Hey again, guys! I'm so happy to be writing again, I can't even tell you...I haven't had ANY internet access for almost two weeks, it's been awful! I guess I'm pretty addicted to this site, because I had some serious withdraws – not just from writing, but from reading and reviewing too! I just caught up on all the stories I've been following. Oh, and is anyone else traumatized by the first two episodes of the second season? I'm not going to say what happened in case anyone didn't see the premiere, but let's just say I'm pretty depressed. The story must go on anyway, right? Here goes...


The ride back to the motel was silent – well, silent save for the blaring Metallica music Dean had turned on immediately upon entering the Impala. To Sam, however, it was as if a blanket had been laid over the car, smothering all sound and preventing any noise from penetrating his brain. He had told Dean that everything was fine, that what he had seen was no big deal. He had to, had to assure his protective brother that he was unfazed by his morbid vision. If he didn't, there was no way in hell that Dean would ever let him step foot into the colossal mansion, and if that were to happen Sam was sure more people would die. He had to put aside his fears and be the warrior he was raised to be, the warrior that Dean hadn't ever stopped being a moment in his life. He told himself repeatedly that his visions weren't set in stone, that they constantly changed. They could be stopped – he had stopped Max from killing his stepmother, hadn't he? And...he gulped…from killing Dean. This shouldn't be different. Sighing, he laid his head against the passenger side window, letting the coolness of the glass soothe his still aching head.

Dean drove without thinking of anything but what had just happened in the diner, without thinking of how pale and helpless Sammy had looked, trapped within the dark confines of his own mind. He had felt helpless himself, unable to do anything but sit there like an idiot. He had decided to turn on the Metallica on the way back to their crapshoot for two reasons: one, to assure Sam that he was fine, as the music was such typical Dean-o behavior, and two, most importantly, to steady his own nerves. He hummed under his breath to "Ride the Lightning", attempting to seem carefree and relaxed, as he usually was. He also tried to ignore the fact that a word hadn't been spoken throughout the entire trip.

The motel slowly made its way into his line of vision. The peeling gray paint on the outside looked even worse under the harsh morning light than he remembered from the previous afternoon.

"We're back in heaven, Sammy," he said sarcastically as he rolled the classic car into the parking lot.

"Great, Dean," the youngest Winchester moaned as he raised his head from the window. "That's just fantastic."

"Still a bit sleepy there, Sammy boy?" said Dean, ruffling his hair.

"Dude, I'm not five," said Sam. "I'm fine."

"Whatever." Dean decided not to press the issue. If nothing had just happened at the diner, he wouldn't have thought anything of Sam's grumpiness. He opened the heavy metal door of the Impala, waited for Sam to do the same, and walked with his brother to their depressing motel room. Upon entering, Sam flopped down onto the bed, spreading his body into a spread-eagle.

"Man, I could use a nap, bro."

"Uh, dude," said Dean, laughing. "Have you forgotten what I found in those sheets yesterday?"

Sam immediately bolted upright, grimacing and rubbing his hands over his body, as if to cleanse himself of the germs he had picked up from the filthy mattress. "Gross, man!"

Dean just laughed. "If you get syphilis or something, I am so not taking care of you."

"You can't get syphilis like that, Dean. You have to be..."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "You really want to continue on with that riveting explanation, bro? I could use a good sex-ed lesson."

"Never mind," said Sam, his face reddening. "You know what I mean. I just...I think I'll take a shower now."

"Probably a good idea, brain-boy."

Sam went into the dank bathroom, closing the old wooden door behind him. At a loss for anything else to do, Dean opened his laptop, placing it on the small round table in front of him. There had to be some other way to get rid of the spirits. They could use rock salt, but it would be only a temporary repellant from the ghosts. They had to get rid of those bastards.

Dean mentally went over the situation, as it had begun to get jumbled in his mind. Okay, there are spirits throughout every section of the house: a group of those who died by the Winchester rifle, a group of construction workers who never stopped working, and Sarah Winchester herself. Sarah had killed Tommy, the construction worker, to get revenge on her own workers for not rebuilding the house after the earthquake to meet her expectations. Sammy had seen himself die in both of his visions, apparently at the hands of a man who had been shot and killed by the famous gun. It seemed as if the workers were the only ones who hadn't yet caused any harm – they were also the ones who likely didn't even know they were dead, since Sam and others had heard construction noises in the house. So...we just have to get them all to leave, thought the eldest Winchester. Great, this is gonna be a blast.

Logging on to the internet, Dean navigated to his favorite site: Google. He wasn't much of an in-depth researcher. Feeling like an inexperienced idiot, he typed in "getting rid of malevolent spirits" into the search bar. He clicked on a couple of sights to no avail – people had some pretty twisted ideas about how to handle the supernatural. He wished he could just do what he always did in similar situations, but he didn't exactly feel like digging up hundreds of graves and salting and burning bones of people who may not even be involved in the case. He figured they could probably find Sarah's grave, but if they were caught at the cemetery at night excavating the corpse of a famous woman in history, the results would certainly not be pretty. And besides, there was no guarantee that would end the other haunting – even if she WAS the center of it.

He remembered how Missouri had led them in cleansing their old house of the poltergeist, but he had no idea what she had used. Sam could probably recite the ingredients the woman had placed in those little bags to him if he asked. He considered it for about a second, until he realized that that hadn't even ended it. The poltergeist had stayed in that case, and that was only ONE. These sons of bitches weren't poltergeists, but they were nasty as hell and they wouldn't leave the mansion easily. Frustrated, Dean clicked on the next site he saw: "Haunted?" Among other things that seemed fairly useless to him, he caught the words:

...I also recommend smudging with sage (I prefer white sage). It is a simple and powerful way in which to remove negative energy from the area. Smudging is a Native American ritual. To use the sage, place a few leaves in a fireproof container (I use an albacore shell) and light them or light the bundle. The flame will go out in a short time and the sage will begin to smolder. Fan the smoke with your hand or feather. Say a blessing of protection as you walk around. Fan the smoke around you, imagining it passing through you, flowing through you, and drawing out all of the imperfections that have collected within yourself. I recommend going to the farthest part of your house and work yourself towards the front, opening a window where you can draw all of the negative energy out. Don't forget to smudge closets, basements, nooks and crevices, etc.

Maybe it would work...except for the whole "opening a window to draw the negative energy out" thing, (he REALLY didn't want to open any windows) and the advice to "smudge" the sage and every nook and cranny of the "house". This was much more than a house, it was a mansion! Well, at least it was something...a bit too new-agey, "hug-a-tree and get high with me" for Dean, but he remembered hearing that sage was a powerful spirit repellant from dad. And that was good enough for him. Still, he needed more.

He laughed a bit as he found the next portion of the same article. Sammy would love it.

Because spirits were once living, breathing people, the best thing to do is to actually speak to the spirit. In essence you have to act as a counselor to the spirit to get to the bottom of the activity.

This was definitely up his little brother's alley. Dean could always see Sam as some sort of psychiatrist, an image he had conjured long ago upon seeing how Sammy interacted with their traumatized clients. He stared at them with his brown doe-eyes, always ensuring their trust and without fail always got them to reveal their deepest secrets. But counseling murderous ghosts? Now that was out there, at least to Dean. His core belief was that anything supernatural should be killed, not given a tissue and asked to spill its problems.

He was startled from his thoughts by a yelp from the bathroom, followed by a crash. Immediately going into older brother protective mode, Dean ran to the door of the bathroom and began pounding on the flimsy wooden door.

"Sammy? What's going on in there? Are you okay?"

All he heard was running water from the other side of the door, so he continued pounding. He didn't notice when the door opened – that is, until his still moving fist clocked his brother in the face.

Sam stumbled, falling onto the wet bathroom floor. He pinched his nose, as it had begun to bleed. "God, Dean! What was that for?"

Dean reached down, giving his brother a hand so he could stand up. "Man, Sammy! I thought something happened to you, is your nose okay?"

Sam tilted his head back, keeping his fingers pinched on his nose, adjusting the towel around his waist with his other hand. "You thought something happened to me in the BATHROOM? Dude, I think I'm capable of showering on my own."

"You never know, with all the crap we see. So, you're good?"

"Yeah, I'm fine man. It's not like that's the first time you've clocked me."

"It's the first time I've done it accidentally," clarified Dean. "There's a difference."

Sam just shook his head, laughing. "You never cease to amaze me, Dean."

Dean shrugged, a glint in his eye. "What can I say?"

"You can SAY," said Sam, "'sorry for banging down your bathroom door and punching you in the face.' Just a suggestion."

"I'm not saying I'm sorry until you tell me what happened. You havin' a party in there or something? You yelped like a little girl, sounds like you must've been having some fun."

"What do you think happened, Dean? Look where we are. With all of the other crappy things in this room, a good shower is pretty unlikely. The water turned brown, and then turned, like, twenty degrees. I bolted out and knocked over the trashcan by the bathtub, and I was trying to freaking pull a towel around my waist and turn off the water when you started banging like the world was coming to an end."

Dean looked at his brother silently for a second, and then began laughing hysterically. Gasping for breath and holding a stitch in his side, he said "Aww, Sammy! I can't believe you just said it all like that, as if you thought it wasn't just a little embarrassing! Little Sammy scared of cold water?"

Sam looked up, shaking his head impatiently. After Dean's laughter ceased, he looked back at his brother. "What about you, huh? Why were you so freaked out?"

"Why was a freaked out? Sammy, we were raised to always be on alert, to think that every little thing was supernatural. Besides, you and showers...with your weirdly long legs...you know, you're bound to fall at some point."

"So it had nothing to do with earlier?"

"Earlier?" said Dean innocently, pretending not to know what he was talking about. "What do you mean?"

"Come on, Dean! Seeing my own death? Passing out? You don't think you're just a little freaked still?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. I don't know, Sammy."

Sam sighed. "Whatever, Dean." His eyes scanned the room, landing on Dean's open laptop. "Find anything new?" he asked, walking over and looking at the screen.

"Not much," said Dean nonchalantly. "Mainly just a load of bull about-"

"-counseling spirits?" finished Sam for him, reading what Dean had left on the monitor.

"Yeah, I thought you'd find that funny, Sammy-boy."

"Why would I find that funny? Maybe it'll work."

"'Maybe it'll work?' Dude, spirits need to be shot up, not given a freaking psychiatric session."

"What other suggestions do you have, Dean?" asked Sam, exasperated. "I mean, these ghosts have some issues. Maybe we can talk to them, convince them to move on."

"What makes you think they'll talk to you?"

"Supernatural things are kind of drawn to me, Dean. You're the one who keeps telling me I'm a ghost magnet with all of my 'psychic' powers, if that's what you want to call them."

"Uh, Sam? Are you forgetting that these bitches THREW YOU OUT OF A WINDOW? Do you really want to talk to them?"

"They threw me out of a window when I had a gun, remember? Maybe I'll hide it this time, they'd have no reason to want to kill me."

"When'd you get so damn into philanthropy?"

Sam smiled. "So you think it's worth a shot?"

"Maybe, Sammy, but I'm standing right behind you the entire time, and you're going NOWHERE NEAR a window, got that?"

"You really think I want to go near a window at this point? I don't think you've got to worry about that."

"Okay, you can try your little 'cry it all out, it'll be okay' method. I'm gonna burn some sage, too, just in case."

Sam looked mildly surprised at this. "Sage, huh? It is a pretty good spirit repellant, but it's not really your style, is it?"

"Well, everything that's my style has been shot to hell, hasn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I'm tired of all this talking, I gotta get out." Dean walked to the front of the motel room, grabbing his jacket from across the chair. It was summer, but Dean Winchester's "layered look" never changed.

"Where are you going?"

"Where are WE going, Sammy, I'm not leaving you alone. And the answer is a bar, I gotta tie one down, maybe hustle some pool, and definitely score a hot blonde. We've got till sundown."

Sam groaned. Bars weren't really his thing, but he'd go for Dean. "Fine, let's go."

Dean grabbed his keys, and flashed Sam a smile. "I've gotta get some M&M's on the way, too, don't let me forget."

"I won't." No, his brother never did cease to amaze him.

TBC


I hope this explained a bit more...I had to do a little wrap-up, because I think the story was getting a little too complicated. I hope you liked it, please review! As always, I have no idea when my next update's going to be...hopefully soon!