A/N: Sorry for the long wait! It took me a long time to figure out what kind of creature I wanted to use. So I hope it turned out all right.
Rule Seven: Keep a knife at the ready, no matter where you are.
It had been one hell of a long day in the car. Sam seemed to be getting taller everyday—or perhaps the backseat of the Chevy Impala was simply getting smaller. After the multi-hour drive up to Oregon, the sixteen-year-old gladly hopped out of the car to stretch his stiff, wiry legs. Grabbing his duffel bag from the seat next to him, he slung it over his shoulder and gazed, with a heavy sigh, up at the dense forest spread out before them.
Massive trees stretched up to the sky like rough, reddish fingers topped with emerald leaves and surrounded by tufts of green shrubbery. A narrow dirt trail wound its way towards a small log cabin in the distance—the one, John had discovered, had been empty for two years, ever since the owner was impaled through the head by a sharp tree branch.
"All right, boys. Let's get a move on," John commanded from the front of the group, a bag of artillery over one shoulder and one of clothes on the other. Without hesitation, twenty-year-old Dean trekked after his father, leaving Sam to grudgingly bring up the rear. He was seriously considering sleeping in the car, simply in defiance of his father; but of course, the logical part of his brain reminded him what an idiotic idea that was, and so he trudged towards the cabin in Dean's wake.
They'd had another argument—big surprise. It seemed like they had one every week nowadays. Especially now that summer had arrived, and there was no longer school to keep Sam's mind off of hunting. Now there was nothing but driving, hunting, and bickering… like some kind of torturous cycle, always waiting for the next succession. Sam wondered faintly if this was how werewolves felt when they watched the moon.
The cabin was enveloped by overgrown plant life in varying hues of green; its few windows were tinted with dust and other woodland debris. It reminded Sam of that cabin from The Ring. As they stepped into the dim, stale interior—Home, sweet home, he thought bitterly—Sam tried to remember if "home" had ever been something other than a rundown excuse for shelter, had ever been, perhaps, similar to homes on old sitcoms from the '50s.
It hadn't, as far as he could remember.
There was a muffled thump as John dropped his duffle bags onto the floor, which looked rotted with termite damage. "It's been a long day. Why don't you two hit the sac and we'll investigate the area in the morning?"
Dean, gazing around in apparent scrutiny of the cabin, nodded obediently. "Yes, Sir." And with a small nod of seeming approval of their current residence, the elder brother sauntered over to a side-room and peeked inside. "Think I found our room, Sammy!" he called, turning his head to the side so that his voice carried back to the youngest Winchester.
"It's Sam," he grumbled just quiet enough for Dean to hear as he brushed past him into the room and chucked his bag onto the far bed by the window—before flopping down on top of the dirty, old covers himself.
"It's Sammy," Dean countered with a grin as he sat down on his own bed and unloaded several weapons from his bag. "And what's got your panties all in a twist?"
"Nothing," Sam mumbled as he turned over and pressed his chin into the pillow that had probably been lying dormant on the bed for the past two years. "Though it would be nice to sleep somewhere that we didn't break into because nobody else paid it any attention after the owner was brutally murdered," he added as an afterthought.
"Beggars can't be choosers," Dean replied as he peeled back the musty covers for inspection. "Just be glad that dude had kids, or we'd probably be sleeping on the floor right now."
Sam rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, which was cast in semi-darkness. "I guess this'll make for one hell of a 'What I Did on my Summer Vacation" essay," he murmured darkly. Then, as if reading aloud from an invisible paper that had manifested itself before his eyes, he continued, " 'After finals, my brother, Dad, and I went to Nevada to look into disappearances. Once on that trip, I stayed up all night with a gun in my lap hoping that my face wouldn't get sucked off. Then we went to Oregon, where some creature seemed to have a taste for lumberjack blood—' You know, somehow, I'd rather write about playing baseball with my friends and hanging out by the pool."
Glancing over at Dean, he saw that his older brother had deemed the bed adequate and was settling on top of it, pulling his shirt off in the process and stuffing it into his bag. "Sure sounds like boring crap to me," he commented absently, once again digging through his bag.
"It's safe."
"So is having a gun in your lap all night. Dad taught you how to protect yourself."
A surge of fiery indignation swept through Sam like a struck match, and he sat up quickly. "I don't want to have to protect myself like that!" As the cinders slowly burned down and his anger was quelled, he watched Dean extract a huge, shiny knife from his bag and slip it under his pillow. He blinked, startled. "Wha—what are you doing?"
Dean leaned back on the bed, and the rising moon filtered through the window and illuminated his silhouette. "Well, I was going to stop listening to your bitching and go to sleep…"
"Did you just put a knife under your pillow?" Sam interjected, baffled.
"Yeah." There was a pause in which Sam continued to stare, dumbfounded, and Dean continued. "In the past five years, over ten lumberjacks have been skewered to death by shards of wood right around here. And judging by the blood that seems to have evaporated from all their bodies when they're found, I'd say we're either dealing with an Agropelter or a finicky, anemic, vegetarian werewolf. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't really want to come up against either of those things unarmed."
"…And you think they'll barge in and attack you in your sleep?"
Dean snorted, and even in the growing darkness, Sam could see the smirk on his face. "No, actually I was thinking they'd politely wake me up before they savagely ripped me to pieces. We're hunters, Sam. We've gotta be prepared for things like that."
But Sam merely rolled his eyes, turning over so that he faced the wall rather than Dean and pulling the covers up over him. They smelled old, rotting even. He hated when they stayed in long-since abandoned houses.
There was a gentle creaking as Dean shifted into a comfortable position on his bed, and then silence took over the room. Sam gazed out the window into the pale moonlight, which drifted through the dirty glass and lit up floating dust particles in the air. He wasn't sure how long he lay there, gazing wistfully into the moonlight, growing more and more resentful of the creaking house around him. He didn't like it—but he wasn't quite sure why.
He guessed it was close to midnight when he stood from his bed, sleep easily eluding him. A glance over at Dean told him that his brother was sound asleep, determined by his arms, interestingly enough. One was flung away and hanging halfway off the bed; the other was tucked neatly under his pillow and—as Sam had recently discovered—was surely gripping the handle of his knife. When Dean feigned sleep (which he was terrible at), his arms were always held close to his body.
Deciding that now was as good a time as any to take a look around the cabin, which continued to give him an unexplainable feeling of hollowness and loss, Sam crept out into the small living room. There were a few moth-eaten couches, but nothing special. Walking stealthily over to another door, he gently pushed it open to find a neglected bathroom. A dirty-looking toilet sat near a narrow shower; on the other side was a wooden cabinet and a dust-covered mirror hanging on the wall above it. Sam stepped into the tight space, leaving the door open to alleviate possible claustrophobia, and used his sleeve to wipe off the cloudy mirror.
His reflection wasn't much better than staring into the dust. A sour look seemed permanently etched into his surly face, his eyebrows knitted together as if someone had sewed them in the middle with a needle and thread. What bothered him the most was that he looked much older than a normal sixteen-year-old should…and he was disturbed by the creases in his forehead and worry lines around his mouth.
And who could he blame but his father? It was John's fault that he dragged his kids around the U.S., gave them guns and knives, and told them to be prepared for death. So Sam was constantly torn between being prepared and scared shitless. And it was all thanks to John.
Sam rubbed at his bloodshot eyes uselessly. He was utterly exhausted, but for some reason this house just wouldn't let him sleep. He wished more than anything that he could dispel the clenched feeling in his chest, but no relief came. The house just creaked ominously around him, rustic and smelling of fresh trees. And Sam stared into the pallor of his reflection…
And a scratching sound echoed from behind him.
Heart skipping a beat, Sam whirled around. But there was nothing in the bathroom—he was alone. And that momentary leap of fear, that black thought of death—that, he blamed on John. John and his crusade. "O, full of scorpions is my mind!" he thought, the line racing into his head out of nowhere. He'd had to read Macbeth last year for English. Dean had bought it for him, he recalled. And as he stood there, remembering some of the more disturbing lines of the play—"Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou could'st"—something else came into his mind, out of the blue—Wake Todd with thy knocking—and he knew, in that instant, why he hated this cabin so much.
It was almost ten years ago that they had left the house in Cedar Springs, the one he'd liked so much. The den of that house had had the exact smell of this cabin, the smell of fresh evergreen. And it had been rustic, too. And the resemblance between the house and this cabin reminded him of leaving the place with the most semblance of normality that he'd ever experienced; of why he left, of why none of his friends would understand if he decided to tell the truth one of these days in those stupid "What I Did on my Summer Vacation" essays. Damn John.
There was another scratching sound, and Sam stood stock-still, peering at the mirror to try and see over his shoulder into the darkness behind him. The shower curtain rustled, and Sam suddenly felt a wave of foolishness mingle with his dread. He should have checked in the shower. But what could be in there…?
Surely not a werewolf; those were too big. Agropelters hid in the husks of dead trees, not in empty showers. It could be a vampire… though, granted, if a vampire was responsible for the attacks, it was sure one hell of a brutal vampire to impale its victims just to drink the blood. And frankly, Sam really didn't want to find a vampire in the shower back there.
Turning slowly, he gripped the edge of the shower curtain, took a breath, and yanked it open. He caught a glimpse of something dwarfish in height, hairy, and slender before it retreated a step and practically vanished into the shadows. Its near-invisibility caused Sam's heart to skip a beat—both with fear and recognition. It was a fucking Agropelter.
The only thing Sam could see in the darkness was the glint of two orange eyes before the creature gave a snarl and leapt forward, long fingers held aloft so that the sharp, pointed nails aimed straight for Sam. Sucking in a quick breath, Sam leapt to the side, banging his knee sharply against the toilet.
What the fuck? He thought wildly, searching for some kind of weapon in the tiny, dingy bathroom that could defend him against the incongruously strong, little creature. Agropelters are supposed to live in trees!
The ape-like creature was advancing slowly, transitioning between showing its brown, hairy body and becoming a chameleon with its surroundings. It's three-inch, black fingernails were held up menacingly. After a moment, Sam dashed forward to get around the creature—but the Agropelter lashed out again, swiping its dagger-like nails against Sam's leg and causing him to grunt and stumble sideways, into the empty shower. His head banged against the wall, and he could feel warm, sticky liquid oozing from the deep cuts and soaking into the fabric of his pants, but he ignored the sting as he tried to regain his senses.
The Agropelter was once again blending with the shadows, its orange eyes glinting somewhere near the doorway, blocking Sam's escape route.
This was ridiculous. Sam, of course, knew that Agropelters were known for their sharp claws—but when they wanted to kill someone (mostly unsuspecting lumberjacks), they usually used their immense strength to hurl dead husks of lumber at their skulls. Since when did they live in bathrooms and scratch people, who were just trying to take a leak, to death?
Clearly enjoying the game with its prey, the Agropelter loomed a bit closer before diving at Sam, claws aimed precisely. Sam tried to roll out of the way, but the creature wrapped one long-fingered hand around his wrist and kept him in place as it slashed into Sam's chest, eliciting another grunt of pain.
But then the scratching stopped, and the creature lowered its head to inspect the blood dampening Sam's shirt. Without warning, he felt a rough tongue slide against the wound, and adrenaline surged through him enough to kick wildly at the creature until it snapped back and released its hold.
Pumping his legs, Sam darted out of the bathroom and back towards the bedroom that he and Dean were staying in. There were weapons in there, the ones that Dean had unloaded from his duffel… but he didn't know where they were.
Well, he'd just have to find them.
He had made it halfway into the living room before a sharp hand caught his ankle and sent him sailing to the floor. He'd forgotten how fast the little bastards were: not quite as fast as Wendigos to the point where they moved too fast to be seen, but fast enough. And if they didn't want to be seen, they could just use camouflage to sink away into the shadows.
Rolling onto his back, Sam delivered a hard kick to the creature's head and pushed himself up. Using his long legs to his advantage, Sam took three huge strides towards the bedroom and burst inside, glancing around wildly for weaponry.
And, damn it, Dean—with his arms hanging all over—was still out cold. And Sam couldn't see in the darkness, wishing futilely for sunlight to arrive. "The night is long that never finds the day."
Sam heard a faint scratching sound again and knew that the Agropelter was slinking around somewhere in the shadows of the room, waiting for a good time to strike again. Shit.
"Knife, I need a knife," he murmured, searching desperately for where his brother had stowed the weapons. And then, eyes falling upon Dean's arm that was tucked under his pillow, an idea lit up in his head. He made a mad dash for Dean's bed, shoving the pillow up and thereby knocking Dean's head out of the way. The elder Winchester snapped awake.
"Sammy… what the hell?" he grumbled, his voice caught somewhere between annoyance and concern. But Sam didn't reply; he found the knife, yanked it out of Dean's grip, and held it out towards the darkness. He barely noticed as Dean sat up, eyes wide with curiosity. "What's going on?" he tried again.
But as Sam turned to answer Dean, he caught sight of two orange eyes shooting through the shadows… Leaping forward, he swung the knife down at the Agropelter, swiftly lopping off the creature's head and listening as it thumped dully against the floor. Still clutching the bloody knife, he turned around to face Dean with a wry grin on his face. "I guess our buddy was getting sick of being cramped up in tree husks."
"Agropelter," Dean confirmed, turning his eyes from the creature to Sam. "You're bleeding."
Sam waved it away, the dull sting in his chest and leg already fading. "Good thing you had that knife under your pillow."
Dean stood up from his bed to get a closer look at the creature. "It's like Dad always says: keep a knife at the ready, no matter where you are."
"Yeah, well, I guess I should be more prepared," he admitted grudgingly, his annoyance and anger with the whole notion still burning strong but at the same time accepting his brother's advice. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to start sleeping with a knife under my pillow. I'll leave that to you… don't want to roll over and slice my hand off or anything."
Sam smirked as Dean rolled his eyes. When he looked up, the silhouette of a furious John stood in the doorway, gazing from the headless monkey to the crouching Dean to Sam with a crimson knife.
"What the hell is going on in here?"