Vacancy - Ch3
"Jo!" Sam said. The blonde pushed her way into the motel room and stared at Dean, who stared right back at her. "What are you doing here?"
"My mom sent me."
"Ellen? How did she know we were here?" Dean asked, sitting up with some difficulty.
"She had Ash put a trace on your computer. He could see what websites you guys have been looking at." Jo looked pointedly at Sam. "He says you two are very naughty boys."
Sam blushed a furious shade of red. He opened his mouth to speak but found no sound would come out.
"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy," Dean said. "What have you been doing on my laptop?"
"Never mind," Jo said. "Mom wants me to help you two."
"No," Dean said. "You can't. Whatever we're up against here is too dangerous. It hurt me with its axe and I can't let you help."
"You have no problem with Jason coming back tomorrow," Sam protested. "Jo can help too. She's much more experienced than Jason is."
"Who's Jason?" Jo asked. "You don't look hurt, Dean," she added after looking him over. He didn't mind at all.
"This thing that's haunting the motel. It's like the movie The Grudge... we think something really, really bad happened to that man, so bad it stayed behind after it died. And it kept its axe. It chopped my chest, and it feels like I have a hole there or something," Dean said. "And Jason is this kid we met. His mother was killed just like ours, only he's not Sammy's age. He's younger."
"That's interesting," Jo said, pulling out a cell phone. She dialed the number for the roadhouse and said, "Hey, Ma, it's Jo. Yeah, I'm with Sam and Dean." She listened for a while, and then said, "Dean was hurt. They think it's a kilajh. It got Dean with its axe..."
Sam mouthed the unfamiliar word to Dean, who shrugged. Jo continued talking. "Ok, mother, I'll put him on." She held the phone out to Dean. "She wants to talk to you."
"Hey, Ellen, what's up?" Dean said, flashing Sam a look. Now it was Sam's turn to shrug. Jo turned around, and Sam smiled at her.
"Hello, Dean. Are you all right?" Ellen asked on the other end of the line.
"Yeah, I think I'm going to be ok. It hurts like a mother right now, but Sammy thinks he found out how to kill this thing. What did Jo call it?" Dean said.
"A kilajh. It's the old Indian term for a creature born out of rage. That's what you're dealing with?" Ellen replied, washing the counter of the roadhouse with a washcloth. She shifted the phone to her other ear to continue rubbing down the bar.
"We think so," Dean said. "Its face looked like it had been murdered, maybe even by an axe. It carried this axe over into the other world, and it was immune to rock salt. That sound about right?"
"Yeah," Ellen said. "It seems good to me. And you know you have to burn its bones in a fire made from sticks, right? No gasoline."
Dean sighed. "No, Sammy left out the part about the sticks. Thanks, Ellen."
"No problem. You boys take care of yourselves, you hear? And be good to Jo, too," Ellen said, tossing the rag into a bucket full of water. Ash ran past, stark naked, covering himself with his the deer head from the wall. Ellen shook her head.
"Sure, Ellen. Will do. You want to talk to Jo?" Dean replied. He shifted his weight so he could hand the phone to the blonde girl in the center of the room, grunting as he did so.
"OK," Ellen said. Dean handed the phone to her daughter, and the two said goodbye to each other before Jo hung up the phone.
"So," Sam said to Dean. "What did she say?"
"Well, Sammy, we can't burn this thing with gas. We need to make a fire from sticks. Good thing we've got Ellen to watch out for us, no?" Dean replied. He stood up and stumbled over to the table, taking another cold piece of pizza from the box. "You want a piece?" he asked, offering the one in his hand to Jo. She shook her head, looing slightly repulsed by the thought. Dean shrugged and bit into his slice.
"I'm going to go rent a room," Jo said. She turned and almost made it to the door before Dean spoke up.
"Don't do that," he said.
"I will not share a bed with you," Jo said immediately.
"That's not what I meant," Dean replied. "I'm sure Sammy would be glad to give up his bed for you."
"You're kidding, right?" Sam said. Dean just smiled at him. Sam groaned and picked up Dean's keys from next to the pizza box. "I'll be in the Impala."
The clock on the endtable read 12:37 when Dean awoke with a start. There was something in the room with him and Jo, something inhuman. He could hear a snuffling sort of breath from the other side of the room, but he couldn't see anything in the darkness.
He felt under his pillow for the gun, this time loaded with the silver bullets that were supposed to repel a kilajh. Trying to be quiet, he leaned over and felt for the lamp. His hand connected rather loudly, and he saw something glint red in the darkness. "Son of a bitch," he whispered and groped frantically for the switch. Finally he found it, and the room flooded with light.
In the far corner of the room sat a young girl with white-blonde hair, dressed in a white nightgown. She was looking down at her feet, but when Dean drew in a gasp she lifted her head up to look at him.
"Sammy!" Dean yelled at the top of his lungs. Instead of eyes the girl had two gaping holes. The girl scrambled to her feet and began to step toward Dean.
Jo awoke in the other bed, saw what was happening, and shouted for Dean to shoot the girl. He pulled the trigger and the silver bullet exploded from the end of the gun. The dead girl's wispy form blew apart when the bullet hit her.
"What the hell!" Dean shouted. "I thought we were dealing with a fifty-year-old murder victim, not frigging Shirley Temple."
The door to the room flew open, startling both of the room's inhabitats. Sam stood in the doorway, hair disheveled. "What's going on?" he shouted. "I heard a gunshot." He took in the scene before him; Dean in bed, shirtless as he always was at night, with a gun, Jo staring at him in shock, and the clothes strewn around the room. Normally he would have thought Dean and Jo had hooked up, but Dean was injured.
"There was another frigging spirit in here, Sammy," Dean said. "A girl. She had no eyes."
Sam closed his eyes. "Oh my god," he said, slumping against the doorframe. "There's more than one?"
Dean nodded. "I'd say we got ourselves a bit of a problem."
"Listen, I'm going to go get my own room," Jo said after a moment. "I feel bad for making Sam sleep in the car."
"It's OK, really," Sam said. "I had the heat cranked up and I was listening to the radio. Some dude who called himself Jackles was pretending he could sing... he sucked big time."
"No. I'll go wake up the fat slob in the office and make him rent me a room. Maybe I'll ask him a few questions while I'm there. See you boys in the morning," Jo said, looking one last time at the shirtless Dean in bed.
Sam moved out of the way to let Jo pass and closed the door behind her. He turned to Dean, who still looked shaken from his encounter with the ghost girl.
"What do you think's going on?" he asked his older brother. Dean looked pained for a moment, and he clutched his chest.
"I don't know, but I want these bitches gone so I can work on fixing myself."
"Maybe we need to find you another faith healer," Sam smiled. "We could go back to Roy LaGrange... see how he's doing."
Dean threw a pillow at his brother, who caught it, laughing. "I'm just joking," he said. "If killing the kilajh doesn't fix you, we'll start exploring some other options."
"For now I need to catch some Z's," Dean said. "You can watch some TV if you want. Keep it clean, please."
Sam scowled at his older brother and lay down on the bed that Jo had slept in. Dean turned off the lamp with the ripped shade and was soon fast asleep, breathing irregularly.
Sam lay there for a while, listening to Dean's breath. He thought about how close the two of them were, about how much closer they'd become since their father had died. At first they'd fought a lot, each trying to help the other come to terms with the death, but now they had accepted the fact that their father was no longer able to help them hunt the demon and had moved on.
Sam picked up the remote from the bedtable and turned on the TV. He heard loud thumping and a moan before the picture came into focus. "Sammy," Dean growled in his sleep. Face reddening, Sam changed the channel. He found a cartoon involving fairy godparents and an evil teacher and lay there watching it until long after the clock read 3:00.
Sunlight streamed through the window of Room 7 and fell upon the faces of the two sleeping brothers. The television played softly, and it didn't bother either of them. They kept sleeping, Dean facing the wall nearest him and Sam looking toward the ceiling with both arms behind his head, Dean shirtless and Sam wearing a solid grey T-shirt.
Outside, a light snow had fallen, covering the beer bottles and McDonald's cups in a thin layer of white. A white car pulled into the parking lot and Jason got out, wearing a heavy winter coat and work boots. He walked over to the office, intending to find out which room the brothers were staying in.
He pulled open the door, breath rising in a thin column from his lips. Stepping inside the office, he wondered where the man who ran the place was. Why wasn't he behind the counter?
Jason walked up to the front desk and said, "Hello? Is anyone here?" When there was no answer, he walked around the counter to look for the man with the trucker's cap.
Behind the counter was a small kitchen and a room with a couch in front of a TV. Jason could see the legs of the man who had rented a room to him and his girlfriend just last night, lying up on the couch. He walked over to the couch, saying, "Hello? Hello? Sir, wake up." The man didn't move.
Jason moved around the side of the couch so he could see the man's face, and to his horror saw it was covered in the same deep, long lacerations that had marred the face of the being that had attacked him the night before. The motel owner was dead.