Chapter Four
In the end, Sam closed the door and Dean snipped at him about threatening to ruin his car -- an offence punishable by death and haunting, if and when such a thing happened.
"I told you, a theory," Dean told him, flat out.
"You drove all the way out here for a theory, something you could figure out over the phone?"
"You asked, I answered," Dean shrugged. "Now wipe that mess up."
So Sam did, because in truth, he respected his brother's admiration for their father's car and it was a shame to see the leather seat spotted with rain. He grabbed a rag from the back seat -- a t-shirt of Dean's that had seen better days -- and cleaned off the leather and dash as best he could.
"I want to check out that cemetery," Sam declares after finishing up, his voice still holding a lingering of anger and frustration over his brother's inability to be perfectly honest with him. Not that honesty was something the brothers shared frequently.
Why expect it from Dean when Sam didn't give it freely himself?
Dean glares at him; his mind was probably mulling over a few games of pool and a nice beer to pass the time until the storm passes, and a trip to a cemetery on a less than pleasing day has never been Dean's idea of fun.
Or was it? The apparent thrill he showed while hunting would suggest he enjoyed all facets of the odd and creepy, cemeteries included.
Still, Dean isn't giving in to Sam's sudden interest in weathered gravestones, even when they're standing on the side of the narrow road running down the middle of the old municipal cemetery. He stands off to the side, leaning against an old oak, arms crossed.
"What exactly are we looking for here?" he calls to Sam.
"I don't know," Sam replies in kind, roaming between the grey, monotonous stones.
"Alright. Let me know when you figure that out."
He can be an ass when he wants to be, but the tree helps keep him dry as his brother wanders around in a small cemetery, or rather, half a cemetery with no idea what he's looking for.
A cold breeze flicks small specks of rain against the back of his head, the leaves rustles above his head. All the sudden Dean feels a shiver travel down his spine, and that's when he's noticed Sam's stopped dead in his tracks.
The wind wraps around him, pulling him towards one of the stones. He feels like a kid on a windy day, when you can lean into the wind and feel like you're flying or being held up by some invisible force. Except now, he's being pushed by something he can't see, and he flashes back to Dean's comment about shooting at something invincible. It doesn't seem too inconceivable at the moment, and he turns to shout back to Dean when he freezes in front of a stone.
Sam crouches down to read the stone. Years of age and dirt have caked the surface, so he reaches forward to wipe it off, get a clearer read of who's it is and why they might be pulling him there.
When he touches it, the wind increases and he feels himself falling, falling...and a bright white light that blinds him, burns into his mind, and sends him tumbling backward.
He comes to a few seconds later, his tumble apparently enough to pull Dean from his position under the tree halfway between himself and the car. Dean's crouching over him, face concerned, eyes wide.
"Took a bit of a header there, huh, Sammy," he jokes. Sam tries to sit up on his own, but his vision's covered in a big black blotch that fades just enough at the edges to let him know his eyes are open. It makes it hard to get his bearings, and he feels a little dizzy.
Dean's hand's on his back, helping him sit up, and then he's leaning against an upright stone.
"Dude, you okay?" More serious than before, but not without that mischievous edge his voice has had for as long as Sam can remember. "You just went all stiff and fell over. It was kinda funny."
Only Dean would find someone falling over humorous.
"Yeah. Just a little blind at the moment."
"Blind?" Dean asks. "What kind of ghost are you communing with?"
"I'm not 'communing' with anyone," Sam retorts. "I'm not James van Praaug."
"Who?"
"For someone who keeps making pop-culture references, you're falling down on the job."
"Whatever, man. I know my stuff."
His vision's coming back, fading in from the edges. He can make out Dean's ears and part of his chin, and his hand resting just over his right shoulder on the stone. The center's still a huge black blur, but they're there for a reason and the rain's starting to fall heavier now. If they don't get out of there soon, they'll both be soaked and the interior of the Impala will be ruined.
So he tries to stand up. The hand over his right shoulder is suddenly on it, and he's pushed back down to the ground.
"Yeah, try getting up when you can see."
Sam's amazed Dean hasn't pestered him as to why he's blind. He takes what he can get, though, and considers telling him when he realizes he doesn't really know himself.
They sit for a moment, breathing in the moist, cool island air, the calm before the storm. Both are soaked, the waterproof material moot from unzipped jacket, keeping just their arms dry.
With his hair plastered against his forehead, Sam didn't realize he could see again until he brushed his hair away from his face and eyes.
He pushes away from Dean with a quick okay and stumbles back to the stone, careful this time not to touch it. It's not that old -- there are several older, from when this was a whaling village -- the date of death is 1964. A child's grave.
"Hey, be careful," Dean advises from over his right shoulder.
"He was only twelve," Sam replies. His brother's concern proves the vision was something more, something that scared him.
Dean leans over next to Sam -- cloud have blocked out much of the sun above, casting the world in shakes of blue and gray -- and reads off the stone. "Thomas Chillins. What's so interesting about him?"
"I don't know," Sam says, frustrated. Annoyed by the rain, by that nagging feeling ringing in the back of his head, this compulsion -- need -- to be there, standing in front of a grave out somewhere they didn't belong. He felt lost, misplaced by the cosmic order that dictated their lives, then forgotten.
If not here, then where? Wouldn't life -- normal, orderly, messy -- direct them to be near those who cared for them, places that helped them along in some way? Perhaps, Sam thought sourly, roaming the country in a blur of shady motel rooms helped them along in a direction so far from normal, darkness marked both ends of the tunnel.
When would life be lived in anything but shades of gray and black?
"If you don't know," Dean says, jarring Sam from ever-darkening thought, "can we get out of this shitty rain?"
A glare would be in order if Sam didn't agree with him. The tingle at the back of his head leapt forward, ordering him to stay...stay forever, keep company, never leave.
Then there was Dean, hands on his hips, head cocked to the side, frown growing deeper every second.
It won over every feeling competing for dominance in his overcrowded head. "Yeah."
Dean claps him on the shoulder as they start back to the car -- away from the stone screaming for fellowship behind them.
"Don't worry, we'll check it out."
There are some days he feels Dean can read his mind as well as his outward demeanor. Some days, he's glad words can remain unspoken between them. Other days, he hopes Dean can't gleam a thing, afraid of what he might find.
--
Rather than spend the day scanning the internet, searching for any information it had to offer on the death of Thomas Chillins, Sam suggested visiting the library. Smaller populations, he explained, usually kept detailed records and locally-geared books in their library collections, and would prove more fruitful than the internet.
Dean figured a day in the library would satisfy his brother as well as give them something more constructive to do -- the television in the room refused to cooperate after the power returned.
Cobblestones make the car rock back and forth, rain dances on the hood, and Dean turns his music up louder to drown it all out. Beside him, Sam holds a tourist map snatched from the inn's front desk on raised knees. He squints out the windshield, wipers swishing over it dispelling water, and refers back to the map.
"Up three blocks, then take a right."
Below, the street gives way to normal pavement, and Dean pats the dash, muttering words of encouragement to the car. It's the only movement he makes.
"You're doing this to humor me, aren't you." It's more a statement than question, which makes Dean wonder why he said anything if he already knows the answer. "There's something there. Someone."
"We aren't in the business of helping lost ghosts, Sam. This is a waste of time." Time that could be spent saving someone else, but he doesn't say the last part aloud. "But seeing as we're stuck here, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do than go to the library with my little brother."
Sam snorts. "How many times have I heard that one before?"
"C'mon! I really do love libraries! All those books." He makes a face. "They smell old."
"That's because they are old, Dean," Sam retorts. "And how many times have you wandered into the rare books collection? Once, twice?"
"Four times. And hated it every time. How can you spend so much time in there?" Dean's nose wrinkles and he takes the right turn a little too fast.
A shrug. "Some people do enjoy reading, you know, learning stuff?"
"I learn plenty."
The library grows larger on the left as Sam laughs. It's a large white building that tries its best to impersonate an ancient Roman structure, with thick columns lining the front. Written across the top against blue is Atheneum, a tribute to the Greek Goddess of wisdom and learning Athena. It reflects the high-brow society around them, suffocating them, so unlike the small towns they're used to visiting.
There's no parking next to the building, so Dean pulls into a space alongside the park after circling the block, in front of a pair of park benches empty of any lounging readers. In the rain, the garden looks dead, ghostly through a haze of grey water, but must be beautiful when the sun in shining.
Dean groans. Another library. For a second, he finds himself trapped in a memory. Thirteen year old Sammy running up the steps of the Wichita Public Library, his arms full of books thicker than the tree branches he should have been climbing instead of those cut cement steps. He stayed in the car, to watch and make sure he was safe, fine, okay as he returned his books.
And then it's the present, and Sam's already halfway up the steps before he turns and motions to Dean, a silent hand gesture speaking volumes: what?
So Dean shakes the memory from his head, pulls the keys from the ignition, and hops out into the rain, coat pulled up over his ears to protect his recently cleaned hair. No point thinking of the past, when he still viewed Sam as Sammy, as an innocent child lost in a world of madness he inherited.
"You okay, man?" Sam asks, shaking out his hair in the front hallway of the library. The floors are dark wood, the walls pale yellow and white with molding up top. Just inside the front hall, the check-out desk runs the whole of the room on the left side, where middle-aged women sit chatting.
"Yeah, fine. Just thinking."
Their boots echo as they walk past the women and through to the literature section. "Watch out, Dean. First thinking, then reading. I swear, it happens that way."
"Don't start, college boy," Dean retorts with maybe a little less gusto than normal. "I'll rub off you, just wait."
"Right." Sam smiles -- he's been smiling a lot more lately, like he's feeling his skin fits better now that he's developed new abilities -- and reads a sign up on a marble column. "No matter how much you play it, I'm not going to sing along to your Metallica tape."
Dean stutters as Sam leads them up a flight of stairs. "Sing along?"
And those are the small secrets you keep. The ones no one minds revealing, no one minds when they're discovered. They're covers for the larger ones, bigger ones that really matter.
He lets Sam enjoy his small victory, his foray into the private side of Dean Winchester, and wraps it around him like a warm blanket.
Musty odors invade his senses as they emerge up onto the second floor. Books line the walls, in some places two stacks deep. They circle a mass of tables with tiny lights, looking exactly how Dean would imagine a boring, old library would look. If he squinted hard enough, he could see Sam sitting at one of those tables, leaning over a book, jotting down notes as he turned a page.
But the mirage fades like smoke, and he's left looking at empty tables.
--
The research goes slowly at first. The town's newspaper hasn't been digitally archived too far back, and the death of Thomas Chillins didn't get much coverage in the larger newspapers nearby cities. With computer searches out of the question, Dean joined Sam in searching the microfiche archives on the first floor, the desks shoved back away from the fiction and children's collections in the east addition.
Which wasn't going that fast, either.
"You'd think with only a year to look through, we'd have found it by now."
"Too bad you didn't remember the date," Dean shoots back in response to Sam's comment.
Sam keeps zooming through old newspapers. "Feel free to take a drive over and check."
Rain pounds on the windows like boxers before a fight, glove against glove, ready to unleash hell. Wind gushes against the panes; it's a miracle they haven't shattered, but a building this old has to have some hidden strengths. Dean takes one glance outside and shakes his head.
"No way. Rather sit in here." But his eyes are glossy when he starts looking again, and Sam doubts his search will be any help.
Then again, Dean did spend four years hunting with their father, the master researcher, and if there was anything John Winchester did right, it was refining techniques.
Installing a bit of faith in his brother's ability to stay on task, even when faced with reading, Sam returned to his own screen and continued to look through the front pages of the town's newspaper for 1964.
A few governmental announcements, council member changes, and the new housing development out by the other town on the island marked most of the pages from January to April; there was little variation, and Sam was beginning to see that even though it may look different than their average small town, it had the same sort of news.
Nothing like a high society party to break the monotony. A photo of partygoers dressed in sleek evening gowns stood with men in tuxedoes, all of them smiling under a bright chandelier --
-- light so bright it was blinding in its intensity.
A headache erupts behind his eyes, causing him to blink a few times and stop the machine. Take a break. Reading never bothered him before, and for a fleeting moment he hoped that was the reason his head started pounding, and not some new side-effect of his newfound abilities.
But he knew it was.
Every time he attempted to recall the vision from the graveyard, it was drown in bright while light so pure, it was hard to return to reality. How comfortable it was, where darkness was completely obliterated. How safe.
And each time, Sam struggled with returning to the dreary world outside.
"Bingo," Dean says beside him. He taps the screen with a finger, making that hollow click as he points to what he found. "I didn't find Thomas, but here's a William Chillins."
Finally, something.
"Says here he became the keeper of a lighthouse on the other side of the island, and lived in a house there with his family."
Sam rolls his chair over. "Thomas?"
"His son." Dean scans the article. The machine whirls as he rushes through a few months in the blink of an eye.
"Hey, stop," Sam orders. Dean takes his hand off the control. "Back a few."
"Yes, master."
Sam smirks. "Finally."
"Don't get used to it."
But Dean takes it in stride, and goes back until Sam tells him to stop. The headline reads 'Death at Sconset Lighthouse' and features a photo of the Chillins family; William and his wife, with a small boy no older than eleven standing between them sporting a haircut screaming of the 1960's.
"So that's Thomas," Sam says, and Dean nods. They both look at the picture of the family, of the young son dressed in khaki pants and a nice shirt; newsprints lacked color in those days, and whatever colors the family had dressed in were diverse but undistinguishable. Sandy hair, bright smile. A regular, happy family.
Sam's eyes linger on William -- the father -- for a second, his face so familiar. He leans back to his own terminal and it clicks into place. William's one of the men standing in a tuxedo at the society party.
"Okay. Blah blah, lighthouse keeper. Yadda yadda," -- Dean reads through it with his hands, waving his right hand whenever he skips over things he doesn't deem important -- "Ruth goes up to the top of the lighthouse, falls over the side. Thing is, there was no reason to go up there."
"Wait, what's the date?" Sam leans in. Dean points to the top of the article.
"Uh, April 14th, 1964. Why?"
Sam pushes his chair back to the other terminal, lingering on the faces of the happy partiers before scanning for the date. "That's the same date as this gathering?"
"And...?"
Sam points, finger smearing the screen. "That's William Chillins."
"So he's out at a party the same night his family croaks, huh? Nice guy."
Sam sighs. The parallels to their own life run right over Dean's head, and he decides to change the subject. "Still doesn't answer the question -- "
"Why would someone go to the top of a lighthouse in the middle of a storm?" Dean tries.
Sam sees that flash of light in his head again, and tries to refine it. "What if it went out?"
Dean shakes his head. "No one saw it go out. Just heard her scream. Yuck."
"What?"
"She fell into the ocean; they found her body days later eaten by...stuff."
"Stuff."
"Yeah. Whatever. Thomas Chillins, eleven. Went out to see what was going on, misjudged the distance to the cliff, and fell over. Never recovered his body." Dean leans back in his chair until only two legs are on the ground. "There ya go, Sammy. Lost body, lost ghost. End of story. Unless you'd like to wade through that water, though you might want to ask Ruth about the effects of doing that before diving in."
"God, Dean, you could be a grief councilor with the sensitivity you display," Sam deadpans. There's something about the photograph that haunts him; in the right light, he could say that was the figure he saw on the side of the road in the cemetery, but he can't be sure.
"Hey, you be touchy-feely, I'll shoot 'em, okay?" Dean laces his hands behind his head and gives the clock a glance. "So, what now, ghost whisperer?"
"You watch too much TV," Sam comments. "And I don't know. Why would Ruth go up onto the top of a lighthouse in the middle of a storm? There had to be something."
They can't print directly from the machine, so Dean copies down some of the more important information in that foreign handwriting of his. "Something down our alley?"
"I thought you said this was a waste of time," Sam quips, eyebrows raised. Dean leans forward with a slam that attracts the attention of another patron, and he gives them one of his prize-winning smiles. How women found that attractive, Sam didn't know -- to him, it was just creepy.
"I've been known to be wrong before," Dean proclaims. "Once. But hey, I'm big enough to give this one to you."
"Thanks."
"The internet's gotta have some history on this lighthouse. No more old books. The TV' has to be fixed by now."
Sam finds comfort in his brother's predictability, that he may once again know his brother as well as when they were scared kids blindly following their father across the country. A prickle in the back of the head mocks him through whispers of thought. You'll never know him if you don't leave. He almost considers it, almost reaches out to stop his brother and tell him he was wrong, that Dean was right, and they have no business trying to help lost ghosts.
Then he remembers the look on Thomas Chillins' face. Lost. Frightened. Confused. Sam knows what it's like to be a lost boy, to be rescued by Peter Pan and given a makeshift family, and can't help but wonder what Peter Pan gave up to rescue him.