Knock on the Sky
By EB
©2006
Chapter Two
Amarillo by Morning
He used his credit card to buy a plane ticket, and had to smile because really, it was sort of ironic. A lifetime of scams and credit-card fraud, and now to chase after Dean he'd be using a real one, a card with his own name on it, and wouldn't Dean be shocked? Could hear him now: Dude, what the fuck? All that fake plastic and you use the real thing? Have I taught you nothing?
By nine-thirty he was in the air, drinking cup after cup of crappy airline coffee and watching the kids across the aisle. Two boys, arguing passionately about everything from movies to computer games to homework, and Sam felt a sweet surge in his belly, listening. They were closer in age than him and Dean, but the banter was familiar, that surface heat and underlying warmth. He'd wished for normalcy, had sought it for years now, but arguing with Dean had been normal, had been brotherly, familiar as breathing, and now he looked back on it and thought, What else did I not see when I had it? And something's happened, I feel it, taste it, and where was I?
The flight landed in Dallas at just after three, local time. He felt the heat like a faceful of hot syrup, soggy and heavy, and winced while he made his way to the rental booths.
The car was newish, burgundy and got good mileage. Dean would hate it. Sam sighed and threw his bag in the trunk. No hidden compartments, no weapons cache. If Dean's trouble was supernatural, Sam wasn't real well-equipped. Not even a damn bottle of holy water. And forget guns: he didn't even have a pocket knife.
When he started the engine, he blinked and realized he'd expected a roar, not this tame even idling. Throat aching, he slid the rental into gear and headed into traffic.
Long time since he'd been in Texas, and a few miles down the highway he thought about how big this damn state was, how he should have taken a second flight to Amarillo or Lubbock, or wherever the hell ever, just to save this godawful boring drive. But it was familiar, wearily so, and he pushed the car's sewing-machine engine up to eighty-five and hoped it wouldn't just fall to pieces somewhere around Wichita Falls or Paducah. Turned the radio dial past headbanging music, and then back. Sam always hated Dean's metal shit, but the cock-rock crap felt weirdly comforting now.
At least it would probably keep him awake. Probably.
Pushing it hard, only a couple of two-minute stops for more coffee and a couple of candy bars, he blew into Amarillo just past sundown. He found a motel that looked cheap enough that his card wouldn't be rejected, and took his bag into the grim little room. Smelled familiar, like home, and something inside him sighed, relaxed a trifle. It was all doable. Dean was fine. It would all turn out to be a miscommunication. The dream, just a dream.
He took off his shoes and didn't remember hitting the mattress.
It's different this time. The building is in shadow, no hot sun to break through the tree cover, and the grounds are empty, the grass burnt and yellow and dead.
"I don't see him," his father says, and Sam looks over his shoulder, sees John Winchester, the Great White Hunter, standing with his hands over his face, fingers covering his eyes. "I can't see him. He's gone."
He isn't gone, he's right here, Sam says, but when he turns back to point there is no Dean. Dust skirls over the parched ground, and the gate clanks and then falls.
There is dust inside the halls, too, long empty hallways that have not been used in decades, and the walls send back echoes of Sam's boots, dull thuds like a slow, tired heartbeat. When he touches the near wall, he feels it, too, a sluggish thump, and calls, "Dean?"
A face materializes in the tile, sexless and expressionless, and says, "You can't go home."
Before Sam can say anything, it's gone, and the hallway has opened to a wide, grassy courtyard. Here the ground is green and healthy, the trees heavy with fruit and flowers. In the middle sits Dean, eyes closed, a smile on his face.
"Dean," Sam whispers, and the empty doorway flings him back, sprawling in the dust.
Dean's eyes open, a calm green gaze, and behind him Sam can see numberless people, seated as he is, backs straight and faces empty of anything human. Dean's lips move and so do theirs, and Sam hears it as a chorus, a whisper and a susurrus of echoes: Don't worry about it, dude. Go back. You can't come here. We won't let you.
Dean smiles sweetly, and Sam screamed, snapping upright in his hard motel bed, clawing at the covers. No, NO, don't take him away from me, I'm sorry, I'll do anything, just don't put him someplace where I can never find him again.
He didn't sleep again. Couldn't afford to. He paced the room, fists clenching and unclenching. Not even a clue where to start, not a goddamn thing. Could go to the cops, what normal people with missing relatives would do, but unless he'd been arrested for something, Dean wasn't about to have any doings with local law enforcement. Not with as many outstanding traffic tickets on his record as he'd gotten over the years.
Which left Sam absolutely nowhere. Dean was certainly someplace, but he might as well have vanished into thin air at this point, for all Sam knew. And it curdled in his gut, anger and fear and resentment all pulling into a tight hot mass of I don't want to be here, doing this.
His father's number rang four times before voice mail picked up. Sam sighed and said, "Okay, I'm here. Amarillo. And I've got zip, Dad. Do you even know what he was working on? And look, I mean, a month ago? You waited a MONTH and you're just now calling me for help? He could be anywhere!"
He had to breathe, force air into his lungs before he could go on. "I gotta have more than this, okay? Anything, whatever you know. But Texas is a big-ass state, all right, and Amarillo isn't small, and I got -- I gotta be someplace next week, someplace important. I need information, Dad. Whatever you got. Call me."
At seven he walked over to the little café attached to the motel, ate a breakfast he couldn't taste. The need to move, the need to DO SOMETHING, was overwhelming, and he threw some money on the table and strode out, already fishing for the car key in his pocket.
Barely eight in the morning, but the car was already toasty warm. He turned up the air conditioning and then just sat. How long until Dad called him back? Who the hell knew? Christ, he had nothing.
So think of the routine. Dean was big on routine. First stop in a new place, just like Dad: find a place to stay. None of them ever had money, not enough to stay anywhere nice, so it would be cheap and probably close to the highway.
Well, that narrowed it down to only dozens instead of hundreds. Sam sighed and put the car in gear, turned to back up. Hey, at least it wasn't Chicago, or L.A. Amarillo wasn't tiny, but not exactly a bustling metropolis, either.
He froze, then reached for his wallet, stomping the brakes. His hands shook while he dug in the compartment behind his license. Never thought, never even occurred to him, and now he was sure it wouldn't be there. Just when he needed it, no –
But it was. He smoothed the edges of the photograph, smiling and feeling his smile fade just as quickly. When had this been? Summer before his senior year? Or junior? Dean had been twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Hated posing for photographs, so Sam had snuck this one, snapped it on that crap throwaway camera right as Dean looked up from whatever he was doing. Eyebrows lifted questioningly, and otherwise as relaxed as Sam could remember seeing him.
It was a good picture, and he'd tucked it away like a talisman, because there were so few. Because Dad had some kind of weird thing about photographs by the time Sam left, and Dean, although Sam didn't think he was quite as superstitious about it, always went with what Dad said. He actually had one photo of the three of them back at the apartment, but he'd carried this picture of Dean around for four or five years now, and he wondered if it would freak Dean out to know that when things got lonely, during his freshman year when he felt as if family had become a myth, a campfire story, he took Dean's picture out and stared at it and thought that if nothing else, no mother, no father, he still had a brother, someone who'd always, always be there, no matter what. Knowing it let him sleep at night, and get up and trudge to class the next morning.
He swallowed and put the photo in his breast pocket. If Dean knew, he'd give Sam shit about it for months. Never hear the end of the teasing. And right now, Sam thought, he'd give just about anything to hear it. To know that Dean WAS okay, that he was alive and well and not moldering someplace, on the losing end of –
Well. That wasn't exactly a productive line of thought there, was it? He cleared his throat, took his foot off the brake pedal, and blinked the haze out of his eyes before pulling out of the parking space.
By noon his father hadn't called back, and he'd scouted out fourteen different motels. Not the big chains; the smaller local places, home-owned and all that, because it was what Dad always preferred and what Dean was used to. The photograph had gotten him nothing. No one recognized Dean's picture, and Sam had no idea which alias he was using this time around. Could be literally anything under the sun, which made names less than no help, and the picture was old; for all Sam knew, Dean could have grown his hair out the past few years, or shaved his damn head.
Motel number fifteen, though, was a different story. More run-down than most, a front office smelling of cigarettes and burnt coffee, and a proprietor whose mouth had bid a sad adieu to most of his teeth at some point in the distant past, giving him a heavy lisp.
"Think I've theen him, yep."
"You've -- You recognize him?" Sam stared at him.
The man pushed his gimme cap further back on his head, scratched his bristly cheek, and nodded. "A while back. Come in here and paid cath on the barrel."
"Cath – Okay, great. He -- When did he leave?"
"He wath the crathee one."
Sam squinted. "The what?"
The man gave him a dour look. "Cray-thee," he said, enunciating his speech impediment even more clearly. Or less. He made a circling motion at his temple with one plump finger. "Loony."
Sam nodded, then froze. "Why do you say that?"
"Talking to himthelf. To people that weren't there. Thtuff like that."
"How do." Sam cleared his throat. "Do you know where he was headed? After he left?"
"Didn't really leave. Just didn't come back one day, left all his thtuff." The owner lifted his chin and jerked it to the side, indicating the murky room behind the office. "Thtuck it all back there, thee if he'd ever come back for it. Never did. Thought I'd thell it or thomething, ain't got around to it yet."
Sam touched his forehead, where a tiny, icy blade of pain had formed. Might be stress, might just be the effort of parsing the man's speech. "Would you mind if I took a look at it? He's – my brother."
"Family, huh. Thure. Hell, take it with you, I don't care. Thtuff's ath craythee ath he wath." The man's eyes narrowed. "You got thome kinda ID?"
Sam showed his license, and the man said, "That ain't hith name."
"He sometimes uses…different names," Sam said softly. The man considered and nodded, and Sam thought, Well, he's already called him crazy, guess that doesn't sound so weird after all.
But the "thtuff" Dean had left behind gave him a chill. The motel owner might not realize it, but this was pretty much everything Dean had: that familiar battered duffel bag, a few changes of clothes, toiletries, a couple of books. Sam swallowed, hefting the Edith Hamilton volume in his hand. Dean wasn't much for research; could certainly do it if required, but had never found it all that personally stimulating. But he adored mythology, had read this book nearly to tatters, could cough up the most obscure reference purely from memory. Holding this threadbare trade paperback was like holding a part of Dean in his hand, and his throat grew tight while the motel owner prattled about what a weirdo his brother had been.
"Noithy," the man mumbled. "Other gueth didn't like it. Yelling and talking all the time. Had more than one athk to get a different room, down the row, jutht to get away from all that noith."
Sam slid the book back into the bag and zipped it, brushing a heavy cobweb off the back with a frown. "I'll give it back to him when I find him," he said, straightening and slinging the bag over his shoulder. "Thanks for not just throwing it away. He'll – appreciate that." He pauses. "What name did he use?"
"On the tag there."
Sam angled his head so he could read the tag pinned to the bag. Drover. Well, it was more than he'd had. He thanked the guy again, and went outside. Put the bag in the trunk, lips pressed tight with worry, and dialed his father's number again.
"All right, then." Sam blew a long sigh. "I picked up his trail, but it's real cold. He stayed at the Dunes Motel, and he left his bag, all his things. The guy at the motel said he was crazy." Sam snorted a little. "I mean, I don't know if that's normal-crazy or not so normal, but Dean would never leave his shit here. So that's. Well." He swallowed. "Not a real good sign. Would you call me back? I mean, we need to discuss this. Don't just – leave me hanging here. Do you know something? What was he working on? Dad, TALK to me."
He stowed the phone in his pocket, and climbed back in the car.
"Missing persons?"
The guy at the desk gave him an impassive look. "If they've been gone less than 24 hours –"
Sam shook his head vigorously. "A month," he said hoarsely. "He's been missing a month. My brother."
"Have a seat. Somebody'll come talk to you."
He sat on a hard plastic chair in the hallway, alertly watching. No one came out right away, and he had time to think about how much police stations all seemed the same, no matter where you went. The same odor of old coffee and disinfectant, and underneath it body odor and a smell like old books, papery and dusty and ancient. He wondered if even new buildings like this would smell the same after the first week.
"Looking for somebody?"
He flinched and stood, already nodding. The woman was tall – tall as Dean, he thought, but not as tall as me – and unsmiling, no uniform but a severe gray pants suit, her dark hair pulled into a sensible ponytail. "I'm Detective Ware." She didn't put a hand out to shake.
Sam nodded again. "Sam Winchester. I'm looking for my brother. He –"
"Come into my office."
Ware's office was tiny and as uncompromising as the woman herself, utilitarian furniture and nothing in the way of personal objects. Sam sat uneasily in the proffered chair and kept on watching her.
"Name?" she asked, fingers poised over an unseen keyboard.
"Dean. Winchester."
She typed it in, and Sam shook his head. "No. No, he wasn't -- He was using a different name. I'm sorry."
That got him a narrow look. "Alias?"
"He -- Drover. Glen or Shawn."
"Which one?"
He gave a helpless shrug. "Could be either. I don't know."
"I see." Any trace of warmth that might have been there was gone now; her lips were tight, but she typed it in, surveyed the screen he couldn't see, then shook her head. "Not a thing."
Sam slumped a little. "Oh."
"When did he disappear?"
"It would have been – September sometime. A month ago. Roughly."
More typing, and she gave a crisp shake of her head. "Four missing-persons reports filed during that time period. No one by any of those names, and three were women. And unless your brother's black –"
"No."
She watched him, and then seemed to soften a little, sighing. "All right." A clipboard appeared, pen held out alongside it. "Fill this out. There'll be –"
"Wait." Craythee. Dean had been craythee, the lisping guy had said. Sam swallowed. "Any John Does?"
Ware kept on holding out the clipboard. "How so?"
"I mean, picked up. He -- He might not have been thinking very well."
"History of mental instability? Illness?"
"Not -- No. Nothing I know of. But he." Sam considered, and said carefully, "Things could have changed. I haven't seen him in a while." Anything could have happened. Anything at all.
She pursed her lips, and then laid the clipboard on her desk and turned slowly to the computer. "It'll take a minute." Typing, she said, "What sort of business is your brother in?"
"I don't -- I guess he's sort of a drifter." A lie, one that felt shabby and sour on his tongue. Dean was so much more than that.
Ware sat back, glancing from her screen back to Sam. "Vagrant, picked up on August 13th. Non compos. Never did get a name. Male, age 25-30." She had blue eyes, Sam saw, blue and chilly. "Remanded for psych evaluation. Don't have anything more than that."
August. That long ago? Sam stared at her. "Where?" he whispered.
She said nothing for a moment, then reached out and turned the monitor in his direction. "That him?"
Standard mug shot, although there was no booking number. Hadn't been arrested, then. A week's growth of beard over drawn cheeks, brows drawn together hooding the eyes, but no disguising that startling green. Dean's eyes always went green when he was tired, when he was hurt --
"Yes," Sam whispered. "That's Dean."
TBC. EB