Author's note: Thank you to everyone who's reading my new book, Julia's Heart! Here, as promised, is Act One of this story. (Because of my research into television scripts, this is the longest section of the story. Just so you know.) Act Two will be coming tomorrow.
Looney Toons
by Elfinblue
Act One
18 Hours Earlier...
Roadrunner, his head down between his feet, peered at them upside-down. Dean Winchester leaned to the side and tilted his head, reading the upside-down speech bubble. It said, "BEEP BEEP!"
A confusion of voices rose and fell around him and red and blue lights strobed across the three-foot tall cardboard cutout. The glass window lights beside the front entrance showed blue sky and broad daylight ouside, but the Charles Jones Museum of Comic, Cinematic, and Theatrical Art was closed.
"Who found the bodies?" Sam asked.
Sam, dressed, like Dean, in full FBI outfit, was talking to a uniformed cop and a sophisticated-looking woman in her late sixties. The three stood over a pair of covered corpses, while Dean wandered the area, examining the museum's art collection. The building contained everything from rough pen and ink drawings to finished movie posters and CGI imagery.
The blood spatters, drying to brown, were, oddly, not the most garish thing in the room.
"Two of our patrol officers." the cop said. "The break-in triggered an alarm and when the security company couldn't reach their guard, they called us."
Dean spun on his heel and joined the conversation. "So, we know who the guard is. Got an ID on the other guy yet?"
"Yeah, Mick Hartley, local druggie. Figure he broke in looking for something he could sell to get a fix. The guard surprised him and Hartley shot him."
"Okay," Sam agreed. "That makes sense. But then, what got Hartley?
"That's the question, isn't it?"
Dean, Sam and the Cop moved closer to one of the bodies and the Cop pulled down the sheet to reveal a mangled corpse. It was a young man; one who had lived hard and died harder.
His clothes were ripped and slashed. Raking claws had sliced his torso to ribbons. His arms were dotted with welts leaking black fluid and his face and shoulders were covered with small bite marks.
Sam took a pencil from his pocket, dipped it into the black fluid and sniffed it.
" It smells like ink," he said, surprised.
"Ink?" Dean asked. "Seriously?"
Sam shrugged.
The cop had a theory. "We figure it was some kind of animal. Possum, maybe. Rabid raccoon. Must have got in during business hours and hid. Gunshot scares it, it comes out and attacks the only thing moving."
Dean nodded at the body. "Those bite marks look like possum teeth to you?"
Sam was examining them. "They almost look human, except that they're way too small. He'd have to have been attacked by a child."
"Or a midget."
Sam gave Dean a warning look. Dean shrugged and tried to look innocent.
The older woman, whom they knew to be the museum curator, interrupted them, sounding like she was quietly freaking out. "What I want to know is, who vandalized that display? And why? And how?
"What display is that, ma'am?" Sam asked.
She indicated an easel behind the guard's body.
A blood-drenched movie poster depicted a stone pyramid, washed by moonlight. The central picture was surrounded by a frame made up of arcane symbols. The movie title, "The Monster Within", was splashed across the top in a garish font.
The cop squared his shoulders, and tucked his thumbs in his belt. Dean imagined he was glad to have something he knew how to deal with.
"I don't think that's really what you'd call "vandalism", ma'am. It just got hit by the blood splatters when Hartley shot the guard."
"I don't mean the blood. I'm talking about the other."
Dean and Sam leaned in and studied the poster while the Curator watched them expectantly.
"You don't see it?"
They looked again, then looked at each other and shrugged.
"The monster," she said. "It's gone!"
*SPN**SPN**SPN*
Sam stood by the Impala, a poster unrolled across the hood, his laptop open beside it. From the corner of his eye he saw Dean come down the museum steps carrying his EMF meter. He spoke without looking up from the poster.
"Anything?"
"Nothing. No EMF, no sulfur, nada. You?"
"Maybe. This is a print of the movie poster that I got from the gift shop. The one on display was the hand-drawn original. Check out the monster."
He slid to the side, making room for his brother to join him. The print was the same as the original poster, but without the bloodstains and with a monster lurking on the pyramid steps. Vaguely reptilian, it had four legs with sharp claws, a long, barbed tail, a sinuous neck and the head of a human infant, but with reptilian eyes and fangs protruding from his mouth.
"Human bite marks, but child-sized. And is that a stinger on its tail?"
"Could be. The monster didn't have a name in the movie, but it's commonly called Baby Fang. Man, how twisted does someone have to be to come up with something like this?"
"What I don't get is, how come I never heard of this movie? I thought I'd seen every monster movie ever made."
Sam consulted his laptop. "The Monster Within, 1967. A deeply dramatic psychological horror film about the damage unresolved childhood issues can wreak on the human soul. Swedish, with subtitles."
"Oh," Dean said, voice flat.
Sam frowned thoughfully. "That sounds kind of interesting."
Dean gave his brother a disgusted look and moved on.
"So we got any theories here, Freud?"
Sam shrugged. "Vengeful spirit? Guard gets murdered, takes the form of the last thing he sees to kill his killer?
Dean's was shaking his head before Sam finished speaking.
"Can't be. There's-"
"No EMF. You can have EMF and no ghost but-"
"Not a ghost and no EMF." Dean finished their joint exercise in supernatural logic. "So..."
"So..."
They stood and thought for a few seconds in companionable silence.
"We know anything about the guy who drew this?" Dean asked. "He still alive?
Sam checked his research. "Ah, yeah. Louis Ernesto Thune. He's living in a retirement home up in the hills just north of here.
"Toon?"
Sam caught the amused undertone in his brother's voice and shot him a sideways glance. "T-H-U-N-E." He spelled it out. "Thune."
"So this guy's name is Lou E. Thune?"
"I doubt he goes by that. You think we should go talk to him?"
"Oh, yeah! Definitely! Let's go see just how Lou E. Thune he is."
*SPN**SPN**SPN**SPN*
A roadrunner raced along beside the Impala as she traversed a long, barren stretch of scrubland but peeled off when she reached the beginning of the long, steep, climb that led up into the hills. The road was narrow and winding. A bluff rose to the right. On the left, only a flimsy guard rail separated oncoming cars from a sheer drop to the hard earth far below.
The Old Cartoonists' Home was located in a sprawling Victorian mansion. It had bright flowers in the window boxes and bars on the windows. A hand stuck out between the bars on one window, playing with a paddle ball. At another window an old lady pressed her face against the bars and imitated birdsong.
The Winchester boys had exchanged their FBI suits for casual clothes and Sam carried a notebook and had a pen behind his ear. A nurse led them down a pleasant hallway, past a handful of elderly people sitting around in wheelchairs making faces at one another. Her shoes were making strange squeaking noises with every step. They walked past a sign that read "QUIET ZONE! NO SOUND EFFECTS!" She tapped it, glaring at the group of elderly people pointedly, and her shoes went silent.
At the end of the hall it opened up into a lounge area and here a cranky looking elderly bald man was waiting, sulking on a couch.
"Lou?" She said. "These are the young men I told you about. Be nice now."
The nurse took her leave and Sam and Dean helped themselves to seats on one of the other sofas. The old man glared at them.
"Reporters?"
"Yes, sir," Dean said. "With Art World Today".
"Never heard of it."
Sam put on his best Earnest Young Man look. "Ah, it's a webzine. Just getting started, but we have high hopes."
"Oh. A webzine." Thune made a face. "The Internet."
"You don't like the Internet?" Dean asked.
"Of course I don't like the Internet, you idiot! The Internet is killing all the newspapers!"
"You can always get your news online," Sam pointed out.
"What the hell do I want the news for? I'm talking about comics, boy! The newspapers are dying and it's killing the comics. Thousands of deserving artists losing their creative outlet. Their very livelihood!"
"Ah. I see." Dean took a wild guess. "You draw a comic strip?"
"No. No, I never had my own strip. It's not my fault, though. I could have, you know!"
"If the Internet wasn't killing off the comics."
"Exactly!"
Sam stepped in to get the conversation back on track. "Okay! So...what we wanted to talk to you about is a movie poster you designed back in the sixties."
"Baby Fang. It was my masterpiece! I suppose you heard what that Philistine did to it?"
"Yeah," Dean said. "Bled all over it, the bastard. That's why we're here. Our editor wants a story on the loss of such a, uh..." He sputtered to a stop as he searched for a complimentary adjective.
"Significant piece of artwork." Sam came to his rescue.
Thune deflated, going from angry to sad and pathetic.
"It was my greatest work, you know? The movie never showed the monster. They left it up to me to envision it. It's supposed to be the inner child tormenting the human psyche, so I gave it claws, to rip at the soul, fangs to sink into the heart, a stinger to plunge deep into the gizzard!
"The gizzard?"
"Oh, yes! The gizzard!"
"Ah ha."
"So, what's with the whole, uh," Dean motioned towards his own face, "the baby head? Why a baby head?"
"It's the inner child, of course. Besides, I always did think the Gerber baby was a little creepy, didn't you?"
"Well... no..." Dean dropped his voice so only his brother could hear. "but then, I'm sane."
Sam matched his volume. "You wanted to hunt the fabric softener bear," he reminded him drily. He produced his copy of the poster. "Tell me, Mr. Thune, what inspired the background for the poster. This pyramid looks vaguely familiar to me."
"Yes, that's a real building. It's the Pyramid of the Moon, on the Avenue of the Dead."
Dean looked up sharply.
"The Pyramid of the Moon? In Teoti-, Titi-hooa-hooa, uh, that ancient, lost city down in Mexico?"
"Teotihuacan?" Sam clarified.
"Yeah, that one. That Pyramid of the Moon?"
"Yes. You've heard of it?"
"Oh, yeah!" Dean answered with feeling.
Sam was puzzled. Whatever conclusion Dean had reached, he wasn't following.
"I visited there while I was designing the poster."
"In the sixties, right?"
"The summer of 1966, as I recall."
Dean shot his brother a meaningful glance. "Ah, yeah. High times! And these symbols, in the frame around the temple. Are they from that city too?"
"Yes, it's the ancient language."
"Never been deciphered, right? So there's no way to tell exactly what you wrote here?"
"Well, that would be the logical conclusion. If you happened to be feeling logical. You're not the brains of the operation, are you?"
Dean rose and Sam followed his lead.
"Mr. Thune, I think we've got everything we need for our story. Thank you for your time."
They turned to leave but Thune called after them.
"I know you don't really understand. You think I'm over reacting - that it's just a picture. And there are lots of copies, so why should it matter? But it does matter! It matters to me! I put my heart into that painting! I put my soul into it! I put my sweat and my very blood into it!"
Sam and Dean froze and turned back.
It was Sam who asked for both of them, speaking tentatively. "When you say you put your blood into it, you're speaking...metaphorically... right?"
Thune only bit his lip and refused to meet their eyes.
*SPN**SPN**SPN**SPN*
Sam and Dean stood on either side of the Impala, talking over her roof.
"Teotihuacan?" Sam asked.
"Dude! Seriously! How do you even know how to pronounce that?"
Sam gave him a look.
"Right. The titty city." He got in the car and Sam followed suit.
Dean started the car and pointed it back the way they'd come before he continued the conversation.
"Dad and I talked about it a time or two while you were at college."
"You and Dad? Ancient history? Seriously?"
"Lost cities, Sam. Think about it. Lost. Cities. They find them all over the world, from time to time. Usually in deep jungle, near water. South America, Africa, an entire freaking civilization in the Indus River Valley. Teotihuacan was huge. During its heyday, around the third century A.D., there were as many as 200,000 people living there. It was one of the biggest cities in the world at that time - right up there with Rome and Athens. They had apartment houses, and roads you could drive Baby on, and they played ball games and made pottery and built big-ass freaking pyramids. They were there for eight or nine hundred years. And then - they were gone."
While Dean talked, Sam was doing research on his computer.
"'Teotihuacan' means 'birthplace of the gods' or, 'the place where men became gods'. The name is Aztec, but the city wasn't. By the time they came along, it was already just an ancient ruin. They didn't know anything about it but vague legends and old stories."
"And after more than three hundred years of digging around exploring it," Dean said, "we still don't know why they left or where they went, or even who they were. Wasn't a flood, or a fire, or an enemy invasion. Thing like that'd leave traces behind. So they - historians, archaeologists - they think maybe a famine, or plague, crop failures, or social upheaval.
"But you don't?"
"Could be, I suppose. But doing what we do, seeing what we see and knowing what we know about what's really out there...?"
"You think there's a supernatural explanation."
"I think it's a real good possibility."
"It makes sense." Sam was deep in his laptop. "Eeugh. Did you know that, when someone died there, they cut up their bones to make buttons and combs and kitchen utensils?"
"Huh." Dean acted out a conversation, mimicking different voices. "Grandma died! Oh, good! I needed a new spatula!"
"And the Pyramid of the Moon-" Sam broke off and turned in his seat to look directly at his brother. "The Pyramid of the Moon was the site of animal and human sacrifices."
"Surprise! Surprise!"
Sam set his computer aside. "So we figure there's this... thing. Pagan god, ancient spirit, some
kind of evil elemental. And for, what? Twelve, thirteen centuries it hangs around the temple, waiting. And then, 45 years ago, Thune shows up.
"An artist, remember? Artsy people are always more susceptible to the weird crap than regular people. And it was the sixties. Pretty good bet there were some illegal substances involved."
"Right. Right. So the... thing...reaches out to him? Influences him somehow?"
"He mixes up a nice cocktail of his own blood and India ink and draws it a body. Builds it a gateway back into our world. But for almost fifty years, nada."
"Because the ritual wasn't finished," Sam reasoned. "It needed a human sacrifice."
"And then, this morning, there it is. That poor bastard of a guard standing right in front of the painting, and a drugged-out loser with a gun in his hand."
They drove in silence for a long minute.
"Dean, if you're right - and I'm not saying you're not. It's a good theory. It's a real good theory. But, if you're right, then this thing Thune's summoned, whatever it is, it's something that's already wiped out an entire civilization."
"Yeah."
As they considered this, Dean rounded a curve and started back down the steep, narrow, winding highway they drove up on. An air horn sounded behind them.
Dean glanced in the rearview mirror and found a tractor-trailer right on their back bumper.
"What the hell? Dude's right on my ass!"
Sam craned around to look. "He probably can't slow down much. Not on a hill this steep, not if he's got a full load. He'll just burn his brakes out if he tries."
"What kind of moron tries to drive a big rig down a road like this? Seriously! He got a death wish? What?"
The semi barrelled down, right on the Impala's back bumper. Inches from Sam's door, the guardrail flashed past. The road curved and the Impala took it with screeching tires. Sam sat sideways, bracing himself on the dashboard and watching the semi. Dean, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, divided his attention between the road and the rearview mirror.
As if the sheer drop on their right wasn't bad enough, a line of school buses loaded with children approached on their left.
One wrong move meant death.
And then a black line appeared at the top of the windshield.
"The hell...?"
The line began to creep down the window, blacking it out. Dean hit the windshield wipers, but they slammed to a stop when they met the line, then were forced back down.
"What is that?"
"Whatever it is... Dean... it's moving against the slipstream!"
Sam turned front, bracing both hands on the dash.
Dean sank lower and lower in his seat, trying to see through the increasingly narrow gap between the black line and the hood.
In the rearview mirror the semi loomed. Its air horn sounded a desperate warning. The semi was nearly touching the Impala's bumper. The guardrail passed in a blur. The Impala's wheels dislodged a stone, sending it sailing away into the depths of the canyon.
Dean was bent nearly double, steering with desperate skill. He had one last glance of the oncoming school buses, children's faces pressed against the windows. And then the black line reached the bottom of the windshield, completely obscuring his view.
TBC...