Hi, everybody! Wow, I can't say thank-you enough for the wonderful response to Chapter1. I wasn't expecting anything like that. I'm soooo glad everyone is liking it so well. I tried to get a personal response out to each of my reviewers, but if I missed someone, let me know and I'll get on that right away. Anyway,here's chapter 2 of Pileup, and it's a LOOONG one; six and a half pages, according to Word. Eek. Hopefully, it's interesting, though.

Disclaimer: No, I don't own them—the characters or the plotline. Sucks to be me. Now onward for what you really came for.

Pileup, Chapter 2

Unfortunately, across the hall, Sam was having much less luck. He tossed and turned, the blankets wrapping tightly around his torso and legs. Finally, he gave up, rose, and padded down the musty hall to the kitchen. He retrieved a dusty glass from the cupboard, filled it, and took a long drink. He spun the glass in his hand, watching the light from the bulb above the sink refract in the water and send rainbows darting playfully across the floor.

"Sam-my…." A child's voice, playful and sing-song, split the silence. It was taunting and amused, obviously enjoying the surprised look her voice provoked.

The glass slipped from his hand, hit the counter, and shattered. Water and glass shards rained down on his feet.

"Sam-my…."

He spun, hand automatically flying for his gun, which, of course, wasn't tucked down the back of his pajama pants. A shard of glass sliced cleanly across the pad of his foot, and he released a hiss of pain involuntarily.

A giggle erupted from the empty shadows behind him, and disembodied footsteps darted from the corner by the garbage can to the doorway and then back again. Keeping his eyes warily on the room, he began to edge his way into the living room, trailing blood as he moved. He fumbled through the bag at the foot of the broken-down couch, looking for his gun.

It was gone.

"Sam…" The girlish voice was back.

He whirled around, scanning the emptiness. The cocking of a gun alerted him to a presence behind him. Slowly, painfully slowly, he turned again. Dean'll kill me for this…

There she was. She had Sam's gun in her tiny hands, leveled at his head.

Instinct kicked in, and he began to back away, even though they were already well across the room from each other.

She didn't blink, cocking the gun in a warning that was all too clear.

He froze instantly. "What do you want?"

"You didn't care an hour ago." She replied. The playfulness was gone from her voice, and it was dry, raspy, hollow…dead.

"Listen, Dean didn't--"

"He just shot me, like I'm some kind of animal! No warning, no nothing! With salt, no less. He's smart." She gave the weapon in her hands another thoughtful look. "Is that what's in here? Rock salt?"

Deciding not to make her angrier, Sam opted to answer her question. "Yeah. What's your name?"

Surprise made her eyes widen, and her finger tightened on the trigger, a sign he didn't miss. "Christina."

"Christina what?"

"Carlyle. "

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself as much as her, "We can help you. I want to help you."

She studied him coldly, looking much older than any child should. She didn't answer him. Her form was fading—the energy required to hold corporeal objects, like a gun, was clearly becoming too much of a strain on her.

"Because I don't want you to be angry any more. I don't want you to hurt. I can help you."

"Maybe we don't want your help." Snapping sharply back into focus as rage filled her tiny frame, she found the strength to raise the gun again.

"We?" He repeated, his curiosity piqued. A character fault--even with a gun pointed at his face, Sam couldn't quit asking questions.

"I mean I. Maybe I don't want your help."

"Maybe you do." He replied softly.

"No, I don't!" She shrieked, and he, seeing the danger signs, turned away from her. As he moved, the gun fired, and he caught the load of salt in his left shoulder. Christina threw the gun to the floor, turned, and ran.

Sam stood stone-still in pained shock for several minutes before he gently ran a hand over series of tiny bloody holes in his tee shirt, wincing as it touched the painful welts, and headed down the hall to the bathroom mirror.

As he passed his brother's door, he paused in sudden realization. Dean wasn't a heavy sleeper--a gunshot should surely have woken him. Concerned, Sam eased the door open, wincing at the creak of the hinges. A shaft of hall light fell on his brother's peaceful face, fast asleep, and Sam gave him a curious glance. What the hell is going on here?

Stepping hesitantly into the room, he edged his way to Dean's bedside and gazed down at him, taking in the gentle rise and fall of his older brother's ribs beneath what seemed like miles of gauze and tape. He couldn't believe it-- Dean had slept through the shattering glass, the conversation, the gunshot. All of it.

Shaking his head in disbelief, he slipped from the room and made his way to the bathroom. There he cleaned a circle in the dust that coated the mirror's surface, pulled his shirt slowly and stiffly over his head with a number of muffled curses, and leaned over to examine the peppering of tiny, bleeding spots and the colorings of bruises that marked where the pebbles of salt had struck him.

A reflection over his shoulder caught his eye, and he stifled a groan at the sight.

A boy, no more than eleven, stood behind him. He wore a Vikings tee shirt under a scruffy black parka jacket and a pair of jeans that seemed to be missing the knees. His feet were laced into bright red sneakers. He was deathly, eerily pale, and his hair was dirty and sticking up in odd places--much like Sam's used to as a child. Light brown eyes, the color of creamed coffee, were wide and glazed-over.

Without taking his eyes from the mirror, Sam whispered to him. "Hi. Who are you?"

No response.

"My name is Sam."

Nothing.

"Can I help you with something?" He asked, trying to fill the silence. The boy only shook his head and vanished.

Sam sighed. "Freaky." The one word that could easily sum up his entire life.


"What the hell happened to you?" Dean asked, eyes wide, as his brother appeared in the doorway, moving stiffly and carrying a tray loaded with two breakfasts in his right hand. Sam cursed to himself—how did Dean always know? Always!

"What do you mean, what happened to me? Nothing. I'm fine." Sam replied, kicking the door closed behind him.

"Sam." Dean struggled into a sitting position and gave him a "don't-screw-with-me-kid" look.

"Seriously, Dean."

"Take off your shirt. You're holding your arm funny, and I want to know why."

"Dean, I'm fine."

"Sam!"

"All right, all right!" He dropped the tray to the nightstand and slowly pulled his shirt off. "This is why you don't let kids play with guns." He replied dryly, knowing it looked even worse than it felt.

"Shit, Sammy. Let me look."

"It's fine, Dean, really." He replied, "And don't call me Sa--"

"Sam." Dean cut over him, giving him the patented, 'I'm-your-big-brother-and-you-will-listen-to-me' Look.

He sighed, set down the tray, and sat down next to his brother. Dean leaned over him as he examined the freckled marks on his little brother's shoulder and the varying degrees of bruises accompanying it.

"We gotta get out of here, Sam. This isn't safe." He finally said, satisfied that Sam would be just fine.

"They're just kids, Dean. They--" The younger Winchester began, pulling his tee shirt back over his head.

"Wha--wait. They?"

Sam sighed. "I…last night, I saw another one. A boy. Little, younger than Christina, even. Maybe--"

"Wait, wait." Dean held up a hand in a stop-before-my-head-explodes gesture. "Who's Christina?"

"That's the girl."

"The ghost? You named her?"

"No, that's her name. She told me."

"You talked to her? You're not supposed to--"

"She had a gun, Dean. What was I supposed to do?"

"Get another one, maybe?"

"She had one, one was under your pillow. We keep two in the overnight bag. You do the math."

Dean sighed. "Fine." He finally relented. "So what did she want?"

"Mostly? To complain about you."

"Me?"

"You shot her."

"She was hurting you!" He said defensively.

"I don't think she knew that."

Dean heaved another sigh. "This boy, then. What's his deal?" He asked, changing the subject and turning the conversation around full circle.

"He didn't talk. He just kept staring…Dean. Dean, look." Sam gestured to the door, which was slowly creeping open.

A child, another boy, padded into the room. Dressed in long green shorts cinched around his waist and a bright blue tank top and toting a blanket in his right fist, thumb in his mouth, he stopped at the sight of the two adults.

"Hey, there." Dean said softly, smiling at the boy. "What's your name?"

"He won't talk." The door opened wider, revealing Christina standing behind it, still in the creepy white gown. Her jaw was set, her eyes were cold, but she looked less mutinous. "His name is Tommy."

"Hi, Tommy." Sam said, cutting off anything Dean might have started about the gunfight the night before, but he was looking at Christina. "Why doesn't he talk?"

Christina refused to answer, picking Tommy up and settling him on her hip before ambling off down the hall. "Just go." Came her ghostly command, a hoarse and dry whisper. "We don't need you here."

"You heard the girl." Dean said.

"Dean."

"Right. Bad call. All right, all right. What do we do, O Wise College Man?"

"What we always do."

Dean heaved a long, weight-of-the-world sigh, more pronounced than Sam would've thought possible from someone with damaged ribs, "To the library. After breakfast."


"This sucks." Dean groaned as Sam held the door open for him.

"Quit sulking." He replied, glancing up and studying the room that lay behind the inner doors. His eyes alit on the librarian, "Besides, your mood is about to pick up considerably."

"How do you know that?" Dean, who was still trying to make it through the door and hadn't yet seen inside, demanded.

"Trust me."

"Okay, ESP boy."

Three, two, one… Sam thought smugly. Dean moved ahead of him through the inner doors.

"Hello." The older Winchester said under his breath.

Sam swallowed a laugh as the beauty behind the desk glanced up from her work. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the two coming into her library. "Hey."

"Hi." Sam said smoothly.

"Hey." Dean grinned. "I'm Dean, this is Sam."

"My name is Sara." She said suavely, returning Dean's flirtatious smile with a killer confident one. Her long brunette hair was tied back from her pretty face, and, as she came around the desk to greet them, Sam smiled at the way Dean's eyes lit up at the sight of her denim-clad legs. "What brings you two to the library on a day like this?"

"We need some information." Sam said, trying to speed the process along. Dean gave him a dark look that clearly read 'what-are-you-doing,-idiot-that's-not-how-you-flirt-with-a-cute-librarian', which he countered with a let-me-get-settled-and-then-she's-all-yours shrug. "Anything you might have on the old camp on Lake Cerulean."

"Eesh, there's not a lot." She said. "Not much has ever gone on in that area. It's been woods for as long as records have stood. You can try the periodicals, though." She said, offering Dean a hand (which he took, though the assistance clearly wasn't necessary) as he sank into one of the overstuffed chairs by the window. "I'll duck into the back and get them."

"That would be great." He smiled at her, and she returned it, though without the predatory gleam in her eye that had accompanied the smile she'd given Dean. She disappeared a second later into a back room, Dean's wide green eyes following her every move.

"So…" Sam tried to steer his brother back into the realm of the hunter, "There isn't much on the camp. Do you think that means something?"

Dean slid easily back into the role, now that his pretty distraction was gone. "Not much information, but something is definitely going on there. We've seen three spirits so far--really active spirits--and I think that that--"

He was cut off by Sara's return, her arms loaded down with boxes of microfilm, and Dean grinned at his brother, who rolled his eyes in a not-so-subtle "you're an idiot" way.

"You need help threading these?" She asked, offering the boxes to Sam, who rose to take them from her hands.

"Nope. Libraries I get." He replied with a friendly smile.

"Great. Microfilm machines are through that door along the wall. Copies are ten cents a page, they print out here behind the desk. Let me know if you need anything."

"Sure. Thanks." With that, he moved across the room and through the door to the microfilm lab.

When Sam was safely settled with his machines, Dean turned to the young librarian. "I have some questions that you might be able to answer…but I should really help him," He gestured to Sam's back, which was visible through the microfilm lab's doorway, "right now. What do you say we discuss it over drinks tonight?"

She gave him a smirk. "I'd say fine. There's a bar right down the street called Mikey's. I'll meet you there at, say, eight?"

"Perfect."


Well, that was certainly long. Sorry about that, I tend to get a little carried away sometimes. Next chapter won't be quite so long or dramatic, but it's going to pick back up and enter a whole new realm of drama pretty soon. And, if anybody's wondering WHY Dean didn't wake up when the gun went off, well...just hang on. It'll all be explained later, I promise.

Thanks for reading, thanks for your great reviews of chapter 1, and I hope to see you all again in chapter 3!

All my love,
Sila