrior mode. "What's going on?"
"Get up and get dressed."
Dean cast one dyspeptic eye at the clock but complied, pulling on his jeans and his shirt as Sam sat back down on the bed to put on his socks and shoes. "What have you figured out?"
"I'm not sure," Sam admitted, "but I think we've been missing a big chunk of this puzzle. I'll get the others."
Dean pulled on his socks and shoes while Sam went and chivvied everyone. In about fifteen minutes a coterie of sleepy, grumpy people were assembled in the hallway with the exception of Tommy who slept in Peter's arms, his head on his father's shoulder.
"Sam, what's going on?" John asked, squinting slightly.
"I want to check something, come on." Sam led the way downstairs to the drawing room and asked Peter to sit with Tommy on the gashed couch where Tommy had been until Sam saved him from the photograph. "Everyone look around the room, and tell me what's wrong with this picture."
It was Julie, surprisingly, who got it, maybe because of her maternal protective instincts. "The picture! No, that one, the Nathaniel Wainwright I painting. To hurt Tommy…"
"Exactly," Sam agreed as Peter stood up again so he could look at the oil painting on the wall behind him. "The photograph that flew across the room didn't twitch until I was looking straight at it, and if anything had really wanted to hurt Tommy why expend all that energy throwing a heavy photograph frame across the width of a room when all it had to do was flirt this beast –" he rapped the canvas with his knuckles, "- forward all of six inches."
Sylvie scowled and intelligently asked, "Who was the photograph of that flew at Tommy?"
The adults exchanged glances. "Bright girl," praised Dean, going to where the photograph had been laid on a side table after the glass had been cleared away by Julie. He lifted it up and peered at the neatly typed label below the image of a young man who looked to be around the mid-twenties mark. "Nathaniel Wainwright IV it says here, taken on the White House lawn in 1870."
"I don't see the relevance?" Peter asked in confusion.
"Neither do I but think about it," Sam urged, "you have suffered severe paranormal disturbances in this house for nearly a month yet no-one has been physically hurt. Julie said the fruit bowl began to rock violently before it flew through the air; Sylvie said the lamp began to buzz and shake before it threw itself at her. None of you have been injured in any way because this thing telegraphs its intentions, and throws like a girl."
"On behalf of my gender, hey," muttered Julie.
"You know what I mean," Sam shrugged. "Either we're dealing with the world's most inept malevolent entity, or else there's something else entirely going on that we are just not understanding."
"Yeah, but what connects the dots?" Dean retorted.
"He was her bruvva." Little Emily, who had gone straight back to playing with the rocking horse, suddenly spoke.
"What, honey?" Julie asked.
Emily walked over to Dean and tapped a little finger on the photograph he was holding. "He was her brother, that lady who hit her head and was dead in the morning."
There was pause as they recognised her confusion with the old doggerel rhyme about the old man snoring who hit his head and went to bed and was dead in the morning, and then John Winchester clarified, "You mean Charlotte Wainwright? The woman who fell down the steps and hit her head and was killed?"
"Yes." Emily nodded. "There's a paper on my bedroom wall with all the moms and dads and children on for the Wainwright people."
"A family tree," murmured Sam. "So, the photograph is that of Nathaniel Wainwright IV, who was the brother of Charlotte Wainwright; the only person ever to have suffered anything close to a violent death in the vicinity. Is there any other connection?"
"I've got one," Sylvie raised her hand, looking sheepish.
"What is it?" Peter asked.
"Well, I know you told us not to touch anything because the furniture is very valuable, but I really needed an extra lamp for my bedroom, so I took the one that flew through the air," Sylvie admitted. "I took it from the bedroom that used to belong to him."
"But surely that wouldn't apply to the fruit bowl," John mused, "or to that exploding vase…though that snuff box that tried to take Peter's eye out could be."
"Wait, I know something that might be of use, in the library. How about a bunch of Quarterman sketches?" Peter suggested, carefully passing the still sleeping Tommy to Julie.
"As in William Quarterman, the 19th Century watercolour artist?" Sam said as they followed Peter to the library. "His stuff is extremely rare and worth millions – come to think of it, the Wainwright family is the only group to own a significant collection of his works."
"Not surprising," Peter explained, "William Quarterman was a house servant for Nathaniel Wainwright III after the American Civil War. His mother had died when he was three in a typhoid epidemic and he'd lost his father and a brother fighting for the Confederates and his other two brothers and an uncle for the Union. He practised his technique by making incredibly accurate colour and monochrome drawings of various rooms in Wainwright House. Nathaniel Wainwright III found him at it one day and sponsored him through New York's most prestigious art college and the family bought everything he ever produced. Arthur Wainwright I bought a Quarterman watercolour from him in 1899 for $100 and Arthur III sold it to a member of the Japanese Imperial family last year for $5.3 million."
Entering the library, Peter went over to a glass cabinet and unlocked it, carefully taking out a bundle of something wrapped in oiled sealskin. Gingerly he opened the protective wrapping and eased the fragile drawings out over the table. Various rooms of the Wainwright House had been precisely drawn, down to minute details, over a time period ranging from 1865 to 1878.
"Here," John pointed at one drawing, being careful not to touch it. "Nathaniel Wainwright IV's bedroom, completed March 15th, 1871. Look, there's the lamp that Sylvie borrowed."
"And the vase that is – that was – in the downstairs sitting room when we first came," Julie pointed, "before it went off like a grenade."
"We're two for two," Dean murmured.
"Three for three." Peter had stepped away from the table and now turned back, holding a magnifying glass over the page – he indicated the mantelpiece. "Present and correct - one large silver snuff box that tried to take my eye out."
"Can't see the fruit bowl though?" Julie peered at it.
"Wait, there, you can't actually see it from the angle of the drawing, but you can see a bowl reflected in the mirror over the fireplace," Sam indicated.
"That looks like it." Julie agreed.
Carefully Peter returned the sketches to the cabinet as Julie asked, "But what does it mean?"
"Sam?" prompted Dean.
Sam thought about it. "We need to exhume the body."
"Cool!" chorused the twins.
"Whoa, we can't just start digging up Arthur's ancestor!" Peter protested.
"Yes we can." Dean contradicted. "Look, the Wainwright family plot isn't visible to any passers by and I'll lay odds that we're talking family crypt not graves under sod. I promise you, if there's no cause for concern we'll put everything back as good as new."
"But…" Peter protested.
"Trust me, nobody knows better than us the dangers of unnecessarily disturbing the dead," Dean said with understatement, "but if we don't, this thing might follow you wherever you go, so unless you want that…?"
"But what do you hope to find in Nathaniel Wainwright IV's grave?" Peter demanded unhappily.
"Nothing," Sam interjected, "it's Charlotte Wainwright we're going to exhume."
Continued in chapter 5…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart