Smells Like Trouble
We're in the home stretch… Bear with me.
See the top of the story for the usual hoohaa.
Chapter 5
The stench was unbelievable now that the body was no longer contained in its makeshift coffin. Dean covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve, trying not to gag. Sam was turning greener by the second and Dean mentally started to count. Sure enough, at four, his brother ran for the bathroom and he could hear him throwing up everything he'd even thought about eating the day before.
Dean considered going to help, but decided against it. If he moved too much he'd probably end up right where Sam was and it was hard to be in charge of a situation when you were heaving your guts up. The only blessing was that because the body had been stuffed in the mattress there weren't any bugs. Bugs and bodies. Put them together and what have you got? A quick trip to Ralphtown. Maggots had never helped him sleep better, that's for sure.
Sam came back into the room, still looking like death on a cracker, keeping a washcloth over his mouth. "What do we do now?" he demanded, waving with his free hand toward the remains.
"What do you mean 'what do we do?'" Dean asked incredulously. "We salt and burn the chick before she kills anyone else."
"But Dean," Sam said, then stopped involuntarily gagging again at the smell.
"No buts. We might already be too late." Dean turned away and headed for the bag sitting against the wall with the needed supplies.
"NO," Sam said with such force that Dean turned around despite himself and raised an eyebrow, waiting. Sam just looked at him.
"Spill it, Sam!" he barked
Sam pulled the washcloth away from his mouth, anger overcoming his queasiness. "This is a murder scene, Dean! We've got to call the police. If we burn the body, they won't ever know about it. They won't be able to collect any evidence. No evidence, no catching the killer. She's only been dead a couple of days."
"Look, it's probably whoever was in this room the night before we got here. We go shake down the desk clerk and get the info," Dean answered reasonably. "Then we'll take care of it."
Sam's eyes widened to the size of saucers. "Take care of it? We're not cops, Dean. That's not our job or our place! Cops catch bad guys, we catch ghosts."
"Exactly, Sam… And we've got a nasty spook running around our motel ready to kill anyone who hires a 'woman of ill-repute'."
Sam was momentarily stymied by his phrasing. Sometimes the kid looked at him like he was dumb as a post, Dean thought. He would have smiled if the situation weren't so desperate, but the ghost could be killing someone in another room while they were standing here twiddling their thumbs.
"Are you telling me you could just hunt down whoever did this and kill them?" Sam asked quietly, almost as if he were afraid of being overheard.
"Monsters are monsters." Dean's voice was hard. "Look at that woman," he nodded toward the bed, "and tell me whoever did that wasn't an animal that needs to be put down."
Sam only shook his head, disbelief written on his face. "We can't just kill him, Dean. He's a person… A man."
Dean moved closer to his brother. Sam looked so troubled, he almost put an arm on his shoulder, but stopped himself. "Sam, listen," Dean poured every ounce of persuasion into his voice that he could muster, "if we let the cops take her, we'll have to wait days, maybe weeks, before they'll release the body and we can burn it. How many people could she kill in that time?"
"We could sneak into the morgue in a few days after they examine the body," Sam tried.
Dean was already shaking his head before Sam was even finished. He straightened to his full height, much good it did him with his brother. If persuasion wasn't going to work, he'd have to settle for pulling rank. "She could kill more people in the meantime and I won't allow that, Sam. The cops can't stop those murders from happening. We can." Dean knew he was getting louder and louder but he couldn't stop himself. "I'm sorry she's dead. I really am. My guess is she had a crappy life and I know she had an even crappier death, but we can't let her kill more people even if that means letting the guy who did this get away. We're doing this."
"Dean, if the guy gets away, he'll do it again. He'll kill more women. That's no better." Sam's voice was calm and quiet, reasonable. Sam closed the distance between them and put his hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean had to fight the urge to brush it away. Sam had never needed the distance he did, not physically or emotionally.
Dean clenched his jaw in irritation. "Sam, listen…"
Sam cut him off with only a gentle squeeze to his shoulder. "We've got to let the cops do their thing." He stared at Dean, looking down at him like he was the older brother talking to a disobedient child. "Even if we get a name from the clerk, the guy could be half-way across the country by now. We'll never find him. The police have the resources to hunt a man like this. We don't. We have our own hunting to do, our own fight."
Dean turned away, stepping out of Sam's reach and away from his brother's worried, pleading eyes, his oh so reasonable voice. He knew what needed to be done, but would Sam ever forgive him if he did it. Would he be able to forgive himself if Sam was right and two weeks from now they saw a news report of another dead hooker found stuffed in a motel mattress.
His eyes trailed back to the woman's body. Dean knew he wouldn't be able to forgive himself either way, dead johns or dead hookers. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. Well, crap. He'd learned to live with hating himself a long time ago. But Sam… The look on his brother's face, the disappointment, Dean wasn't sure he could live with seeing that look.
Dean grit his teeth. "Fine. Make the call." They would just have to stay and deal with the ghost as best they could until they could burn the body.
"Hey, is there a problem?"
Dean's entire body snapped to attention and he turned toward the door, which in his annoyance he'd forgotten was standing open. Good hunter's instincts, Dean, he berated himself. Sam, too, had stopped on his way to the phone.
The clerk from the front desk appeared in the doorway, but stopped dead at the horrific sight in front of him. Dean was struck once again by just how uptight the guy looked and right now the guy looked like his head was about to explode.
Dean held up a hand to keep him at bay. Holy hand grenades, didn't they have enough to deal with? "We thought there was a funny smell and were checking it out. My brother was just about to call the cops." He gestured to Sam to get to the phone.
To his surprise, the clerk stepped farther into the room, kicked the chair away from the door and let it swing shut. He pulled a gun from his waistband and leveled it at them. "I think that would be a bad idea."
"Well, great," Dean said in disgust, throwing up his hands. "That's all we need." He heard Sam take in a steadying breath and knew he too was thinking furiously, looking for an opportunity. Sam was just quieter while he did it.
"Shut up," the man ordered. "You get away from the phone," he told Sam.
With the door closed, the stench quickly became overwhelming and Dean once again covered his nose and mouth using his shirtsleeve as Sam moved to stand beside him at the foot of the bed. He noticed that the gag-inducing stink seemed to have little effect on the clerk and Dean guessed this was not the first time he'd been near a body in such a state of decay. Sam was right. This man had killed before. He would kill again, and again, as often as he could get away with it…
The thoughts tumbled through his mind over and over. Dean was starting to see red and could think of nothing better than kicking the crap out of the guy and stuffing him in the other mattress. His eyes trailed to Marigold sitting just out of reach on the dresser. He had put her down to move the top mattress. Still, he could feel the reassuring weight at his back of the pistol he had tucked into his waistband, hidden by his shirt.
"You really should have changed rooms when I offered," the man said angrily, his face transformed from the uptight, but mild clerk's mask into a man who could butcher a woman and leave her in a motel room to rot.
"Then what did you put us in this room for in the first place, you moron," Dean shot back. Sam put a restraining hand on his arm. Right, right, Dean nodded that he got the message. No taunting the homicidal maniac. He'd always had trouble with that concept. Just couldn't help it.
The man's face became a livid red. "Because of all the rooms, you had to ask for this one! I didn't have any reason to say no. Besides I figured you wouldn't stay more than a night."
Dean mentally cursed his luck. He'd asked for the room because it was the most easily defensible.
"We weren't going to until we ran across your lady friend here," Sam said and Dean guessed his brother was just a little bit ticked off himself. Maybe they both needed the lecture about not taunting people with guns pointed at them.
The clerk shifted so that the gun, which Dean noted was annoyingly steady, was aimed at Sam. Dean's eyes narrowed. He really didn't like people pointing guns at Sam.
"He's too tall," Dean said in a nonchalant tone. "He won't fit in the mattress."
"SHUT UP," the man shouted. "Just shut up!" He brought the gun back to point at Dean. There, Dean thought, that's better.
No that is definitely not better.
Dean's breath hissed out in shock and beside him he heard Sam gasp. The ghost flickered to life behind the clerk and began a halting walk forward. She bore every wound the man had given her, her body a mass of blood and ruined flesh. The stench in the room suddenly became suffocating and Dean had to blink as his eyes began to water. Between one blink and the next, a knife appeared in the woman's hand and she raised it high as she stalked toward them.
"Dude, get behind me," Dean ordered. Again, he looked toward Marigold, but he knew the man would shoot him if he lunged for the shotgun.
"What?" the man asked in total confusion.
"Get. Behind. Me," Dean said again, putting every bit of authority he could into it. He reached for the gun tucked into his belt.
"Don't move," the enraged man nearly screamed.
"Please," Sam added, finding his voice. "She's going to…"
Sam never got the last word out. The ghost raised the knife high, reaching around the oblivious clerk and drew the blade savagely across his throat, digging it deep into his neck, making certain to open an artery running up the side of his neck.
The man's eyes bulged in bewilderment and suddenly dawning horror, the gun forgotten as he clutched at his ravaged throat, blood spurting in time with his heartbeat.
The ghost disappeared and the clerk fell to the ground, air gurgling through the bloody wound as the stricken murderer tried to breathe. His mouth opened in a silent scream as brutal gashes began appearing one at a time all over his body. In mere seconds, his invisible assailant was reducing him to ribbons.
"Salt, Dean, where'd we put the salt," Sam shouted.
Dean looked around him trying to force his mind to work, finally seeing the duffel bag on the floor behind him. He tore it open and threw the canister of salt to Sam who caught it, already turning, and began scattering it over the woman's corpse. Dean stood with the lighter fluid and simultaneously began dousing the body, all the while hearing the gurgling and thrashing of the man behind them. Dean fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his lighter. He flicked the lighter with one hand and with the other pushed Sam back as the body and the bed with it caught fire in a massive whoosh.
The woman appeared between them and they both involuntarily stepped back from the blood encrusted ghost. She was not looking at them, however. She was looking down at the bed. "Let it burn," she hissed.
"What?" Dean thought perhaps he'd misunderstood.
"The whole place," she rasped. "Let it all burn."
Sam was looking at him past the woman to see how he would answer, and Dean only shrugged. "Yes, Ma'am."
The ghost raised her face upward and sighed, her image flickering as something shuddered through her, and then in a flash of fire she was gone.
The flames were spreading onto the carpeting around them. Dean turned and saw that the clerk, behind them on the floor, was no longer moving, a pool of blood surrounding him as he stared blankly at the ceiling. "Sam?"
"Yeah, Dean," his brother said, beginning to cough from the smoke.
"Salt him too. I don't want to have to come back here," he said, his tone matter of fact.
Sam only nodded and began scattering salt from the industrial sized canister. Dean added a bit of lighter fluid and the man's clothes immediately caught fire from the carpet. Almost robotically, the two gathered their meager belongings and left the motel room shutting the door behind them.
Just a little bit more… Sam wouldn't be Sam if he didn't ask questions. And Dean… well Dean wouldn't be Dean if he didn't get to have the last word…
