Disclaimer: I honestly don't know why I even bother…
Chapter 5 – The Visit
Dean felt that familiar feeling of being watched. The kind of feeling he would get in a haunted building, or late at night in an open space or a forest.
Suddenly, he understood. Because of the poison he hadn't been able to recognize the signs; it was, after all, unusually cold. Supernaturally cold.
He couldn't move, but it wasn't as if he was too weak to move; it was as if he had been tied to the bed by invisible ropes. The room had gone dark, not because he was losing his sight but because whatever was stalking him had made it dark. He mentally slapped himself for falling for it and believing he was dying.
But if he didn't do something he would end up dead.
He tried to reach under the pillow for his knife, but his arms didn't even shake with the effort, as if he had been turned into stone. He also tried to turn around to face whatever was watching him, but again he had no luck.
Dean found himself being thrown roughly against the wall and held there by an invisible force, and he could finally face the entity.
It was clearly the spirit of a young girl. Her white rotten skin had turned slightly purple and her light blue dress looked damp and ragged. Noticing this, Dean realized its body was probably drowned: it was the ghost of Averill Park.
He couldn't see her face, for her head hung limply, her ginger hair covering one side of her face and shadowing the other one. All he could see there was a shining red eye.
The girl slowly raised her head revealing a grossly mutilated face, fury evident in every scar, in every bruise, but especially in those shiny crimson eyes, which Dean now realized were that color because they were covered in her own blood.
"FIX IT!" she screamed not even opening her mouth. How can I? Thought Dean, for a moment forgetting that this ghost was already far too angry to let him out of the room alive. Not to mention fix anything. How could I possibly fix it? It was obvious by the appearance of the girl's deformed face that she had been murdered. Tortured and eventually murdered in her own school. It had been no accidental drowning.
But what's done is done and Dean could do nothing to take it back. Perhaps if he burned the bones, but that wouldn't actually fix it. Pinned against the wall as he was, Dean did nothing but stare pitifully into those red eyes.
"IT WANTS YOU! FIX IT!"
It wants me? Well, that doesn't make sense. What's this chick talking about?
Enraged at Dean's blank face, the spirit kept repeating the words 'why won't it leave me alone?' as it sent the bedside lamp flying and smashed it against Dean colliding with his shoulder with inhuman strength. Dean let out a groan and instinctively screwed up his eyes at the pain. When he opened them again, he saw that the spirit was about to throw the glass-made bottle of water courtesy of the hotel straight at his head. He took a deep breath and locked eyes with the ghost, refusing to let it see his fear.
The bottle was sent flying across the room and Dean tilted his head to the side closing his eyes waiting for the crash. But the impact never came.
Opening his eyes again, Dean was startled to see the bottle mere inches from his face, suspended in the air. He looked up at the ghost that still hovered at the feet of his bed, and saw that the girl's expression had turned into one of terror. Her eyes were fixed somewhere above and in front of her, something that wasn't there or that was invisible to Dean's eyes.
"No… leave me alone… leave me alone… LEAVE ME ALONE!" the unnaturally loud and otherworldly scream hurt Dean's ears as it began fading away with the girl until there was no sign of a ghost or noise of a scream. The bottle suddenly dropped to the ground shattering, pieces of glass flying everywhere at the same time as Dean fell hard on his back with a sickening thud. Dean was grateful for the soundproof walls.
Breathing hard, he sat up with his back against the bedside table. There was shattered glass from the bottle and ceramic from the lamp spread all over the room. A few shreds had incrusted in his arms and legs, but he didn't feel them. He didn't even notice them. Dean was far more concerned about what had just happened; about the girl's words and her strange behavior, as if something was haunting her.
At least now he knew that Averill Park was the right place to go. Whatever the girl was talking about, something had disturbed her peace and whatever that was had probably taken Sam. All he knew is that he had to get to that high school. Feeling more relieved at knowing what to do next, he allowed himself to examine his own physical state.
His left shoulder was a bloody mess. Large pieces of ceramic were still firmly attached to it, some deeper than others. Not to mention the amount of bruising the impact the lamp had on his shoulder would cause later. His legs had been attacked by glass but the shreds weren't too big and they seemed to only have made small scratches.
Patiently, he removed every piece of broken material off his body and cleaned his shoulder the best he could with a piece of his shirt. Thankfully, it had looked worse than it was, the wounds being smaller than the amount of blood had made them appear, but his shoulder wouldn't be the same in a while, he thought as he practiced moving his arm, but at least it had only been bruised and nothing more.
Dean finally stood up laying a hand against his forehead and supporting his weight on the bedside table at the dizziness he felt from the sudden movement. He walked to the bathroom and kneeling in front of the toilet, he threw up the little amount of food he had managed to eat that day and he wiped his fevered brow exhausted. He would have given almost anything to stay in that hotel room and sleep for another two weeks non-stop and then somehow wake up in his bed next to Nacha and his little boy waking him up.
But Dean had work to do.
The silhouette of a large building extended in the distance as Dean drove towards a forested area of Averill. He didn't know what to expect, or where to look first. Sam and Kirsten could be inside the school or anywhere on the immense grounds.
He parked the car at a safe distance from the building, at the end of the school grounds and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. Dean forced himself to think and tried to stop the panic building up inside him by breathing deeply a few times before he decided what to do. The most obvious place to start looking would be the area around the pond where the girl had drowned. Or at least, if he didn't find them there, hopefully there would be some sort of clue.
He opened the trunk of his car, took out a flashlight and unloaded the heavy duffel bag off everything except for two shotguns loaded with rock-salt, – that girl wouldn't catch him off guard twice – his trusted knife, which he usually kept under the pillow, some lighter fluid in case he found the girl's bones and a pistol loaded with real bullets.
Dean switched on the flashlight and walked across the lawn but instead of going in the direction of the school entrance, he bordered the building heading to the back of the place. He stared up at Averill Park High School with wary eyes. All the lights inside the building were off, and the antiquity, the size and the isolation of the building gave it a threatening look that made Dean shudder.
He looked back down and focused on the pond straight ahead. Around him, crickets sang, frogs croaked and there was a light cold breeze that gently pushed leaves and branches in the same direction. But he noticed that the pond seemed to be part of another world. No branch belonging to the trees around the pond moved, not even the slightest sound came from the area and the water in the pond was as still as a corpse.
Dean grabbed hold of one of his shotguns.
With practiced grace he approached the pond step by step, one foot after the other making no sound whatsoever, his entire body hidden by the shadows of the school, as he moved close to its walls.
There was something about the pond that hypnotized Dean. He was convinced he had to hurry to be able to look at it closely, or else that magical effect that emerged from its waters would be gone. Only a few more steps and he would be there.
Dean felt exposed as he left the protection the school walls offered. He left the building behind and kept going completely uncovered, knowing full well it was a stupid idea, but there was no other way to get to his destination.
Now he could see with detail the black water and the stillness of everything around the pond. There were no animals, no insects, nothing. In fact, Dean seemed to be the only living being approaching that pond in months. The trees around it that he had seen from the distance he now noticed were dead; all their leaves were dry and their trunks were starting to rot.
Two more steps and he would be at the edge of the water.
He could see something in its depths. There was something white floating just below the surface. Dean cocked his shotgun and walked carefully all the while aiming at the thing in the water. He took the last hesitant step, the gun firmly held in place.
The first thing he saw was long black hair and purely white skin limply floating in the water. He realized it was a girl.
"Oh, crap," he muttered. Dean knew the girl was probably already dead, but he wouldn't leave her there. He dropped his shotgun and kneeled at the edge of the pond. Extending his arms toward her, he reached under her armpits to try and pull her towards him.
Dean never made it.
The corpse suddenly looked up with those crimson eyes he had first seen only hours ago. Her face was bruised and mutilated and her hair was suddenly ginger again. With unnatural strength she grabbed Dean's forearm and pulled him towards her.
Anticipating the movements but unable to do anything about it, Dean did the only thing that came to his mind. Before the freezing water invaded his every limb he took a deep breath. Even when he was completely submerged, the ghost still pulled him headfirst deep underwater and there was nothing Dean could do to stop her. He struggled as hard as he could, but human strength was nothing against an angry spirit. And soon he realized he was going to need his strength to actually keep himself alive. He did his best to look up and realized it was just as dark up there as down here. Even if the spirit let him go, he doubted he would ever make it to the surface. How deep is this freakin' thing? He found himself thinking, as the ghost still guided him God-knows-where. He was starting to have trouble to hold his breath. He had been over two minutes underwater and his lungs were screaming for air.
After another thirty seconds his human instincts got the better of him. He couldn't help the agonizing reflex of sucking in gulp after gulp of freezing water, his body expecting to receive the air it so urgently needed and never actually getting it. For the second time that day he thought of Nacha and Andrew and he longed to see them one last time. He thought of Sammy. Who would rescue his baby brother now?
He felt something like a painful electric current go through his body and before consciousness slipped away, he saw with blurry eyes the girl was pointing at something yellowish that lay on the ground hidden amongst the rocks at the bottom of the pond. Human bones.
Finally understanding what the poor girl wanted, he closed his eyes, willing the pain to stop. The reflex of inhaling and exhaling stopped completely, as if having given up the hope of ever finding air, leaving his lungs full of unwelcome water. His body convulsed one last time, but Dean didn't feel the shock this time. Dean didn't feel anything anymore.
A/N: Ah, how I love a Dean in pain… or unconscious… or suffering… yeah I know I sound kinda twisted… but hey you're reading the story! Lol… anyway thanks again so much for the reviews! By the way from now on I might not update as regularly cuz I haven't written chapter 6 completely yet, which means I haven't written anything else from this point on lol… so please bear with me but I promise I'll finish this story. Any comment is still extremely appreciated, so I'd love to read more reviews :)
Random Note: I seem to love water as a sort of death symbol… first it was a lake (in my other story "Angels Born on Earth") now it's a pond… my next story will have like a bucket of piss or something that will totally attract Dean into its depths… Please don't take that seriously :)