The Peacock Farm – Chapter 3

Disclaimer: The cat is now giving me the cold shoulder, so this is completely beta-less. In my own little world, I'd play with the boys like I used to play with Barbies. Alas, I own neither anything Supernatural, X Files, nor even Barbies anymore.

Rating: T for a lot of unwholesome language and the occasional Canadian spelling. And lousy with spoilers, I tell ya.

Fun Fact! Kim Manners directed the X Files episode featuring the ultimate dysfunctional family, the Peacocks. The episode was from Season 4 and entitled – wait for it, fellow SN geeks – 'Home'. The episode remains one of the all-time most disturbing, and was banned/slapped with warnings even before it aired on October 11, 1996. I've only seen it once, and I'm having nightmares just from doing the bare bones research I had to for this piece. If I knew where they'd filmed it, I'd never go there in a million years. Writing: cheaper than therapy.

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Everything, even daytime access to supernaturally suspect sites apparently, came down to commerce. By donation, they found out, meant $5. Five Canadian dollars and Dean, in his doubtlessly extensive strategic planning, hadn't bothered to factor for foreign currency. Sam's mouth curved in amusement, watching his brother bristle. Maybe their father and his ghostbusters network ought to look into some kind of haunted house flexipass for multiple entries.

"It's okay," the girl said, serious as a cough in a poorhouse, not responding to Dean's lethal grin. "I'll take American. Can't give you the exchange, though." She leaned over, tanned and lovely and so totally in possession of Dean's number. She stared into the car's interior, glanced over at Sam in case he was more interesting. Freckles on nose and forearms, low sun lighting her like a church icon, mouth tilting into an ironic crooked-toothed smile. "It's for a good cause."

Her mother, Sam decided, must run the historical society, because this girl looked bored out of her mind. "Hey," he called to her, instinctively knowing that a soft disingenuous approach would go a lot further than a bad boy flirtation. This girl probably made happy face dots over her 'i's. "Can you give us a tour?"

"We have a walking tour map," she suggested tepidly, foregoing Sam's sad spaniel demeanor and turning to her booth, where she rummaged around before extracting a badly photocopied hand drawn map. "It's a loonie," she said unapologetically, not caring one way or another if they took it.

"Pardon?" Dean quirked, taking the map and scanning it quickly before handing it back to her. He glanced at Sam, who couldn't read his expression beyond a generic irritation.

"A dollar," not even looking at them anymore, thinking about dinner, or her boyfriend, or whether she liked crunchy or smooth better. "Helps the historical society. This building would have collapsed years ago without it." She waited as Sam fished around in his wallet for a dollar bill, and only then handed the map back to him. "Don't park on the garden. And we close in an hour. That's plenty of time." She turned back to the booth, sat on a worn wooden stool and picked up her dog-eared book. Something about pants on the cover. Her job here was done. Sam chuckled, low and delighted, knowing that he wouldn't have to pay too much for that: Dean was in a reasonably good mood.

In response, Dean grunted, and gunned the car through the gate, a line forming between his brows. Sad, how Sam noticed these things. That line hadn't been there before Sam had gone to college. Those intervening years were something neither of them spoke about other than to strike ineffectual mocking blows – well, back when you were a college boy, Sammy; Dean, how the hell did you find the yucky stuff before text messaging? Sam didn't like to think about what life had been like for Dean, out on the road alone or with their father; he barely liked to think about what it had been like before Stanford. Little things called it up, though. Cassie, for example, or the more visible scars Dean carried, origin unknown to Sam. The line between the brows. Irretrievable years.

But that bulletproof belief in his own sexiness? Pure Dean, from birth to now. Like a bird flying into a window, the girl's imperviousness made a dull thunk against Dean's armour and it was worth a chuckle.

"What?" It was more of a noise than a word, one of Dean's characteristic grumbles.

The dirt patch that seemed to serve as a parking lot was empty. Late in the day for an outing, poor signage, indifferent service. Or maybe die-hard X-Files fans had already seen it all; maybe it was the kind of place that only attracted teenagers after dark. In any case, they would have the place to themselves. Knowing what they were there for, that was a small comfort.

"I'm just watching your edge disappear in the rearview mirror," Sam sighed as the Impala rolled to a stop. "Some objects aren't closer than they appear."

"What edge?" Dean barked half-heartedly as he got out. But it really wasn't a question, or an opening. It was a door, and it was closed. Dean leaned back in, resting his elbows on the car's top, light breeze tufting his hair, slanting sun touching his eyes green. Mr. Last Fucking Word. "Hearts, not happy faces. So not my type."

Oh, and that was brilliant. Since when was the psychic hotline on Dean's speed dial? Sam shook his head in disbelief as Dean slammed the car door and sauntered off toward the house, not waiting for his brother, either absolutely certain Sam had his back or not much caring.

Sam looked over the site plan as he followed more slowly behind. Large square for the house, with descriptions of what scenes had been filmed in which rooms; barn (with authentic farm machinery!); hand pump in the yard; memorial garden. Memorializing what? Sam wondered idly. Trails in the woods. He'd have to do some searching on the internet tonight, figure out what had happened before the X-Files filming had superceded the prior history of the house. He worried the house with his gaze: nominally white, with dark gaps in the roof, railing missing from the wrap-around porch, glazing gone from the ground floor windows, dirt paths circling the house as though they'd been worn down by hungry animals. His vision shifted, tilted suddenly, like opening his eyes underwater, like a photograph double-exposed. This was freakshow archaeology: he was seeing layers upon layers of nastiness, one on top of the other, surface Peacock, under that other stuff. Dark matter.

He focused on the site map, looking for any reference to the history of the property – who had lived there, who built the house, what the local legends were. But the text only described the last ten years, as though the house had been specially built for the television series. Where was Dean getting his information from? Was this all from their Dad? Because Sam hadn't seen direct mention of it in the journal, only that one reference to Satanism in the Lower Mainland. Exorcisms and possessions, the disappearance of children, sold into cults by their willing parents. But what had Dean specifically said about the Peacock Farm?

A commune, a guru, missing children, a dead dismembered woman. Surviving cult members somewhere about. Knowing Dean, they'd be talking to those people before long. Sam hated going into those interviews without having all his ducks in a row; he was a glutton for research and he knew it. It was part of the reason they made a good team: Sam got the facts straight and Dean was never afraid to hit anything with a big stick. Sam's niggling and unpredictable premonitions drew shit to them, and Dean's natural charm deflected most human inquiry. It was why, he reflected as he looked up and could no longer see his brother, Dean was already poking around inside the house and why Sam was wandering around outside reading a map. Sometimes it was teamwork, and sometimes it was just being separate.

By the time Sam pounded up the shoddy front steps, he could see Dean just inside the doorway. The interior wallpaper had not been restored any more than the clapboard exterior, had been half-ripped away, defaced with marker and pen – X-Files Rules! Suck my dick, Mrs Peacock! – and the house beyond was lost to the silty darkness that came after standing in the sun. It smelled of mold and age, and urine and dead rat. And it was not quiet: Dean had his wacky-ass EMF detector out and it was beeping. "Holy moly, Sammy," he murmured, not looking up. "We're in business."

It was upper case cold. Sam needed no hopped up CD player to tell him that serious shit had happened here, and not just television storytelling with actors and cameras. Children, always with the children, Dean. And a shearing white light bolted out of the sky as though they were in a doll's house and a kid with a flashlight had just ripped off the roof.

White light and the smell of heat and rubber. Slight voice, out of nowhere, somehow familiar, yelling instructions: Here's your mark! More intensity, please. And in response: Do you want me facing this way? Or this?

If it wasn't so fucking painful, he'd be laughing. Catching glimpses of actors, of a director, smelling prosthetics and industrial lights: this is just a dream, he told himself. They had long ago ceased being merely dreams, they were something else, but he couldn't bring himself to imagine the word 'vision', even in his own thoughts. That would have been nutty. But why this, now? Actors? And then fear, fear as though it was painted on the walls and it wasn't light, it was dark, it was very dark and it swam under the surface like a many-toothed serpent. They are all so scared, he thought.

Then he didn't think, for the pain intensified, felt as though that giant kid with the flashlight was bludgeoning him over the head with it, and all he could hear was screaming, the screaming of children, of infants –

And it was very bright, because the sun is always bright when you're looking at it without blinking and it's also painful to be shaken as hard as Dean was shaking him. He pushed back without thinking, but not hard enough to dislodge his brother's firm grip on his upper arms. They were outside on the porch and, damn, that low sun was bright on his face. It would take him a few moments to manage his ragged breathing, a few minutes for Dean to master that alien look of fear in his eyes. This was the only thing, ever, that scared Dean shitless. This doesn't freak me out. With a loose shrug, like he was facing a stupid poltergeist or a Jehovah's Witness at the door. Liar, liar.

"Well?" Dean asked, finally letting him go so he could lean against the house, underneath a wrought iron hook that might have once held a bell or triangle. Come and git it! Sam thought, completely incongruously. The dreams scared him, too. But Dean being scared? That took the cake.

"I'm not ready for this." He held Dean's stare, hard, trying to see if it was unbreakable. "We're not ready for this."

It stretched, that, until Sam could almost see the rubber band that held Dean's gaze to his, feel his brother's need to pull away, to not care quite as much as he did. Pointless, the not caring, Sam knew. They did brotherhood in different ways, but pointless to think it didn't exist, equally pointless to mention it in conversation. With a blunt nod, a concession to what Sam was saying and not saying, Dean looked away first, bent to pick up the squealing machine that had been thrown to the porch boards.

"I'm getting our five bucks back," he said, not looking at Sam, who was pale and picked clean, but who was also upright and about to get his way.

The girl, however, had already gone and they didn't bother to shut the gate when they left.

TBC