She was standing in the eerie predawn light wearing the pretty pink dress they'd dressed her in when they'd buried her last year after the fall from her tree house had snapped her delicate neck. Her thick strawberry blonde hair was hanging in careful ringlets just like the morticians had left it before putting her little girl into the earth. Christina Mills looked deeply into her baby's blue eyes and felt fresh hot tears run down her cheeks. "Emma sweetie," she choked on a sob. She didn't worry about waking up her husband. She'd banished him from their bedroom to punish him for building the tree house so high in the tree, and he'd never tried to come back. If she listened carefully enough sometimes she could hear him snoring from the other end of the hall in their small two story house.

"Don't cry momma," Emma's vision said as the First showed the grieving fragile woman what she wanted to see most. "I've come back to you. Your prayers were answered."

"Oh baby girl," Christina almost fell out of the bed as she rushed to touch her daughter's pale cheeks. Her hands trembling with need and pain slid through the girl's apparition like it was so much smoke. "Why can't I touch you?"

"It's his fault momma," the First smiled beneath haunted eyes. "He didn't want to share you no more, so he made sure I'd fall out of the tree house. Momma, daddy wanted me dead. You need to punish him for it."

Christina walked down to the kitchen, her bare feet making small slapping noises on the old speckled linoleum as she walked over to the drawer where she kept her favorite butcher knives. She held the 10" blade up into the light, and smiled when she saw Emma's face reflected in the cold steel. "That's right momma," the First smiled even bright. She was so pleased with how easy these country bumpkins were to manipulate. "Now go show daddy how to play nice."

Frank Mills barely had time to reach up to stop the knife from plunging into his stomach a second time when he saw Emma standing behind his wife in her blood splattered nightgown. Christina's eyes were wild, blood mixing with the tears as they ran down her face. "You killed my baby!" she screamed as she dug the fingers of her free hand into the wound. As he gasped and writhed in pain, she stabbed and sliced at him again and again until he was nothing more than a pile of raw meat on the bed. The First left her there gibbering in a puddle of his blood. She had other things to do before dawn.


Dean wandered into Mimi's Diner a bit after the breakfast rush. His father was off pretending to be an FBI profiler to get information about the rash of murders that had started in the small town. The younger Winchester, while a clever liar, was a bit too young to be taken as the man's partner. The streets of the town were filled with the normal folks heading for work, and taking their kids to school and such. He smiled at a postal worker who was emptying out a mail box, and asked if it was all right to add a letter he'd written to his brother?

"Sure thing," the man said as he shut the box, and stood up slowly to stretch his back into place. "One more letter won't break my back none. You new around here? Don't remember seein' you before."

"Just in town on a road trip with my dad," he said with a shrug. "But I heard it's not a good time to be in town. Something's going on?"

"Well the mayor would hunt me down for spoilin' the tourist trade," the man let out a snort and chuckle as he took Dean's letter from him. "But there's been a few murders here abouts. Don't know what's goin' on, but perfectly normal folks is killin' each other. Might be better you and your dad kept on down the road."

The diner was like a carbon copy of any other diner that Dean had found himself in over the years. A selection of pies in various stages of decomposition in a rotating display case, next to an old style cash register that clunked each time it was open, and the same cast of characters you'd find from one end of the country to the other filling their chosen stools at the counter and the booths that lined the walls. One of the waitresses, a woman who was on the far end of 50 with earrings made of fishing lures smacked her gum as she looked at the handsome young man who had just come in.

"Hiya," he said with a grin towards the locals as they looked him over. "Can I sit anywhere?"

"You'll want to be comin' back here," he heard a familiar voice call from the far corner where Father Caleb was holding up one hand to get his attention. "Maggie, this here's my friend Dean that I told you about. Get him whatever he wants, my treat."

Dean wasn't sure how he felt about taking food from a priest, but then he and his father were rarely holding much in the way of cash. He sank down in the peeled faded pink of bench across from Caleb careful not to touch any of the wads of gum he knew were under the table with his knees. "Thanks for buying me breakfast," he said as he waited for Maggie to fill his coffee cup. "I'd love chicken fried steak if you've got it?"

"Honey, we invented it," she snapped her gum and sauntered off in a uniform that was probably older than either Dean or Caleb towards the kitchen.

The priest was dipping the ends of his white toast into the congelling yolks of his fried eggs while Dean took his first sip of the coffee. "Don't worry," Caleb cast him a crooked grin. "They actually make fine coffee here. So where's your dad this mornin'. I wanted to buy him breakfast too


Dressed in a dark suit and tie, wearing dark glasses, and clean shaven, John Winchester sauntered into the Double Springs Sheriff's Office like he owned the place. He pulled out a fake FBI badge, and flashed it too fast to be looked at closely under the nose of a female deputy at the front desk. "I'm special agent Skinner, and I'm here to see the sheriff."