Disclaimer: Rated M for occasional language (Dean, you wash your mouth out with soap, boy..!) and probable gore in later chapters. Beware the odd spoiler for the first half of Season 1. Any places and people mentioned are fictionalised. I don't own the boys or the concept, although, like everyone else, I wish I did. Especially Dean...

A/N: Apologies for any British spellings, and general lack of American knowledge - only ever set foot in the fair old US of A for a couple of hours, so it's mainly guesswork, hope it's close to the mark. This is my first ever fic, so please read with a considerate eye...!


Chapter 1

She fought vociferously, with every last ounce of breath that would soon become as worthless as her continued existence. But it was impossible to ignore the futility of her plight, and like that turn of the head that is made and instantly regretted when passing a horrific road accident, her attention lingered on it, foundered in her pain and misery, for just a hair too long. Which, in less time than it took for the appalling realisation to fully suffuse her prostrate form, was her undoing.

Her ruined body continued to draw ragged breaths. A reflex, nothing more.


"Sammy, what time do you call this?" Dean's tousled mop appeared from under the grey blanket, his barely-open eyes meaning his expression bore a freakish – Sam inwardly chuckled at the word – resemblance to that of a newborn pup. He grinned, painting on his favourite naively innocent face, knowing it would rile his brother no end.

"Cold shower time Dean." His grin, if it were possible, intensified. He was rewarded with the sight of his already irritated sibling becoming vertical too hastily – and clouting his head one hard on the solid oak bedstead as a result. Muffled curses followed. Lots of them. Sam threw him a glance of mock-reproach.

"Little early in the day for that kind of language, don't you think? Sorry, rhetorical question, don't answer." A smirk, picked up subconsciously from Dean's veritable arsenal of facial expressions, stole across his features. Dean, his eyes now playing ball and ungluing at least, grimaced.

"And just why is it cold shower time? Unless you're actually not my baby brother at all, but Angelina in a very effective disguise which any moment you're going to whip off and I'm suddenly going to find myself powerless to move underneath your unflinching gaze."

"Dude! That's just….yuck!"

"Score one for the Deanmeister!" Dean, now fully compos mentis, beamed toothily. Sam raised his eyes to heaven and tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that had fleetingly twinged in his gut at his brother's words, powerless to move… That had happened all too frequently to his brother in altogether less flippant situations, and Sam felt uneasy that Dean made such comparisons so unthinkingly. He shrugged off the feeling like removing a familiar old coat, and returned his gaze to meet his brother's, which was giving up a fine example of that smirk that Sam had been modelling only moments before.

"Yeah, whatever Dean. But before you get all smug and start creaming your shorts over there, you might want to consider the fact that your wiener ain't going to be in the best of shape for anything in a few moments, especially Angelina. That's if you're planning on getting washed today. Which I suggest you do." Sam's nose wrinkled as supporting testimony. Last night's hunt had been messy – and sweaty.

"That's the whole point of taking a cold shower, stupid. You don't do it before the event. At least, not unless you really want to prolong… Are you saying I smell?"

"Like a warthog on heat."


Rapidly vacating the shower room, Dean could've sworn he'd be singing soprano for the rest of his life. They would really have to find a steadier source of income so they could afford better than this, he thought angrily as he towelled feeling back into his granite nipples.

"Steady on, you'll rub them off. I'm sure Angelina wouldn't approve."

Ignoring his brother's bait, Dean instead chose to get to business. It never was too early to think about busting some evil motherfucker, even if one wasn't yet fully clothed.

"What's next on the agenda then, Sammy?"

Sam sobered visibly and looked grateful for the bone he'd been thrown. He shuffled some of the dailies on the bed next to him and glanced at the laptop that he'd obviously fired up whilst Dean had been undergoing his arctic cleansing.

"Well, I've been looking back over some of the articles and postings we've collected over the past few months. Something caught my eye, I'm not sure if it's anything, but I decided to go back and have another look after I downloaded an interesting blog that day we did some library research for this hunt."

"You mean you weren't entirely focused on the task in hand geek-boy?" Dean wasn't surprised that Sam had filed away other likely titbits of information; Dean regularly did this himself. Only mentally, obviously – no more of this multi-media thing for him than was absolutely necessary. Still, as he gratefully pulled on his clothes, almost tripping over his own legs in his haste to return his body to a temperature above zero, Dean lost no momentum in the verbal torment of his brother. "That'll be why we ended up in several shades of crap last night – and I do mean that both literally and figuratively."

"Oh my God Dean, have you been possessed by the spirit of a malevolent dictionary? Bring back the real Dean, he doesn't know words of more than three syllables. In fact, the only one he can really manage with three syllables is his surname, and that's a struggle."

"Which side of bed did you get out of today, the one right next to the wall?"

"Do you want to hear my findings or not?"

Dean relented, and held his hands up in a pax gesture which signified a truce. For the moment. Sam continued.

"The blog is from a woman who has been writing about her ongoing search for her missing son. At least, state police told her he wasn't missing, that he was alive and well, and when she persisted they showed her the CCTV footage to prove it. But she's been unable to contact him." Dean shrugged.

"There's nothing unusual in that. Sounds to me like the boy just doesn't want to be contacted." We know someone else like that, he thought, but knew better than to say.

"Well, yes that's what I thought at first, which is why I filed it, but something that bugged me about it made me go back and take another look. This woman posts on her blog, regular as clockwork, every day at more or less the same time, and each entry is date and time stamped. Three days ago the entries just stopped."

"So? She found him. Or decided he didn't want to be found." Again, that uncomfortable closeness to home. "Either way, nothing supernatural about it." Dean had already written it off and, presumably sensing this, Sam's voice grew impatient.

"Well, maybe… But there's been more than just this one case. A few made it to the newspapers, one or two even national. Parents, relatives, reporting a loved one missing, police finding them, but not helping the relatives regain contact. In some cases even hindering. Letters of complaint have been written to quite a few local papers, from all across the country. But this is the weird part Dean – some of the people who have dropped off the radar recently have been those same relatives who were looking to find someone in the first place. And what convinces me even more that this is one of our gigs? All the lost folk were headed for the same town."

Dean had to admit that this was starting to sound a tad more promising. He wrestled features that were inclined to stall on a grim frown into a more light-hearted grin.

"Well, God help us if it doesn't look like we're gonna be following up another one of your shitty leads bro. How is it that I always seem to unearth the intel on the more entertaining excursions?" Sam pointedly ignored him, a trick he had annoyingly mastered even before he was out of diapers, and fastened his laptop with a snap. Doesn't he know you're meant to respect your elders? Honestly, the youth of today… Dean began an internal monologue of variations on a theme as, with a little more force than was strictly needed, he tossed the various tools of his trade – some trade – into his fraying holdall. Then he made a concerted effort to bring closure to his mental tirade and glanced at the nearest encircled newspaper article.

"Humnoke, Arkansas." He stuffed the papers as noisily and carelessly as he could into the top of his bag and continued. "I reckon that's gotta be at least a day's drive from here. We should get going. I need meat first though." Unconsciously, he struck his best Neanderthal pose.

"Fine. There's a diner a few doors down." Matter of fact, that's pretty much all there was; and disgruntled was written all over Sam's ugly mug. Dean perked up again at the realisation.

"Diddums. No rocket and parmesan shavings for you today, lady-boy. I hope you're intending on brushing those locks of yours before we're seen in public together, Samantha."

"Whatever, Deanna."

In the midst of the reassuringly jovial banter, Dean was almost successful in quashing the dread that had set up home in his intestines the moment he had processed Sam's new information. A small, out-of-the-way town to which people seem to go and not return – what if that's where Dad is.

He was almost able to mask his foreboding in hungry anticipation of wolfing a king burger, extra pickle, heavily salted fries on the side.

Almost, but not quite.


The drab colourless town floated into being on the horizon like an unwanted mirage. Her foot hesitant on the gas pedal, she let herself drink in the view. It tasted like dirty bath water. Even the highway was void of life, and from here, as she cranked down the window and took low breaths to calm herself, she fancied she could sense a strange marriage of dust and putrefaction on the air.

She was glad she had pumped the tank full of gas at the last station she'd passed; that had been at least fifteen miles back and she hadn't set eyes on another one since. She got the sudden, slightly hysterical notion that she would be trapped in this place, held captive simply by something as prosaic as a lack of fuel. She shrugged off the feeling with an abrupt, humourless laugh, with which she startled herself, and determinedly brought her emotions under control as she fixed her gaze on the vestiges of civilisation in the distance.

Humnoke, Arkansas. Population: 280. And, for the first time in decades, growing.


A/N: Well, I hope you liked it. I'm really worried that my style will be too English, so please, any hints are really welcome. Not 100 percent sure where the story is going either, but I do know it's gonna involve lots of physical and mental pain along the way...! Hope you stick with me on the journey!