Detention 4/5

Ann Miller was outgoing and friendly until Sam mentioned Don Taylor, when she clammed up completely.

Sam tried to reassure her that he was not trying to dig up scandals and ruin anyone's life, but she stil refused. It was therefore a pleasant surprise when she called him a little later with a change of heart. Her husband had encouraged her to talk to him, to get her secrets out in the open.

Everyone had been shocked when Don had hung himself. The man had been one of life's optimists, friendly and outgoing, a perfect husband and father. Apart from the part where he was having an affair with the underage Ann, something Ann had never told anyone other than her husband. At sixteen, Ann had threatened to reveal their affair if Don didn't leave his wife for her, and Don had disappeared the very next day. The following day he'd been found hanging from the bannisters in the basement and Ann had blamed herself, carrying her secret alone until she'd met her husband.

She burst into tears at this point, and her husband silently begged Sam to leave. In other circumstances, he might have, but his brother's life was at stake here.

"What basement?" he asked her.

"Don had discovered the old school basement on some maps of the property and was extending part of the house to cover it. He'd just about finished building the steps down there when, when-" Ann broke down again, and this time Sam did leave.

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At seven hundred lines, the cane did not come down and there was a pregnant pause as Dean hesitated, fully expecting it to.

Instead, the ghost asked, "did you covet your brother's bride to be?"

Dean blinked at that. "No," he said, "I mean she was cute and all, but she was Sammy's girl and she's dead now, so don't got there. Sir. Please. Whatever."

"What about other mens' wives?"

Unable to stop the genuine grin as he recalled some of his more fly-by-night conquests, Dean said. "We-ell, now you come to mention it –"

He didn't feel the crash of the cane onto his arm, his brain blowing a fuse and blanking out completely. He came to a short while later with his arm on fire, blinking back tears of pain. "Son of a bitch," he muttered, and this time as the cane fell, he felt the pain in all it's technicolour glory. Eventually sound and vision calmed down enough that he could hear what the ghost was saying.

"I have no doubt that you would commit adultery were any of the fairer sex agree to give her hand to you in marriage, but they have not. It is no laughing matter that you have seduced women into committing adultery themselves, but I cannot punish you for their weakness of will. Continue."

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After some fast talking at the realtors office that Dean would have been proud of, Sam emerged with copies of the plans to the house. There was no basement, only the extension which contained the room where Dean disappeared, but Sam had not expected the basement to be on those plans. Going back to the library, however, and using the original walls as guidelines, Sam was able compare the newer house against illustrations of the old school building and find where the staircase should be.

He would take a pickaxe to the wall if he needed to, but running out of leads and probably running out of time, Sam was clutching at any straws he could.

Whilst he was comparing the drawings, the helpful librarian brought a handful of musty old books. She'd borrowed them from the adjacent museum who in turn had been given them decades before from a previous occupier of the house. They turned out to be ledgers from the schoolhouse. Boys that had passed through, monies that had changed hands, teachers hired and fired and even notations against some of the boys names where they'd gone onto greater things, settled down locally or in one case ended up on death row.

Interestingly, there was a heavy notation underlined in thick faded black ink, against one of the very last pupils at the school, certainly in the last class listed. Lucas Ash, at the age of twelve was deceased just a few days before the school closed down. What made the notation especially interesting was the corresponding notation in the teacher's ledger against Jacob Grey. Deceased by his own hand, and just a day after Lucas Ash.

But the question still remained, where were Jacob's bones?

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'I deserve nothing but punishment' was rapidly becoming Dean's lifeline, the only thing that gave him focus to keep going until the cavalry arrived.

At eight hundred lines he could feel abused muscles stiffening up, those around his ribs making it awkward to breath properly, and his bruised spine making sitting on the backless stool a torture.

The cane smacked the desk to get his attention. "We have two more areas to cover," the ghost told him. "And then all this will be over and you can leave."

Dean wondered if that was such a good idea before Sam arrived. "I'll be dead then, or as good as," he told the ghost.

The ghost shook his head. "Only if it is by your own hand, boy. I deliver punishment, not execution. You will be well disciplined when you leave here, but still among the living and breathing."

"Huh," Dean quirked his lips in weary acceptance. "Bring it on, dude."

"To ask you if you are liar would be pointless," the ghost said. "For while an honest man would say no, because he is honest, a liar will also say no, because he is not."

"I say yes," Dean told him bluntly. "I am a liar, I've lied about most things most of my life. Deal."

"Honesty from a self-confessed born liar?" The ghost seemed taken aback. "How… refreshing." Hesitating a moment the ghost continued. "I was looking forward to cataloguing all the lies, the webs of lies you have created, as well as your own self-delusions, but it seems that you know what you are."

"Can't mistake what's in the mirror every morning," Dean sneered.

"No doubt," the ghost replied softly. "What should I do about it, do you think?"

"I deserve nothing but punishment," Dean met the ghost's eyes, and then leaned forward over the desk, grasping the top edge with his good hand. "Knock yourself out. Sir."

Four blows from the cane, that were strangely not as vicious as those previously inflicted, were spaced evenly down his back and the ghost informed Dean that he was through. "Why the lies and deceptions?" the ghost asked thoughtfully.

Once his harsh breathing was back under control, Dean shrugged and winced against the tightness of his sore back. "It's just the way it is. People don't like truths they don't understand."

The ghost contemplated the idea before tutting in distaste. "Continue, boy."

XXXXX

With no record of his passing other than the notation in the ledger, Sam decided that it was afair bet that Jacob's resting place was in the old school house, and with the opening up of the basement in 1973, Don Taylor had inadvertantly let the spirit out.

But why did it only attack some men, but not others? Why had it shut Sam out? Jacob was the evil schoolmaster the kids loved to hate according to his research, and his own far more recent recollections of school was that those teachers you hated as a kid, were the ones who were the scrictest.

He needed to find out more about Lucas, what sort of boy he was and what could possibly have happened to him.

There were no obituaries for Lucas Ash, no record of his passing other than a small plain marker in the graveyard, and Sam considered digging his bones up, but decided against it for the moment. The ghost he'd seen was an adult, not a child and exhuming the body just to see if he could work out what the boy had died of seemed too ghoulish.

Lucas would have to remain a mystery for now.

XXXXX

'I deserve nothing but punishment', was burned irrevocably into Dean's brain when the cane slid across the paper at nine hundred lines.

"You are a murderer."

Dean swallowed hard and shrugged. "No, not really." This was one discussion he really didn't want. "I kill. I'm not a murderer."

"I beg to differ, boy," the ghost said, his voice stil soft, with with a distinct underlying menace. "I can see there are many things that you have... exterminated, and it is not to those that I refer."

"I know," Dean swallowed again. "You mean little Katie May." The ghost said nothing, and Dean couldn't help but draw in on himself. "That was an accident." He winced at his own words, knowing that her death may well have been an accident, but it was completely his fault.

"I can see that in your heart you believe yourself responsible for her death, and perhaps in part you are," the ghost agreed. "But I can also see that your head knows that there was no other course of action you could have taken. Accidents are part of life and it is not to her that I refer."

"What?" Dean looked up, his mind drawing a complete blank. Unless he meant those that he'd failed to save; but while he felt guilty as hell about those, there was no way any of those could be considered murder. "I don't understand."

"Yes you do, boy. Your subconcious mind is screaming your guilt to me. Are your self-delusions really so tightly woven and twisted that you cannot hear it?"

Here it comes, thought Dean, the real reason we're here. Probablyt the dead guy was projecting his own guilt on to Dean.

"Johnathon Howes," said the ghost.

Or not, thought Dean although he still wasn't quite getting it.

"Deborah Isaacs, Michael Allinson and the Reverand Johnathon Masters. There are probably more, but those are the ones you know you murdered."

"I did not!" Dean protested hotly, "they were conjuring up demons and spirits and killing people. They got what was coming to them!"

Crack! The cane came down on Dean's arm and between pain filled gulping breaths he noticed that there was was only space for one more strike of the cane inside his elbow.

"Like the Reverand LeGrange? Or the Reverand Sorenson?" the ghost hissed. "Both nearly murdered by you in a moment of erroneous judegment. You murdered people that you could never know for certain had done the things you claimed."

"I stopped them from killing!" Dean shouted, knowing in his gut that he hadn't been wrong about any of those he'd killed; he'd simply lacked the hard evidence.

"Perhaps the real culprits moved elsewhere, fearful that you may actually catch them, so you would never know," the ghost said, voicing Dean's own doubts, long ignored. "Are you any better than any of those people you killed? Is there someone hunting you? Perhaps a son or daughter determined to destroy a serial murderer?"

"I did what I had to," Dean said softly. "That's all."

"Very well."

The cane came crashing down on Dean's back and didn't stop until he'd passed out.

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