Disclaimer: The rejection, refusal, or renunciation of a claim, power or property.

Chapter 6 – The Rescue

"C'mon, man, wake up! Dean, please… please don't do this to me…" said a shaky voice coming from very far away. He tried to answer but he didn't know how. In this world, in this darkness, Dean had no voice, no body and no senses to reply with. The voice kept shouting and Dean wanted to answer but he simply couldn't.

Until all he heard was one little plead.

"Dean, please, it's Sam!"

He opened his eyes a little as he began coughing out what seemed to be tons of water out of his abused lungs and desperately breathing in the air his body had missed so much. Although his vision was blurry, there was no doubt to whom that mop of dark shaggy hair belonged.

"Dean? Thank God… Dean you scared the hell out of me!"

Sam.

"Sa-Sammy! How… where- Sam… are-are you okay?" Dean managed to choke out, but his little brother had turned him on his side to help him get rid of the offensive water. The only reason Dean allowed him to do it was because he didn't have the strength to stop him. As much as he tried to move, his heavy limbs were refusing to respond, so he lay there waiting to recover some energy before bombarding his brother with questions one more time.

"Everything's okay now, Dean, don't worry," Sam said soothingly. "We need to get you out of here," he added urgently more to himself and looked over his shoulder.

"Kirsten?" Sam called gently at the woman who stood behind him, her gray eyes puffy and slightly red as if she had been crying. In fact, fresh tears still streamed down her petrified face. Sam understood the tears only too well. He had been unable to find a pulse or even the ghost of a breath coming from his brother for exactly 36 eternal seconds.

Sam's girlfriend was a tall and slim woman with long straight light brown hair that fell freely down to the small of her back, but that was usually neatly tied up in a ponytail. Her skin was as white as a porcelain doll, although her face had turned slightly pink because of the constant sobs.

"Kirsten, don't worry, we'll be back in town before you know it. Just wait a little bit longer, okay?"

She shook off her fear and looked at Sam determinately.

"Sam, you have to get him out of those wet clothes, we could use our jackets to keep him warm-"

"Whoa whoa whoa, I'm a married man, Kiki and I believe you're in a relationship with my little brother here, I mean… Sam and Nacha wouldn't be very impressed," joked Dean, finally finding the strength to sit up. The couple let out a relieved chuckle. "And ah… I think I'll survive in these clothes, thanks."

"Oh my God… We found you floating there and we thought… Dean, are you okay?" she said kneeling next to him and hugging his shoulders affectionately.

"Me? – In case you haven't noticed you two have been missing for like two days, what the hell happened? You guys aren't hurt or anything, right?"

"No… Dean, about that, we have to talk but we gotta get outta here right now. If I'm right, the spirit of that girl should let us go but the other-"

"Wait, Sam, the bones… the girl's bones… they are at the bottom of the pond, we gotta find them and burn them before we go," he said wondering how the hell they were going to get the bones out. His little trip to the bottom of the lake was definitely something he refused to repeat.

"No, Dean, we can get back to that later now we have to go and finish this before it's too late."

"What are you talking about, Sam?" he asked angrily. He hated not knowing what was going on and he hated even more the fact that Sam had saved him when it was Dean who was supposed to save Sam.

"Look, I don't have time to explain now, let's go to your car and we'll talk on the way, okay?"

"Huh? Where are we going?" he asked as Sam impatiently helped him to a standing position.

"To Point Pleasant."

"Huh?"

"Kirsten, I'll drop you off at home, okay? I need you to tell the firm that we're fine… say I'm sick and you were taking care of me or something… just make up anything, alright?

"Yeah, okay."

Dean looked incredulously at his brother, but he knew he wouldn't get anything else out of him until they got to the car.

Sam chose that moment to slide his arm under Dean's left shoulder to pull him up, catching the injured man off guard. He cried out at the pain that went through his shoulder and involuntarily jerked it away.

"Dude, what's wrong?" asked Sam taking a step back and raising his hands in front of him as if to indicate that he wasn't going to hurt Dean.

"Nothing… I had a little encounter with our bitch of a friend before I came."

"Let me take a look at your shoulder…" he approached Dean but again the eldest Winchester stepped away.

"Look, man, you just said there's no time so let's just go, okay?" but Sam had already focused all his attention on his older brother and noticed how weak and sick Dean actually looked. Yes, he had just almost drowned, but it seemed to be more than that. More carefully this time, Sam and Kirsten helped him walk back the way he had come half walking and half running towards the car, trying to get away from the haunted place as soon as possible.

"Dean, you look like crap, what-?"

"It's nothing Sammy… oh, wait I just kinda drowned back there, that's all… not sure if that counts though…"

"I'm serious, Dean, you're far too warm but you're shivering like a… like a freaking ringing phone or something-"

"Shivering like a 'ringing phone'?" Dean laughed at the absurdity. "Sam what the hell kind of comparison is that? I think you've been in New York for way too long-"

"Dean!"

"Alright, alright, it's Canisolus poison, happy?"

"You hunted one of those bastards on your own?"

"No, Sammy, Andrew was there all the way, kicking ass – what do you think? There aren't many of us out there in case you haven't noticed."

Dean hadn't realized how much he was relying on Sam and Kirsten to keep walking. As the car came to his blurry field of vision, he distractedly tried to think if he had ever felt so exhausted in his entire life. The days after the electrocution so many years ago came to mind. Shaking the memory away, other random memories crossed his fuzzy mind, some making him laugh, while most made him shudder. At this point he had no idea where he was or how he was moving but the numbness was somehow extremely comforting.

And so Dean never noticed that they had stopped moving. He never noticed that Sam had walked away a couple of steps uttering a worried, 'what was that noise?' before leaving Dean to the care of his girlfriend while he investigated their surroundings. Dean never heard the huge tree behind him crack loudly, even though the weather couldn't have been finer and the tree couldn't have looked stronger only seconds before.

But his mind regained all focus miraculously when Kirsten and him were violently thrown on the ground a couple of feet away from where they had stood. This was followed by a loud thud and the sound of branches brushing against the ground and each other. Dean could feel a heavy weight on top of him. Had the tree fallen on them? No, it was far too light for a tree; it felt more like a body.

Turning his head was enough to understand what had just happened: the immense tree lay broken exactly were Kirsten and Dean had been standing only moments before. Sam had probably foreseen what would happen and had pushed both out of the way right before the tree collapsed completely, therefore falling on top of his brother and girlfriend.

Sam stood up quickly and helped Kirsten and Dean up. The first hugged him tightly, but almost immediately went back to steady Dean.

"Oh my God, Sam, what the hell was that?"

Dean, on the other hand, smirked at Sam cockily.

"If you wanted a hug, you could have just asked nicely," he said, as Kirsten did her best to keep him on his feet, which he noticed, seemed to have turned into rubber.

"Saved your ass!" said Sam grinning, recognizing the comment as being Dean's way of saying 'thank you'.

"Whatever."

"What was that?" repeated Kirsten, this time demanding an answer.

"I think it's the thing that's controlling the girl… we can't fight it now, c'mon we have to run, the car's over there!" Sam pointed at Dean's Montero before turning to help Kirsten walk Dean to the vehicle.

Because Dean was the only one of the three who wasn't really doing anything, he noticed a dark shape fly fast with enormous wings from a tall tree right next to the one that had just fallen, to the roof of the school, disappearing from their view since they were standing directly below it, only a few inches from the wall.

As soon as the thing touched the roof, a tile came loose. Before Dean could even warn the others about what he had just seen, the tile was falling fast with all intention of hitting Sam's head. Since his little brother had seen nothing, he was completely unaware of the silent threat and Dean panicked. Time seemed to have slowed down as he watched the heavy material approach his head.

Running on pure adrenaline, he grabbed Sam's shoulders tightly with both hands and pulled the younger but heavier man towards him with all his remaining strength. He let out a breath he didn't notice ever holding as he heard more than saw the tile hit the ground and break into a thousand pieces that flew everywhere as if to show the force of gravity in all its might. Fortunately, the tile wasn't big enough and most of its pieces flew low and didn't reach any of them.

Dean felt his left shoulder burn from the movement and effort, as adrenaline began abandoning him only too quickly. The fever and exhaustion blinded him and suddenly his firm legs became fragile noodles again. Unable to support his own weight his knees bent and only Sam's strong grasp prevented him from falling hard on the ground.

"Let's get the hell out of here," muttered Sam, gulping at the sight of what had been so close to crack his head open. He shifted Dean as well as he could over his shoulder and headed straight to the car.

"So, do you wanna tell me what happened to you and Kirsten?"

Sam jumped in surprise on the driver's seat. For half an hour he had driven, dropped Kirsten at their apartment and carried on with Dean still out cold on the back seat. Deep in his own thoughts, Sam hadn't noticed that his big brother had woken up and was now leaning heavily with his good arm on the back of Sam's seat, like an impatient child wanting to know if they were 'there yet'.

"Dean! When did you wake up-?"

"Just now... so?"

"Well… I thought you called me from Averill… you said you were hunting something and you needed help straight away so I came…"

"Yeah, Alex McQuail told me about that… I guess you figured it wasn't me once you got there. Wait and you brought your girlfriend with you?"

"No, man, that's the thing. I was gonna take Kirsten home first but something happened… the roads were blocked; a cop told us there had been some sort of accident and the only way was through Averill. I didn't think anything of it, but when we were passing right in front of the school, the car sort of died. After that all I remember is waking up in the attic of the school. Oh and the freaky-looking dead girl."

"So how did you break free anyway… which, by the way, made me feel like a total retard for coming all the way here."

"Actually, you distracted the girl just in time. She was getting seriously frustrated and kept saying that 'it won't leave her alone,' whatever 'it' is. She started shouting and things started floating around her-"

"Dude, that sounds like 'Carrie'!"

"-and she was about to throw everything at us in some kind of… nervous breakdown, when she saw you through the window. And then she was just gone."

"Just like that? She left you guys alone?"

"Yeah, I also thought it was too careless, but then I think this girl's being forced to do this against her will-"

"-or she has some serious PMS problems… but seriously, I get it, she just seems to want to be free. Plus she was a peaceful ghost before, and she just started attacking well… us."

"But why us?"

"Well, I dunno, but when sexy school-girl went to visit me in the hotel, she said 'it' wanted me." Sam's heart skipped a beat and tensed for a second before swallowing and relaxing again. The action didn't go unnoticed and Dean knew Sam was keeping something from him. "Which reminds me, why the hell are we going to Point Pleasant?"

"If it wants you… Dean… I think I know what this thing is and why it's after you. We have to get to Nacha and Andrew before it's too late."

A/N: Okaaay, sorry about the delay, it took me a while to manage to get so much information in one chapter in a sort of… wannabe-entertaining way lol… thanks so much for your reviews! When I was stuck I went back to read them and felt encouraged and managed to write again lol cuz you guys are too nice! I mean what's the catch- you guys gonna throw some random online scarecrow at me?

Random Note: Wait that'd be sorta cool… I think there's potential for a new story there – Sam turns on his computer and is attacked by an online monster… love it. Ahh so many good ideas... with the bucket of piss and the online monster, I think I should write a freaking movie script, it would so be my ticket to fame.