Sacrifice – chpt 4 – s.n. fic.

by: sifi

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"Right this way gentlemen…" Rabbi Roseman smiled with just a hint of unease while ushering the Winchester brothers into his office. He pointed to his heavily littered desk and closed the door securely behind them then held up a piece of paper with a printed scan of the rubbing on it, "Listen, I'm not a linguist but you boys might be in for a heap of trouble if this says what I think it says…" he told them urgently.

"What kind of trouble?" Dean asked warily and glanced quickly from Sam to the Rabbi.

"The Powerful kind…Did you bring the original?" he asked.

Sam nodded and slid the rolled piece of parchment out of his bag then slid off the rubber band as if it were an original scroll from Nag Hamadi, and gingerly laid it flat.

Damn my boy's got a knack! He's almost got me thinking it's a priceless relic… Dean smiled appreciatively to himself.

"I'm certainly not a historian or anything but this is in excellent condition!" he exclaimed while shaking his head, "…where did you say you got it?" he asked rubbing his hand over his ruddy and sweat damp forehead before assuring himself that his yamulke was still firmly pinned to the three hairs on his head.

"It was in a trunk in the attic… I think it belonged to our Grandfather…" Sam half stammered with a shrug.

Rabbi Roseman looked from Sam to Dean and back again, finally deciding he would believe the younger Winchester for the moment.

"Do you have any idea where or when this rubbing might have been made?" he asked moving quickly to the window where he shut the blinds then looked out between them, a sure sign of outright fear that neither young man failed to notice.

"Well the trunk had a bunch of International Travel stickers on it… I think probably from when they went to Jerusalem…" Dean said and looked questioningly at Sam who nodded and shrugged his concurrence.

On the way to the synagogue they'd worked out how they were going to play this.

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EARLIER THAT MORNING…

"…yeah well if this thing IS from Jerusalem… and if this thing IS behind these wishes coming true or demands being met… or whatever… it needs to be… not accessible…" Dean urged glancing at Sam who was nodding.

"I agree… so…what? Grandma and Grandpa were world travelers and we found this while going through some of their stuff?" Sam asked.

Dean chewed his lower lip and glanced at the rolled parchment, "It doesn't really look like it could pass for fifty or sixty years old does it?" he asked.

"Okay so it was buried deep in some old steamer trunk or something…wrapped in layers of stuff… protected…do you really think we should lie?" Sam asked then nodded his head, "…I guess we don't have much choice…at least until we know what this says…"

"Yeah well I hate to break it to you Sam… but you get the big ones…with those puppy dog eyes of yours…Besides, if it turns out to be nothing, we can come clean alright?" Dean smirked.

"Yeah alright…" Sam smiled, "Dean?"

"Yeah?" he glanced into his little brothers' eyes.

"I don't like this one… it feels…I don't know…"

"Like it might be big?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Sam nodded relieved that Dean understood and somehow more at ease than he'd been just a moment ago.

Dean nodded and pulled the car into a space, he took a breath and sighed it out while grinning at his little brother, "Show time…"

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RABBI ROSEMAN'S OFFICE.

The Rabbi nodded, momentarily lost in thought, "Have you told anyone else about this?" he asked and received double barreled suspicious stares from both brothers.

"Rabbi what is it exactly that you suspect? You're making us a little nervous with all this… cloak and dagger crap…" Dean stepped forward and edged just a bit in front of Sam and swallowed hard.

Rabbi Roseman met his eyes and seemed to genuinely 'see' the man before him then he huffed a chuckle, "Yes, I suppose this does seem a little unusual… I'm sorry… it's just that…" he turned toward the parchment and pointed at it while looking at Sam, "… it would help if I could fold this… do you mind?" he asked.

Sam shrugged, "Not at all."

Again the Rabbi huffed nervous humor and thought, These boys have no clue whatsoever, my God if this is real…heh…my God… heh yeah…

A few deft motions later and the Rabbi had the paper folded and rolled into a cone with the edges of the rubbing touching one another, "Was there anything else in the trunk? A bell perhaps?" he asked.

Dean shook his head, "I didn't see one…. Sam?"

"No… but it's not like we've gone through everything yet…" Sam shrugged then looked at the man who was now at his side, "Why Rabbi? What is it?" he asked.

He passed the paper to Sam and looked between the boys, "When you put the edges together you can see the shape of a bell right?"

Sam and Dean nodded.

"How familiar are you boys with the scriptures?" he asked.

Dean cocked an eyebrow, "Well if you're talking about floods and plagues and stuff… fairly, but if you're talking about all that begat-ing in the beginning…personally, I kinda skipped over most of that…"

"Me too…" Sam admitted sheepishly.

Rabbi Roseman nodded and smiled, "I don't blame you for that… actually what I'm talking about is the tower of Babel…"

"Oh yeah… they almost made it to heaven but God got pissed and knocked it down right?" Dean asked.

Both the Rabbi and Sam looked at him surprised.

"That's the one…in the 1990's archeologists found a mound in Syria that they're attributing to Babylon… so it's possible that while on an excursion your Grandfather could've gone to Syria…but that's neither here nor there… the thing you have to know about the tower, about its creation at least in the Rabbinical sense… is that it was created as a means for man to charge the heavenly realm and wage war on God…" he looked at both Sam and Dean then continued when he was certain he had their full interest.

"I thought it was built so that man could aspire to his own Godhood?" Sam asked surprising both his brother and the Rabbi.

Rabbi Roseman shook his head, "Not according to any of the accounts I've ever come across… though in all fairness, I never gave much thought to the whole thing until you faxed the copy of that rubbing to me…"

"What does it say?" Sam asked softly.

The Rabbi looked around nervously and drew the boys to the desk where he spread open the rubbing once more and pointed to a thicker band of characters where the apex of the bell would be, "See this?" he asked and nodded as they did, "…basically it says 'Property of Nimrod'… in the modern vernacular…"

"Nimrod?" Dean questioned and looked at Sam who nodded.

"Yeah, he was a Mesopotamian king, the first after the flood right?" Sam asked and got an impressed nod from Rabbi Roseman.

"Right… he was Noah's great grandson according to some texts, his son according to others but that's neither here nor there… the fact is that depending on which text you read he either wanted to wage war against God and built the tower to do so, OR when he realized what the builders really wanted he turned his back on them and separated himself from them. The existence of the bell could actually resolve the issue…" he babbled, and chuckled excitedly.

"How so?" Dean asked.

"Well you won't find it in any text that's openly available that's for sure… but there's an account that when Nimrod turned his back on the builders of the Tower of Babel, that God rewarded him for his humility before him, by giving him a bell with which to… manifest… his needs…"

Sam and Dean shared a confused look and the Rabbi could see their familial relationship, it seemed for the moment that he could see far more than he wanted to, the man was terrified and growing moreso with every passing moment. If these boys were right, and if his interpretation was right, he had to fight the urge to fall to his knees before them.

But they said they didn't see it… They could be lying… but why would they? My God if they've touched something that Holy… from the hand of God himself passed into human possession…It's too much… I can't think about it… I can't even begin… Dear God watch over these boys!...

"So what? you ring for service and God comes down and says what can I do for you?" Dean asked skeptically, Sounds more like some kind of demon trick if you ask me… he thought.

Rabbi Roseman burst out a nervous laugh, "Not quite… not quite… but the ringing… the ring is… it's supposed to be… the voice of God… the thing of it is it's not supposed to be audible to mortal ears..."

"Wait a minute, it's a bell… if it's real that is… some kind of metal… or ceramic, or something and a clacker inside that makes it ring… the only way it's not going to be audible is if there's no clacker right? I mean otherwise that's just goes against all the laws of physics since we don't live in a vacuum…" Dean questioned and caught a glimpse of Sam's expression changing from a wincing, 'we're busted' look to one of relief when he covered his tracks by mentioning the possibility that the bell could be made of clay or ceramic material rather than just metal.

"God can do whatever it wants… that's why it's God son…" the Rabbi scrubbed his face with his hands and wiped them on his suit pants. It was obvious he was still nervous but he did appear to have calmed somewhat.

"So… why would God put something like this into the hands of a human… I'm supposing Nimrod was human after all right?" Sam asked.

The Rabbi shrugged and nodded, "For as mortal as biblical era humans were… I mean look at Methuselah... close to a thousand years old…"

Sam nodded and forced a nervous chuckle from himself, suddenly sweating so profusely he could feel his clothes soaking it up even as the drops ran down his back and sides, "Well, all this is kind of a moot point anyway right? I mean without an actual bell to hold in your hand for confirmation…" he shrugged.

"Wouldn't something like that… if it really existed… that would be a very dangerous thing to have in the hands of any living person don't you think?" Dean asked glancing curiously at his brother who was sheened in perspiration, his hair growing more damp by the second.

"Dangerous? Dangerous! It would be disastrous my boy! Absolutely disastrous… it would topple civilization as we know it for any one person to have that level of power…" Rabbi Roseman scoffed and looked at Sam, putting a hand onto his shoulder as his breathing started coming in shorter spurts, "Are you alright son?" he asked.

Sam nodded, and winced, pinching the bridge of his nose and squinting his eyes shut, "Yeah…" he ground out as Dean wrapped his arm around his little brother and looked apologetically at the Rabbi.

"He gets cluster migraines…" Dean explained and started to turn Sam toward the door.

The Rabbi dodged to the table and grabbed the parchment with the rubbing on it. He quickly rolled it and slid it into Sam's messenger bag, "Take this… I don't want it… I don't want to see it again… if you're smart boys, you'll burn that thing… and if you find a bell with writing that matches that rubbing… find some way to destroy it…" he felt the words rupture from his mouth and couldn't have stopped them if he'd wanted to, which part of him did.

"Excuse me?" Dean asked turning back and eyeing him curiously.

"Something like that… the historical implications are astounding purely for academic reasons but if it were to actually exist… and anyone found out about it… well…" he shrugged.

Dean nodded, he understood, "Absolute power…"

"Yeah," the man of religion nodded and muttered a long stream of Hebrew behind them as Dean supported Sam out of his office and down the hall.

Man I hope that's some kind of blessing… Dean thought while setting his little brother into the passenger seat of the car and buckling him in.

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tbc…

Let me know what you're thinking please… I'm extremely curious.

(For the record… The Bell of Babel does NOT exist…it is a fabrication of sifi's own imagination… just so you know)

thanks

sifi.