This is my first Supernatural fic, basically, there is an Urban legend called Humans can lick too, in which a girl alone in the house has her unseen dog licking her hand all night until she goes to the bathroom to discover the dog has been dead for hours, so who's been licking her hand?
Well, when the brothers hear about a thirteen year old girl dying in a way that sounds startlingly familiar to this 'legend' they realise the 'human' in question is a body hopping maelevolant spirit who plans to kill more little girls before its through.
I dont own any of Supernatural, just my own OC's of whom there may be some
Warnings for language, content, talk of violence and rape and also, animals getting hurt.
R+R, enjoy.
Prologue
Millie picked up the ringing phone and chuckled as she pressed it to her ear "Hi Mom" she said a little exasperatedly.
"Hey sweetie, how's everything?" Lana Deakins voice was husky and soft from smoking, something she only did out of the house, away from her 13 year old daughter.
"Fine mom, everything is absolutely fine!" Millie laughed "I'm just having a drink of water before I go to bed" she told her mother.
"Did you eat your supper okay? And do your homework?" Lana asked.
"Yes!" Millie was smiling as she leaned her butt against the counter top, folding one arm across her stomach. She looked older than her thirteen years, taller, a little lanky, but as she walked around the kitchen she moved with the grace of some one who just needed to grow into her own body.
"Okay…where's Rolph?" Millie heard the breathy sound of her mother taking a drag on her cigarette.
"He's around" Millie nudged her dog, a chocolate Labrador's bowl with her toe "I took him out before so he's probably already in bed" she mused.
"Well alright. I just wanted to make sure, and to say good night. I'll be back home in while, probably just over an hour, it's starting to wind down now, and you know I'm just up the street if you need anything" Lana was smiling, Millie could tell.
"Sure mom…hey, did you meet anybody?" she asked.
"Well, there is one guy, he's in advertising, kind of cute. Asked me for dinner…I told him I'd think about it" Lana said quietly as if the man in question might be nearby.
"Oh MOM, you have to say yes, you totally deserve a night out!" Millie gasped.
"I'm out now!" Lana laughed.
"I mean with a guy, duh! Going over to Missus Morgan's house does not count!" Millie snorted.
Her accent was a gentler version of the Bostonian twang, as was her mothers.
"Well if you're done giving me romantic advice, how about you head to bed and I'll come in and kiss you good night when I get in?" Lana asked.
"Geez, subtle much" Millie giggled "Okay mom, goodnight, have fun, love you" Millie made kissing noises into the phone, which her mother returned.
"Love you baby" she told her daughter.
They hung up almost simultaneously and Millie set the phone down in the charger, rinsing out her glass and leaving it out to dry.
She walked around the house quickly checking all the doors and windows where locked and secure. Yawning, Millie jogged up the stairs, heading straight for her room. Grinning to her self, she ran and jumped into her bed, bouncing slightly on the springy mattress.
Beside her bed, Rolph breathed steadily, and as she pulled the sheets over her self, Millie let her hand drop over the side of bed, gently nudging the top of the dogs head.
There was a hitch in the breathing as Rolph stirred, then Millie felt the familiar sensation of his rough tongue licking at her fingers.
"Night puppy" Millie sighed, contended, closing her eyes as sleep began to roll over her.
She sat up suddenly, snorting as something she was saying in her dream about Adam Brody transferred through to her waking state.
Frowning, Millie huffed as she tired to figure out what had woken her. She squinted at her clock and realised she had only been in bed for twenty minutes and groaned.
As she was about to lay down, she heard it…the hollow, trickling sound of water running down a plug.
"Shit" she muttered under her breath, wondering which tap she had left on.
She crawled across the bed so she didn't step on Rolph and stumbled across her room to the door, leaning against the wall as she stepped out into the corridor. She made her way to the bathroom with her eyes pretty much shut, feeling the cool smoothness of the wallpaper under her hands. Without bothering to turn on the light, Millie crossed the tiled floor of the bathroom and twisted the nozzles of the taps, turning and staggering back to her room as quickly as she could without waking herself up too much. With any luck, she thought, I can just fall back into my dream.
She flopped forward onto her bed, reaching to Rolph again, feeling sleep quickly begin to take hold as the dog affectionately licked her out stretched fingers.
Just as she pulled the dream back together, and Adam was about to profess his undying love for her, Millie realised she could still here the draining sound.
With a loud groan, she hurriedly made her way down to the kitchen and checked the taps, then ran back to her room, diving into bed and grabbing for her sheet "House won't shut up Rolph!" she told the dog, once again reaching out her hand.
As the dog lapped at her fingers, Millie cursed loudly. She could still here the draining sound. "Fuck!" she thumped her head against the pillow.
She wrinkled her nose "It cant be any of the taps" she told the dog "Fuck, the shower, I'll be back puppy" she rolled over the bed a third time and groaned at the thought that her dream was pretty much shredded.
She scratched at her head as she slumped down the corridor to the bathroom, flicking on the light and squinting against the sudden harsh brightness.
She paused for long enough to confirm that yes, the draining noise was coming from the shower, figuring she simply hadn't turned it all the way off when she had showered earlier on in the evening.
The sliding glass door was pulled across, something her mother had taught her to do so that mould and mildew couldn't form on the glass when it was pushed into the groove.
Millie wrinkled her nose at an odd smell in the bathroom, resolving to pour some bleach down all the plug holes at some point and walked over to the shower, grabbing the handle and pulling the sliding door across.
There was something on the wall but Millie's gaze was drawn down to the floor of the shower. Rolph lay on his side, his body curled around the plug hole so that the blood from the gaping wound at his throat ran into the plug hole.
Millie felt her breath catch in her throat as she took a step away from the shower, then realisation dawned and she curled her hand, the hand 'Rolph' had been licking into a fist, her eyes tracking up the shower wall to the thing she had seen but ignored. Some one had dipped their finger in the dogs blood, trailing it up the wall in shining read streaks. Written on the tile, the lettering haphazard as if the author had been in struggling to control shakes or spasms where five simple words;
Humans can lick too Millie
Millie gasped so hard it hurt and felt the blood thumping in her ears as she backed away from the shower, shaking her head in shock. As she opened her mouth to scream her back hit something warm, 'some one's chest' her mind noted in a detached way.
Millie spun and saw who was there. And then, she screamed.
1…
"So come on mister story teller, tell me a story" Sam Winchester was leaning back against the passenger door, staring at his older brother expectantly.
Dean pushed out his lower lip "Well what one?" he asked.
"I don't know, something, I'm bored" Sam shrugged.
Normally he would spend time on drives doing research or work, trying to track down their father John, or find out about what their latest Boggle or monster. But the laptop's battery had died, John's notebook was buried at the bottom of Sam's back pack and the reality was, both boys felt like they needed a break, if only for a few hours.
"What kind?" Dean asked.
"A horror story, see if I can still be scared" Sam smirked.
Dean grinned "I don't know Sammy, you where jaded at eight, you're a grown up now, I don't think I could scare you if I tried"
Sam rolled his eyes and looked out the window "Some things can still get to me" he said "like the story I read today"
"What one?" Dean frowned, reaching for the insulated coffee mug that Sam held idly on one hand.
As Dean sipped the strong coffee, Sam pulled the news paper from off the dashboard.
It was a state wide paper, covering major news in the major areas in Massachusetts.
"It was in Boston a couple of nights ago, sick stuff, this mom left her daughter alone in the house to go for dinner a few houses up right, the girl and her dog? She calls the girl every hour to check up, and the kids fine, the last time 'mom' talks to her, the kids just on her way to bed for the night. So mom comes home a little while later and goes to tuck her daughter in but notices the bathroom light is on so goes in to turn it off…" Sam shook his head sadly.
"What happened?" Dean asked grimly.
"Some suck fuck had raped the girl sliced her throat, and her dogs, left them both in the shower" Sam spat.
"How old was she?" Dean asked slowly, as if his mind was elsewhere.
"She had turned thirteen a few months previously, it was the only reason the mom left her in-Hey!" Sam had to grab the coffee mug as Dean all but dropped it and snatched the paper from Sam's hands, swerving the car, a classic Chevrolet Impala over to the side of the road, throwing Sam roughly against the door.
Dean hit the over head lights and scanned the front page article about the murder, his eyes wide.
"Get dad's book" he barked at his younger brother.
Sam frowned but grabbed his bag from between his feet and began to pull the contents, mostly clothes and books, out, until he got the battered, stuffed old note book and handed it to his brother.
Dean passed the paper to Sam "Find me details, something about the killings, about the scene" he snapped.
Sam's frown deepened but he began to speed read the paper, something he had always been able to do better than Dean.
"What kind of details?" Sam asked as he read through the same words he had looked at before, what had seemed like a horrific, senseless, but otherwise vanilla murder, suddenly become something deeper.
"Anything that stands out!" Dean was flicking through the notebook hurriedly, muttering under his breath between barked orders.
"Uh…detectives think…it might have been done by some one on drugs, apparently something at the scene makes them think it may have started out as some kind of sick prank, maybe something her school friends did" Sam tried.
"Does it say what?" Dean glanced up at his brother, his hazel eyes wide and seeming unnaturally bright under the lights from the overheads.
"No" Sam made his face curious.
"Where?" Dean rested the notebook on his knees and put the car in gear, pulling back out into the mostly empty street.
"Boston" Sam told him.
"Alright, you want a story?" Dean asked, pushing the accelerator down to let the car speed up slowly, managing the gears as he spoke.
Sam concentrated as Dean began to talk.
"Did you ever hear the urban legend about the girl and her dog?" Dean asked, and Sam shook his head.
"Okay, well, there are variations on it, sometimes is a young woman living alone, but that's a pop culture twist to try and make it fit the whole teen slasher genre, but the one relevant here is this 'once there was a little girl who always asked her mom and dad for a dog, every day, 'mom, dad, can I get a dog?' and every day they said, 'no, you're too young; and so it went for years. Then one day, the girls thirteenth birthday was approaching and the parents figured, what the hell, they wouldn't be able to tell the kid she was too young any more so they bought the damn dog and of course the girl was over the moon. So time passes and the dog gets bigger and the girl is really mature about taking care of it so the parent feels confident enough to leave their mature daughter and her loyal dog alone in the house. The story goes that the dog slept beside the girls bed every night and used to lick her fingers every night as she went to sleep. So this night, as normal the girl goes to bed and the dog licks her fingers, but she cant see it, she just knows it's the dog. So she's in bed and she gets woken up by taps dripping or a draining sound, and she goes to check it out, she goes three times, checking all the taps in the house and every time she goes back to bed she lets the dog lick her fingers and the fourth time she goes she realises the noise is coming from the shower and when she goes to check, she sees that the dog is dead in the shower, chopped up or killed in some bloody way that makes the noise she's been hearing the whole time. And written on the wall in the dogs blood are the words 'humans can lick too'…the parents find the girl brutally murdered the next day" Dean said quickly.
Sam frowned as Dean handed him the notebook, "There, Dad's looked into it before but when ever he got to some where were a killing had happened, he'd get that same old 'cousin of a friend of an uncle' bullshit…I don't think he's ever gotten a fresh lead before…is there an address?" Dean asked.
Sam frowned at the entry in the notebook. It was a series of old newspaper clippings, hand written notes-Sam recognised his fathers handwriting- and a sketch of the scene Dean, and the newspaper had described, a frightened girl staring at the body of her murdered dog, the message on the wall, a shadowy figure looming behind her.
"Dad thought there where probably variations dating back for decades, maybe even centuries, but the basic details remain the same, young female, virginal…at least at first, god help them…animal sacrifice followed by the corruption and sacrifice of the girl…Dad had a theory it had something to do with them turning thirteen, coming of age" Dean surmised, speeding up the road.
Sam gave him the road in Boston where the Deakins house sat and Dean continued on toward Boston.
"What did Dad think the monster was?" Sam frowned, worried by his brothers sudden, strong reaction to the report.
"He figured some kind of possessing spirit, something that jumps from body to body...since the killings happened without any kind of regularity, some one Dad spoke to had this idea…that this spirit can keep a body alive for a while, probably a different amount of time for every person, which is why the killings aren't regular…the killing of the animal, well that's the basis for a lot of spells in a lot of different Occult schools. The…rape…represents the rebirth of the spirit in a new body, probably some poor shmuck grabbed off the street, and the slaughter of the girl afterwards…human blood to seal the deal" Dean shrugged.
Sam nodded along with his brother, then stopped, frowning "Wait…if this thing only needs to kill…every now and then" Sam shrugged as if to say 'For lack of a better term' "Why are we rushing there now? Surely the trails dead?" he asked.
"No, read the notebook, the killings don't happen one at a time, there'll be two or five or twelve, we could never figure out why, I had a theory that the more people it kills, the longer it can go between bodies, but it needs a recently turned thirteen year old ,virgin, with a dog, or maybe a cat, although that variation is rarely heard. Either way, it's not as common a combination as you would think, so the thing has to seek out these girls, then wait until it can get them alone in their house" Dean was almost breathless.
"Shit" Sam nodded slowly as realisation dawned.
"Wait so, how are we gonna track it down!" he spat "It's the whole city of Boston!" he noted.
"Missing persons reports in the area…in almost all the other cases there was a missing persons report within a few miles of the first killing, cops never tied em together cos the missing persons where in themselves unremarkable, sometimes they wheren't even official 'missing' persons, there where reports that 'maybe' some one had seen two guys fighting, sometimes there where even missing persons reports at all" Dean explained.
"Then how-" Sam started to ask.
"There have been missing persons reports more times than there haven't" Dean said.
"So if we can see who's gone missing we can try to track his movements?" Sam asked.
"Pretty much" Dean gave an almost apologetic head tilt "See this spirit, its mischievous, that's why it leaves the message…so there's a chance it's left clues, stuff that only people like us, with the correct training, would see, ya know?"
"Oh" Sam nodded again, "So we're going to Boston…Who are we going to be?"
2…
"My name is Agent Dean Murphy, this is my partner Sam Connor, we're with the FBI" Dean gave the tall, red headed officer standing on the porch of the Deakins house a steely gaze as the kid, clearly new to the job, came close to panic at the sight of two, apparent, feds.
"Um, Officer Mckenzie, sirs, uh, no body told me feds would be coming to the scene sirs" the kid moved his hand as if he wasn't sure whether or not to salute and blinked at the brothers, his breath fogging in the crisp air.
It had started snowing an hour before, just as the boys had reached Boston, and already, thick white snow covered everything.
"We like to be as discreet as possible" Sam gave Mckenzie a grim smile.
"I thought this was just a case of some drugged up kids breaking in and killing the girl, why would the feds be here?" Mckenzie asked.
"We don't want it spread around…the media, ya know? But there's a good chance that this killing is linked to a series of murders dating back a few decades" Dean said quietly, conspiratorially.
He wasn't entirely lying either.
"Like a serial killer!" the young cop gasped.
"We don't use that term" Sam said.
"What term do you use?" Mckenzie asked, wide eyed.
Sam faltered and Dean stepped smoothly infront of him "what we call him isn't important, what's important is that we get a look at that scene to see of there's anything your guys might have missed that we, as trained professionals, will pick up" once again, he wasn't totally lying.
"I should radio in…" Mckenzie reached for his mike but Dean stepped in even closer, talked even lower.
"The press will be monitoring your frequencies, they're already looking for a way to make this more horrific than it already is, if they get wind the FBI is sniffing around they'll descend on this scene like locusts on a field and you will be single handedly responsible, do you want your sergeant to come down on you for that kind of screw up kid?" Dean spoke fast.
Mckenzie nervously shook his head and lowered his hand. "Good kid" Dean gave him a smile "Now you just stand out here and act as if nothing is happening you understand? You never know when a reporter might be watching" Dean made a point of glancing around dramatically and Sam had to stifle a laugh as the cop narrowed is eyes and squinted around the street.
The neighbourhood was far enough from the main city of Boston to be quiet, but not so far as to be considered a suburb. The taller buildings of Boston where easily visible in the distance, but the street was quiet in a different way than just being further from the main roads.
The neighbourhood, which was near to Southie, was made up of people who knew how to mourn. It was almost deathly silent, as if all the children had been murdered, not just Millie Deakins. It wouldn't stay that way. Once it was possible to have a wake for Millie, then the true celebration of her life would begin.
Dean and Sam slipped into the home and both, at once, where Aware that something bad had happened. It wasn't any kind of sixth sense, not really, it was more like the way a cop can look at a guy and know he's bad news, instinct honed over years of practice. "Whoah" Dean muttered, heading for the stairs.
The smell of blood was still in the air, degraded and stale but still present, the metallic, copper tang to the faint breeze travelling through the house.
"Jesus" Sam shook his head sadly "A little girl man" he said to his brother.
"I know Sammy…try not to think about it" Dean said gruffly, and Sam could tell from his tone that Dean was as distressed as Sam.
They made it to the bathroom, slipping on rubber gloves as they pushed the door open. While the crime scene techs had been in, no one had cleaned the scene yet, other than to remove the bodies. The smell of blood here was much stronger. Because there was so much more of it. It covered almost every surface, pooling primarily on the floor but there where streaks and splashes on every wall, the ceiling, even slicing across the mirror that Sam saw was reflecting Dean as he stepped cautiously into the room, the reddish brown streak looking like a bloody gaping wound across Danny's face.
" 'Humans can lick too Millie'" Dean read the message aloud "Macabre" he said as if passing judgement.
While he acted glib and unaffected, Sam knew this was affecting his brother deeply.
"Imagine how horrified you would be reading that, then realising…" Sam cut himself off, involuntarily curling his hands into fists as his mind created the sensation of creepy crawlies on his skin.
"Fear is probably part of what it feeds off've" Dean stated, leaning over near the shower, a torch suddenly in hand.
"You got something?" Sam asked, from near the mirror, where he had been shining his torch to see if the light reflections revealed any hidden messages.
"Maybe" Dean leaned forward and reached into the plug hole with a pen, hooking the nib precariously on something.
He with drew it and frowned at the long silver chain that came out. It was mostly covered in blood, which was starting to flake off now that it was drying. There was a small medallion hanging from the chain.
"Could have The Thing" Dean mused.
"How did the cops miss that?" Sam frowned.
"Well it looks like it's only recently starting to dry, probably from being in the relatively sheltered plug hole…the blood's flaking off the surface now…" Dean explained.
"Is that one of those things we should probably give to the cops?" Sam asked.
"No way, this almost definitely belonged to the killer, it could lead us to where he disappeared from…maybe even where he is now, there's no way to be sure this thing doesn't just…keep living its hosts life…it's a place to start at the very least" Dean frowned.
"What about this big clue?" Sam shone his torch at the bloodstains.
"Apart from the message on the wall I don't see anything that stands out do you?" Dean asked.
Sam shook his head.
"So we go where else the killer was…Millie's bedroom" Dean said quietly.
"Dean-" Sam started but Dean cut him off.
"Sam one little girl is already dead. There are going to be more. It sucks but we have to look in her room" Dean stated.
Sam sighed but followed his smaller, but older brother out of the room.
They found Millie's room easily, her name was painted on the door in bright, colourful letters, that had probably been put there when she was much younger.
Dean pushed the door open, having put the chain in a plastic baggie and pocketed it.
He paused at the sight of the room. Millie's bed was still unmade, the covers thrown back where she had hurried to find the source of the noise. There was nothing else in the room to suggest anything bad had happened there, which was the reason the cops where so sure it was stoned teens thinking it would be funny to act out the old urban myth.
"Doesn't look like they gave it more than a cursory glance in here" Sam noted, biting his lip at the sight of Millie's photographs; her and her mother, her and an old couple, grandparents, her with a goofy grin and about thirty more kids, all wearing matching Christmas sweaters, her and her school friends goofing off for the camera. There was a stereo in one corner, a computer on a desk against one wall, a closet full of clothes, shelves lined with books and DVD's and trophies for some sport or another. The room wasn't pristine but it wasn't a total wreck. It was a teenage girls bedroom, no more, no less.
Dean was crouching beside the bed as Sam began scanning the book and DVD titles lest anything stand out.
"Dog basket's one of those fabric ones, easy enough for a guy to lay on It without it making any nose while pretended to be the dog" Dean told him.
"Hey…" Sam called out, reaching for one of the photo's stuck to a cork pin board.
All of the photo's where arranged neatly, edge to edge, corner to corner, showing more family and friends. But the one Sam had noticed showed Millie, for the brothers recognised her from her picture in the paper, dressed in a uniform, a catholic school uniform. This picture had been tilted to one side, not much, but enough to notice.
"Dean this picture was moved" Sam took the picture down and examined it.
It showed Millie and a group of her friends in their uniforms, posing on the steps of what must have been their school.
"Well if that isn't a clue I don't know what is" Dean murmured.
"You find anything by the dog bed?" Sam asked.
"Nadda" Dean shook his head "And I cant think of anywhere he would have been that the cops wouldn't have already examined"
"We're out of here?" Sam pocketed the photo, silently promising to return it to Millie's mother once this was done.
"We're so gone we're history" Dean said but there was nothing in it.
He was scowling around at the room, the anger clearly written across his face.
Sam nodded in silent agreement. Neither one of them was leaving until this thing was stopped.