Prologue
Sam is standing in a Morgue.
Inwardly he shudders; he's had this dream before. He remembers the smell of sterile chemicals and the icy chill that seems too real for a dream.
And beneath it all, the sweet smell of decay.
He's alone, in front of row and rows of metal doors that stretch out of sight. He can't turn his head to see if they end; he has no control in this dream.
He watches as his hand grips the handle of a door, opening it. The drawer slides out of its own free will.
The body on it is covered by a shroud, unmoving. Sam knows it's a victim of the Wendigo, without knowing how. Silently the draw slides back in, and he lets the door swing shut.
He moves on. Three more doors, three more bodies. A women mauled by a werewolf, a drowned child dead before he was even born. A girl whose bleeding eyes stain the sheet brown.
In the real world he can feel his sleeping body half throttle itself with tangled sheets, icy with sweat. It's trying to wake up.
It knows what's coming.
His mind fights, but the self within the dream walks on.
The fifth drawer. Without his consent his hand opens the metal door. The smell of burnt skin is released with the body hidden beneath the white sheet.
Jessica's beneath it.
He waits for his hand to whisk off the sheet to reveal her poor destroyed face. Every time he fights, and looses to his dream. He'll relive her death and his guilt, watching as she burns.
He waits for the fight he can't win, cold with dread.
Her body retreats into darkness. The door springs from his hand, slamming in the silence.
The dream is getting creative.
His body is turning. Afraid of what it will reveal, he tries to pull his eyes away.
A drawer is already open, the body lain out. Red is soaking through the cloth.
Sam pulls of the sheet and looks into his brothers face.
Images. Too many, too quick, too much to see. A policeman. A doll. A frozen lake. Flashing and gone within a second.
Frost is forming on windows. He and Dean are armed with crossbows, facing-
A howl that makes his ears bleed. He's on the floor, feeling blood trickle through his fingers.
A shadow rips a fist sized hole in Dean's chest.
And in the silence of his brothers falling body, he hears a whisper too soft to understand.
But he knows.
Soon
At last, his dream releases him, forcing him to take the image of Dean's Death with him.
With a jerk, Sam woke up