ASYLUM PART 1

Alice was restless, peeking to the point of insanity with how many hours she had put into research. Day in and day out had been filled with the name 'Jezebel' ever since she discovered it. It was the only thing she would talk about, and if not that, Alice wouldn't speak at all to the boys and it was really starting to make Dean worry. It was obvious in his eyes that her health was starting to decline. She was barely eating anymore and her insomnia was getting out of hand.

This new obsession was really starting to scare him.

The three of them had spent yet another night inside a cheap and questionable motel room that had the strangest smells lingering inside. Since it was late, Sam decided to turn in for the night while Dean stayed up a little longer to keep an eye on Alice. It was really starting to take a toll on him though and he found his mind drifting off to dreamland. He rubbed his tired eyes and took a glance over to Alice for the hundredth time today.

The girl hasn't moved at all since the day began and she was still stuck at the desk with her nose in a book. Her eyes were strained and bloodshot from the lack of sleep, and her hands were trembling too from her adrenaline-induced coffee high. Dean always thought she had pretty bad black circles under her eyes, but now...they were absolutely horrendous.

Dean couldn't stand it anymore and felt his body slowly being pulled towards the bed like a magnet. He needed to go to sleep. He needed those eight hours more than anything but knew better than to go to bed while Alice was still awake. "Ah, Alice? Are you going to bed?" he dared ask.

Alice's sharp blue eyes only briefly looked up at him for a moment before lowering them back down to the pages in her book, not saying a single word to him and only shaking her head. That kind of struck a nerve with him. Has she actually forgotten she had a voice?

Dean felt his blood pressure began to rise and reach the boiling point with her attitude. "Ok. We're not doing this." He walked up to the table and sat down, reaching across and closing the book that was in front of her. He finally grabbed her full attention but it came in the form of a chilling Cromwell glare. The worse kind someone could give to you. He would be lying if he said he wasn't slightly off by it. "We got a long drive tomorrow and the last thing we need is you crashing on your motorcycle because your ass is too stubborn to go to bed."

"Don't give me this shit, Dean," she shot back like a snake waiting to pounce. "Jefferson's gone but he left behind something a lot bigger. Something happened in my family that no one but him was aware of and I need to find out what it was. That's what's important to me right now."

"You're health is more important." He waited for a moment but like always, Alice was too headstrong to see things his way. "Ok. Let's strike a deal. You tell me something you figured out about Jezebel. Something we don't already know. If you can, I'll leave you alone. If you can't, then you gotta go to bed."

Alice groaned and leaned back in her chair to think for a moment. According to the Book of Kings of the Hebrew Bible, Jezebel was the daughter of Ithobaal I of Tyre and the wife of Ahab, King of Israel. She was noted to be quite the wicked woman with a bad reputation, but that was about all they knew so far and that wasn't new. Alice wasn't even sure if Jefferson was talking about that particular woman or someone entirely different.

Dean waited for a solid minute for her to speak but he knew he had her beat. This was a cold case that had no leads and no one to ask. "Yeah, that's what I thought." He got up off the chair and headed over to her bag on the counter. "We're going to bed. Come on." He pulled out some shorts and a tank top and tossed it over to her. Luckily she accepted her defeat by catching them.

Alice had a million words she would like to say to him but her brain was too fried to even come up with a cohesive sentence. "Whatever," she muttered in a tired voice and headed to the bathroom to change.

After stepping inside, Alice started to strip off her clothes the moment she locked the door behind her. She glanced over at the mirror and paused with her shirt in hand, seeing everything now being reflected back at her. The exhausted and withered look on her face, the scars, the cuts, and the bruises all over her exposed skin. Fresh and old ones alike.

"I look like shit..." Her eyes drifted down to a strange symbol above her right collar bone. It was a tattoo of a devil's trap sigil that was inked into her skin but slightly distorted and damaged because of the fresh cuts. She figured it must've been from the glass window when Jefferson attacked her. "I gotta remember to get this fixed when it heals." She whispered while running her fingers across the mark.

The morning was anything but peaceful with the sound of Sam and Dean's arguing getting louder and more hostile. Alice cracked an eye open and blinked the blur away. She didn't get up just yet and decided to listen quietly to what they were yelling about this time around.

"You know, maybe we should call the Feds. File a missing person's," Sam said.

"We've talked about this. Dad'd be pissed if we put the Feds on his tail."

"I don't care anymore."

Alice groaned loudly and sat up in bed like Frankenstein's monster rising up from the operating table. "Jesus Christ, can you guys argue any LOUDER!?" she snarled, staring at them with her wicked bloodshot eyes that were deprived of sleep. Her irritation only peeked when her head started to rattle with the sound of a phone going off right beside her. "Damnit..." She pulled her head down into her lap to try and block out the sound. "Dean, please answer your phone already," she said in a weak whimper.

Dean cast Sam a sharp glare before he went over to try and find the source of the ringing in his duffle bag. He used his other hand to rub up and down Alice's back to soothe her brain melting headache. He could feel her spine through her skin though like it was made out of thin fabric. She had lost quite a bit of weight if he was able to make out each individual bone.

"Dean..." Alice called out, almost pleading for him to hurry up.

He finally found his phone and quickly turned off the ring to save her from its dreadful noise. "I found it. Hold on." He flipped it opened to see who was calling him but found out that it was actually a text message. His eyes lit up and he steadily sat down next to Alice. "I don't believe it."

"What?" Alice leaned over his shoulder to see what he was staring at.

From: Unavailable

Subject: Message: 42, -89

"It's, uh...It's a text message. It's coordinates," Dean said.

Immediately, Alice started to snap her fingers and motioned for Sam to give her his laptop so she could look up the coordinates.

"You think Dad was texting us?" Sam said while handing it over to her.

"He's given us coordinates before," Dean shrugged and waited for Alice to type them in.

"The man can barely work a toaster, Dean."

"Sam, it's good news! It means he's okay, or alive at least."

"Well, was there a number on the caller ID?"

He shook his head. "Nah, it said 'unknown'." He turned to Alice and waited patiently since he could tell she was still half asleep and exhausted. She didn't look the best right now and he dared say she looked worse than when she first went to bed. "Alice?"

"Uh..." she paused for a moment to rub the sleep from her eyes. "Rockford, Illinois. That ringing any bells for you."

They both shook their heads.

"Any local news that flared up?" Dean asked.

"Ah..." She typed it into the search and dug a bit deeper until she finally found her mark. "Yeah, actually. It's about a cop, Walter Kelly. The dude comes home from his shift, shoots his wife, then puts the gun in his mouth, lights out. Earlier that night, Kelly and his partner responded to a call at the...Roosevelt Asylum?" The boys saw the dread of depression lift briefly from her eyes and spark again with life. She actually seemed excited about something.

Sam blinked. "Okay, I'm not following. What does this have to do with us?"

"Hold on." Dean brought out his dad's journal and flipped through the pages. "Dad earmarked the same asylum in the journal. Let's see..." He stopped at a page with a newspaper clipping in it. "Here. Seven unconfirmed sightings, two deaths – till last week at least. I think this is where he wants us to go."

Sam scoffed. "This is a job... Dad wants us to work a job."

"Well, maybe we'll meet up with him? Maybe he's there?"

"Maybe he's not? I mean, he could be sending us there, by ourselves, to hunt this thing."

Alice abruptly ripped her covers off and jumped out of bed at the speed of light with her eyes still sparkling with excitement and curiosity. "Hell, if you ain't going then I will." Her lips curled up and she actually smiled. It wasn't fake this time. It wasn't practiced. It was real, and Dean honestly doesn't remember the last time he saw her like this.

"You like asylum cases?" he asked.

"Dude, I love them. Aiden and I use to chomp at the bit to find cases like this." She patted him hard on the back and went to the bathroom to get dressed. "If you're going than hurry up and get dressed!" she said behind the loud slam of the door.

Alice left the boys in total shock at her joyful demeanor. She was completely different now than when she was last night: refusing to sleep, eat, and talk. Her sudden change nearly gave them whiplash but Dean was just happy to see her get excited about something.

"I swear..." Dean gave his brother a warning. "If you ruin this for her..."

"Dean," Sam began but was cut off at the knees.

"This is what we agreed on, right? We said we'd watch over her, and if doing an asylum case is what gets her out of bed in the morning...then who are we to say no." He eyed him carefully before going off to get dressed, not leaving his brother room to complain.

Daniel Gunderson sat solemnly at the local Rockford bar with a drink in his hand to mourn over the loss of his partner who had recently passed. Just by looking at him, people knew that it was in their best interest to leave him alone. That until Dean in view up and pointed him out.

"You're Daniel Gunderson. You're a cop, right?" he asked.

Gunderson looked up and furrowed his eyes. "Yeah."

Dean took a seat across from him and smiled. "Huh. I'm uh, Nigel Tufnel, The Chicago Tribune. Mind if I ask you a couple of questions, about your partner?"

Gunderson groaned. "Yeah, I do. I'm just tryin' to have a beer here."

"That's okay, I swear it won't take that long. I just want to get the story in your words."

The man tightened his jaw and started heavily at Dean. "A week ago, my partner was sitting in that chair. Now he's dead. You gonna ambush me here?"

"Sorry. But I need to know what happened."

Alice abruptly came up behind Dean and grabbed him by the back of his jacket, yanking him onto his feet and roughly shoving him away. "Don't you know when to leave people the hell alone? The dude just lost his partner. Back off," she warned him and sternly pointed towards the exit door. "I ain't gonna repeat myself."

Dean stared between them before lifting his hands and walking off.

Gunderson paused, a bit baffled. "Thanks, but you didn't have to do that though."

Alice waved him off. "Ah, don't worry about it. Dude was a serious DICK!" she yelled, catching Dean frowning at her from across the room just before he left. "At least let me buy you a beer, huh?" she said and gestured up two fingers towards the barman.

Gunderson looked genuinely happy and decided to take her up on that offer. "Thanks."

After an hour of waiting outside the bar, Alice finally came out and walked up to the Impala that Sam and Dean were leaning against.

Dean gave her a cheeky grin. "Don't try to deny that you loved every minute of that."

Alice playfully shoved him just like she did back in the bar. Couldn't mistake the smile on her face though, one that was long overdue. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"What'd you find out from Gunderson?" Sam asked.

"A bit," she said while heading over to her motorcycle. "Gunderson spoke highly of him. He said Walter Kelly was a good cop. Head of his class, even-keeled, he had a bright future ahead of him."

"What about at home?" Dean asked.

"He and his wife had a few fights, like everybody, but he was mostly smooth sailing. They were even talking about having kids." She made a gesture towards the boys to get ready while she made a grab for her helmet. "So either Kelly had some deep-seated crazy waiting to pop...or something else did it for him." Her words were filled with ominous mystery but also itching with excitement.

Dean walked around to the driver's side of his car. "What'd Gunderson tell you about the asylum?"

Alice stuck her keys into the ignition and fired the red machine up. "A lot."

The asylum was at a haunting standstill that was beginning to decay from the years of not being used. The building was colored into a faded, dingy gray, and most of the windows were shattered. The doors were boarded up too with planks of wood or wrapped up with chains. Some of them weren't though so it was easy to get inside.

If not the appearance than the atmosphere alone was enough to give people the creeps. Alice seemed to be the only one who didn't feel that way though. Instead, she was bubbling with the excitement one would get when they were about to walk into the unknown. This was the type of thing she liked. It made her feel like she was in an old movie and just absolutely adored buildings like these with dark secrets. It always gave her and Aiden a strong kick of adrenaline whenever they would do spirit-involved cases like this one. She longed to witness the restless ones wandering the halls and echoing the past as if they were still trapped in it, and hear the walls whisper secrets from a distant yesterday.

After climbing over the chain-linked fence to get inside the premises, they walked inside the building where it was as you expected it to be. It had been totally defaced over the years of people breaking in and out. The inside was a wreck and the paint on the walls was starting to peel away. The rooms also smelled strongly of chemicals and most of the furniture had been turned over. Equipment was still laying around too but within shambles and ruin.

Alice beamed like a child walking into a candy shop. Instead, her candy shop was an abandoned asylum that is known to have people dying inside it. "Dude, this place is so cool." She grinned ear to ear while exploring the first room.

Sam shined his flashlight down the halls and across the signs on the walls. "So apparently the cops chased the kids here...into the south wing." He pointed his light towards a particular sign on the wall.

"South wing, huh? Wait a second." Dean paused and began to flip through John's journal. "1972. Three kids broke into the south wing, only one survived. The way he tells it, one of his friends went nuts and started lighting up the place."

Alice's smile morphed down into a smirk. "So...all the freaky stuff's happening in the south wing, huh?"

"But if the kids are spelunking the asylum, why aren't there a ton more deaths?" Dean pointed out his confusion.

Alice shined her light further across the room and noticed that most of the doors were chained up. All except the one on the south wing doors. "The chains probably stopped a lot of stupid kids from getting in," she said while walking over to the south wing door to pick up a set of broken chains that laid on the ground. "Or...maybe it was to stop something from getting out." Her voice had a sinister ring to it that made the smirk on her face look slightly more demonic now.

Dean cocked a brow and questioned her morbid curiosity. "Cool it for a moment, Dr. Frankenstein. Seriously, what made you like cases like these?"

Alice's smirk turned back into a smile. "Sorry. These places just make me feel like I'm in an old movie. That's all," she chuckled lightly and pushed the doors open, quickly flashing her light down the halls to pierce the darkness. "I'm always half-expecting to see someone like Hatchet Man coming around the corner."

Immediately, Dean's eyes lit up as if he had just won the million-dollar lottery. "You like Hatchet Man movies?" he said, trying to conceal his excitement and not come off as weird.

"Yeah, I do. Aiden and I use to binge those movies whenever Halloween came around." Alice smiled fondly over the memories of fake blood and Aiden's boisterous laugh when it came to the terrible acting in some of the scenes. "God, we use to stay up so late to watch those movies. We even tried to sneak into the kitchen to grab some food and avoid my mom's 110-degree vision. I gotta say...I think my first-near death experience was when she caught me looking through the fridge to get Aiden a soda," she said and started to walk down the south wing hall. "Come on. We got a lot to look at before we leave," she gestured.

Dean stood in place but his smile spread wide like a cartoon character. The man was deliriously happy, giddy even to know that someone shared his passion for those movies. Sam never cared for them but he never imagined that Alice would be a fan. And like that, Dean already had a birthday present in mind for her and was looking forward to next Halloween.

They wandered deeper into the old asylum where most of the rooms looked the same. They flashed their lights all over the place and the equipment that was left lying around, along with the crude instruction manuals for demented ways of 'curing' people of mental illnesses.

"Man. Electro-shock. Lobotomies. They did some twisted stuff to these people," Dean whispered while flipping through some of the pages. "Kinda like my man Jack in Cuckoo's Nest." He flashed Sam and Alice a wicked grin with crazy eyes, only to promptly drop it when he realized they weren't paying attention to him. "So. Whaddaya think? Ghosts possessing people?" he asked, getting back on topic.

Alice walked over to one of the chairs that looked like it was used to strap patients down. She sat down in it and immediately got the creeps of what some of these people must've gone through and what they saw. "I'm thinking something like Amityville. A spirit that drives people insane." She paused for a minute and smiled, glancing back at Dean. "Kinda like Jack from the Shinning."

Dean laughed when he realized that she was paying attention to him in his antics. "That's my girl."

Sam was the only one who didn't seem pleased about the situation. He looked as if he wanted to say something but didn't want to ruin Alice's rare and happy mood. He couldn't stand it anymore though and decided to speak his mind. "Dean... When are we going to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" Dean asked, not liking where this was going.

"About the fact Dad's not here."

"Oh. I see. How 'bout...never."

Alice groaned and briefly closed her eyes to try and cut herself off from this awkward conversation. She hated it when they argued like this and it was especially irritating when they did it during a hunt. She gets Sam's frustrated but finding John's location was just as hard as finding out who Jezebel was. They were both cases that grew cold every second.

Sam tightened his jaw. "I'm being serious, man. He sent us here..."

"So am I, Sam. Look, he sent us here, he obviously wants us here. We'll pick up the search later."

"It doesn't matter what he wants."

"Guys!" Alice snapped and got off the chair. Her eyes were storming with anger and it immediately made the boys clam up and pay attention. "See? This right here is what I hate most. You guys can argue all you want after this job is done, or you can leave and let me finish this one by myself. I'll catch up later."

Dean stepped up to try and defuse things. "Hey, you don't have-"

"I will. In a heart-beat." Alice reached her limit with how much she can take from these guys and had to put her foot down. She didn't mind working a case by herself but if they're gonna argue in the middle of one, then that's where she's gonna have to draw the line. "You two can either work this case and argue later...or leave."

Sam gave Dean and Alice a frustrated look but the conversation ended there when all three of them turned away. The atmosphere was ruined though, along with Alice's good mood. She wanted nothing more than to hurry up and finish this case.

Alice walked over to a desk and picked up a sign that showed a name. "Sanford Ellicott..." she muttered before tightening her jaw.

Alice sat patiently in the waiting room of a psychiatrist's office and flipped through the pages of a magazine to pass the time until her appointment. She waited for what felt like an hour until the door opened and a man walked out to greet her.

"Alice Cromwell?" he asked.

"That's me."

"Come on in."

Alice tossed the magazine down on the table and followed him into the private room, not before glancing up at the sign on the front of the door reading, 'Dr. James Ellicott, Clinical Psychiatry'.

Dr. Ellicott sat down at his desk while Alice took a seat at a chair right across from him.

"Hey, I appreciate you seeing me last minute," she thanked him and looked around the room, pretending to just now notice the plaques on his wall that read his name. "Ellicott? Excuse my curiosity but...wasn't there a Dr. Sanford Ellicott? He was a chief psychiatrist somewhere?"

"My father was chief of staff at the old Roosevelt Asylum." Dr. Ellicott looked over the information she provided him with. He remarked to himself that she didn't offer him much and that told a story of its own. He wasn't going to pretend that he didn't notice the bags under her eyes either, along with the fresh cuts across her face and hands. "How did you know?"

She tilted her head and smiled. "A little guilty for history. I live for these sorts of things. But wasn't there an incident or something? At the hospital's south wing."

Dr. Elicott silently observed Alice's kind nature that nearly felt practiced to him. "We're on your dollar, Alice. We're here to talk about you."

"Oh. Right, right, right. Sorry."

Dr. Ellicott adjusted himself in his seat and waited for her to begin her session. "So. How's things?"

"Decent, I guess." She gave a half-hearted shrug. "Nothing that I really gotta complain about."

He cocked a brow and pointed at the obvious dark circles and cuts. "Are the bags under your eyes what you call decent? And the scars too."

"Ah...that was my bad." She glanced down at herself and rubbed the scars on her arm, subtly pulling her sleeves down so he wouldn't see the extent of the damage. "I'm a bit of an insomniac, and the cuts are, well... a bad accident with glass recently. Let me tell you, I ain't much of a fan of windows after that one."

"I'm sure it wasn't the best experience."

"Yeah, kinda mucked up my week." she paused for a moment. "Right, uh, sorry to bring this up again but...what exactly happened in the south wing? I'm not really sure since I ain't a local."

"Alice..." he sighed and set his clipboard down on the table behind him, "lets cut the lying bull, shall we?" He looked into her eyes and saw an unusual but distinct change in her sharp blue hue. It instantly told him that she wasn't here for a therapy session.

"Excuse me? I ain't picking up what you're putting down." Even her voice sounded different. It wasn't light-hearted as it was when he first met her. It had a fine edge, almost like a knife.

It was actually amazing how fast her attitude change. She wasn't exactly hostile, just on guard for some reason, like she was expecting the worse to happen. "You're a good liar...but I've seen it all. All the habits and tricks people try to pull on me. You're no different." He saw her flinch slightly. "Now, I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you all about the Roosevelt riot if you tell me something honest about yourself. Like, where do you think your insomnia came from?"

Alice lingered quietly for a solid minute while her face scrunched up like she was considering what to do. She juggled the thought of just leaving but that would make things harder for her and the boys. She took in a breath and leaned back in her chair, staring down Dr. Ellicott who waited like he had all the time in the world.