Chapter 6

"Jessica"

Avera McKennan Hospital& University Health Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

4:18pm

"Charlie woke up for a few minutes." Dean said

"That's great. Was she able to tell you what happened?" Sam asked anxiously.

Dean hesitated for a long moment before clearing his throat. "Not.. exactly."

"What does that mean?" Sam asked perplexed by the tone in Dean's voice.

Dean let out a deep breath before he continued. "She was hunting. Mentioned a woman and a child. And then it got wierd."

"What does that mean?" Sam asked

"When she mentioned the kid she looked absolutely grief stricken Sammy. Devastated. She suddenly started panicking and got aggressive saying this kid went away and asking when would she see him again. She was crying Sam. At the drop a dime she was full on crying."

Sam was quiet on the other end. He didn't know what to make of what Dean had just described to him. He knew one thing for sure, it scared him as much as it scared Dean.

"Dean.. " Sam said.

"She's sleeping now." Dean cut in. He could hear the uncertainty in his brother's voice and it made everything even less comforting. "She'll be out of it for awhile and not much help for the time being. Please tell me you guys found something."

"Actually yeah. Let me put you on speakerphone." Sam said.

"Hey Dean." Jody said over the phone. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm holding up." Dean said unconvincingly. "Did you find anything?" He asked her hopefully.

"I knew this sounded familiar. It's from a case dating back to 2003. There was a woman named Jessica Thompson. She was found dead in her home with stab wounds to her abdomen and slashes to her wrists. And get this. She was wearing a white sleeveless dress. All of it just like the state you found Charlie in."

Dean was quiet for a moment; the wheels in his head spinning. "She didn't happen to have a kid, did she?" Dean asked hesitantly

"Oddly enough, yeah. But he died 2 months prior in a drowning during a camping trip. He was only 8." Jody said sadly. So close to her own son's age, she thought. It saddened her more than she let on.

"Let me guess. He drowned at the very lake where we found Charlie." Dean said.

"Yup. It was before my time as a cop. And it was big news. And even bigger when Jessica was found dead a month later."

"Was it murder?" Sam asked.

"The official report was filed as 'self inflicted wounds'. Police found a note at the scene saying how she wanted to see her son again." Jody's voice was somber. "It's in the books as a suicide."

"So.. what? Charlie was hunting a ghost? This woman?" Dean surmised over the phone.

Jody handed Sam a photograph of Jessica. Sam looked back at Jody with a surprised look on his face as soon as he saw the photograph. "Dean I'm sending you a photo of Jessica now." Sam said.

Dean saw a text message notification on his phone and tapped on it. A photograph appeared. His face fell a little. The photograph of Jessica seemed to be a spitting image of Charlie right down to the long red hair. "Your kidding." Dean scoffed. "This just gets better and better."

"Yeah the resemblance is uncanny." Sam said. "So we find Charlie in a white dress with the same wounds as this Jessica woman and we also found Charlie .. " Dean said.

"... at the very lake where this woman's son died." Sam finished off Dean's train of thought. "Sounds like a ghost possession. Ghost sees a connection with her appearance and then hijacks Charlie and brings her to the lake. But then what?" Sam continued.

Jody declared. "She killed herself so she could be with her son in death." Jody took the photograph back from Sam and looked at it for a moment before placing it carefully back into the file. "Maybe dying wasn't enough to make it happen. Maybe she had to be at the lake. And she needed Charlie to do it." Jody's tone was soft. This case was pulling at her heart strings in a way she hadn't expected when she first met up with Sam and Dean at the hospital.

"So we have to find out if she's possessed. And if she is..?" Dean asked as he glanced back at Charlie through the hospital doorway.

"Then we might have to give the ghost what it wants, in this case." Sam stated.

"What? No, how 'bout we force the ghost out and gank it." Dean said flatly.

"It might not be that easy Dean." Sam retorted.

Dean turned away from Charlie's room and walked further down the hall a bit for more privacy from the other nurses.

"This ghost is grieving her child in death. We have to be careful how we go about this." Sam explained over the phone. "If we go in hot it could cause irreparable harm to Charlie. I mean she's already laid up in a hospital with serious injuries. And judging from what you just told us about Charlie's behavior, she's manifesting Jessica's physical and mental trauma..."

Dean listened intently to his brothers voice over his phone, when the lights suddenly began flickering overhead. The hair on the back of his neck and arms suddenly stood on end as he warily took in his surroundings. Within moments he heard what sounded like a startled scream coming from down the hallway. He spun around just in time to see a nurse running out of Charlie's room screaming. Dean wasted no time and charged down the hall careening into Charlie's room. He certainly wasn't prepared for what he saw.

Charlie was no longer laying in bed or in bed at all for that matter. She was standing. Her face stark white and shadowed with look of sheer desperation. Before Dean could adequately process what was happening, he found himself suddenly midair and flying. He hit the back wall hard. The impact knocked his cell phone out of his hand as he drop landed onto the hospital room floor with heavy thud. From that point everything went blurry and then dark for Dean. The same nurse who ran out before ran back into the hospital room, quickly appraised the scene, and without hesitation ran back out of the room again, screaming.