Rule Number 5: Don't hunt for an hour after eating.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Dean asked Sam the nth time since they had gone out on the lake.
The younger Winchester grimaced but nodded, trying to pretend as though his stomach wasn't doing flip-flops in his abdomen and cold rivulets of sweat were streaming down his face.
"How far do we have to go out?" Dean asked as he continued to row the small boat out, with no help from his brother, thank you very much.
"The last victim," Sam began, "Carl Lawrence, said he was sure he was about in the middle of the lake."
Dean rolled his eyes, "Yeah, 'cause that guy seemed so reliable."
Mr. Lawrence, currently recovering from the monster attack in the local hospital, had insisted that he had gone onto the lake to do a bit of nighttime fishing but Dean hadn't missed the deep bags beneath the man's yellowish eyes nor the burst blood vessels in his bulbous nose, a sign of chronic alcoholism.
Five people had gone missing from the lake in the past two weeks. The first victim had been a fisherman, like Mr. Lawrence, who had failed to return home after going onto the lake to catch dinner for himself and his wife. His fishing gear- basket, extra bait and hooks, an egg salad sandwich and a can of Coca-Cola were found on the shore with no sign of the man at all. Not even the fishing pole he'd been using had been recovered.
The second and third victims had been a teenage boy and girl, who had swum out into the lake together to beat the heat. They too, vanished without a trace.
Next, a little boy who had gone to the lake with his parents had disappeared while his mother and father sat only a few feet away on the lakeshore. At first it was assumed the child had drowned, but when his body didn't wash up on shore, rumors of alien abduction and monsters like Lake Champlain's Champy or the Ogopogo of the Okanagan Lake of British Columbia began to abound and roused the interest of the Winchesters.
Carl Lawrence, the final victim, and presumably lone survivor of the beast, had described a kraken-like creature with tentacles and a razor sharp beak that had pulled him right out of his boat and into the water. At first local authorities had been quick to write off his story as the ravings of the town drunk, but then once doctors had had a chance to examine him, they had discovered four saucer-sized welts on the skin of his chest that could not be explained. Mr. Lawrence was adamant that the marks had come from the monster's tentacles.
"We're here," Sam spoke up in a weak tone, startling Dean out of his thoughts.
Instantly, the older Winchester stopped paddling, resting the two oars in the brackets on either side of the boat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
At his feet, in the bottom of the boat sat two long fishing harpoons, ready for when the beast showed itself. According to Sam, the research said that the most vulnerable parts of the monster would be its large, disk-like eyes or its mouth; if they could get past its sharp beak.
"Are you-" Dean began again but Sam cut him off.
"I'm fine, Dean!"
The older brother sighed and decided that he might as well just drop it since Sam wasn't going to admit he wasn't feeling well.
Even if he was sweating buckets despite the cool night air, and the fact that his face was a white as a sheet and that his eyes were just a little too bright.
Dean sat back and glanced around the moonlit lake. They were out far enough so that he could still see the shoreline but it was only a long black streak in the distance.
A wave of unease crept through the hunter. Only a tiny metal rowboat and a couple of harpoons stood between them and a monster that had already killed four people. If this thing turned out to be more than he and Sam could handle, they would be trapped out here on the lake.
"Maybe we should head in a bit," Dean suggested, trying not to let his anxiety bleed through into his tone.
"This thing does come close to shore," he continued, "It grabbed those teens and that kid-"
Although Sam didn't answer- he was probably too green around the gills to do so- a sound did reach Dean, though it wasn't exactly something he wanted to hear.
A loud plopping splash sounded nearby, seemingly just off the left side of the boat, as though something heavy had been dropped into the water.
All of Dean's muscles grew tense and he scanned the water on that side of the boat, noticing the minute bubbles that popped up along the water's surface close to where the sound had come from.
Sam, having heard the sound as well, slowly reached down toward the harpoons in the bottom of the boat.
Crash!
Before Dean could react, a long, three-foot wide tentacles with saucer-sized suction cups on one side and hard-as-rock black scales on the other side, broke the surface of the water and wrapped itself around his brother's chest.
Sam gasped in shock, but that was all he had time to do before he was dragged into the lake by the hungry beast.
Dean grabbed one of the harpoons from the boat's bottom without even looking and held it ready, the vessel rocking violently from side to side.
"SAM!" Dean shouted and fearfully scanned the water, hoping to see his brother resurface.
"SAMMY!"
Seconds ticked by and Dean quickly realized that the monster was not going to reappear.
It didn't surface.
Nor did Sam.
Realizing that he had to act quickly or his brother would die- eaten by the kraken or drown, Dean took a breath and stepped off the boat and into the lake.
The frigid water closed in around the hunter and he gasped in shock, drawing in a lungful of the chilly liquid.
Legs kicking, Dean's head broke the surface of the lake, spluttering, before drawing in another breath and diving down, struggling to see in the murky water.
The harpoon in the hunter's hands was of a newer make and once Dean had found the button to turn on the flashlight attached to the weapons handle, a white beam cut through the churning water, making visibility a bit better.
Dean, his eyes wide, searched the muddy water for any sign of his brother or the monster.
There!
The hunter spied a dark shadow a few feet away, slipping past his field of vision behind a curtain of silt-saturated water.
Using his arms and legs to propel him, Dean swam towards the shadow he had seen, ignoring the strain in his lungs telling him he needed to get to air.
The flashlight on the harpoon illuminated a long, sinuous tentacle, sliding through the water only inches from Dean's face. The hunter struggled to stop his forward motion and, using the harpoon as a torch, waved it this way and that, searching for the monster's eye.
The hunter startled when a plate-sized yellow eyeball, complete with a vertically slit pupil, opened up next to the hunter, the pupil shrinking into a paper thin sliver against the harpoon's light.
Dean, his lungs now burning for oxygen, raised the weapon and drove the sharp, barbed end of the harpoon into the eye.
The kraken's reaction was instantaneous. It jerked away from the hunter, blood streaming out from its wounded eye, its tentacles whipping to and fro- one smacking Dean in the head and nearly knocking him unconscious- as it swam deeper into the lake.
The hunter shook his head, dazed before he could gather his bearings and began swimming after the injured beast.
Realizing that the monster was about to get away, Dean reached out and grabbed onto one of the fleeing kraken's tentacles. The squid-like creature drew the tentacle close to its body, ready to snap it out like a whip and shake the hunter off, when Dean- within striking distance again- shoved the harpoon into the beast's wounded eye as hard as he could.
The tentacle beneath Dean's hand grew stiff as a board for a moment before it went as limp as a cooked noodle. Still not satisfied the kraken had kicked the bucket; Dean used the heel of his hand to drive the harpoon's blade even further into the monster's eye.
The kraken's tentacle remained flaccid and Dean released it. Finding Sam was now his priority but he needed to get some fresh air or his lungs were going to explode.
As quickly as he could, the eldest Winchester kicked towards the surface of the water and sucked in a huge breath of air, hoping that maybe his sibling had done the same.
"Sammy?" Dean asked, eyes narrowed against the water streaming from his hair, the hunter scanned the water's surface, "Sam?"
He's still in the lake, Dean thought with a sickening jolt. How long had he been down there? Was it already too late?
Pushing those thoughts from his mind, Dean dove beneath the water once again, wishing he had a light.
Kicking his tired legs, the hunter swam in the direction he hoped the kraken had drifted.
Now that he had had a chance to catch his breath, Dean actually felt a bit better, his lungs no longer feeling as though they were going to burst like overfull balloons.
Spurned on by his need to find his brother, Dean kicked harder and suddenly writhed as a burning pain raced up his left side.
For a second the hunter wondered if the kraken had managed to hurt him while he'd been distracted but then he realized he recognized this kind of pain. It was a cramp, a stitch in his side.
Dean gritted his teeth against the painful sensation, cursing the bacon cheeseburger he'd happily scarfed down not even an hour ago before heading out onto the lake.
Preoccupied with the cramp in his side, Dean failed to notice that the murky water had gotten considerably darker, as he almost swam right into the kraken's body.
Dean was shocked to find that he had swum all the way to the bottom of the lake. He squinted his eyes, trying to catch sight of his brother.
C'mon Sammy, where are you? Dean thought as he scanned the barely-visible coils of the monster's tentacles.
The eldest Winchester's heart skipped a beat when he spied a pale oval floating near a tangle of tentacles.
Swimming down towards the white form, Dean saw that it was Sam's face peeking out from underneath the kraken's tentacles.
Reaching down, the older brother grabbed his sibling's shoulders and tugged upwards. At first there was no movement, then slowly, inch by agonizing inch, Sam's unmoving body shifted out from beneath the tentacles.
Sand billowed up to obscure Dean's vision, grating against his open eyes but he ignored it, clenching his teeth as he wrapped one arm around his brother's chest and pushed up from the bottom with both feet, trying to propel both himself and Sam upwards.
The cramp in Dean's side flared up once again and he almost dropped his brother. Jaw tightened, Dean fought through the pain and pushed onward because if he didn't, Sam was dead.
W
Breaking through the water's surface for the final time, Dean gasped and panted, paddling with one arm to keep him buoyant while his other arm remained wrapped around his brother, keeping Sam's head above the water.
Glancing at his sibling, Dean saw Sam's hair plastered to his pale, blue-tinged face; eyes closed and feared the worst.
"C'mon Sammy," Dean muttered, "Let's get the hell out of here."
Scanning the surface of the water, the hunter caught sight of the boat a few meters away and began swimming towards it.
Minutes later- too many minutes, in Dean's opinion- the hunter had shoved his brother unceremoniously into the bottom of the tiny rowboat before joining him.
Sitting uncomfortably on one of the bench seat's, Dean leaned down and rolled his brother as well as he could onto his side and began rubbing his back vigorously.
"C'mon Sammy," Dean ground out, shivering, "C'mon, breathe, damn it."
He didn't know how much time had passed since the kraken had grabbed his brother and now, it felt like ages but in fact it had only been minutes and the longer Sam remained unresponsive, the more Dean feared he would not recover.
The elder Winchester, out of fear and desperation, dug the heel of his hand into his sibling's back, snarling at him.
"Wake up, Sam! Damn you!"
Suddenly, the younger Winchester shuddered and coughed, water and vomit spewing from his nose and mouth.
Dean laughed harshly and went back to rubbing Sam's back, between the shoulder blades.
"That's it, buddy," he encouraged, "You're doing great."
Sam gasped and opened his eyes, blearily staring up at his brother. Too weak to sit up, he remained in the bottom of the boat, his chest heaving as he focused all his energy on getting much needed oxygen into his battered body.
"You just relax," Dean said, "I got this."
Picking up the oars, he began paddling back towards the dark strip of the shore, vowing always to wait for at least an hour before going on any hunts where water was involved.
Author's Note:
This rule came from a combination of a prompt from Jenjoremy and missingmikey.
Thanks to jensensgirl3, Jenjoremy, elliereynolds777, BranchSuper, StyxxsOmega, SamDeanLover28, and LeeMarieJack for reviewing.