Punxsutawney Sucks – Chapter 4

Your average disclaimer: I'm going to see if I can write a curse-free chapter! With pixies and puppies! And the boys will eat frozen cookie dough ice cream from the tub and everything will be so dreamy and...oh, fuck it.

The suits own everything, doesn't mean you can't play with your food.

File under "BigPink's Eensy-Weensy Case of OCD": I have now entered into an email relationship with the happy volunteers at the Punxsutawney Historical Society, none of whom resemble anyone in this story. I thank them for their enthusiasm and help, but any mistakes in local lore are mine own. The things I do for veracity, I tell you.

--

Three feet in front of his nose. Three lousy feet. Somehow, the cell phone had bounced out of his pocket. The phone was majorly fucked up; it was melted, twisted beyond recognition. Shit. Even if he could reach it, which he couldn't, even if he could move, which he couldn't, it was no good. No good.

With one eye open, he could see the phone. His other eye...it wasn't working. For whatever reason. Okay.

I'm too warm. Damn, it's hot. I'm burning. Pain was abstract, was pretty far away, somewhere swimming above him, present but prickling outside his immediate concern. Which was. Two feet in front of his nose.

Black on white. Shadow against ice, against mud. Against melted rock. Damn, should it be this hot? Flicker of black. And flecks of grey, falling onto his face. The smell of sulfur. Hot.

One foot. A foot, an actual foot, belonging to someone, something, out of his range of vision. He probably should have looked up, but that would have involved a message-brain-nerve-muscle-feedback loop. It wore him out, just thinking about it. Foot, smoke, fire, ash. In front of his nose. Sulfur. He couldn't move, and he couldn't breathe. All that was holding him together was a sense of humour and the idea of pain. Ash, falling from the moonlit sky.

A foot in front of his nose, black, the rasping noise of death, breathing over him. Ash, turning to snow, lightly landing on the part of his face turned to the sky, cold kisses. Kinda nice. Hissing as they hit the ground on which he lay, disappearing instantly in a little pfst of steam.

Sensed the pain coming, a good-looking girl heading towards him with a beer in either hand. Wasn't quite here yet, but was taking a second look at him, thinking, yeah, maybe he'll do. The foot was gone. Here she comes. White and moon and snow and fuck where was Sam?

--

Standard operating procedure, number eleven: in case of extreme medical emergency, use one of the blue cards in the envelope marked with a cross. Use only if it looks like something you can't handle on your own. While other kids were learning what a ground-rule double was, the Winchester boys could set a compound fracture using a magazine as a splint; perform a tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen; and apply a plastic grocery bag to temporarily seal a sucking chest wound. And if in doubt, amputate. Sammy: I have a headache. Dean: Looks like we'll have to amputate. The only thing their dad didn't teach them was trepanning, probably for a very good reason: C'mon, Sammy, just a little hole, won't hurt a bit.

So, one of the blue cards.

No rules for waiting, of course. Distractions aplenty in the form of Officer Shadlee and several worked up Punxsy Chuck parents pacing the same waiting area, anxious to hear about their boys. Five boys, not six. One left at the Knob under a tarp, a twisted wreckage of bone and sinew, burned beyond recognition, wind stealing the boy's ashes and delivering them to the sky. In the same circle of obliterated grass and melted earth, Dean, one side of him, the one against the ground, charred. An arm of his parka, completely black. One cheekbone, red with burn. The toque a smoldering mess, after taking the brunt of the heat.

Kris ran interference, talked to Officer Shadlee. Sam could hear her steady voice, saying that Sam was pretty 'shaken up' and maybe Office Shadlee wanted to take his statement later. Rebecca Shadlee was already at home, Kris said when she came back to sit beside Sam, who knew she had used that for leverage in staring down the cop.

A doctor had already talked to Sam: several broken ribs, a punctured lung. A cracked orbital socket. Second degree burn on his cheekbone. Two broken fingers on his right hand. We've sedated him so he'll rest. He'd be pretty uncomfortable otherwise. You should get some rest yourself, son. Nothing you can do here.

Except wait.

--

Huh, Sam thought. That's a first.

His brother had just willingly taken pain medication. Of course, the nurse had administered it directly to Dean's IV, otherwise Sam would have advised her to check under the big fat martyr's tongue. Dean was so doped up he was seeing tree frogs on the ceiling. At least, he'd asked about them the last time he'd said anything. Sam sipped his coffee and rested 'A Short History of Punxsutawney' face down on his bent knee.

The room had twenty-seven ceiling tiles, seventeen blue things (including the button above Dean's bed that would go off if his heart stopped), and eight plug outlets. The admitting staff had very wisely not put one of the hospitalized Punxsy Chucks in the second bed. That was occupied by an elderly gentleman who spent an inordinate amount of time doing crossword puzzles and sleeping, usually alternating between the two. Sam had answered all the pop culture-related questions when the old man was awake, had counted ceiling tiles and blue things when he was not.

Dean's bandaged hand came up for a wavery moment, then fell to the cotton blanket. Sam leaned forward, set a warm hand on his brother's forearm, testing to see how awake he was. Immediately, Dean turned his head, met Sam's stare with one good eye, one filled with blood. The bruises to that side of his face were spectacular.

"How are the frogs?" Sam asked.

"You are so fucking weird." Quietly, like he didn't want to be heard. Another first. He licked his cracked lips, was taking shallow breaths. "What happened to the kid?"

Sam needed to steady himself, had some idea how badly Dean might take this. "One of them has a broken nose. He's been sent home. They thought another one might have bruised a kidney, but doesn't look that way now. A few stitches to one of the others. One guy with a broken hand." Not really answering.

Dean swore, mentioned something about idiot kids. Was the girl okay?

"Yeah, she's fine, Dean," and waited the couple of moments it took for his brother to put all of these people in sequence, which would lead him momentarily to –

"Aw, shit." Dean looked away. "Shit." A strange noise came from him, a queasy almost-whimper as he moved the wrong way, got cosy with the fact that he had broken ribs.

"Stepped right over you, to get to the kid," Sam said, after a minute of staring at the back of Dean's head. "Whatever it was."

Dean looked back, but his eyes weren't right, were glossy and black-velvet-painting-of-waifs big. "Human form. Barefoot, maybe. Thought about torching me, I could tell."

"Thought you were too much of a bad ass?" With a soft laugh, because right then, Dean needed it.

Needed it, but wouldn't take it. "My bad ass had just been kicked to next week. It wanted younger meat. It's not satisfied."

Sam shut up, didn't ask how Dean felt, or if he needed anything; he'd just have been swatted away. Besides, Dean was drifting in and out of coherent thought, and the old guy in the other bed was rustling around for a pencil. Time to be elsewhere.

"Snow," he thought he heard Dean whisper. His eyes were shut, the medication taking full effect.

"Dean?" he asked, bending over him, smelling the faint whiff of sulfur and charred flesh. His nose wrinkled. Dean's eyes remained closed, but he was frowning slightly.

"The ash. It turned to snow." And that, apparently, was that. After a few minutes of watching Dean sleep, which Sam had done for so many hours in his life he wished he'd developed some kind of associated drinking game to make it even remotely fun, Sam put his book into his backpack. It was put out by the Punxsutawney Art and Historical Club, and their resource center was just down the street.

--

Bob Shadlee looked as though he'd rather be clapping on leg irons; unfortunately for his law and order ways, Dean was going the restorative justice route. Dean didn't have a fucking clue what that was, really, just that it involved not pressing charges, not going to court, and not having a criminal record check, all of which suited him just fine. It was hard enough, lying here in a hard hospital bed, in really pretty amazing pain, slightly scrambled from the drugs, and having to figure out just which lie would land him in jail the fastest.

"Mr Evans?" the cop had said when he'd entered the room, his Arctic explorer cap in his hand. Dean had seen Rebecca's chin, immediately, knew who this was. Though the movement had caused him to absolutely radiate with pain, he had lifted his hand to scratch the bandage on his cheek – and that hurt like a mother, too – and had surreptitiously checked the name on his hospital bracelet: Matthew Evans. He felt a little like that English bear in the train station. Please take care of this bear. Where the hell was Sam to run interference?

"Yeah?" he was able to answer. The drugs were wearing off, which was a good thing, faced with this. He could always use the pain to end an interview. It soon became apparent that this wasn't going to go like that, though.

"The kids," the cop had said. "They'd like to apologize. They were out of line."

Oh, okay. Beating a man half to death. Out of line, just a little. Apologies accepted. But not with Shadlee there. If these football grunts were feeling guilty, Dean sure as hell was going to use it. So he'd asked for some privacy, and got it. Other than the old guy with the crossword puzzle book, they'd be alone. Dean didn't try to move, just lay quietly, hoping he wouldn't blow this.

There were two of them: the mouthy little guy, and the huge blond linebacker. Except he wasn't a linebacker, he was the captain. And he had a beautiful double shiner, a taped nose; he was the one Dean had broken his hand on. He wondered, briefly, if he'd had the steel-toed boots.

"Hey," the Captain muttered, and in the glare of the fluorescent lights, he seemed about fourteen.

Dean nodded slightly, knew he probably looked like shit, which would work with this one. Mouthy, he was less sure of. "What were you thinking?" he demanded.

Mouthy shrugged. He didn't look any worse for wear and Dean fought the sudden urge to get up and smack him. Which he probably wouldn't have been able to do, but it was a cheerful, sustaining thought. "Austin was our friend. And he was so crazy for Rebecca. Just made us mad, is all."

"What do I look like? A molester? Jesus," and looked away, trying not to breathe too deeply. He changed speeds – ball in his court. "What happened?"

Mouthy brightened up. "Man, you were wicked fast. Clocked Jason here," and grinned at the Captain, "but that'll only take you so far. And the Dixie Chicks comment...well, that gets our Irish up."

"Yeah, I can imagine. What happened next, I mean?"

Mouthy didn't answer, leaned against the wall, content to let his friend answer. He ran, Dean thought. That's why he doesn't know. The Captain, Jason, was staring at his feet, hands on his hips, pushing away two sides of his brown parka. He didn't move from that position. "Something was up there, in the bushes. Waited until you were down. Hoegarten was kicking you – and I was yelling at him – when..." and he stopped, snagged on disbelief and horror. "The lights were on you guys the whole time. There's no way I coulda made this up." His eyes beneath the bruises were round and his voice shook.

"What did it look like?" Dean prompted softly.

"Big, black. See through," those two words very quietly, the whisper of a child woken up in the middle of the night. "Shaped like a person. Just touched Hoegarten on the forehead. And up he went."

After a moment, because he could, Dean snapped at Mouthy, "And what did you see?"

"Same," Mouthy came back, but with a new awareness: Dean knew he'd been in the car, cowering under the dash.

They didn't stick around, but Jason thanked Dean for letting them apologize, and Dean tried to shrug, but that was really too much effort, so he just grimaced instead. "Hey," he called out after them, and they stopped in the doorway. "Don't go back to the Knob," he warned. "Not until this cold snap has passed. Okay?" Not a hard sell. Then, more quietly, because he'd had time to kill, lying flat on his back, trying not to breathe: "Funky Chunks. Poxy Fucks. Monkey Ducks."

If Mouthy heard him, he showed restraint, but Dean saw his shoulders contract, and knew a hit when he saw one.

--

The Bennis building was made from stone and Sam at first thought it was closed. Local history museums and archives often kept eccentric hours, but Sam had actually phoned ahead. But when he walked up to the door, it had opened and an older woman greeted him: Alma Davis, the town archivist and genealogist. He'd given the same story that he had a hundred times before: university student working on a folklore project, mix your primary and secondary sources, please. And as usual, was sat in front of a pile of old books, bound newspapers, and diaries. Sometimes they made him put on white cotton gloves.

He was worried about leaving Dean alone for any length of time, especially if there were women and groundhogs around. On the other hand, there was nothing like the smell of old books, and the act of turning pages with the glove on, scanning the spidery handwriting, exploring details of hops shipments and cases of ague, all of it was like tiger balm to a burn for him. They had never understood this, Dean and their father, never got how it was, to walk into another world.

After a few hours of this, he took off the gloves and rubbed his eyes. He'd had no sleep the night before and felt his gaze finally slip and slide around the page. Clicking the laptop shut, he leaned back on the chair.

"Pretty worn out, looks like," Alma said, coming up behind him and removing the books from the table. "I brought you this," and placed a cup of tea on the table. Great, first the white gloves, then tea. He felt like he'd just arrived at the queen's slightly daffy younger sister's place.

Smiling, he took a sip of the hot tea, considered Alma through the steam. "Why do they call it Punxsutawney?"

Alma smiled. "Oh, that one's easy," apparently hoping for something really difficult. "Ponksad, or ponxies, is the Delaware Indian name for sandflies. This whole place used to be crawling with them. Ponksaduwteney. There's an old legend," oh and here it comes, Sam thought. Three hours staring at newspapers and diaries. When would he learn to just ask?

"The Delaware say that the first people of this area were decendants of Wojek, the groundhog. Just before the white folks started to push them out, there was an evil sorcerer, caused a lot of trouble for the Delawares, might have been a Seneca, or an Iroquois. Finally, a young Delaware chief stood up to him and killed him. When they burned the sorcerer's body, the ashes turned to ponxies and plagued the area. The Europeans drained the swamps, and the sandflies disappeared. So did the legend. But they held on to the groundhog, didn't they? White people never do things in half measures. No, they have to create a big publicity event."

Sam took another careful sip of his tea. "You think Punxsutawney Phil's a bad idea?"

"Hey, it does wonders for the town, don't get me wrong. But it covers up the other history," and she waved her hand around at the shelves of books. "And when we lose history, we are in trouble."

He drained his cup, suddenly anxious to be back at the hospital. Dean would be wondering where he'd been. And that cop might be sniffing around for a statement. Alma asked if he wanted another cup; Sam declined, picking up his laptop and stuffing it into his backpack along with his notes.

"Not many young folks interested in this stuff nowadays," Alma said, passing him his pencil and eraser. "You and Kris Wieland, that's about it."

"Kris? The hockey player Kris?" Sam couldn't even imagine the gangly teen in the cramped room.

"Oh, yes. Strange girl, but plenty bright. And polite. Last week. Wanted to know about why they called it Gobbler's Knob."

Sam paused, uncomfortably hot in his winter coat, his woolen mittens itching. Not the only thing itching, was like an intellectual mosquito bite. "What did you tell her?"

"That I didn't know. Thought it probably had something to do with turkeys. But I have no way of proving it. We went back into the records, far back as the 1820s, and couldn't find anything. Always been called Gobbler's Knob, as far as I know."

--

"Dude, wait'll you hear," and choked to a halt, almost dropped his knapsack in surprise. Was that a crossword? In his brother's hands? Dean was propped up in the bed, which was an encouraging sign, but his colour was awful and made the bruises and burns on his cheek look even more livid.

"Archie here," Dean gestured a free thumb at his sleeping roommate, "is fucking psycho for this shit." He threw the book aside. "Crazy old fart. You should hear the stuff he's telling me." With a glimmer, that known sardonic glimmer, in his eyes. Would have been reassuring, a return to form, except that one eye was a bloody mess, so he ended up appearing more grotesque than amusing.

"What's he been telling you?" Sam shoved Dean's legs over and sat on the edge of the bed, retrieved the crossword book. Dean wouldn't even have been able to hold a pencil, for God's sake, let alone do a freakin' cryptic crossword. He must be bored sideways.

"Former member of the Inner Circle," Dean replied, looking cheerful. "And the Funky Bunch came by to apologize, I'm not being charged with anything, and there's one nurse...

Sam tossed the crossword book onto Dean's chest, causing him to hiss in pain. "What next, Sammy? Legs off a spider?" Sam grinned. If Dean was joking about nurses, he was feeling a little better. At least he wasn't yammering on about amphibians on the ceiling. He told him about his visit to the Art and Historical Society, about Kris's interest in Gobbler's Knob, and the legend of the sorcerer.

"The thing on the hill, the thing that's been offing the kids – young men, all of them – is the ghost of the sorcerer? The Gobbler?" Dean doubled checked Sam's logic; it was his job. Sam nodded. "And the groundhog has nothing to do with it?"

"I don't know about that, Dean. Maybe he's the Gobbler's familiar. Or the sorcerer incarnate?" He was guessing, and he knew it.

"Fuck, Sam, listen to what comes out of your mouth. Repeat after me: The groundhog is not evil. Move on." If he hadn't known better, Sam would have said Dean was developing a soft spot for Phil. He'd always been the one who'd wanted a dog when they were kids, an idea so ludicrous Sam hadn't even bothered to mock it.

Maybe it was the old man, putting ideas into Dean's doped up, impressionable head. "So, what's Methuselah saying about the Inner Circle? When's the last time your meds were topped up?" Sam examined the surface of the rolling table next to Dean's bedside, looked under the steamed lid of a cold dinner. "Have you eaten, like, anything?"

Dean stared at him. Too many questions, again. It shut him up in a way few things could. Sam replaced the lid onto what might have been pork chops and gravy. "Sorry. Inner Circle, first."

"Wouldn't say a word about it, just mentioned it in passing." He gestured to the crossword puzzle book. "I'm trying to butter him up."

"With your amazing crossword prowess?" Sam lifted his brows.

"Either that, or slip him some of my morphine."

It was an established tactic, to pretend to be doing something else while asking personal questions. Maybe Dean would think he wasn't actually listening. So Sam was purposefully unpacking a bag of potato chips and a can of orange juice when he asked, "So, you don't need it?"

"I'm doing okay," Dean replied, but quietly. "They want to keep me a few days, but I'm out of here, just as soon as I can get Archie to rat out his Inner Circle comrades."

And his tactic, clumsy and obvious and, unfortunately, efficacious: change the subject.

"That girl get my car back in one piece?"

TBC