AN: Happy Birthday Worm!
Another plot provided by you, and you provided some of the dialogue for this one too ;-)
As this work is a gift for my usual beta, it has not been beta'd.
Part 3 - Trees and Boulders
The so-called Three Nephites weren't that tough. Sam supposed that they'd gotten lazy and out of shape, preying on the relatively easy pickings that were Mormon believers. It was so easy for them to acquire souls with the 'Nephite' ruse, that they hadn't needed to strain any of their demonic muscles for over a hundred years. Whether or not the Mormon holy water and salt made a difference—they did seem a little surprised when the holy water sizzled off their meat suits, but Sam and Dean would never be completely sure if Greg had been straight with them—it was a relatively easy task to trap them. They had talked about exorcising the demons and sending them back to Hell, but in the end they'd decided that these guys had been running their racket for so long, it was probably a habit that they would find was hard to break. And they were demons after all. With no hope of saving the poor bastards who had been possessed since the 1800s, the brothers had used Ruby's knife to ensure that no more Mormons would be fooled into selling their souls.
And that was the Three Nephites crossed off their Utah to-do list. Next up: various and sundry hauntings.
There were so many reports of hauntings coming out of Utah over the last few months, that it would've been impossible to follow up each and every one. So they went through the list and decided which reports were dangerous and prioritised those.
The old 'vanishing hitchhiker' guy, carrying a "Kolob or bust" sign and warning people that they needed to make sure they had enough food stores, was probably not that dangerous. Unless the driver ran off the road when the ghost vanished from the back seat, but Dean thought they couldn't be held responsible for reckless driving.
The legendary network of secret tunnels under Ogden City probably didn't exist and they hadn't heard anything that sounded halfway legitimate about ghosts down there. Or even mutant alligators.
The beggar, ignored by university students who then go on to fail their exams as a result, wasn't killing anyone and anyway Sam felt rather strongly that if the students had, in fact, adequately prepared for their exam, no ghost could've made them fail. Which made Dean roll his eyes.
However there was a Widow in White in Frisco that they needed to check out. Widows in White were not known for their benevolence. And there were at least two confirmed skinwalkers in Grafton who needed to be put down. The body count in that area was unreasonably high. (And Dean was so stoked about seeing where Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid was filmed he was practically vibrating with excitement.)
But after going through the list, they decided that their first stop would be Osiris, Utah.
After stopping for a pastrami burger for Dean (he'd discovered pastrami burgers on the day they'd arrived in Salt Lake City, and had declared them his one true love. After Sam of course.) and a bowl of green, crunchy something for Sam, they'd settled down for the three hour or more drive to Osiris.
"Tell me again about this town. It's a weird name for a Mormon town." Dean was talking with a very full mouth, but Sam was used to it and had no trouble understanding him.
"Right, that's one of the things that made me suspicious to start off with," Sam answered. "A family settled there and built a creamery in the early 1900s. They were very insistent on naming the town 'Osiris' which, like you said, is very un-Mormon. Makes me wonder if he didn't have some plans for the town."
"Who? Like Osiris, the Egyptian god Osiris?" Dean sounded sceptical.
"Could be," Sam shrugged. "We know gods are out there. No reason why he shouldn't be one of them."
Dean glanced over at his brother with a knowing smirk. "Admit it. You're going a little fanboy at the possibility that we might run into an Egyptian god."
Sam's cheeks flushed a little but he didn't answer. Instead he continued, "Anyway, not long after the creamery was built, people began to report sightings of black forms with glowing eyes roaming through the canyon, or running alongside wagons travelling in the area. Then people began to hear wailing in the creamery. Some witnesses even said they saw occult altars set up in the creamery. It didn't take long for people to clear out of the area."
Dean leaned over and put a Fleetwood Mac tape in the tape deck, pressed play and turned the volume down so that he could still hear Sam. The Chain came on, and Dean tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in time to the music, while asking, "So if no-one's there, why are we going?"
Sam turned to Dean and gave him a look.
Dean looked a little sheepish. "Okay, I wasn't really listening the first time around. C'mon Sam." He gave Sam his five-year-old-boy grin. He knew Sam couldn't stay mad at him in the face of that.
Sam sighed. "Because stupid tourists insist on going to see 'one of the most haunted places in Utah,' and very often they're never seen again. Those who do make it out are barely coherent, and can only mumble about blocked roads and black figures."
"God, people are stupid. I mean, every horror movie, ever! And they still look for this sort of thing."
"Yep," Sam agreed. "And we're the lucky guys who have to save the morons of the world."
They were silent for a few miles after that, Dean nodding his head and tapping his fingers to the music, and Sam reading on his tablet. Eventually Dean's right arm made its way to the back of the seat and his hand to Sam's neck, like it was the most natural place for it to be, his fingers playing with the slightly damp curls at the base of Sam's neck. Eventually Dean's hand always ended up there. Sam was sure Dean wasn't even aware of it most times. And he'd never admit how much he liked it.
Sam smiled a small smile to himself, before he read something that brought him back to reality. "Hey, listen to this. Did you know that it was technically legal to kill a Mormon in the state of Missouri until 1976?"
"What?" Dean hadn't been listening—again—so he was sure he had heard wrong.
"Yep. Executive Order 44 was issued in 1838 and said, and I quote, that the Mormons 'must be exterminated or driven from the state.' And that order was only revoked in 1976. Can you believe that?"
"So maybe the Mormons are allowed to have a chip on their shoulders. Geez."
"Right," Sam said. "I mean, from what I've read, they didn't make it easy for people who didn't belong to their church to get along with them, but still. Sometimes the laws of this country are scary."
"Humans, man." Dean never stopped being disgusted at the human race.
Sam read on for a little while in silence, before Dean heard him snort. "What now?" he asked.
"Oh this is just too perfect. Some Mormon apostle named Kimball prophesied that Salt Lake City will be 'classed among the wicked cities of the world.' I kind of hope we're around long enough to see that," Sam chuckled.
"Ha! Dude, I bet Greg will have something to do with that." Dean was grinning at the thought. "Wicked ol' Salt Lake City. Heh."
Osiris, Utah, was just off of Johns Valley Road and just before the turnoff to the abandoned town, they stopped at a rundown truck stop to fill up on gas and maybe get a little information.
When the old guy behind the counter of the small store heard they were planning on going to Osiris, he looked genuinely concerned.
"You want a nickel's worth of free advice?" he asked them.
"Sure," Dean shrugged, nonchalantly.
The man gave them a piercing look. "Get out of there by dark."
The way he said those words was decidedly ominous, but Sam and Dean were experienced hunters, so they didn't pay too much attention to his warning. Nevertheless, they thanked him politely, before walking back to the car and driving away.
Sunset was just a couple of hours away.
When they reached what was left of Osiris, the light from the late afternoon sun had turned the wood of the old mill into a rich, almost flaming red, creating a stark contrast between that and the adjoining cement towers. As they got out of the car and looked around, it seemed that the mill was the only building still standing, aside from a barn that was really just a few upright planks balancing precariously against each other, and a pile of stones that might once have been a house.
Sam had done the research and the last members of the Holt family, who had founded Osiris, were buried in a handful of graves on the site. The graves had been fenced in but that wasn't a problem. While they couldn't be absolutely sure as to what was haunting the town, they figured that salting and burning the remains of the Holt family would be a good start. The countryside was peaceful as they set to work. With the sun setting the temperature was cool, and within a few hours they had all the graves dug up, and the remains burning. The moment they'd set the bones alight, a desolate wailing was heard from the large ruins which slowly died away as the flames caught, until all that was left was a sighing sound. Which might just have been the wind.
Once they had filled the graves up again—no need to be disrespectful, they had the time—they walked back up to the mill and looked around. They did a thorough reconnaissance of the site, but everything was quiet. No dark figures, no glowing eyes, no strange sounds. They stayed for a few hours, just to be sure. They sat in the car, with the doors open, staying alert to their surroundings while playing I Spy to pass the time. If Dean played the porn version of the game, well there was no one around to judge him except for his brother, who would never do that. Not out loud anyway.
Eventually though, the boredom got to Dean. "Can't we call it a night, Sam? Nothing is going on here. Maybe the salt-and-burn did the trick."
Sam wasn't convinced, but he wasn't sure them spending the night there was doing any good either. Clearly nothing was going to happen. So, a little reluctantly, he agreed that they might as well go.
But as they shut the car doors, something changed. The windows were all open, so they could clearly hear the moment when all the night sounds were suddenly silent. The silence pressed in on them like a physical thing.
"Huh," they said together.
Not sure what else to do, Dean hesitantly turned the ignition, and put the car into drive. He turned the headlights on.
"Hey, Sam?" Dean asked quietly.
"Yeah…" Sam replied, looking straight ahead at the way they'd driven into Osiris.
"Didn't there used to be a road there?" Dean was also looking straight ahead.
"Yeah…" Sam said.
Because instead of the gravel road they'd driven in on, there were now fallen trees and boulders.
"Okaaaay," Dean said and turned the car. He drove in a large circle, looking for any way through which they could drive out. But wherever they looked there were fallen trees and boulders.
They were not driving out of Osiris.
"We could… walk…?" Sam tried, but Dean just gave him a dirty look.
"Not sure that would work anyway," Sam conceded, nodding his head towards where the toe path between the ruined buildings had been. More fallen trees and boulders.
"Those were definitely not there earlier."
Dean was already out of the car, and opening the trunk to get his shotgun out. Sam followed him. "Neither were those," Dean said, pointing the sawed-off barrel of the gun in the direction of at least four black shapes that were moving towards them. They could easily make out the glowing eyes of the advancing figures.
'Well, shit," Sam said. He grabbed his own shotgun, and a duffel filled with salt, lighter fuel and various other things that might be useful.
"Any ideas?" Dean asked, filling his pockets with rock-salt shells.
Sam shook his head, keeping his eyes on the creatures who were clearly coming for them.
"Right," Dean nodded his head decisively. "I do." And he grabbed the duffel from Sam, and ran towards the mill, shouting over his shoulder, "Come on, Sam!"
"What are you doing?" Sam yelled, following him.
Dean had kicked his way through some rotted wood planks to get inside the mill and was throwing as much salt as he could over the floor of the building. "We're going to burn it all down!"
"What, the whole building?" Sam sounded unsure.
"The whole building. And then that barn, and then whatever will burn in the pile of rocks and anything else that looks remotely man made. We're going to burn it all."
Sam had no better plan, so while Dean was pouring lighter fluid over the wooden floor, Sam grabbed his own supplies and ran to the broken down barn. Whatever the creatures were, they were very obviously not happy with what Sam and Dean were doing because they split up, some following Sam and some going after Dean.
"Dean!" Sam bellowed.
"Sam! Just get it done and meet me at the car!" Dean shouted back.
Sam ran, ducking and diving the shadows with glowing eyes that appeared in his path. Just as he veered away from one, there was a fallen tree in his path. He cleared that easily, only to be confronted with a "fucking boulder," he mumbled, as he swerved and finally got to the barn. He made short work of setting it on fire. It was something of a supernatural obstacle course to make it back to the mill, but he could see that it was already ablaze and Dean was busy trying to set whatever would burn in the ruined stone house alight. He was surrounded by the shadows, and the absence of sound which seemed to emanate from those shadows was almost as loud as if they'd been shrieking. Sam ran over to help his brother and, barely pulling out of the clutches of one of the creatures, he tripped over another magically appearing boulder and fell to his knees. But Dean was there to help him up, and they ran to the car.
They jumped in and Dean was pulling away before Sam had even shut his door properly. Dean skidded to halt when he saw that there was no way through in front of them and did a reverse turn that had Sam's head spinning. Dean drove away in another direction. Were there less fallen trees than before…?
"Yes, Dean that way!" Sam shouted pointing in a direction that was not the way they'd come into Osiris, but that was clear enough that the Impala could make it through. As they drove away, Osiris blazing behind them, the numbing silence that had surrounded them before began to fade.
Sam turned to look through the rear window. "Holy shit," he panted. "Do you think we got them all? You think it will be over now?"
Dean glanced in the rearview mirror. "Well, there sure won't be anything left of Osiris in the morning. Even if the monsters aren't gone, who's going to want to come and see a ghost town that no longer exists?" After a beat, he added, "Um, I think you better call the Forest Service, Sam. Or there ain't going to be any forest really soon."
Sam looked back again, and hurriedly reached for his phone.
"Fucking fallen trees and boulders," he grumbled, before he heard a voice say "U.S. National Parks Emergency Services, what is your emergency?"