Part Three

If there'd been a vote at any of the schools he'd ever attended, Dean figured he might have won Most Likely to Become a One-Armed Auto Mechanic.

From the moment the Impala had sputtered to a halt, his prime motivation had been to get her going again, to do something he knew he was good at. Soon as he'd picked himself out of the dust in front of the Broomfield place and decided to let Sam carry on being neighborly, he was thinking it through.

Once back at the car he had the hood open and the wrecked fan belt out quicker than you could say sonofabitch. He was a little unbalanced, but having one hand out of commission didn't make him quite as useless as he'd feared. Putting pain on the back burner, so to speak ... that was something else he was good at. And somehow it felt easier doing this kind of stuff when Sam wasn't watching, waiting for him to be an idiot of some kind. Clumsy, buzzed, insane, hopeless ... any of those.

Out in the air, pressed close to the bumper, breathing in the smell of hardworking metal and old motor oil, he felt more together than he'd felt for some days. His hand still hurt, though, and the whole arm went numb when he tried to hold one end of the pantyhose down. He knew he'd have to be messed in the head to ignore how serious it was.

Daylight was starting to fade and Dean wanted more than anything to be back in control, behind the wheel with the engine running, when Sam caught up. He straightened from his task only once to look down the road to where he was expecting his brother to appear at any second.

Trouble was, it wasn't just the belt. He was pretty sure the alternator was on the fritz and something else ... something else had made the engine overheat. Overheat enough to make his palm an empty wasteland for the next fortune-teller who happened along.

Nope, sorry. Your heart, your head, your life ... nothing doing anymore, buddy.

Damn, he needed time. Time, warmth, light and two hands.

Sam was probably right about not looking after her. He hadn't been looking after her. So not cool that Sam was always probably right.

"Sorry, baby," he found himself saying, the fingers of his injured hand touching down on a groove in the metal of the radiator. "Haven't been taking care of you." He rubbed some oil across the pads of his first three fingers with his thumb and then sniffed them. "Sweetheart ... are you leaking?"

Talking dirty to his car. Most fun than he'd had in months.

The almost-evening breeze skimmed the hair on top of his head. There was a pinkish glow to the sky and there was peace. Actually, he hadn't really noticed that before, the peace. Too busy trying to prove that while he was many irritating things, weak wasn't one of them. And at least he could still make it to the top of the ridge first, burned hand or no, and have the car back on the road before sundown.

Pathetic really, but what was he going to do? Forty years hadn't changed his M.O.

Dean smeared the oil on his jeans, examined his handiwork so far.

It was going to be touch and go. He really needed the extra pair of hands, even if they belonged to his messed-up, lying, fumblefuck of a brother.

"Just what the hell?" he asked of the Impala. "How long does it take to small-talk some crazy old dude about trees and drink a cup of goddamn coffee anyway? Answer me that."

The noise of an approaching vehicle made him look up and he moved a step towards the road, wiping across his brow with the bad arm.

A blue truck flashed its lights at him. It slowed down and came to a halt right behind where the Impala was stranded. The engine rumbled on for a while and then went quiet. Nobody got out so Dean decided to approach. When he reached the truck - Mazda B-Series, about four years old and scratched to hell - the electric window rolled down. A brown-haired woman was sitting behind the wheel on her own, tanned forearms, four piercings in her ear. She looked like she wasn't at all sure she should have stopped.

"You in trouble?" she asked, pressed back suspiciously in her seat, arms still stretched out on the wheel.

Eyes the color of shiny hazelnuts. White t-shirt, too small, but that was actually more than OK.

Dean cleared his throat, held up his bound hand. "I'm kinda ... fucked," he found himself saying. "Trying to fix my car ... waiting for my brother to get back. You wouldn't be able to come and ... hold something for me?"

"Did you seriously just say that?" the woman asked, her little red mouth quirking.

Dean felt un-used muscles in his face stretch, heard himself babbling. "The flashlight mainly. I .. really ... one hand ... not going to be able to ... uh, are you getting a cell phone signal?"

Damn. A cute brown-haired woman, busting out of her t-shirt, smelling like vanilla ice-cream and offering to help him, and he had nothing. Turned out owning a coal-black space where his soul used to be didn't help in the business of hitting on mortal women. Not at all.

"Not right now, no. Not up here."

He quickly stepped away as the woman unlocked the car, gave her plenty of room to open the door and get out. When she was on the road she banged shut the driver's door with her hip before coming closer to him. He couldn't help taking in a deep breath, just to get another hit of vanilla.

"My God," she said , "you're ... are you sniffing me? Are you dangerous?"

"Like you wouldn't believe." He flushed so heavily it made his cheeks hurt.

Oh. Fuck. Dean Winchester and shy in the same sentence. Tell me it isn't true.

"Right." She looked him up and down. "I can hold a flashlight. Name's Gina if that helps."

"Dean."

"Hey, Dean. Picked a helluva place to break down. What you do to your hand?"

"Engine was kind of hot."

"Kind of ... hot," she repeated, and looked him up and down again. "Yeah. I get it. Well then lead on, Dean, I haven't got all day."

Dean had the not-unpleasant sensation that her eyes were fixed on his butt as he walked back to the Impala. She stood close enough with the flashlight that her flowery-sweet ice-cream scent was all over him as he bent to his task again.

Cars and women. Women and cars. Jesus. It's not like I ever asked for much.

"I don't believe this," she said after watching him for a while. "Is that what I think it is?"

"It's doing the job."

She laughed hard. "I heard you could mend cars with underwear. Never believed it."

"Now you know."

"If it works."

"Oh, it'll work. If I could just get it ...." There was a ping and the pantyhose slipped from his grasp again.

"Hey, you're in real trouble with that hand aren't you? Shouldn't you get it looked at?"

Dean held up his paw, impatient in spite of himself, in spite of her sweetness. "I'm looking at it. Looks fine to me."

"Oh right. So you have an attitude. Yeah. Figures."

"Figures?" He stood up straight.

She shrugged, smirked at him a little.

OK, so flirting. On the side of the road. On a mountain. Wasn't this one of those real life versus porn situations? Dean forced himself to concentrate.

"Where's your brother?" she asked when he finally got the damn thing to hold. He was sweaty, had engine oil all over him and his good hand was covered in scrapes where he'd kept banging it against sharp metal and plastic edges.

"Left him at the Broomfield place."

"Oh you bastard," Gina said. The flashlight went off and she dropped it on the ground.

"Excuse me?"

The mood had changed so drastically that Dean would not have been surprised if a black cloud sailed into view over their heads, or a bunch of tumbleweed came blowing across the road. Gina stepped right back, holding up both hands as if to ward him off.

"That is so not funny. That is ... so not fuckin' funny."

Dean laid aside the rag he was about to use to wipe his hand. He knew he wasn't the most tactful person on the planet; sometimes said too many words, or said too few, or just strung all the wrong ones together. On this occasion, though, he was at a loss to know what he'd done. "Okay, come at me again with that, Gina. What is it that's not funny about the Broomfield place?"

"Like you don't know," she said, turning to leave. "Jesus. I can't believe I could be so stupid. Not to see that you're just another sick freak."

The utter disgust on her face told him he had crossed a boundary. Like, straight through the border guards without a passport.

"Hey, hold on there. I really ... don't ... know what you're talking about ... but hey ... hey! I need you to tell me! Now, for ... fuck's sake, I need you to tell me now!"

Gina was already walking away with fast, controlled steps along the uneven road. Dean realized that shouting at her was a bad idea but the apprehension pricking across his back and the dull flare of pain were undermining his self-control. Gritting his teeth, he strode after her.

"Gina, whoah ... slow down ... wait a second, what'd I do?"

She turned on him then, furious, got close enough to jab a finger in his chest.

"Do you think killing people's funny?"

His stomach dropped like a stone.

"Of course I -"

"People died in that house, you pathetic loser. People's sons and brothers died in that fuckin' house. They found their heads in the ... and you think it's funny ..."

"Believe me," he said. "Believe me when I tell you I don't think it's funny. Gina, please ... "

"Yeah, well I hope your car doesn't start and nobody stops and you stand out here all night freezing your ass off. I hope you lose your fuckin' hand, you ... just ... just go to hell, you sick fuck."

"OK," Dean said, and he'd grabbed hold of her before he could stop himself. He could hardly speak his chest had tightened up so much. "OK to all of that. I'll go to hell, yeah, whatever. Just ... tell me what happened in that house."

He was willing her to be calm but she wasn't having any of it.

"Do some research, asshole," she hissed, and broke from his hold. In five more steps she was back at the truck.

Dean let her go. By the time her vehicle had regained the road in a squeal of tires, he was banging down the hood of the Impala. By the time she'd passed him, angrily honking her horn, he was in the front seat, praying to the great god of Chevrolet to just let his baby ....

Yesss!

The engine caught the first time, revved with a bit of a cough, but kept going. Dean gripped the steering wheel with the hand that could still grip and accelerated on to the road. He knew he should probably take it slow, because one-hand-and-an-elbow driving was asking for a skid, and because he needed to make sure he didn't miss the house when he came to it, but his instincts were screaming at him to floor the accelerator, burn rubber and just ... get there.

Something bad. Something very, very bad.

Dusk had faded to dark in the blink of an eye. The trees were indistinct shadows now, the valley spread out below the mountain was beginning to wink with tiny lights.

Here, it was here.

Dean slewed to a stop. This was where he'd come on to the road after staggering up off the ground in front of the steps.

What the hell had he left for again? Because Sam was being a decent, helpful guy?

He practically fell out of the car. Picked up another gun and some rocksalt shells from the trunk, didn't know how in hell he was going to load it with only one hand ... ran. Ran into the trees.

The clearing was just that. A clearing in the trees, containing nothing.

There was no house.

Not so much as a sapling or a log or ... anything. Just an empty space in the trees, the ground shelving slightly, like the place had been leveled by a spiteful alien attack-ship.

Dean hitched in a breath and held it. How had he freakin' well got this wrong? Was his radar so terminally fucked?

He and Sam had come along Chester's shortcut from right over there. The house had been here, right here in this clearing, facing out to the valley. He'd walked past these trees going back to the road ....

"Sam ..." he said to the open, empty space. A spasm of pain shot through his arm from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers, nearly winding him.

This couldn't be.

It just couldn't.

-------

Sam never got his cup of coffee.

He could smell it all right, alongside the aroma of warm dough that crept through the house, but none arrived. Registering a sharp sense of unease that Dean was in no shape to be wandering around on his own, but feeling obliged to give a helping hand to these people, he carried on picking up the scattered pages as fast as he could. There seemed to be thousands of them, out of order, some of them a little crumpled. The drawings were such beautiful, delicate work, that he wanted to be as careful as he could. Several times he had to stop himself just gawking in amazement.

Jim Broomfield sat in his wheelchair, clucking his approval.

"Can't thank you enough," he said. "M would never have had the patience. She'd just have thrown them all on the desk and told me to get on with it. Heh! Doesn't have much patience, my M."

"Do you have a working phone?" Sam asked from his knees. "I really need to get my brother to a doctor."

"Well, I can see how you've got your hands full there. I know I can be a bit of a pain in the ass at times, but at least I don't drink."

It took Sam a moment to realize the direction the conversation might go.

"Oh ... no ... Dean isn't ... he doesn't ... well, that is ... it's just his hand, I think. He's not feeling so great."

"If you say so."

Sam glanced up. The old man was grinning at him, not entirely warmly.

"Uh ... so, I'm sorry, did you say you had a phone?"

"Nooo, lines blew down two nights ago. Goddamn crews haven't made it up here yet."

Sam blew out a calming breath. "Right."

"He shouldn't have left," Jim observed.

"I'm sorry?"

"Your brother should have stayed. Boy needed to take the weight off, let someone look out for him."

"Yeah, he doesn't do that," said Sam, transferring a neat pile of paper back on to the leather-topped desk by his ear.

Jim cackled suddenly. "Sounds like my nephew Jefferson," he said. "Wouldn't let anyone do a thing for him."

Sam nodded. He didn't want to hear about Jefferson, and he didn't want to talk about Dean. "Nearly done," he said. "And then I must go catch up with my brother."

"That's Jefferson," Jim told him, and Sam couldn't help following the line of the old man's gaze to a bunch of photographs on the mantelpiece. "Died in '92."

"I'm sorry."

Sam flicked through the last pile of paper, eyes moving rapidly, and then clambered to his feet.

"He was sick," Jim carried on. "Wouldn't tell anyone, though. Too late by the time we found out."

Sam still didn't say anything. It wasn't like family disasters were very shocking to him anymore.

"He was only ... oh ... thirty or thereabouts. Our dead sister's boy. Like a son to us." Jim was still staring at the photographs and Sam couldn't resist going over to see. All the shots were of the same young man. On a motorcycle. Dressed in hiking gear. Playing tennis. White-water rafting.

Quite the athlete.

Sam wasn't sure if he'd had this thought himself or if he was channeling Dean.

"Goddamn lazy bastard," Jim said from the wheelchair.

"Excuse me?"

"That boy. Lazy, weak sonofabitch."

Sam's brow crinkled in confusion. The smell of baking bread and brewing coffee was beginning to get a little cloying. There seemed to be no fresh air in the place, and .... oh right .... now he was beginning to smell something else. Sam couldn't have described the smell if anyone had asked him, but he was getting it all right. Cold and clingy, pouring out of the walls.

"You know what?" he said, "I'm going to pass on the coffee. I need to get back to Dean."

"The weak ones," Jim said. "It's always the weak ones that turn."

Tragedy and madness ... that was what he could smell. It suddenly tickled his gag reflex. Sam felt the freezing puff of his own breath pass his lips and saw the vapor hanging in the air before him.

"Fuck," he said with feeling. "I walked right into this, didn't I?"

Sam cursed everything he could lay claim to then - his one-track mind, his inability to help his brother, the rolling tide of lousy Winchester luck. Damn. Something had told Dean this house shouldn't be here. Dean, who'd been struggling so badly, had felt it from out there on the mountainside. And Sam, with all his superior Spidey-sense and freaky mojo honed to the nth degree ... Sam had missed it.

He already knew what would happen when he got across the blaring hall carpet and reached the front door. It wouldn't open. Of course it wouldn't. It was jammed and unmoving in the solid, unholy way that haunted doors always were. The windows would be the same. The whole damn house would be the same.

Fuck. Too late, too late.

"Too late," Jim said right behind him.

------

Dean reversed out of the empty clearing at speed and was lucky he didn't wrap the Impala round a tree. The last time he'd driven one-handed, the hand now useless to him had been stroking Mindy Meyerson's inner thigh and that evening hadn't ended too well either if he remembered rightly. For a split second, staring out of the rear window into the dark, he had a total blank about which direction he should go. His desire to act and his ability to do so were not synchronized. In fact, the gap between the two scared the hell out of him.

He needed his cell to pick up something. He needed instant information. Fuck, he so needed Bobby on the end of a phone.

All of these things were out of his reach, so he went for the next-best alternative.

Chester.

Dean couldn't believe his luck that there were actually still lights on at the Travelstop. Not only that, parked out by the pump was the blue Mazda. Two figures were visible standing at the counter inside.

Gina evidently wasn't getting gas. She was right by Chester behind the counter and as soon as she saw Dean come through the door she shouldered a shotgun. He froze.

"Mom," Chester said. "This is one of those guys I was just telling you about." He looked out the window. "Did you manage to fix the fan-belt?"

"Uh-huh," Dean said cautiously. He could only raise his good hand to show compliance with the 12-gauge aimed at his chest as the other one seemed to be attached to a weight that left it hanging forlornly in front of his stomach. Gina held the weapon with a natural confidence that had probably attracted Dean to her as much as the t-shirt.

"Why the hell are you following me?" she snapped out.

"I'm not following you, Gina. I swear. Tell your Mom again, Chester, tell her I was here earlier with my brother."

"Sam and Dean, Mom. I thought they were robbers but they only wanted some water and pantyhose."

Gina snorted. "So what was that bullshit about the Broomfield house? Where's your brother now?"

"I don't know, that's kind of the fucking problem, Gina. I've lost him, out there in the ... and the thing is, if I knew the story, then I might be able to ... find him."

Her hold on the weapon didn't waver.

"How've you lost him?"

" Look, I know this makes no sense at all -"

"Oh you think? No, don't say anymore." She hefted the gun, shifted the weight a little, kept it aimed. "Let me guess. You've read something somewhere ... on some stupid website I'll bet, and you thought you'd come up here and see if there were any spooky souvenirs or some crap like that? What did it say, this website or whatever? Was it about the murders? Or just about the fire?"

"Nothing. Neither. Believe me."

Gina frowned at him. "Believe me, he says." She was looking straight into his eyes, as if searching for the guy whose butt she had followed down the road, who'd made her laugh and quirk her lips. She sighed. "OK, Dean. You want the story. Story goes ... house burned down four years ago, with the Broomfields in it."

"They set it on fire," Chester added. "Locked themselves in the cellar and torched the place."

Dean made himself absorb these statements quickly, ignoring the mental indigestion that resulted. "Why would they do that?"

"Cause they figured the cops were coming," Chester said.

"There was an investigation." Gina began to lower the shotgun. "Finally, an investigation into things that had happened .... over years and years .... to people who came to the mountain and never went home. They found them all, in the burned-out house. Well, found their heads."

Dean knew he wasn't breathing in complete lungfuls of air, that he was beginning to ride the wave of an aggressive panic. "So ... this loopy brother and sister combo ... what? L-lured them in?" he stuttered, "killed them in the house and then ....? "

"Yeah," said Chester. "Chopped off their heads. Gross."

"Jesus, Chester!" his mother snapped, "and you wonder why I want to move away from this fuckin' place?"

Dean pressed the heel of his good hand hard above one eye. "Why though? Why do that?"

"Um, craaaaazy?"

"I know," Chester said, and Dean knew he had been right to come back to the Travelstop. "I know all about the bread-baking crazy people. Ask me."

"Yeah, well we don't need to hear it, buster," Gina interrupted him. "It's way beyond time we were closing and going home. Listen here, you ... Dean ... I don't know why your brother is still running around up there. There's nothing for him to get any kicks out of. There's no haunted ruin or anything. Nothing was left but the foundations and they took all those away years ago."

"I'm going back," Dean said. "And I need to know exactly what they did and why."

"Oh my God, why would you be interested? I mean really. If I could call the cops on your weird ass ... "

Dean had to stuff as much information as he could into the non-addled parts of his brain. Obviously without explaining that he was scared his brother was caught on the other side, in a house that no longer existed, with a couple of ghosts who were probably trying to decapitate him at this very moment. And not pass out. All of which felt like a huge, between-the-eyes head-fuck.

His voice was wobbly with effort.

"I don't give a crap who, but ... one of you ... please, would you just freakin' tell me."

tbc