Bad Moon 5
Maggie brought Father Caleb a fresh pot of coffee to fill his cup. She remembered when he'd come visit in the summers to spend time with his cousin Lucas and the rest of the Black family. The boy had always been a bit quiet, but now he seemed to have turned out all right. He was talking and laughing along with the stranger boy. Going to the seminary had been good for him. It was good to see that he'd gotten over the death of his mother and his stepmother's abuse. "Here you go father," she winked at him since she was old enough to be his momma. "Did you get to see Lucas?'
"No," Caleb said as he stirred four spoons of sugar into his black coffee. "He didn't come home last night. Sara says it's really bad. I hope I can help out while I'm here." He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise when she winked at him. He remembered her when he was younger, the way she flirted with all the customers, and had an affair with the cook while her husband was at work in the mines all day. He wondered if she even remembered what he looked like before he perished in a mine accident back when he was about seventeen. The slut. He hated being nice to her.
"Well I'm sure you're an answer to their prayers now Father." She winked at Dean and sashayed off, her huge hips tight in her polyester skirt.
"The mailman told me there's been a bunch of murders." Dean said more than he asked while sipping at his own coffee to wash down the heavily peppered white gravy that had smothered his chicken fried steak.
"Seems so," Caleb set his cup down, picking up a napkin to wipe up a spot of grease on the table. "They don't know what's goin' on. Wonderin' if there might be some weird gas comin' out of the mine affectin' people, makin' 'em see dead people and such. Sara didn't have all the details, and Lucas ain't been home to talk to about it."
Dean twisted about in the booth and sprawled while glancing out into the less than crowded street. "You picked a bad time to visit."
"Didn't really pick it myself," the Priest said with a shrug. "I go where god tells me, and it was time for me to see my family. Ain't got much of it left back home to visit with anyways." Caleb thought about pressing his fingers through Dean's lie about being in Alabama to look at colleges. There were no school in Double Springs, and he knew that he and his father the Demon hunter were there to sniff around the trouble the First had been stirring up. But for now, it would be better for the boy to think he had pooled the wool over the country folk's eyes. "Speakin' of which, I should get back to the house. Lucas might have been able to come home, and if he hasn't I'm sure Sara wouldn't mind some of my help with the kids. Tell your daddy I still owe him a meal, Dean. Y'all have a nice day."
Dean watched as Father Caleb passed Maggie a twenty to cover their bill before reaching across the table to finish the rest of Caleb's uneaten meal.
John was stripping out of the suit and tie when Dean let himself back into the motel room. He dropped onto the bed nearest the bathroom, which was his customary spot since he was a kid. His father slept close to the door to protect him and Sammy, while they boys slept close to the bathroom in case they had to pee in the middle of the night. Dean wondered if when his dad got old if they'd trade spots, so he could protect the old man and let him pee in peace at night. "Father Caleb says he still owes you a meal," he rubbed at his near to bursting belly. "Town's dull as watching paint dry, but the diner was good."
"Glad you had a good time," John said evenly. Dean heard a hint of disapproval in his voice, but then there was almost always one there. He'd told Dean to go on to breakfast while he snooped around, but he still thought the boy had been wasting valuable time. "There have been ten murders in the past 3 weeks. Some were murder/suicides and others just killing. The sheriff would find the killer just mumbling about being told to kill by someone they loved who had died."
"So it's a spirit telling them to kill? I know there's a lot of inbreeding down here, but 10 people haunted by the same spirit in different houses? That's just weird." He pulled a package of Ding Dongs that he hoped weren't too stale from the pocket of his jacket and tossed them to his father for breakfast along with a package of beef jerky from the gas station down the road.
"They weren't told by the same person to do the killings." His father pulled open the Ding Dong package and bit a chunk out of one of the dark chocolate covered cakes. It wasn't very fresh, tasted a bit like a hockey puck, but it was food. "Last night a woman killed her husband, cut him into hamburger because her daughter who'd been dead for a year told her to do it."
Caleb dressed now in lay clothes from his duffel bag and a pair of hiking boots from his cousin's closet was driving across town in Sara's old Volvo. He'd sent a tow truck to bring his truck to a repair shop owned by his uncle Steve, and was now on his way to start hunting for a cave he used to play in when he was a kid. The First told him he had to find the small dark hole in the earth again where he'd found strange writing on the walls and had hidden to avoid the older boys in the family and neighborhood picking on him at his Grandfather's house.
The trees were thicker than he remembered, but they'd had plenty of years to grow since he'd been there. He tucked his hands into his pockets to make sure that his knife was where he kept it as he heard the sound of laughter coming through the bushes. He ran the pad of his thumb lightly over the honed blade, hard enough to feel the burn of the blade, but not hard enough to draw blood. He knew just how much pressure it took to draw blood with it. He'd had lots of practice.
He took a deep breath, drawing in the warm country smell of the woods as he got closer to the cave's entrance. As he stepped past a tall stone that he'd used as a landmark for years, he nearly stepped on a girl's t-shirt wadded up in the pine needles. There was a path of discarded clothing ending with the girl's bra and a boy's shorts on the ground nearest the opening. "Hmmm, looks like someone's been sleepin' in my bed," he grinned broadly as he drew out his knife. It'd been a long time since he'd gotten to kill anyone, and he knew it would just brighten his day.
