Author's Beginning Note Thingy: I apologize in advance for any geographical stuff I may or may not get wrong while writing this. I spent six hours watching the movies, the special features, and freeze-framing The Ring, and The Ring Two, but there's only so much research I can put up with... so if you're from Washington or Oregon, and you think I'm an idiot... er... well, please don't. XD

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Three days of very casual, meandering driving, and long restful stops had brought the two brothers out of Washington and into Oregon. At the moment, they were approaching the Southern border. Sam was very quiet throughout the trip, moreso than usual... He spent all his time scribbling away inside his new notebook of obituaries, things he'd collected over the past year, and old articles he'd dug up from even longer before that, all revolving around the strange videotape curse.

"You're obsessed, man." muttered Dean. Curiosity and boredom had driven him to ask Sam exactly what he'd seen during his dream, and even three days later, he could provide a detailed and, he guessed, completely accurate account without hesitation.

"I'm telling you, Dean. It's freaking me out. You know I'm not easily affected by this kind of stuff, neither of us are. We can't be, what with all the hunting we do. But there's something here... something about this, something serious, and it's making me uneasy."

"Well gee, I wonder why. You're mister morbid with a book full of gory obituaries. At least dad had some variety..."

Sam was silent, his head once again bowed as he hunched over the little book, scribbling away.

"Seriously, wells and water and creepy girls and women in mirrors?" Dean breathed, mostly to himself, yet not without a skeptical undertone.

"Happens alot." Sam said shortly. "Bloody Mary." he reminded.

-

Sam stood, looking at his reflection in a mirror. It was oval, on a blank wall, reflecting nothing but his face and the equally blank wall behind him. It all seemed... so familiar...

Something was tickling him inside his throat, and his stomach felt uneasy. He frowned a little. It was hard to breathe, his lungs simply wouldn't take in breath... a gag reflex kicked in and his body convulsed, knocking him forward against his will. A hand shot up to support himself. It hit the mirror. It cracked.

He was coughing, and struggling to breathe again, to no avail. Something felt like it was moving inside him, shuffling around in his stomach and coming up through his throat. Tears streamed from his squinting eyes as his entire body heaved to try and get the thing out!

One more rib-shattering cough and something dark spilled out of his mouth... not blood, it was... solid? With a scraping feeling all along his insides, a long cord pulled its way out of him, thick and spiny. The spikes twitched like legs... insect legs. And when it hit the ground before him, two antenna felt around, before the legs took off running, wrenching the back side out of his mouth.

With a grateful gasp of air, Sam came up, his image reappearing in the broken mirror like a head surfacing above water. Sweat ran down the sides of his face and mingled with the tears as he took huge shuddering breaths... what in hell had just happened?

"Hey," came a voice, familiar, Dean's? But he couldn't look up, his body was still practically doubled over, coughing.

"Hey man, you allright?" it came again, a hand grasping his forearm firmly.

"Yeah..." he gurgled, standing up slowly and shakily, and turning towards the man, "I'm just fi-"

"You won't be for long..." came a raspy reply, and his eyes widened taking in, not his brother, but a small girl in a tattered, dirty white dress, long dark hair covering her face and a slimy hand holding his arm with bonecrushing strength, "Four days..."

-

With a yell, Sam sat up in bed. A dream? he wondered, his mind reeling, head spinning, A fucking dream?. In a moment he realized that this being a dream was in fact a very good thing... throwing up gigantic centipedes was definitely not a normal everyday occurrence.

Still breathing heavily, he looked over at Dean, still obliviously asleep in the next bed over, the dim green light of the clock's numbers, reading 3:12 AM, washing over him. With a long sigh, he fell back on his pillow. Just a dream... he tried to calm himself, Nothing... not cursed... just a... he stopped after having slid his arms beneath the pillow. Something felt... a little wierd...

Sitting back up again slowly, he held out his arm in front of him, trying to examine it, but the lighting was too dark. With a frown, he reached out and turned the light over his bed on at it's most dim, and held his arm up to it, turning it slowly to the side.

His eyes went wide at the sight... burned into his skin was a small handprint, grasping just where it had in the dream.

A bolt of panic shot through him. Sam leapt out of bed, a careless stroke of his hand knocking the little notebook he carried off the nightstand. His feet found their way into his shoes, and then out the door. It closed behind him with a slam.

-

Dean awoke to a loud sound. Blearily, he looked to the door, was that where it had come from? Out the window he saw a figure moving quickly, away from the door and down toward the street.

"Sam?" he whispered, still squinting in the dark. He glanced over to his left, and the bed there was empty.

"What the hell?" he quickly sat up, throwing the blankets off, "Sam!"

Bare-chested, and wearing only sweatpants, he had no time to get dressed or even put on shoes, before he followed his brother, or else he'd get away. In his hurry, bare feet touched the floor beside the bed, and something crinkled beneath them. Curiously, he looked down.

Beneath his left foot was the small book Sam had recently been keeping with him, pages open, some small folded papers scattered out of it. He bent, and picked it up, staring at it curiously. Momentarily distracted, he opened it to the front where the obituaries were all glued. His eyes widened marginally...

Every face of every picture of every article had been scratched out, drawn on with pen until there was nothing more than a black blot instead of a person smiling. He flipped through a few more pages, and they were all the same. Leafing to the end, there were a few hastily scribbled notes, messy and unintelligible, mostly, he figured, because they had been written in a car. But even these faded away, and beyond them the rest of the journal was filled up with more black scribbles, circular patterns, rings...

His hands clenched around the book for a moment before he threw it down on his brothers bed, and stormed out of the room, glancing around in the night. "Sammy..." he hissed.

His eyes finally landed on a lone figure, the only person out this late at night. Tall, lean, standing in place and facing away... the Hotel they were staying in was out of the way, and very much in the middle of nowhere. Right across the street was an old quarry, with steep rock walls and a deep lake down below.

"Sam!" he called, breaking into a run...

-

He stood with his toes at the very edge, blank-eyed, looking down at the dark water, rippling red in the light of the unusual blood moon. His hands were at his sides, hovering just a little ways away from his legs where they'd usually rest. His body was tense, erect, and poised to jump.

"Sam!" came a frantic yell, and with a blink, he looked up confused. How did he get here? Hadn't he just been... in the hotel? When had his dream ended and consciousness begun? He looked around, and wide-eyed, took a step back away from the ledge.

"Sam!" was that call again, but much closer, and breathless. A hand closed around his forearm, and that touched a panic button.

An image of his dream flashed into his mind. The hand grey and the skin sagging and loose. With a cry, Sam sidestepped from the thing that was holding onto him, batting at the arm, and jerking his own out of reach.

"Sam, calm down!" came the befuddled voice, still Dean's.

Breathing heavily, he looked up from his arm, and stared at his brother... still his brother. He swallowed, and took another breath, "Dean..."

"What the hell do you think you're doing!" he stepped forward and demanded furiously. "I'm tryin' to help, what the fuck were you thinking leaving in the middle of the night and coming out here!" he motioned to the dropoff beyond the rocky ledge, leading to the water at least fifty feet below, "Here!"

Sam looked at it, apparently pondering the cliff for a moment, and the water below. "It's like... in the tape..." he muttered.

"I swear to god, Sam, if you start talking about that fucking tape again..."

"No, Dean, this is serious." he stated, taking a step forward, "It's serious, and it's real."

"It's driving you nuts, man." Dean protested, "I saw your book, and what you did to all those pictures, all your freaky little drawings. You're taking this thing way to far!"

"It's REAL, Dean!" Sam yelled, forcefully pushing him back, and holding up his left arm, "Tell me you can't see this." he hissed, indicating the red hand-shaped burn. "I had another dream tonight..." he began, "...that this happened, and a bunch of other shit that happened in the tape before."

Dean stared disbelievingly at the mark, gently reaching forward for Sam's arm to get a better look, but Sam pulled it away.

"Then I... I don't know why... I came out here... it was like I was in a trance. It's real, and I'm cursed." he said shakily.

Dean bit his lip for a moment, still staring at the handprint on his brother, then looked back up to his face, and swallowed. "How long?"

Sam glanced down at the ground and sighed. Dean stepped forward with an expression of worry as his brother turned his gaze back up, and a dark red liquid began to seep out of his nostrils. "Four days."