PART SIX: Smelling of Earth and Worn by Weather

He'd lost count how many times he'd been knocked out over the years. You never got used to it and coming back to consciousness after getting your head bashed in always hurt like hell.

Sam groaned. Leather creaked as he slowly sat up from where he had fallen back against his seat. Automatically he raised a hand to touch what hurt - his throbbing head - and hissed in pain as his fingers brushed a nasty cut across the front of his scalp. His hair and forehead were sticky with blood.

"Dean," he croaked. "You okay?"

There was no answer. With great care, Sam turned his head.

"Dean?"

His brother sat slumped sideways in the driver's seat, presenting Sam with a three quarters view of a face masked in dark, glistening blood. There was so much of it Sam couldn't tell where it was coming from, nor could he tell if Dean were alive or dead. The Impala's engine had stalled and the dashboard lights had gone out along with the headlights.

Sam fumbled for the door handle. It was difficult to get the door open, for although the car had gone nose first into the ditch, she was also listing hard to port. Gravity pushed the door down hard in that direction. Sam grunted as he finally managed to shove it open wide enough for him to exit the car.

The door slammed shut just as he cleared it, and just as soon as he put his weight down on his feet, he cried out and fell to his hands and knees. For one long moment he thought he would black out again from the pain. His stomach lurched, his vision swam, and every beat of his heart sent a bolt of agony stabbing through his head. He had to wait until everything stopped spinning before he could try again.

He diagnosed a sprained ankle. It held his weight, but not without pain, and he was able to slowly make his way around to the driver's side of the car. Reaching in the window he touched his brother's throat. The pulse there was weak and thready. Sam saw why immediately.

In addition to the horribly bloody cut above his right eye, which had no doubt occurred when Dean's head left the spiderweb of cracks in the windshield, Dean had broken his arm. It was a compound fracture wherein a sharp protrusion of bone jutted up from the underside of his left arm between wrist and elbow. It bled freely - too freely.

With a curse, Sam fumbled at his belt buckle with one hand, and dug into his pocket for his cell phone with the other. He dialed 911 as he wrapped his belt around Dean's arm just below the elbow and pulled it tight. When the operator answered his call he could barely force his voice to obey.

"There's been an accident," he gasped. "Chesterville...Chesterville-Highcliffe road..."

"The Curve?"

"Yeah, my brother..."

She interrupted him because she didn't need to know anymore. His location was enough. Sam was sure it was all too familiar to her.

"I'm sending a squad."

Sam wanted to say more, tell her what had happened, what injuries they had suffered, but his phone dropped the call in a burst of static and an ungodly squeal. He jerked it away from his ear with a mumbled curse.

Although he was reluctant to leave Dean, Sam wanted to make sure the ambulance saw them right away when it came. With a great deal of effort he climbed out of the drainage ditch toward the road. At the top he staggered to his feet and stood there panting.

What he saw brought him up short.

They were still there and he could still see them.

The orbs were gone, faded away into the night, but not so the spirits that inhabited them. Dozens of "people" milled about on the roadway. Some were from bygone eras, judging by the clothes they wore. Others seemed to be from more modern times. All of them wore similar expressions on their faces, expressions of sadness, fear, and confusion.

A chill went down Sam's spine when one of them looked in his direction and stopped in its tracks. The spirit met his gaze. Sam wondered if he shouldn't make some sort of an attempt to gain access to the Impala's trunk and the ghost repelling weapons inside. A sudden roar of thunder, coupled with a bright flash of lightning made him flinch violently, and a familiar face, illuminated by the lightning strike, caught his attention.

"Ellen?"

She stood behind the milling spirits at the edge of the woods. The wind had come in with the advancing storm and it caught her hair, raising it to swirl about her face. Lightning flashed and she turned away into the trees. Above the sound of another rumble of thunder Sam heard her call his name.

"Ellen wait!"

He lurched into motion, limping badly on his sprained ankle. Almost immediately he was surrounded by the ghosts, who reached out to lay their hands on him as if to reassure themselves he was really there. Like the orbs, their touch was bitterly cold and each time one placed a hand upon him, Sam jerked away in pain. They swarmed him, plucking at his hair, his clothing, his hands with their, spidery fingers. Their hands brushed his cheeks, leaving behind a sensation similar to what he might have felt if he'd been burned. His body was jostled this way and that as all of them sought to touch him.

And all the while their lips did not move, but he heard their whispered voices.

'Help us, free us. Help us. Please help us.'

"Let me go!"

Sam struggled forward, drawing the spirits along with him. He felt suffocated - gasped for breath as if he were drowning. He stumbled off the pavement onto the berm and nearly fell. Fear surged through him. If he fell, he thought, they would kill him.

"Help us, please!"

They did not follow him into the woods, but their voices did, rising into a chorus of pain and misery inside his head. Sam was deafened by it, and made blind by the darkness of the trees surrounding him. No more did cold, ghostly hands grab at him, instead he was assaulted by tangled vines and tree branches. They tore scratches in the bare skin of his arms, rent holes in his clothing, slashed at his face.

"Ellen!"

Only the skies replied. The storm was quickening.

Sam stopped abruptly. Confused and disoriented he turned around in a circle. The trees had closed in around him. He could no longer recall the way back to the road.

And Dean.

Had the squad come? Sam hadn't heard any sirens.

"Ellen! Ellen where are you?"

"I'm here, Sam."

"Where?" he shouted. "I can't...I can't see anything!"

"Here, hurry!"

He surged ahead into the underbrush, raising his arms to protect his face from low hanging branches. In some places the plant life was so overgrown he was forced to detour around it. He tripped and fell. Regaining his feet took a monumental effort and by the time he had dragged himself up out of the clinging claws of the undergrowth, rain had begun to fall.

Dirt became mud. The ground beneath Sam's feet became wet and slippery. What little he had been able to see in the dark now became completely obscured by sheets of pouring rain. He wanted desperately to turn around and go back. Several times he glanced over his shoulder, blinking and sputtering through the water coursing down his face. All he could see behind him was a tangled mass of dark shadows. There was no path, nothing at all to mark his own recent passage.

My kingdom for a machete.

"Sam!"

He turned quickly toward the sound of Ellen's voice. It was muffled by the rain. Thunder drowned out his reply. She spoke again. He stumbled blindly in what he thought was the right direction.

Suddenly he was falling. The forest had spat him out into a clearing. He fell heavily onto grass, mown grass, and in his relief he dug his fingers deep into the thick, green carpet beneath him. All he wanted to do then was lay there and never move again. His limbs felt heavy and useless. He could not make himself get up.

"Sam, look at me. I need you to look at me."

"Can't..."

"Sam!"

The fear in her voice roused him. Something was wrong. He had to help her.

Sam raised his head. Raindrops rolled down his cheeks like tears. He blinked them away so that he could see, and what he did see was not Ellen - at least not at first.

The well tended lawn upon which he'd fallen was not someone's front yard, or a grassy patch beside the road as he'd first thought. It belonged to a cemetery and Sam lay sprawled face down across a grave. He shuddered. Ellen said his name, drawing his attention away from the grave toward her instead.

She stood behind the headstone, rain-soaked from her head to her feet. Her dark, sodden clothing clung to her like a second skin, accentuating the shape of her body, making her look as if she were no more than a shadow. Sam could not see her eyes behind the fogged up lenses of her glasses, nor could he distinguish her tears from the rain, but he knew she was crying.

"Is this it, Sam? Is this what you need to end it? Please say it is!"

Sam refocused, turning his gaze to the name carved into weatherworn headstone.

JOHN R. HADDOX

"Yes," he whispered. "Yes."

He let his head fall. The grass was soft against his cheek, and the music of the rain was sweet and soothing. It would be okay if he rested, he thought, just for a little bit. He had called the squad for Dean. Everything was going to be okay. It was okay to rest.

The last thing Sam remembered before he let himself drift away, was the touch of a gentle hand upon his face and a woman's whispering voice.

"Thank you."