BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

- Chapter Three -

"You need to relax. You're too tense."

Sam shifted, stilled by pain and cold. He lay on his side, curled into a rough ball, lungs wet, breaths agonizingly sharp and rich coppery warmth flooding his mouth. Dull light met his open eyes, but he lacked the strength to focus. Something moved into his line of sight and he flinched as cold lit his arm and fired upwards. He opened his mouth to scream, but gurgled instead, driven into an oxygen deprived gasping fit.

"Stay still. You're moving too much."

The words hung over him: a soft command that he should obey, but could not. Writhing, Sam teetered on the edge of consciousness, his ears ringing and pulse frighteningly rapid. It felt like his head might explode.

"Do you have a low pain tolerance?" The voice asked crisply. It paused then added, "You must have. Because it's really not that bad."

He didn't know how to answer so he concentrated just on breathing. Except that was torture in of itself.

Stabbed. He must have been stabbed. Would have remembered a gunshot, or a fall. But a knife to the chest, that'd creep up on you. If he could coordinate his recalcitrant limbs, he could check for impalement or gaping wounds. But he didn't move. Couldn't. Shards of glass seemed to have shredded his chest, ripped open his lungs – ruined something deep inside of him. His mind roamed and thoughts displaced as every breath threatened to be his last.

"I'm Melanie," the voice said, sounding vaguely frustrated now. "What's your name?"

He tried not to panic, to give in to the mystifying horror of exhaling his own blood.

"You were nice to my father. Why aren't you being nice to me?"

Sam shuddered and burbled as blood ran from his lips. It pooled against his cheek in a sticky coagulated and obscenely warm patch.

"What is your name?"

Harsh insistence underlay the words and Sam blinked and fought to focus. Shivering, he took in the small space, a room without walls, close distorted darkness that suggested a near boundary. Movement again, a wispy shape and something that might have been a face, but the edges seemed off, the contours too soft. He remembered then that he had woken before. Several times, each as foggy as the last. Pain his companion each and every time. Memories fogged and twisted, surreal.

"You are being childish about this. You're not hurt. There's not even a mark on you."

Features formed and Sam flinched as a face appeared. Feminine and almost pretty but for the too cold eyes. Melanie, Sam associated absently. Another breath, grating and raw. He writhed weakly, oxygen starved and increasingly afraid. He struggled to put it all together in his mind, to figure out what had happened, but it lay just out of reach. Lost in the muddled confusion of short circuiting synapses and too much pain. So he stared at this woman who seemed human, but who he knew was not.

Melanie's soulless eyes bored into his, raked over his face, across his chest, over his torso and down his legs. Disapproval pulled at her peach colored lips, dipped her thin eyebrows and made her hand shake as she shoved hair away from her face. Black painted fingernails caught in the long red strands and in the muted light, her hair looked like blood.

"I didn't bring you here for you to ignore me." A sharp jab against his shoulder and Sam's mind spiraled into a twisted vortex of pain. "You're just like all the rest."

Her voice echoed, following him down. Just before the freefall splattered his consciousness, bile licked its way up his esophagus. The bitter sensation shocked him back to a veiled plain of awareness.

Others.

There were others.

It made sense. He remembered enough for the puzzle pieces to fit into place. The train, the drunk, the thugs… Dean.

He held his breath and pushed his upper body into a vertical position –even found a surface to lean against. Didn't know what it was and didn't care. Forced to take a breath then, all his hard work almost came undone as pain skewered through his chest with the intensity of a bladed arc welder. Blinking and panting, his gaze traveled to hers. Their eyes locked and he felt a cold sweep of fear as he took in the impassively neutral, unimpressed, even slightly disgusted look in her brown eyes.

Nine others.

All dead now.

Blood on the tracks.

He got it then. In the midst of choking on blood, he figured it out. There were no others – at least not here and now. It wasn't the MO. Only one victim every year. He had just become the tenth. She had done this. Somehow. He peered down, the muscles of his neck trembling as he looked at his chest. No blood and gore. No mortal gaping wound. Nothing to explain the shocking pain.

He tried to coordinate his oxygen starved limbs so that he could stand. Rasping and gurgling, he succeeded only in toppling to his side where his left shoulder slammed into the floor. One leg came up automatically, but all movement ended there.

She reached out and he flinched as cold hands cupped the side of his face, ran through his hair. The contact burned like dry ice on his bare skin and his eyes involuntarily burned with tears.

"I've been here so long," she said wistfully.

Ten years, Sam thought, the realization skewering him. He had so many questions, but they slithered just out of reach, so he just drooled blood in a thin, viscous stream. And wondered just how long until he couldn't even do that.

She thumbed his lips – burned the tender skin with her ice cold touch. Her hand slipped to his chest, dipped beneath his shirt, traced an ice cold path along his collarbone.

He retracted, pulling into himself. "Don't."

Hurt flashed across her face as his rejection registered. She shifted back, a dark scowl deepening the lines on her forehead. Her head cocked to the side and one hand toyed with her hair, fingering the long strands, twirling them into rough ringlets.

"Aren't I pretty enough for you? Not good enough?" She abruptly stood, arms akimbo. "Not. Good. Enough."

Sam tasted bile, mixed with the blood. He pushed himself up, panting as he struggled to manipulate his rubbery limbs. The deranged spirit, ghost, whatever the hell it was, scaled up her verbal rampage. She moved quickly, shimmering and splitting across the small space. Disappearing at times, only to reappear, her voice screeching in frustrated rage. Then she stopped. Appeared right before him, stiff arms locked at her sides, her waxen features pulled tight.

"Not. Good. Enough," she said, her tone disconcertingly composed. "Emory would know what to do. But Emory is not here. Only me. You have me. Only me. Not. Good. Enough."

Sam made it to his feet. Pushed off before he could think and kept one hand against the wall to test the confines of his prison. She continued to ramble, seemingly having a two sided conversation with an invisible third person. As it bore on, the pitch increased, scaling upwards into a demented rant that shattered the unearthly silence while his own wetly saturated gasps featured as a perverse accompaniment.

He dragged himself forward, even when he could no longer feel his feet, just kept moving – one hand on the wall, the other held outwards, in defense and for balance.

Not a room. Not a cage. But a defined space. Her space. Formless and impenetrable. No way out. But he knew that even before he fell and could move no more.

Her wailing rampage bore on and on. Sam gave up looking, tried talking instead, but managed only a feeble grunt that made no sense even to himself. Apparently though, she heard it because she reappeared right in his face, pushed him against the wall and held him there.

"Not good enough," she said, and the whisper chilled him more than the screaming had. She leaned closer, wrapped her fingers around the collar of his shirt and pushed him down. "Emory would fix this. But Emory is not here."

Sam slid toward unconsciousness. Might have made it. Wasn't quite sure. He came to with a jerk. Melanie seated beside him, running frigid fingers through his hair. He lashed out, connected with her, shocked when she tipped back, screeched and vanished.

Trembling, Sam made it to his knees. Fell back on his haunches, his arms limp at his sides and head hanging. Blood hung from his lips in loose congealed ribbons.

Somewhere in there he vagued out. Came to on his knees, forehead pressed against the wall, his neck aching and one arm caught between the wall and his body. Tried to move and found he could not. Wedged awkwardly, blinking and burbling, his lungs blood-drenched. Surprised he could even breathe at all. It felt wrong. Unnatural. As though he had never been meant to breathe air in the first place.

He passed out again.

When he woke, he knew in advance that it was over. Sensed it, but couldn't figure how. Proof came in the throaty rumble of a train, the echo of a vibration through the floor, through his body, so close and loud that his teeth chattered. Fear prompted movement, but his oxygen denied body mocked him. Further insult came in Melanie's cold embrace – the ease with which she stilled him and clucked her tongue as he gurgled and gasped.

"You brought this upon yourself. I meant you no harm. It's all your own fault."

Maybe it was, but he couldn't figure out exactly how, so he struggled, exhausted himself too easily and then glared sullenly at her.

She arched an eyebrow, touched his lips and rubbed his blood between forefinger and thumb. "You should have come willingly then there never would have been a transporter accident. Never would have been a mistake. Never would have been… this."

"What? What did you… do…" He couldn't finish, collapsed into a coughing fit that sprayed blood and fragmented his already screwed consciousness.

"This has to stop."

She meant the blood and the bleeding. She meant him.

He struggled to his knees. Maybe even made it to his feet. Wasn't exactly sure. Every breath left him gasping for more, and plaintively screaming for less. Breathing air had ceased to become a viable option the moment she had taken him from the train. But he still tried, because he feared the alternative.

"What did you do… to me?"

She cocked her head at him. Smiled sweetly with her all too human face and the blood red hair that hung like disemboweled entrails. He fell back against the wall. Slid down, the back of his head thumping against the rough bricks. Still he stared at her, demanded she give him answers, because it's all he could do.

"I thought you were stronger than this."

He thought he was too.

Her words and his own thoughts coalesced beneath the roar of a commuter train, so close it seemed the wheels rushed right by his head. Impossible though, because he had already navigated his small prison and there was no way out. He knew that, yet still his tenuous bravado broke, pulsed a wave of terrified panic that must have knocked him out because he woke in darkness. Pitch black darkness.

He blinked lazily and grimaced as he drew in a half breath and responded to the immediate pain. He blundered through the catalogue of sensations: internal and external. Couldn't make much sense of any of them, but knew that Melanie had gone – discarded him. That had significance and it made his heart beat faster, but though he struggled to understand, he couldn't piece it all together. All he knew was that something felt dangerously different, the environment changed – no longer the small dark space that he vaguely understood as an enclosed cavity beside the track. This new space felt different, broader, inherently dangerous, though he struggled to understand how.

A droned pitch, a repetitive rattle and he weakly lifted his head in confusion. The sensation intensified. Darkness shaded out to a planed grey. Sam blinked and his skin crawled. White light licked the concrete walls, growing as it shouldered out the gloom. Sam stared, dry mouthed and numb limbed. Sallow heat sparked the rails, lighting the steel with a frosted glare.

His eyes widened in horrified awe as sound thrummed against his eardrums, beating in time with the glaring white light. Harder and sharper than a bass drum, it echoed in his chest, through the hollow pain in his lungs. Coming nearer. Closer. Making him work harder for every breath. Making it impossible for his oxygen starved body to move.

As he stared in horrified awe at the approaching train, it all became alarmingly clear. What she had done, how she had done it, and how it would end. With it came the terrifying reality that the knowledge came too late.