Field of Deans – chpt 4

by: sifi.

--

'What IS that? And why's it look like it's lookin' at me?... Dad! Dad!... oh hell...' he grunted rolling the window all the way up, then slapped his hand on the door lock, making sure it was all the way down. 'the back door!' he remembered making sure that one was down too.

'Dad's side...' he thought, scuttling across the front seat, making sure everything was closed up tight as the column of thick white billowed against the windows, and around the car, "DAD! DADDY! HELP ME!" he screamed crawling down onto the floor of the car, the sound of the group Queen fell away, drowned out or muffled by whatever it was that had grabbed the Winchester's impala, or by his furiously hammering heartbeat. He buried his head under his arms and felt the car rock as the sound of something cracking breeched the unnatural silence. Another sway of the car and a little more cracking then finally the dull plunk of safety glass cubes hitting the leather bench seat, "No! Get away!" he yelled daring a peek at the invasive presence, 'need... need...' he felt somehow through the thickness as something wrapped around his wrists, hauling him with horrible undeniable strength off the floor of the car and toward the shattered window.

"No! NO! LEMME GO! DADDY! DADDY HELP ME!" he kicked and flailed, his hand broke free, then the other and he collapsed on the seat, his forearms and chin scraped by sharp edges of safety cubes, leaving smears of red as it grabbed again, 'need... too soon, dead...' he felt again and once more his wrists were captive, 'dead?!' "NOOOOOO!" he cried, his voice cracking around the sobs and shivers as he struggled against his captor but this time the grip was harder, and the rolling white flew into his mouth as he opened it to scream again.

A kaleidoscope of light and color, of pain tearing and crushing while the world rolled all around them, screams buffeted his head, leeching into his ears, sliding down his spine. He felt pressure in places, heat in others and flames danced just a little bit ahead, reaching for him as he choked, gasping, screaming for help, his voice lost in the cacophony of sound. No one knew he was still alive.

--

"Ray? Do you remember if Michael mentioned anything about a baby in the wreckage?" Missy asked softly, her eyes darting from Justin's pale sweating face to her husband who sat in the desk chair, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.

He shook his head, "No... it's possible though... he was in such a bad way Missy, there were so many people involved..."

She nodded, "I remember hon... it's been almost a year since the accident, since he came to us, do you think he's really starting to remember or..." her voice trailed off.

Ray nodded, "You heard him screaming out this morning yourself... Could be that Sam is the baby?"

"Do you think that's why he keeps getting drawn to the field, cause that's where you found him last year?" she asked mopping the sheen from his forehead as he whipped his head back and forth, muttering.

"May very well be, but even this morning he said he thought he lost something, he was missing something..."

"Did you see anything out there when you went and got him?" she asked.

"No... just him crouched there, scared out of his wits, barely knowing which way was up," he sighed then smiled wanly, "As I keep saying, at least he wasn't all burnt up and bloody this time," Ray frowned with the memory.

"Poor dear... such a big burden for such a small boy... there must be something we can do to help him..." she sniffed, pleading with her husband even as she bent over, resting her head beside the tormented child, stroking his cheek gently while whispering soothing words into his ear.

Ray nodded and rose, leaving for the kitchen where he stood looking up the stairs while the phone on the other end rang for just a moment longer.

"Mike? Ray Marshall... uh not so good... Missy and I think he might be starting to get some memories back of the accident... yeah, you don't know off hand if there were any infant fatalities involved do you?" he asked then nodded, "Uh huh... uh huh... yeah okay, that'd be great Mike... right, first thing in the morning... oh no! No! Not at all! But if he IS starting to remember things... we want to be able to help him... he's gonna need someone Mike and Missy and me, we're up for it! He's a wonderful boy... smart and basically happy... I know he'll be happy once he gets through it all...Right... see you in the morning then... thanks Mike..." he hung the phone up and sighed feeling a catch in his throat, "He can count all the way to three hundred..." the words caught and held inside his heart while he leaned against the wall scrubbing his face with his hands. I won't let you down son... I swear I won't...

--

"Whaddya want?" Buck Forester squinted deeply through the tiny crack he'd opened the door.

"Young man here needs to hear a story Buck..." Shep sighed clapping his hand onto John's shoulder. He couldn't remember the last time someone called him a young man, he couldn't remember the last time he felt... well he could, but it hurt too much.

"What kinda story?" the old man barked.

My God he looks like Popeye's Pappy... John thought as the door came open just a little further and he found himself looking into decades of folds and furrows.

"A true story," Shep grunted and held up his hand as Buck started to respond with what must've been a standard reply, "I know I know, they're ALL true... We need to hear the Marshall story, all of it...not just the crap you tell the kids at the rec center at Halloween."

"OOooh you really DO want the truth... er do ya?" he squinted at John, smacking his gums a few times, sizing up the haggard young man who smelled like the Midwest, not the Pacific Northwest.

"Buck!" Shep barked, taking John by surprise, but apparently the old man was accustomed to this from the hunter.

"Alright alright... ain't gonna torment a man who's got pain writ all over him and you with your hand up his ass puppeting him all around... you gonna break him IN or just break him McGregor?" Buck stepped back admitting both men into his surprisingly orderly little house.

John noticed the scent of fresh cooking, fresh chopped wood, and the must of old books. He looked questioningly at his guide who shook his head, "It's a long story..."

"Mebbe I oughta tell 'im that one! Get him runnin' screamin' fer the coast..." Buck challenged, his twisted wiry frame leaning steeply toward Shep, his long and oft practiced squint losing its severity as a smile tried to creep out from his toothless maw.

"Aww hell..." Buck gave up, motioning both men to a simple wooden table in the small kitchen. "I just put the stew up too..." he pulled a large cook pot off the counter then shoved it into the center of the table as well as a stack of bowls and a loaf of bread.

"Boy's gonna drop if y'don't feed 'im Shep... livin' on Jack aint' no way t'live either son, I know I tried... so..." he scooped the stew directly into the bowl for each of them, ripped what was left of the bread into three pieces, placing one before each of them, then passed out bottles of rootbeer.

"For God's sake man! Get the spoons out we're not animals!" Shep growled dodging off the bench to the sink where he rinsed off three spoons while Buck Forester laughed to himself.

"You don't have much time son...just about two days... what's your gig? Research? Paranormal studies? Cryptozoo...zoo...damnit I hate that word! Bigfoot stuff cause I can tell ya, that ain't no bigfoot..."

"Something took my son," John said softly, his eyes pinning the old man to the spot.

"No..." he breathed.

"Yeah," John nodded.

"Now are you gonna quit the doddering old fool shenanigans and talk or do we take a walk and run the risk of losing his kid?" Shep asked strongly. He was grateful John was letting him push the old man but impressed with how quickly he'd forced him to cut his normal clowning around.

"This morning?" Buck leaned in, all business now, "Only trace of anything a thick white cloud like a blanket of cotton that kinda rolled almost like a tumbleweed, not wispy... and you're the only one who saw it?" he ventured.

When John was done telling his story, he and Shep cleared the table while Buck sifted through stacks in a small closet.

"The Marshalls... Oh Good lord... the Carnival started up today didn't it McGregor?" he asked.

Shep nodded.

"My son would never run away of his own volition...unless it's something like... that story... oh hell the Bradburn... no... Bradbury... oh what the hell is it?" John shook his head while Buck sorted and ordered a small pile of newspaper clippings.

"By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes..." Shep quoted, "Ray Bradbury's story...the carnival was called Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show if I recall correctly... the quote is from Macbeth."

Buck shrieked, whipping around the table and started smacking Shep on the arm repeatedly, "You twice removed moron! Don't you know you NEVER SAY that name! There's a reason it's cursed! You... damned stupid... blight on Scots the world over!" he howled scowling as Shep held back his chuckles. John was getting the feeling this was a pretty normal interaction for these two odd men.

When he was done, the old man gasped returning his attention to John, "No, no... it's not like that... but there's more to it than that son... plenty more," Buck nodded, peering over the tops of a pair of wire rimmed glasses that had materialized on his face, neither John nor Shep knew when.

"Mmmkay, here we go..." he got the clippings sorted, turned up the kitchen lights to full then sat across from the boys before him, "Second weekend in August, 1957 loggers coming down 395 from Umatilla National Forest... Government had gone and opened a season's worth of logging in the area... damned fools... anyway... inland fog doesn't move too much and the roads were slick... truck took out four family vehicles when the driver lost control. When he lost control he was just on the edge of the Marshall's wheat farm, right there on the edge of Lakeview... nobody even knew the boy had been IN the crash let alone survived it until Ray Marshall found him near dead in the field," Buck frowned and swallowed hard, several of the folds and furrows that had lent him the 'Pappy' air, was apparently a bit of a put on for visitors. The man John had initially thought had to have been near 90 was in fact, just a few years into his 70's.

"Dear god..." John groaned looking at the picture of a what was obviously a child wrapped heavily in blood seeped gauze laying in a hospital bed with a lean whip of a man on one side, his cap in his hand, and a soft looking woman on the other side of the child appearing to be in the midst of a bedside prayer. The caption read, "I-395 Tragedy claims 13, local couple awarded custody of sole survivor."

"But how does it fit?" John asked, then nodded, "...the mini-mart. It stands on what used to be the edge of the Marshall farm..." he surmised.

Buck and Shep nodded and John rose, "Well then let's go... let's get to the farm and get my boy back!"

"It's not that easy John," Shep shook his head.

"What? The farm doesn't exist anymore? No one knows where the Marshall's bones are buried? I don't care if I have to tear up half the state of Oregon! I'm going to find those bones and salt and burn 'em and get my boy back!" John stormed feeling as if his head was about to split open, his skull hurt and there were dancing dots behind his eyes.

"Sit down before you go into apoplexy youngun... there's more... it's not that easy because if I'm right, and can finally get some damned proof of it, your boy isn't ON the Marshall farm..." Buck informed him.

"But you just said..." he hung his head scrubbing his face, "...okay fine then we go to the carnival and talk to the owner... make sure the roustabouts know to keep their eyes open for Dean..." he shrugged but met a shaking head once more, "THEN WHAT!?" he yelled leaning heavily on the plank table, barely able to control the fear and frustration that kept wanting to mix his sweat and tears together. His hands fisted on top of the wood, nails digging into his palms to keep his hands from shaking, to keep himself steady, stay the course and be once more the competent soldier he had been before. Before Mary's obscene murder, before the police had investigated him more thoroughly than a proctologist, before they'd threatened to take his sons from him to try and get him to confess to some impossible wrong doing, before his partner had lost faith in him.

Once upon a time he'd been a competent United States Marine, once upon a time when the boogeyman was tree branch scraping the aluminum siding, when ghosts slept in beds with their names etched on the headboards, or remained trapped and held within the pages of storybooks for his children. When Poltergeist was just a movie, and werewolves were either Bela Lugosi, or Michael Landon having a bad hair day, or chased Abott and Costello around with hilarious hijinx ensuing, back when things that went 'bump' in the night was usually a stubbed toe on the hall table. I have to do better... I have to BE better... I have to or my boys won't make it... I have to be able to keep them safe! I have to get my son back.

"Are you gonna sit down and let me finish filling you in here boy?" Buck asked, "Or are you gonna go off and miss what little chance you might have to get him back entirely? NOT just for a year..."

"What?" John huffed feeling the wind collapse from his sails once again.

--

"No! NO LEMME GO! DADDY PLEASE!... help me..." he sobbed then gasped feeling himself drawn against wiry warmth that stroked his hair and back.

"Shhh now, it's okay son... It's okay... I gotcha, yer ma'n me... we're both here for you Justin..." he smiled gently into the perplexed face before him.

"Justin?... Sam... where's Sam?" he asked looking around the early morning orange of the room. The curtains billowed gently in the breeze, and a faint rope of white shimmered against the orange light. "No... You stay away from me... whatever you are! You came and took me... you... Where am I?" he asked, his eyes darting away from the approaching snake of white that apparently the man who'd called him Justin couldn't see, Marshall... Ray Marshall... I'm Justin David Marshall, my mother is Missy, but... no... NO! I'm Dean! and I got a little brother named Sam and my dad is John! He's got a gun named after him!

"Mr. Marshall... you gotta help me... please!" he scrambled to the edge of the bed, the end of the smoke splitting into two, each branch caressing a temple in an almost loving touch before the ends clamped closed around his throat.

--

tbc.

please R&R

thanks,

sifi.