Apologies:

1) Forgot to mention at the start of Chapter 1, this has to be set after the end of Season 1 due to the dates I needed to use, so we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that neither Sam nor Dean are dead by the end of Season 1 (heh just kidding!)

2) Apologies if anyone knows Stillwater, Nevada - this was a town name I completely made up, but then after writing the first couple of chapters discovered it was actually a real place that even had a reservoir next to it! Spooky and almost supernatural coincedence...

3) And once again, I really didn't set out with the intention of claiming the Winchesters for England...

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They weren't kidding about this drought thing, huh?" Dean observed, shaking the dust of yet another dried up Nevada town from the Impala's wheels with a shove of the accelerator.

Even at this time of the evening, the heat was absolutely suffocating. Rolling down the Impala's windows had done little more than create a weak through-draft, and both Sam and Dean fidgeted uncomfortably in their seats, t-shirts and jeans clinging to their sweaty skin.

"You know what?" Sam said, looking up from the map to squint into the twilight up ahead. "As cool as this car is, its times like these I'd prefer a minivan with air conditioning."

Dean looked momentarily wounded, patting the Impala's steering wheel lovingly. "Don't you listen to the nasty man, sweetheart," he said. "He's just jealous he ain't as pretty as you are."

Sam laughed and shook his head, returning his attention to the map.

Dean glanced sideways at him. "Are we there yet?" he asked, the oppressive heat starting to get the better of him.

Sam didn't even bother to look up. "No," he replied in his best angry parent voice, still poring over the map. "But we're not far away. In fact, we should be crossing the county line right about…"

"Jeez!" Dean burst out, as out of nowhere the car suddenly ploughed into the heaviest sheet of rain he'd ever seen, and he had to fight to keep from skidding off the road.

"…Now," Sam finished his sentence, scrambling to wind up his window as the torrential downpour soaked him through in seconds. Dean's window had also gone up, although the coolness of the water was a blessed relief after the day's arid journey.

"What the hell…?" Dean tried to keep his eyes focussed on the road, but the rain was so heavy he couldn't see three feet in front of him, darkness falling like a brick as the incessant downpour continued to beat against the windows.

Sam glanced behind him, trying to make out where the rainstorm had hit them, but was unable to see anything beyond the rain pounding on the back window. "I guess this is Stillwater," he said, twisting back to face the front of the car, where raindrops the size of golf balls were bouncing off the Impala's hood.

"I swear, I find one single dent in my car," Dean searched for the right oath. "I'm suing the Weather Service!"

"Still don't think this is our kind of gig?" Sam asked, glancing sideways at his brother with a lopsided smirk.

Dean risked a quick look at his brother, before returning his attention to the treacherous driving conditions. "You're starting to convince me, little brother," he commented.

Sam nodded. "You ever see a rainstorm just – just – " he groped for an adequate description, but failed utterly. "Just start like that? As if someone had turned on the water just as…"

"Just as we crossed into Stillwater," Dean finished his sentence for him, before shrugging uncertainly. "I dunno," he said thoughtfully, glancing again at Sam. "Just 'cause a thing don't seem natural don't necessarily make it supernatural…"

"Dean, look out!"

Pointing frantically in front of them, Sam's eyes had widened to the size of saucers, and Dean rapidly turned his attention back to the road.

Slamming on the brakes as hard as he could, Dean yanked the wheel savagely, narrowly avoiding ploughing into something dark, blurry and completely motionless in the middle of the road.

Fighting for control, the Impala skidded crazily as Dean tried to keep the wheels on the black top, the tyres squealing in protest as the car spun round in a one hundred and eighty degree arc before finally coming to a jarringly abrupt halt.

Dean breathed hard, his heart pounding almost as loud as the rain on the Impala's roof. "You OK?" he asked Sam shakily, his brother's knuckles white as they clung to the dashboard.

Sam nodded uncertainly, almost afraid to let go. "Yeah," he managed, voice high and strangled. "Peachy. Let's not do that again, huh?"

He glanced almost fearfully behind them, eyes narrowing as he tried to make out what the hell they'd almost hit in the middle of the road. But all he could see was the rain, lit up blood red by the Impala's tail lights as the cold water splattered against the tarmac. "What the hell was that?" he asked.

Dean gritted his teeth angrily. "Whatever it was," he said, making a grab for the door handle. "It's gonna wish I'd hit it by the time I'm through with it!"

Sam caught his brother's arm before he had chance to get the door open. "What, are you crazy!" he burst out, keeping a firm grip on Dean's arm. "Anything could be out there!"

Dean grimaced. "Anything almost wrecked my car, Sam!" he remonstrated. "Not to mention us! Anything's in for a bitch slappin'!"

With that, he wrenched open the car door and stepped out into the pounding rain, soaked to the skin within seconds, but completely oblivious thanks to the haze of unfocussed anger clouding his vision.

Peering through the relentless sheets of water, Dean could make out something dark and vaguely person-shaped up ahead, and as he began to fight his way through the rain towards it, he realised Sam was out of the car and at his shoulder, a nervous but determined expression on his face. At Dean's questioning look, he shrugged his sodden shoulders.

"Like I said," Sam fairly had to shout to be heard over the rain. "Anything could be out here. You think I want my Trusty Sidekick squashed by an eight foot trucker with a tyre iron?"

Dean grinned lopsidedly. "Not that I need you to hold my hand, Sammy," he said. "But if you had to come, you could at least have brought an umbrella with you…"

Sam frowned at him, before striding off purposefully towards – whatever it was, Dean almost having to run to keep up.

As they neared the figure, oddly illuminated by the Impala's tail lights, they slowed, suddenly aware that they seemed to be looking at nothing more sinister than an elderly woman.

She was short and gnarled-looking, back bent over and crooked, the hood of a dark green cloak pulled up over her head, casting weird shadows over her barely-visible features. What they could make out of her face was weathered and lined, eyes the colour of midnight partially cowed by drooping eyelids. Her mouth was a narrowed line, yellowing pointed teeth just visible between pale, thin lips.

Dean considered the woman for a second, before observing, "You remember that life-sized witch statue you made in school that Halloween…?" He trailed off, the mere memory enough to make Sam shudder.

Regardless, the younger brother reached out a trembling hand towards the woman, humanitarianism overriding instinct. "Ma'am?" he said carefully, gingerly touching the woman's arm. It felt oddly dry. "Ma'am, are you alright? Can we help you?"

The woman just stared at him, or rather, through him, her gaze distant, as if focussed on a point a mile up the road. A point she couldn't possibly see through the horrendous downpour.

She snatched the arm that Sam had touched away from him, as if protecting something, and it was only then that Sam noticed the old-fashioned wicker basket hooked over her bony arm, half hidden beneath her cloak. There was something in the basket, Sam could see, but he couldn't quite make out what it was. Something vaguely spherical; lots of them; piled atop one another, almost as if the woman were carrying a basket full of ping pong balls.

"Ma'am?" Sam repeated the word, uncertain whether the woman had heard him through the driving rain.

The old woman seemed to see him for the first time then, a wild, crazy look in her jet black eyes. "Forty days and forty nights," she said finally, her voice as withered as her frame. She had an accent that Sam couldn't quite identify and a totally mad expression on her face that made him instinctively want to grab for the nearest salt gun. "His bones lie under the water," the old woman added, just in case Sam didn't already think she was nuts. "His bones lie under the water."

Sam glanced sideways at Dean, whose expression said 'just my luck to nearly hit a crazy broad standing in the middle of the road in a torrential downpour…'

Relieved that Dean's assessment of the situation seemed to concur with his own, Sam turned back to the old woman as if to speak, but she merely carried on rambling.

"Restore him!" she said, making a sudden move towards Sam that caused him to retreat a cautious step, just as Dean made a move forward in front of him, Big Brother instinct kicking in. This drew the woman's attention from the younger to the older. "Restore him!" she repeated, eyes boring into Dean's. "Restore him to his rightful place or this place will drown! All will drown! On the fortieth night, all will drown!" Dean was uncomfortably reminded of a Monty Python sketch as the woman continued to ramble on madly. "He must be restored or all will drown on the fortieth night!"

The woman made as if to turn away, before suddenly turning back towards them, dark eyes locking with Dean's as a withered hand grabbed his wrist and held on so tight he had to resist the temptation to cry out. "You understand me?" she said. "You understand?"

"Not really…" Dean replied truthfully.

The woman grimaced, pulling on his wrist with more strength than Dean would have given her credit for. "Then run or you'll die!" she said softly.

Dean froze.

Run or you'll die… The images from his dream resurfaced disconcertingly before his eyes as he stared into those of this batty old woman. How had she known the thoughts he'd had in his dream? How could she possibly have known that?

"Run or you'll die!" the woman repeated, just as the heaviest downpour Dean had ever seen in his life chose that moment to descend on them, as if a thousand buckets of water had all been upended at the same time and come crashing down on them like a tidal wave.

Freezing water stinging like a thousand pinpricks, Dean instinctively closed his eyes for just a second. When he reopened them, the woman was nowhere to be seen. All that was left to prove that she had ever been there were four white marks on Dean's wrist where her nails at dug into his skin.

He stood rooted to the spot. "You see where she went?" he asked, just as Sam grabbed his arm and started tugging him backwards towards the car.

"We need to go," was all Sam said, continuing to pull insistently at Dean's arm until the older brother's legs finally decided to acquiesce to the demand, and he followed Sam back to the Impala mutely.

Climbing inside, the two of them sat, staring straight ahead in stunned silence until Sam finally managed, "Still think this isn't our kind of gig?"

Dean shook his head slowly, the old woman's last words still ringing in his ears. Run or you'll die… "Sam?" he said cautiously, still staring straight forwards out of the front window. "Your nightmares." He paused, swallowing hard. "You know… those nightmares?" He turned to face his brother uncertainly. "When you're dreaming them, do they feel like – like regular nightmares, or – or something else? I mean, can you tell the difference? You know, when you're having one of those nightmares, or is it…" he trailed off lamely, not overly encouraged by the confused look on Sam's face.

"I'm not sure this is the best time for us to be having this discussion," Sam said carefully. "You know, facing the wrong direction in the middle of a haunted highway? Maybe we should move before something a little bigger than some nutty old crone smashes into us?"

Dean looked at him with that blank, dazed expression he got sometimes. "Huh?" he said, before suddenly coming back to himself. "Yeah. Right. Move. Good idea."

Grabbing the steering wheel, he twisted the key in the ignition, the Impala rumbling into life as he pushed down on the gas. Putting the car into gear, Dean manoeuvred so that they were facing the right direction again, but just as that was accomplished, he suddenly yanked the wheel and pulled over to the side of the road, biting at his lip as he stared at the place where the old woman had been standing minutes earlier.

Sam frowned, pushing his sodden hair out of his eyes as he wondered why they weren't moving. "Dean?" he asked. "Hey? You awake man?"

Dean nodded absently. "Uh-huh," he said. Then, "'Run or you'll die' she said, right?" he asked.

Sam's frown deepened and he shrugged, not sure what Dean wanted him to say. "I guess," he agreed.

Dean turned to look at him then, an odd expression on his face. "Maybe we should."

"Huh?" Sam said, not sure he'd understood. "Should what? Run?"

Dean nodded ever-so-slightly. "You heard the old crone. This place is going to flood…"

"That's not what she said," Sam countered. "She said 'in forty nights' it was going to flood…"

"She said on the fortieth night," Dean interrupted.

Sam shook his head, exasperated. "What's with you?" he asked. "You've never run away from anything your entire life!"

Dean shrugged, the image of him pushing Sam off a cliff so vivid in his mind that he almost had to shut his eyes against it. "Well," he said. "Maybe this is a good time to start."

Sam just stared at him, a look of total disbelief on his face. "You're kidding, right?" he asked at length.

"No," Dean replied instantly, before reconsidering. "Yes." He seemed to think about what he was going to say next, before adding, "It's your fault you know."

Sam looked taken aback. "What is?"

"You and your freaky nightmares."

A look of comprehension dawned on Sam's face. "That dream you had," he said. "Where you pushed me off a cliff…"

Dean nodded sheepishly. "What she said – run or you'll die – that's all I kept thinking in my dream."

Sam's expression remained completely neutral. "You said it yourself, Dean," he said cautiously, not wanting to hurt his brother's feelings. "Everyone gets nightmares. They're not all…" he trailed off, looking vaguely apologetic.

"Like yours," Dean finished for him. He rubbed at his eyes for a second, trying to dislodge the water dripping off his soaking hair and clinging to his eyelashes. "I know that, Sam," he said finally. "And I know it was probably nothing – déjà vu or something – everyone gets that from time to time. But if you hang out long enough with someone who's nightmare actually come true, well," he shrugged in defeat. "It has an effect on you."

Sam nodded, smiling slightly as he finally understood. "We see a cliff," he promised. "I'll run in the opposite direction."

Dean smiled back weakly. "You do that," he said, putting the car back into gear and pulling back out onto the highway. "'Cause I'm not gonna be held responsible if I suddenly turn into a raving fratricidal maniac."

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The motel room was warm and blissfully dry, and although the double-glazed window wasn't nearly a match for the racket being caused by the pounding rain outside, a hot shower and a greasy burger later and Sam and Dean had almost forgotten the crazy old woman and her dire predictions of watery doom.

Almost.

"So," Sam was saying, sitting at the rickety table where he'd precariously balanced the laptop as Dean stretched out on one of the beds, TV remote flicking inhumanly fast from station to station. "The fortieth night. Whole towns flooded. What does that say to you?"

Dean's wide eyes never left the TV set. "Noah's ark," he said off the top of his head. "Wrath of God. Forty days and forty nights of rain."

"Which is about how long it's been raining in Stillwater, right?" Sam agreed.

Dean glanced over at him then. "You think we should go pick ourselves up a couple of girls to go in two by two with?" he asked with a grin.

Sam shook his head, smiling despite himself as he turned his attention back to the laptop. "Not unless they got Sheryl Crow working at the local diner…" he muttered.

Dean did a double take. "I never figured you for the toyboy type, Sammy," he said, continuing to zap through the TV channels like an eight year old with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Sam didn't reply, his internet search drawing his attention. "Huh," he said finally, his voice betraying his heightened state of interest. "Well I'll be damned."

"I certainly hope not," Dean said, still entranced by the garbage on the TV. "'Cause that would just be too ironic."

"Listen to this," Sam interrupted, drawing Dean's attention away from the TV again. "OK, I put 'forty days rain' into a search engine, and this is what I got." He squinted at the screen as he began to recite what was displayed there. "St Swithun's day if thou dost rain / For forty days it will remain / St Swithun's day if thou be fair / For forty days 'twill rain nae mair." He looked at Dean expectantly, but the older brother just looked back at him with a completely bemused expression on his face.

"And in English that means…?"

Sam laughed. "That is English, dude!" he said. "Old English. Really old. It's a weather proverb."

"Lemme guess," Dean said, forcing himself up into a sitting position. "Something to do with this Swithun guy."

Sam nodded enthusiastically. "St Swithun, or sometimes Swithin," he said, sounding for all the world like one of Dean's high school history teachers. "He was a Ninth Century English bishop who was so in touch with the common man that when he died, he asked not to be buried inside the local cathedral with the other holy men and local bigshots, but in the churchyard, where the common men could walk over him and the rain could fall off the cathedral onto his grave."

"Nice," Dean commented, attention starting to wane at the mere mention of Ninth Century English bishops. "A man of the cloth who's down with the people."

"So 'down'," Sam agreed, "that when a subsequent bishop had Bishop Swithun dug up and moved into the cathedral, there was a clap of thunder and a terrible rainstorm that lasted…"

"Forty days and forty nights?" Dean hazarded a guess.

"Nice to see you're paying attention," Sam applauded. "Apparently, Bishop Swithun's spirit was said to have been so unhappy at his bones being moved that he caused the bad weather, and thus the proverb was born…"

"Which means? In English?"

"If it rains on St Swithun's Day, it'll rain for the next forty days and forty nights," Sam translated. "If it doesn't rain, then it'll stay fair for the next forty days."

Dean actually did look vaguely interested now. "And St Swithun's Day would be – ?"

Sam consulted his screen, laughing ironically. "July 15th," he replied.

Dean's interest level spiked a little more. "Which would be about a month ago…" he said.

"When Stillwater's drought problems suddenly seemed to be over," Sam finished.

Dean nodded thoughtfully. "So they made this Swithun guy a Saint 'cause he made it rain?" he asked, frowning. "I thought it always rained in England?"

Sam laughed again. "No," he said. "They made him a Saint because in life he was said to have performed many miracles, whilst in death his bones were reported to have healing properties. Pilgrims would travel from miles around just to visit his tomb."

Dean shuddered. "Creepy," he said, before adding, "So far, so not-of-this-continent."

"I know," Sam agreed, acutely aware of this slight flaw in his research. "But it gets better," he said. "St Swithun was also a Patron Saint. Guess what of?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Got anything to do with water?" he asked.

"Yes it does," Sam agreed. "St Swithun is the Patron Saint of Drought Relief, among other things."

Dean had to admit, that was pretty relevant. "OK," he said, going along cautiously. "Still not quite convinced me yet."

Sam sat up straighter, a knowing grin on his face that reminded Dean of when they were kids and his kid brother had some earth-shattering piece of news that he just couldn't wait to report. "This could be the clincher," he said.

Dean rolled his eyes. "The suspense is killing me. Really."

"OK, try this for size," Sam said. "St Swithun was Bishop of a small cathedral town in southern England. Guess which cathedral."

Dean shrugged. "Ninth Century British history not exactly my strong suit, Sam," he admitted.

Sam's grin widened. "You're not going to believe it."

"Sam – "

"Winchester!" Sam blurted out, his grin even wider.

Dean didn't comment for a second, not sure he'd heard right. "Run that by me again?"

Sam spun the computer in Dean's direction so that he could see for himself. "St Swithun was the Bishop of Winchester," he repeated. "That's in Hampshire, in case you were wondering."

"I wasn't," Dean said. "But you get the award for Geekiest Research of the Bizarre and Freakishly Coincidental…"

Sam was still grinning as he tapped the computer screen. "In 1906," he said. "Winchester Cathedral started to sink."

Dean frowned. "Now I know you're kidding," he said. "How the hell does a cathedral sink?"

"It was built on a marsh," Sam explained. "They had to send a diver down into the water under the foundations to help shore the building up with concrete to stop it sinking entirely! Parts of it still flood to this day."

Dean stared at the laptop, before finally declaring, "Yep. Pretty weird. And pretty coincidental."

Sam shook his head. "Maybe," he said. "But how about this…"

"There's more?" Dean thought his head might explode if Sam tried to squeeze one more fact in there.

"Tom Bradshaw," Sam continued, nodding feverishly. "The power company guy who threw himself off a bridge? Guess when he returned from a 'fact finding' tour of Europe?"

"July 15th?" Dean suggested.

"Uh-huh," Sam confirmed. "St Swithun's Day. And the last place he'd visited was the UK, where he'd been researching alternatives to hydroelectric power."

Dean shook his head. "OK," he said. "If England didn't involve a pretty damn long plane trip – " he shuddered. " – I'd say let's go torch dem bones…"

It was Sam's turn to shake his head. "Good luck," he said. "According to the research, St Swithun's bones were moved so many times that they were eventually scattered and lost. And besides, I don't think that's it. St Swithun was a pious man, committed to the wellbeing of his community, friend of the poor. Not some vengeful spirit out to drown a whole town in a fit of pique. Hell, his most famous miracle involved his mending some peasant woman's basket of eggs that got smashed when she was jostled on her way to sell them at the market. They were her only source of income, and Bishop Swithun's supposed to have taken pity on her."

Dean interrupted. "What did you say you saw that old crone carrying out on the highway?" he asked.

Sam did a double take. "A basket," he said slowly. "With something inside the shape of…"

"Eggs, maybe?" Dean had moved forward so that he was now perched on the edge of the bed, the TV forgotten.

Sam could tell he'd finally managed to get his brother's attention. "Not so coincidental?"

Dean tried not to appear too interested in his kid brother's geeky research. "Maybe," he allowed, glancing out of the window where the rain continued to crash against the glass in angry waves. "Doesn't explain who – or what – the old bat is though."

"Or what she wants," Sam agreed, turning back to the laptop. "Plus, if she's the angry spirit, no way we're finding her bones to salt and burn…"

Dean nodded, thinking. "So to save the town, we gotta figure out why this chick's so pissed off?"

Sam didn't look away from the computer screen, another search bringing up some obviously intriguing possibilities.

"Sam?" Dean prodded, irritated by his brother's ability to go into Total Research Mode at the flick of some invisible switch. He glanced longingly at the TV remote, now abandoned on the bed, and silently wished they'd come up with a version for controlling kid brothers.

Sam continued to stare at the screen, before finally seeming to flick back into Human Interaction Mode. "What if she's a water wraith?" he said slowly, meeting Dean's questioning gaze. "You know: old woman, wears green, lures people to their watery death?"

Dean grimaced. "How'd she go from Ninth Century dairy farmer to vengeful water spirit?"

"Errr…" Sam glanced back at the computer before admitting defeat. "No idea," he said.

"He shoots, he misses," Dean noted. "But thanks so much for playing." Sam threw a pencil at him, which he ducked with the practiced skill of an irritating older sibling.

"Hey, you've changed your tune from 'freaky geeky coincidence' to 'let's torch some bones' in the space of five minutes," Sam observed. "So I don't think I can be doing too badly here."

Dean grinned. "Years of public scholarship money well spent," he observed.

Sam smiled wryly. "Thank you," he said. "I'll take that as a compliment. Even if you didn't mean it as one."

"Take it whichever way floats your boat, kiddo," Dean said. "Still doesn't tell us how to stop Grandma Whacko going Old Testament on Stillwater."

Sam's shoulders slumped tiredly. "No," he agreed. "But at least it gives us an idea where to start."

"Angry water wraith versus Ninth Century English Bishop with a cool line in dairy disaster recovery and water divination," Dean recapped. "Not forgetting the fact that they're both from a little town that just happens to be called Winchester, where they were dumb enough to build a cathedral on a marsh and not expect it to sink." He shook his head. "God, I hope the name's all we have in common with those guys," he said. "I'd hate to think they're our ancestors or something. 'Cause that would just make us dumber than a hunk of cheese in a meat grinder."

Sam threw his brother a 'what the hell are you talking about?' look, before closing the laptop. "Might explain your dream though," he offered, cutting off Dean's random stream of consciousness mid-flow.

The older brother frowned. "How d'you figure?" he asked, intrigued.

"Well, Sam said, reasoning as he went. "We must have gotten our family name from somewhere. Makes sense it could have come from there. The old woman might actually be some distant relative. Who knows, she might have picked up on that and sent you the dream as a warning not to come here or something."

Dean made a face. "Pretty damn non-specific warning," he said.

"Ever known my nightmares to come with an instruction manual?" Sam countered.

Dean considered that. "OK," he said. "But why me? Why not come to you? You're the one who gets the 'vibes' after all…"

Sam thought about that for a second. "Well," he said. "I guess if she really was a Ninth Century peasant woman, in those days, the eldest son was the most important person in the family after the father."

"As he should be," Dean deadpanned.

Sam continued as if Dean hadn't spoken. "People didn't live too long then. If the father died, the oldest son was expected to provide for the family. Maybe she went to you for that reason."

"Huh," Dean said. "Seniority. Sounds plausible." He thought about that for a minute, before continuing, "Jeez, if we're related to that old battleaxe, then we must have got our looks from Mom's side of the family."

Sam sniggered. "Oh, I dunno," he said. "Looking out the two of you out on that road tonight? I'd have bet money you were related…"

Sam never saw the pencil winging its way back towards his head until it was too late.