Chapter Seven

I drove Dean's Impala down the gravel road towards a white tent sent up in a huge vacant field. The weather was still crappy out and it was making the situation ten times worse than it felt. Dean pouted the whole way here and kept saying 'it's not going to work' and 'you don't even know if he's legit.' We saw a sign next to the tent that said The church of Roy LeGrange. Faith Helater. Witness the Miracle. I looked over and saw Dean roll his eyes. He was getting worse by the hour. His face was pale with dark circles under his eyes. He could barely breathe let along walk. I parked the car and watched a few dozen people go inside the tent. Dean went to open the car door and I hurried out to help him.

"I got it." he said angrily.

"Alright, don't get snippy." I said.

"I can't believe you brought me here to see some guy who heals people out of a tent." He retorted. People were walking passed us claiming Roy LeGrange is a saint. I could just feel the annoyance rising off of Dean.

"Would you just have some faith?" I snapped.

"You know what I have faith in? Reality. That's all that's going on. You of all people Sam know what we go through, and you believe this crap?"

"I've always had faith Dean, you've just never asked." I said directing him to the nearest chair to sit in. "If you know evil is out there how can you not believe there is still good?" I asked him.

"Because, I've seen what evil does to good people." He said looking me in the eye.

"God works in mysterious ways." This woman behind us chimed in. Dean and I turned around. She was a young woman with short blonde hair and this Jesus necklace wrapped in her hands.

"Maybe he does. I think you just turned me." He said winking at her. I rolled my eyes. "I'm Dean," he said extending his hand. "this is my friend Sam."

"Lyla. So if you're not a believer then why are you here?"

"Well you see my friend Sam here believes enough for the both of us."

"Yeah right." I muttered. He shot me a look and then turned back flirting with Lyla. Even in his time of death, he'd be flirting with a Christian.

I looked around the inside of the tent and saw security cameras at each corner and ones pointing towards the entrances/exits. At the front of the tent there was a table set up with religious items and candles and this wooden cross with a smaller cross in the middle of it with a circle around it. I had never seen a cross like that before. Roy LeGrange was wearing dark sunglasses and had a cane.

"You sent me to a blind guy." Dean whispered in my ear. I elbowed in the arm hard enough for him to keep quiet. Roy started going on about having breakfast and his faithful wife and blah blah. I needed him to get to the good stuff; the part that will help Dean already. There was a lot of cheering and murmuring around us.

"The Lord guides me into choosing who gets healed by the goodness in their heart." Roy said with his hands raised up.

"Yeah and into their wallets." Dean whispered to me.

"You think so, young man?" Roy said. Dean shot his head at me and I too stared back at him. Woah.

"Sorry." Dean said out loud.

"Don't be sorry young man. I may be blind but I've got excellent hearing. What's your name son?" Roy said. Everyone was now staring at Dean. Dean became hesitant.

"Dean…sir."

"I want you to come up here with me son." Roy said holding his hand out for him. Everyone around started clapping and this older woman moved center stage, smiling at Dean.

"No way!" Dean whispered to me.

"What are you talking about?" I whispered back.

"You're here to be healed right?" Roy boomed over the cheering. "The Lord chose you Dean."

"Get up there Dean." I said all excited now. Dean reluctantly got up from his seat and made his way towards the stage. The older woman on the stage moved to help Dean stand next to Roy.

I couldn't really hear what was going on but Roy put his hands in the air then on Dean's head. "Pray with me." Roy said to the crowd. People around me had their hands up in the air and all joining in with each other's prayers. Dean fell to his knees and I shot up to see if he was okay. He was tilting back and forth and then collapsed on the floor. I ran through the people and got on the stage. "Dean!" I yelled. The crowd kept clapping and chanting nonsense. I grabbed him by the collar of his hoodie and his eyes popped open all wild. "Say something Dean!" I said more so only he could hear me. He kept blinking and staring at something behind my head but when I turned around no one was there.

*

We went back to the hospital to see if Dean was alright. He was sitting on the table with his shirt off. I was trying really hard not to stare. He looked good though. The color came back into this face and his strength was more than noticeable.

"There's no sign of you ever having a heart attack. You're a young man, athletic. You have no worries." The doctor said going through his papers.

"Thanks Doc." Dean said putting his shirt back on. Bummer. The doctor left the room. "That's messed up."

"Why does it have to be messed up?" I asked. "Why can't you just thank me already?" I said with a huge smile on my face.

"Yeah well, as grateful as I am, I can't shake this feeling I got."

"What feeling?"

"It's probably nothing." He said ready to leave the hospital. We got back out to the car before I spoke again.

"You can tell me. What's shaking you up?" Dean looked a bit timid. He looked to the ground then back at my face.

"When I was being…healed…I felt weird. It felt wrong. Everything went cold inside of me and I saw…this old guy."

"Old guy? What did he look like?" I was leaning against the Impala now and trying to keep his eye contact with Dean, but he kept looking everywhere but at me.

"He was well…old, dark eyes and dark clothing. I think it was a spirit."

"Dean, I didn't see anything like that up there."

"Sam, I've been hunting a long time to trust a feeling like this. This wasn't good."

"Alright." I sighed. "Well, what do you want to do about it?"

"You go figure out what happened to that guy that dropped dead."

"What guy that dropped dead?"

"This one." He said giving me a piece of paper. "I found it in the hospital while you were getting a coffee. Some guy dropped dead of a heart attack while I was being saved." I gave him a skeptical look.

"Where are you going?"

"See the reverend."

*

I went around town getting the low down on this heart attack guy named Matt. He was probably the biggest health freak that I've ever known. Exercising and eating organic foods with no HMOs or GMOs. Whatever that meant. He was far from a heart attack. I went down the street and called Dean.

"Did you find anything?" he asked.

"Yeah, he was the biggest health freak ever. Went to the gym every day before and after work. Took vitamins and only ate organic foods. I talked to one of his coworkers and he said he was running when he had a heart attack. And before that Matt told him something was after him." I said.

"Did he say what?"

"His friend said he didn't see anything. And the clock on the wall was frozen at the time of his death."

"That's weird."

"Yeah, what's weird is that he died, when you were healed…" I trailed.

*

When we got back to the hotel Dean threw his jacket on the bed and sat down in defeat. I got on the laptop and did some research while Dean rambled on about what could be doing this.

"Okay." I said writing down some stuff. I turned around in my chair and looked at the Dean laying on the bed.

"Lay it on me."

"Over the last year, Roy has healed seven people and every time one is healed, someone dies from what they had. So one has cancer, he heals him and then someone dies from cancer.'

"So he died because of me?"

"I'm sure if he healed someone else he still would have died."

"Some Reverend." Dean looked upset. "You shouldn't have brought me here Sam." I looked at him appalled.

"What else were we supposed to do?"

"Let me die or I don't know. Go on." He said getting angry at me.

"I didn't know this was going to happen Dean. You think if I did, I would have still brought you here?"

"I think, I still don't really know what your intentions are." He said getting up now.

"I see." I said getting up and putting my laptop away.

"What are you doing?" he said.

I sighed and looked at him uncertain of what to say. "I'm trying to be civil. I'm trying to make this work. I had only one intention of hunting with you, and that was getting Yellow Eyes, and then you had to go and get electrocuted and then had a severe heart attack and I did what I thought was best to save you. I didn't know it was going to turn into a case. Guy healing people, yeah that can be supernatural, but there's only one thing that can bring people to life and kill them."

"Oh, and what's that?" he said getting all flustered.

"A reaper." I stated. "Someone must be controlling it because they don't just heal people like that and then take another."

"So that man I saw…was a reaper?" he questioned. He kept looking at the ground and then got really quiet. I could tell he was mad, frustrated, and probably just really distraught. I couldn't imagine having someone die for me. Literally!

"Who do you think could be controlling this? Who would want to? That's just messed up." He said.

"What about that cross looking thing? I've never seen anything like that before." I said getting my laptop back out. I looked up crosses and came across one close like it. "I think this is it!" I said all excited. Dean leaned in close over my shoulder and I could smell him. He smelt of gasoline and pine trees. I tried not to lean in closer to him.

"That looks like it. Where the hell do you find something like that?"

"No idea." I said leaning farther back so I could smell him some more.

"Let's go back to Roy's house." Dean said grabbing his jacket.

When we got to Roy's house no one was home. Dean picked the lock on the door for me and I snuck in. When I turned around he was still outside the door. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm going to find Roy. Stop him from healing somebody else." He said keeping watch for me. "When you're done here call me." He closed the door gently and I sighed. He was always leaving me to do the mischief work. I looked around the dark house and tried to figure out where people would keep secret stuff. Especially a healer.

I went through drawers and closets and couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. I looked at some of the pictures and realized the woman on stage with him was his wife. His wife? I went upstairs in the bedroom and found some newspapers clipping of the past year of the other deaths that happened because of this healing business. It's like they're serial killers, I thought to myself. I went into another room and saw this huge bookcase against the far wall. I walked over and looked over and saw a book that was much older than the older ones. Roy is blind, so he couldn't have read this. I picked up and in the middle of the book were several clippings of Matt and how he was a gay activist in the community. Health freak gay guy? I called Dean.

"What's new?" he asked.

"Matt was a gay activist in the community." I said. "Roy isn't the one doing this, it's his wife…whatever her name is. There's this book here that has all these spells and stuff."

"Spells? What is this witch craft?" Dean asked.

"I think its black magic."

"Alright, get over here quick. Roy is about to kill someone else." He hung up.

I got the tent as quick as I could with the book still in hand. I saw Dean being let go by some cops and then that chick Lyla talking to him outside the tent. What the hell did I miss? I walked over and heard Roy say he was going to have a private healing tonight.

"What the hell happened?" I asked approaching Dean.
"Nothing good. We got to stop this and fast." He said walking towards his car. I followed pursuit and got in the car with him. "I don't think he has any idea of what his wife is doing."

"Well, I got this from the house." I said handing Dean the book. "It's ancient. Someone went to the dark side and left a spell on how to bind a reaper." I said watching the expression on his face.

"This picture in here, Sue had that cross in her hands when I saw her. Maybe that's what binding it." he said pointing to the cross in the book.

"That's the same one I saw on stage." I said.

"Let's go." He said driving back to Roy's house. He turned the lights off when we pulled up the driveway.

"Do you have a plan?" I asked trying to get a look inside the windows.

"We got to find Sue and fast. He's going to try and heal Lyla."

"Lyla? Who's Lyla?" I asked.

"That chick we met in the tent. She's got a tumor or something." He mumbled and got out of the car.

I snuck around the back of the house and looked behind me and saw Dean in the trunk of his Impala. I looked into the back window and saw everyone in the living room getting ready to do the ritual. I looked into the ancient book and found a spell to reverse this onto Roy's wife Sue. I chanted the spell softly under my breath. I didn't know if it was working until I heard a scream on the other side of the house. I walked around to the side and saw Sue standing there clutching the cross and Dean standing in front of her. Sue started crouching down on the ground and looking up at something that neither of us could see. She took two large breathes and then collapsed to the ground dead. Dean looked over at me a little confused and I held up the book.

"I think it's time to get rid of this." I said tossing it to him. We both walked back to the Impala and Dean drove us to the motel. When we got inside Dean plopped down on the bed and stayed quiet.

"What's wrong?" I asked sitting at the little table in the room.

"Nothing." He said with no emotion. I waited a few minutes. Still silence.

"We did the right thing Dean." I said looking over at him. He didn't say anything or move. "There was no other way we could have done it. I know you feel bad about Lyla but her miracle will come. The right way." He sat up and looked troubled.

"Thank you." He croaked. "Thank you for saving me." I looked at him surprised.

"You don't need to thank me." I said. "I guess it was just…destiny." He smiled at me.

"Let's rest up. We got a lot more work to do."