Chapter 2

George Ovington was a small man, thin and slightly hunched, which made him seem smaller still. His face was made up of sharp angles and deep hollows, made deeper by his tight expression of controlled grief. Dean assumed he must be Tallie's father, but saw little resemblance between them, besides the small frame. When the brothers entered the office, he was seated behind a heavy mahogany desk behind a pile of paperwork, although he didn't look like he had any intention of working through it. The man was dwarfed even further by the size and expensive furnishings of the room, so he seemed a pathetic figure; an unlikely owner for such an impressive estate.

Sam had reproached Dean quietly on the way up the stairs for using their real names to Tallie. 'It doesn't exactly help our story. And it's not the name on the IDs we're using, you idiot!' he hissed, out of the corner of his mouth.

Luckily, Ovington was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice the details. He sat slumped behind the desk, examining their faces with dead eyes and answering their questions in a hoarse monotone.

'Mr Ovington, we understand that two members of your household have been killed in falls from the balcony in the hallway?' Sam prompted, as sensitively as he could manage.

The man nodded, swallowing a lump in his throat. 'Yes,' he replied, his voice breaking with emotion. He collected himself quickly before continuing. 'My… my wife… uh, she fell. And now, my housekeeper. I don't know how it happened…'

'There's no way somebody else could have been involved?' Sam asked softly.

Ovington was sharper than he seemed. 'You think someone killed my wife?' he demanded. Then his voice softened again. 'No… the only people in the house were me, my daughter and Roberts. Both times. They just… fell.'

'And nobody in the house… had any grudge against either victim?'

'No! They weren't murdered!'

'Ok, I understand,' Sam soothed him, 'and… this is going to sound weird… but… you haven't noticed anything… strange, recently?'

'Like what?' he challenged.

'Uh… maybe, weird noises, at night. Or… lights, not working. Things moving.'

'What kind of question is that? No, nothing. It's an old house, sometimes the lights don't work, sometimes the pipes make noises. Nothing weird. What's happened…' his voice threatened to break again. 'They were accidents. There's nothing to investigate. Should I get Roberts to show you out?' He raised an eyebrow, suddenly exuding authority from his sunken dark eyes.

'No… we can manage,' Dean answered the question, standing and heading for the door.

'Thank you,' Sam said politely as he followed his brother out. 'He's probably right,' he added to Dean when the door had swung shut behind them. 'Coincidences happen.'

Dean raised an eyebrow. No, not really, they don't. He shrugged and headed for the stairs, but was stopped by a shrill voice behind him.

'Dean!' Tallie ran forward and plucked at his jacket with small fingers.

'Hey, what's up?' he asked, surprised.

'I was outside the door,' she admitted, her eyes flicking down as if to acknowledge that she knew she shouldn't have been. 'I heard… the "strange things"… my mirror jumped off the wall. The night Mrs King fell. Does that count?'

'Your mirror… jumped…?'

'Yes. The table was shaking and then the mirror jumped on its own and it broke on the floor by my feet.'

Dean glanced back at Sam. I told you so.

Sam shrugged slightly as if to say 'Maybe, but I'm not convinced yet'.

Tallie seized Dean's hand and he allowed himself to be led into a nearby room. It was decorated in soft shades of pink and yellow, and surprisingly tidy for a child's bedroom, except for the area around the dressing table, which was littered with shards of glass. The wooden frame of a mirror lay amid the mess, cracked cleanly down the middle, showing that it must have collided with the floor harder than just falling.

Dean grabbed Tallie by the shoulders, wary of her bare feet on the broken glass. 'You stay here, let me look, ok?'

She nodded, and perched on the edge of her bed to watch him. He produced a walkman-like piece of equipment from a pocket of his jacket and held it close to the broken mirror while carefully picking up shards of glass with the other hand. Sam looked on unenthusiastically, but then brightened despite himself when the device began whirring loudly, and came to crouch down next to his brother.

The brothers listened to the buzzing for several seconds, then Dean turned it off abruptly. 'Oh, you of little faith, Sammy. I told you I'm always right,' he muttered, under his breath.

Sam looked up at the ceiling sullenly, still unwilling to admit defeat, but unable to find a way out of it. 'Alright. Yes, you were right. Happy?'

Dean grinned. 'Yup.' He turned to Tallie. 'Thank you for showing me… I think I know what's going on, now. What can you tell us about the two people who have died? I know it's hard, but it might be important…'

'I don't mind. First it was her. It's better without her. I'm glad she's dead,' she said, with a child's unreserved honesty.

Sam looked stunned. 'Tallie, your mother?' he asked, horrified.

She turned to him angrily, coals burning in her eyes. 'She's not my mother! She's not!' she yelled, an unexpectedly fierce expression twisting her face, tears glistening in her eyes.

'Hey, hey, ok…' Dean calmed her, crouching down once again to her level. 'Can you tell us if… if she and Mrs King had anything in common?' he asked gently.

Tallie sniffed, composing herself. She shook her head. 'No… I mean… I don't know, they both lived here, I guess,' she offered, shrugging her narrow shoulders.

'Ok. We're gonna go find out what's doing this, ok? Then, when we know, we'll make it stop. And…' he searched his pockets for a scrap of paper, and scrawled on it with a leaky black pen. 'If anything is happening, anything scary… you call me, ok?'

His wide hazel eyes looked directly into her small, tear-streaked face. She explored his eyes, and decided to trust them, taking the scrap of paper. She nodded earnestly.

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'Wow, that kid was creepy,' Sam muttered, one they had found a motel and dumped their bags in the threadbare but clean room.

Dean frowned. It was unlike Sam to be judgemental, particularly where children were concerned. 'So she didn't get on with her stepmother. Maybe the woman was a complete bitch; it's understandable that she didn't want you referring to her as her mother.'

'Dean, that "complete bitch" is dead. And Tallie said she was glad. She's happy that her stepmother is dead!' Sam protested.

'We don't know what her stepmother was like, Sam.'

'Maybe Tallie pushed her,' Sam suggested softly, unsure that he wanted Dean to hear his comment.

'What? Come on, Sam. She's a little shrimp. She couldn't push a kitten over a balcony. Anyway, she liked the housekeeper, she wouldn't have pushed her. And anyway, there was a spirit in that house, you heard the EMF.'

'Ok, ok… Still seems a little creepy, saying she's glad her stepmother is dead… but, though I hate to say it… you're right,' Sam admitted. He blinked, seeming to mentally shake himself. 'So… you reckon… a spirit?'

Back to business, Dean thought. 'Yeah, probably. The mirror throwing sounds like a spirit.'

'Right… so we need to find out what has had a violent death in that house – probably by being pushed off the balcony, or jumping off – and why it's suddenly started attacking now,' Sam summarised, shrugging.

Dean nodded slowly.

'Local records, then, I guess. Library,' Sam concluded, sounding less than thrilled at the idea of long hours of research.

Dean smiled sarcastically, his lips curving into a grin while his eyes remained hard. 'My favourite.'

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The librarian was a frumpy elderly woman who came over twittering and excitable when they claimed to be interested in the old house. Apparently, it had played a fascinating role in the history of the town, had been owned by a series of interesting characters and displayed architectural features dating back to God knows when. It took a while to get rid of the woman so that they could start the slow and frustrating work of scouring through the boxes of records she had brought them.

The "interesting" characters that had lived in the Ovington house over the years turned out to be anything but interesting, and none of them seemed likely material for this particular spook. One owner, Mr Thomas Locksley, had been murdered, but he hadn't been in the house at the time, and he had drowned, not fallen off a balcony. All in all, the search was a failure, and even when every record had been double-checked, nothing remotely promising could be found.

At 7.30pm, the dull librarian returned to tell them she was closing, and ushered them out. Back in the motel room, Sam let himself collapse backwards onto a bed, rubbing his eyes, which were stinging from long hours reading tiny print in a badly lit library.

'Well, it's not the house. Maybe something else… something in the house? If Ovington had bought an antique or something… I mean, objects can be haunted, too, not just places. Like Bloody Mary's mirror.'

'Yeah, I guess…' Dean sighed. He slumped down onto the other bed. 'We'll have to go back and ask Ovington. The library won't have records of everything the guy's bought.'

A few hours later, Dean's cell rang. He frowned at it, confused, then shrugged and dragged himself to his feet and across the room to answer it.

'Mmm?' he asked, as a sort of vague greeting.

'Dean?' the voice was small, high pitched and breathless. Frightened.

'Tallie? You ok?'

'It's here. It's breaking things in the hallway, I can hear it.'

'Are you sure?'

'Ye -' her reply was cut off by a resounding crash in the background. 'I'm sure,' she squeaked.

'Ok, we're coming. Whatever you do, don't go near the stairs! Stay in your room, you hear me?'

'Ok…' Another crash in the background. 'Come quick!'

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The door was locked, of course. Any amount of kicking didn't move it an inch: it was too heavy, too secure. The brothers could hear occasional crashes from inside the house. Giving the doors one last kick, more out of irritation than because it would help, Dean pulled out his cell phone.

'Tallie?'

'It was in my room! Help me!'

'Ok, Tallie, we're here, but we can't get in. We need you to come down and open the door, can you do that?'

'I don't know… it was throwing things… I was hiding under the bed.'

'Is there another way down, without going down the big staircase?'

'Aah, yes, I think so.'

'Tallie, I need you to go down those stairs, and come round and open the front door for us. You'll be ok, just… hide if you see anything…' Dean didn't like having to ask the little girl to leave the safety of her hiding place, but he was pretty sure that no other member of the household would be willing to let them in.

'Ok, I'm coming…'

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Tallie lay still and silent for a few seconds. She could hear distant crashing noises from the hall, but nothing close by. She slipped out from under the bed, still clutching her daddy's cell phone in one hand. As soon as she had cleared the bed, she looked up, taking in the empty room. From her position on the floor, the room looked distorted, and shadowy corners looked threatening. She stayed as low to the carpet as she could – it was safer there, now that Dean had cleared the glass away for her. Her chin was almost close enough to feel the soft fibres of the rug brushing her skin.

She crawled across to the door, pulling herself along with her hands flat on the floor, wriggling her body along behind it. In the doorway, she stood up, with slow, tense movements, opening the door as slowly as she could and wincing when it creaked loudly. She cast a panicked look down the corridor towards the hall. She could see the balcony, and the empty dark space beyond it.

Creeping off in the other direction, hugging the wall, she stopped opposite another door. Somehow sure that it could see her if she ventured out into the middle of the passage, she was terrified at the thought of crossing to Daddy's door, but she had to know that he was ok, and she thought he should know about the bad thing in the hall. Swallowing hard, she dropped to the floor again, and wriggled her way across the polished floorboards of the passage. Straightening up as close to her father's door as she could get, she knocked softly, and called to him under her breath.

'Daddy, there's a bad thing here.'

'Tallie?' a muffled voice asked.

'There's a bad thing in the hallway,' she hissed urgently into the door.

'It's ok sweetheart. Don't be afraid of the dark.'

'But Daddy –,'

'Don't worry. Go to sleep. It'll be ok in the morning.'

She gave up. Daddy didn't want to see her; he hadn't wanted to since the day after his wife had died. She hoped he would feel better soon.

Now clinging to the other wall, she edged down the corridor and finally reached the narrow, curving back stairs. Tallie didn't usually use them: the front stairs were fit for a princess, but these were dull and unimpressive. If they had been a dark spiral staircase, she might have pretended they were a secret passage, but they were no good for that either.

Despite their mundane appearance, she was happy to reach these stairs tonight. She hurried down them, feeling less vulnerable now that she could not be seen from the hall.

The bottom of the stairs came out into the long straight passage from the kitchen to the dining room where Tallie and her father took their meals. It seemed less familiar at night – the shadows were in the wrong places. She ran down the passage, ghosted through the dining room and came finally to the door leading into the hall. It was the same door she had used to surprise the Winchester brothers the day before.

She peeked round the door frame. The hall was deceptively still, all activity seemed to have ceased. Her eyes traced the distance from where she stood to the main door. Maybe twelve steps, if she ran. She glanced around the room one last time, to be sure that nothing was there, then took a deep breath and ran directly to the front door.

Her fingers fumbled for the latch as she collided with the wooden portal, not bothering to slow down. She found it, and the door swung open. To his surprise, she threw herself into Dean's arms, sobbing in relief.

Dean made soft, soothing noises, and stepped into the room, still holding the panicked child.

'Where is it?' Sam hissed, looking around the hall in confusion as they moved slowly into the centre of the room.

The silence was broken by a soft clink sound high above their heads. Sam tilted his head back slowly; afraid of what he would see.

A massive chandelier of brass and dangling glass beads was swaying precariously on its chain in the vaulted ceiling.

'Get back!' Sam yelled, grabbing the back of Dean's shirt and yanking him over backwards, pulling Tallie with him, as the enormous contraption shattered on the hard floor in front of them with a resounding crash, showering them with dislodged glass beads. The three lay on the floor in shock as the echoes of the crash bounced around them.

Among the twisted wreckage of the chandelier frame, a figure materialised. Pale, flickering, dead eyed, but unmistakeably a person. Dean heard Tallie gasp, and felt her draw back against him, away from the figure.

'Is he sorry?' it demanded.

'He might be,' Tallie whispered. 'But I'm not.'

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