AN: Y'all are probably getting sick of waiting! I don't mean to be so slow.
Unlike me, Janice was fast doing her great beta work. I'm grateful!
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Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Sam was more than happy to lie flat on his back under a mound of bags of melting ice. While he'd been pretty certain from the get-go that none of his ribs were broken, they hurt like hell. He'd hit the back of his head too, and that ached enough to upset his stomach slightly. He was relieved that Grant was looking over Dean so he could lie down without guilt. He was more relieved to hear that Dean wasn't too badly hurt. They both had more than their share of injuries at this point.
Grant was easy to be around, too. He definitely was still trying to get them to agree to go to the hospital or at the very least promise to stay in bed for a couple of days until they'd healed up a little. He did it with a combination of teasing and exasperation that was oddly reminiscent of Jody, exuding the same kind of natural competence too.
However, Sam couldn't really relax. First, he had some vague idea about what might be happening in town – but no clue how to stop it. He really wanted to talk it out with Dean and figure out what their next move would be before someone else was hurt or killed…including them. Second, he was both worried about Goethe and concerned that the intelligent creature was trying to tell them something by running away, like when he'd tracked down the ghost and tried to keep Sam away from the library. Third, it made him kind of nervous to have Grant in their room when there were so many unexplainable things he might see.
Sshhh. Sshhh. Scritch.
Over the sound of Dean complaining as Grant wrapped his elbow, Sam heard something out of place. It sounded almost like mice running around inside the walls, something he'd grown familiar with long ago in the kinds of places they often stayed. But that wasn't quite it.
Craning his neck toward the sound without drawing attention to it, Sam saw his flannel shirt inching its way across the floor. His eyes widened. Talk about unexplainable.
Dean and Grant weren't paying attention, but Grant was bound to see it soon, especially since it was moving its way up between the two beds, angled slightly toward Dean. After all, human beings are biologically visual hunters, meaning they notice movement very quickly. Sam was too buried under bags of ice to move quickly. If he tried to get up and grab it, he'd just draw Grant's attention long before he reached his target.
The shirt moved a little closer, its movements small and sporadic. When he had time, Sam would have to give some serious thought to what could animate a squirrel bone that was corporeal enough to move his shirt and able to escape from a pile of salt.
Getting an idea, Sam angled his torso up enough to make one bag of ice slide down onto his hip, then shifted until it was on his thigh, careful to move just the one bag. He tipped his leg so his knee hung just over the edge of the bed, willing the cursed ghost squirrel thing to come just a tad closer.
"You sleepin' over there or what?" Dean asked, startling Sam enough that he almost dropped the ice prematurely.
"What? No, just listening to you whine," he answered. Scritch. He tipped his leg a tiny bit further and – perfect! – the single bag of ice slid off his leg and landed square on top of the migrating clothing. Both of the other men looked over at that, of course. "Oh, sorry," Sam said nonchalantly, congratulating himself on stopping the movement of the migrating shirt.
"I'll get it in a sec," Grant said, finishing Dean's bandage. "I still say your two should get checked out at the hos – WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
The last words were directed to the spot between the two beds where something small and black had squirmed out from underneath Sam's shirt and the bag of ice he'd dropped onto it. It wasn't just a single black bone any longer, but now looked like a tiny spine with a few pairs of ribs curling off of it. And it was spastically twitching and moving itself along the floor.
Well, shit.
Sam rolled onto his side, dumping most of the ice onto the floor and covering the spasming...thing. "We're trying to figure that out –" he said at the same time as Dean said, "Mutant rat."
Grant backed up two steps and put his palms up toward both of them, multiple emotions warring for space on his face. "You – just, no."
Sam carefully slid his feet off the bed and stood, aware to the millimeter of how far away the gun he'd set on the nightstand was from his hand. He liked Grant and respected him, but people acted in unpredictable ways when the curtain was pulled back and they were unexpectedly confronted with evidence of the supernatural. It was extremely unlikely that, even on the off chance Grant lost it, they couldn't handle him without weapons -- (even beat to shit, they were still Winchesters) -- but Sam had long ago learned that "probably" wasn't good enough.
He briefly considered stomping on the quivering cursed squirrel bone but decided he didn't want more fragments that he had to ensure were disposed of, especially if each of the fragments decided to start sprouting more new appendages. What the hell had been in that bag with the bone anyway?.
"Grant," he started quietly as Dean also stood slowly.
The radio on Grant's belt abruptly squawked to life. "All personnel! All on-call and all available to assist respond to confirmed incipient forest fire near 3277 Pinehurst Drive. Full equipment. Caller states fire was started deliberately and accelerant involved. Attention, all personnel…"
Grant's brow furrowed even more and he pointed at the brothers. "You two. When I'm done with this, you're going to answer some questions. A lot of questions." And he hurried out.
"We know that address," Dean said, but Sam had caught it too.
"Yeah, it's the Petersons."
"Maybe ol' Lenny doesn't trust that we burned all the squirrel bones," Dean suggested. "Speaking of…"
"Yeah, we need to check it out, but we need to get rid of this thing first," Sam agreed, knowing what Dean was getting at. With one toe, he nudged aside the bags of ice that were moving again. The nascent skeleton had grown a couple more nubs that were on their way to becoming ribs. Sam painfully bent and grabbed his shirt, then threw it over the bones and tied the fabric tightly around them. "And the gargoyle too. We need to get the bag empty just in case we need it for something else."
Dean blew out a breath. "And we need to check out the woods by the sledding hill. I have a strange feeling those same woods might be on Leonard Peterson's walking route. Maybe even what's on fire."
"And somewhere Allie Curtis likes to hike," Sam chimed in, remembering the picture in her apartment.
"Okay." Dean sat and struggled to reach and pull his boots on. "We aren't going to learn anything when there's cops and firemen everywhere, so here's what we'll do: take a minute to call Cas and Foster, see if either of them know of a Hunter's supply nearby, cuz I don't want to have to wait until Cas can ship some chapulin powder here." He rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. "Shit. What else do we need for a gargoyle?"
Sam tied the sleeves of his shirt in another knot, noting that his prisoner was trying to leap from his arms and getting more animated by the minute. "Mullein, which we have. Some kind of pure alcohol. Yeah. And...the chant. Supposed to be accompanied by a zither, but if I remember, the chant's fine on its own."
"Good thing. I'm pretty sure we lent the zither to Claire," Dean groused, as if they actually owned one of the unusual instruments. (Hell, Sam wasn't 100% sure Dean knew specifically what a zither was.) Dean took his phone out.
"Potres redire ad lapidem," Sam recited, easily recalling the spell for rendering a gargoyle inert.
"I know, I know," Dean complained, not really upset with Sam. "Relinque corpus hoc et somnum --"
"I'd swear this thing is trying to get to you," Sam interrupted, still wrestling with his odd bundle and trying to keep it from bumping his ribs. "Like the gargoyle almost fell on you. And the construction ghost kept attacking you."
Dean grabbed the warded bag out from under his bed and dumped the head out, then started pulling on its tongue, which looked really odd. It made sense though, because the ingredients for the spell to render the gargoyle inert had to be rubbed into the surface of the tongue, and the creature's mouth wasn't open wide enough for Sam or Dean to fit a hand inside. "Nah, that thing's just, you know, twitching randomly. The gargoyle and ghostie came after both of us." He took a better grip on the protruding tongue and shook it, clearly hoping it had broken loose in the fall. "Gimme a quick run-down of what you learned before we make our calls."
Sam didn't dispute Dean's take on things (even though it felt like a pattern and things were after Dean specifically). Tired of fighting the squirrel bones, he tossed the whole thing into a dresser drawer and closed it, sliding a chair in front of it. Then he opened the door and was highly relieved when Goethe ran in right away. Though the dog was clearly trying to get them to go outside, Sam closed the door again and ignored him. Instead, he gave Dean a quick summary of his day while putting on a new flannel shirt and acting like it didn't hurt to move.
Dean efficiently told Sam about what he'd learned too, and more things seemed to click into place.
"I've got an idea," Sam said, thinking hard. "Where did you say Hannah Carpenter was supposed to be the day Noah started hearing the voice telling him there was a price to pay?"
Dean didn't even have to think about it. "Basketball practice." He grunted as he planted a hand on the gargoyle's face and pulled harder on its tongue with his uninjured arm. "Our big file didn't come along, did it?"
Sam frowned, temporarily diverted, then shook his head no. "No, but the truck might have a crowbar. Anyway, I have an idea."
"About this?" Dean asked. He pulled both legs onto the bed and draped them over the statue's face to brace it and give himself more leverage. As far as Sam could see, the tongue wasn't budging.
"No...do you want help there?"
Dean growled. "I've. Got. THIS!"
Sam shrugged and his ribs made him regret it. If Dean didn't want help, he wasn't going to accept help no matter what. If he wanted to try to crack stone with his bare hands, Sam would leave him to it. "Okay, imagine this: Noah wishes, maybe out loud, that Hannah would come home. Then the school gym collapses and practice obviously gets canceled, so she comes home. Buddy wishes he didn't have to work so he could go see his fiance and there's an accident causing the worksite to be shut down. Allie Curtis wishes she didn't work for such a creep…"
"Yeah. Yeah. And Boss Asshole become kitty chow. Leonard Peterson wishes there weren't any squirrels in his yard eating the birdseed," Dean chimed in, finally stopping his molestation of the gargoyle for a moment. "And remember the guy with four popped tires? Maybe his kid wished he wouldn't go on his business trip."
"Uh-huh. Maybe Librarian Laurie was onto some things too. Maybe somebody wished the guy with the smelly office wasn't at work. And a wife might have resented the fishing boat, or a neighbor was jealous of it, and wished it was gone." Sam frowned, absently shooing away Goethe, who was pulling on his shirtsleeve, a la Lassie. "This can't be another wishing coin, can it?"
Dean groaned in memory but shook his head. "Even we can't be that unlucky. Well, maybe we could. But we're thinking it's something out in the woods, right?"
Sam hmm'd through his nose, then his expression soured. "Could it be a deal thing? I mean, get something you want and there's a 'price to pay' afterward."
"Crowley doesn't let his guys renege on deals early, remember?" Dean disagreed. He sullenly pushed the head off the bed with one foot, sneering at it after it thudded to the floor. "Nobody said anything about meeting someone or anything. Not even Noah Carpenter."
Sam almost argued against trusting Crowley's goodwill or sense of fair play or whatever, naturally disinclined to appreciate any reminder of the demon, but he was distracted by Goethe pulling on him so emphatically that he almost lost his feet. "In a minute, boy. We have to make a couple calls, then I'll check out what's got you all worked up."
"You're trusting a dog?" Dean asked, teasingly rather than seriously, cuing up his phone to make their first call. He switched it to speaker and it started to ring.
"You're trusting Crowley?" Sam asked back dryly. "I'm pretty sure Goethe's track record is better."
"...say who you are and ask the caller to leave a message," Sam's own voice came through the speaker, very distant.
"But if someone is calling me, they must know who I am," Cas' voice protested, much louder and clearer than Sam's had. "And everyone knows how to leave a message, I'm sure."
A soft huff crackled the phone, then Sam's voice spoke again. "Fine. Leave it blank if you want. I don't care. Just erase the message Dean put on there."
The phone beeped and Dean snickered a little. Then he spoke into the phone. "Hey, Cas. We need everything you can find on, uh, wishes coming true."
"Look for something that's tied to a specific piece of land, maybe lore local to where we are," Sam called.
Dean gave him a mildly dirty look for interrupting. "Yeah, turn off Netflix and call us back for details, will ya?" He hung up and transferred his glare to the dresser where Sam had stashed the undead squirrel. There had been steady banging since Sam had thrown the packet inside and now the entire piece of furniture was rocking back and forth.
"I'll take that out back and burn it and see what Goethe wants while you call Foster, 'kay?" Sam decided, figuring that they wouldn't be able to hear the call with all of the banging. Heck, they were liable to get a noise complaint soon if they had any wall neighbors. Besides, he was getting downright curious about what had the dog so agitated.
"Fine." Dean sounded mildly annoyed, but that could have been because of the obnoxious banging or all the bruises he was sporting or any of half a dozen other reasons, so Sam decided to go with it. They were definitely not having a great day even by their standards. Moving a lot slower than normal, he retrieved the lighter fluid, salt, and angry flannel. By then, Dean had Foster on the phone, though the connection was faint. "Hey, man," he said, back to trying to pry the tongue out of the gargoyle. "Want an update? Maybe you know what we're looking at here. And by the way, you might wanna tell your grandkid to stay out of the area until after we get this all sewn up."
"Dean, good to hear from you. I wish I could, but he's already there."
"We could use the location of a Hunter's supply nearby too," Dean added. "We have a maybe-gargoyle to get rid of and we don't have any, uh, chapulin."
Foster's laughter crackled over the line. "Boys," he said with another chuckle. "Tell me what's going on there, huh? And trust me on this one, you don't need a Hunter's supply for chapulin. Don't you know what that is?"
Unfortunately, Sam missed the rest as the door clicked shut behind him. All he knew about chapulin was that it was a white powder with no other use except for gargoyle killing.
Goethe was still tugging on him determinedly. "Okay, okay, let go. The last thing I need is to fall and bust my nose," Sam admonished gently. He needed both arms to carry his ever-more-wiggly package. The dog obeyed, letting go immediately, but still obviously wanted Sam to follow. He was tense, almost dancing in his impatience.
Darkness had fallen but the way was well-lit until Sam trailed Goethe around the far corner of the motel where the light in the parking lot couldn't reach. Behind the building it was even darker, which is probably why it took Sam a second to make out what was happening in front of him.
Foster's truck was covered by ungulus.
The nasty little demon-adjacent creatures looked like something that had been assembled incorrectly. The size of a large gerbil, each ungulu had a low-slung, lightly furred black body with too many little legs coming off it. However, those legs looked nothing like anything you'd find on an insect but rather were relatively thick for their short length and terminated in minuscule bear-like paws.
The front end of an ungulu curved up sharply like the torso of a centaur. It was pale and hairless, topped by an eyeless head dominated by heavy mandibles. Four more legs emerged from the torso section (or was it a thorax?), and unlike the others, these were narrow and segmented like a spider's legs and needle-sharp at the tip. They were hollow, too, allowing the creatures to harvest small but long bits of flesh or other materials for consumption by merely stabbing their prey. Despite their small size, they could produce enough force to pass a forelimb right through bone or metal. They were fast suckers, too, darting in, taking their "bite" and darting away again before most people could react. It was fortunate that they were rare and there was usually only two or three in one place.
Naturally, this time there had to be at least fifty of the ugly creatures. They were all over the outside of the poor truck, stabbing and tearing at its metal exterior and windows as if desperate to get inside. Sam had to wonder what on Earth had drawn so many of the demonic equivalent of vultures and what was or had been in the truck that they wanted to taste so badly.
Driven by mindless hunger, they showed up anywhere that there had been significant demon activity and ate anyone and anything they found with evidence of demonic energy remaining. (Luckily, they rarely found humans who'd been possessed before the "demon taint" had worn off to the point that they could no longer sense it.) They were scavengers and were uninterested in anyone who hadn't had demon contact. Dean referred to them as "infernal rats." And, though nasty, they weren't terribly difficult to kill. They were subject to the same weaknesses as the demons they trailed – salt, demon traps, and so forth. Significant mundane force could destroy them, too. They could be crushed (say, under the tires of an Impala), blown apart by a shotgun, even cut into pieces by a machete with enough structural integrity and wielded with sufficient strength.
In fact, an ungulu's best defense was the fact that it was invisible to humans...except to someone who'd been to Hell. So, as disgusting as they were, ungulus weren't typically an issue for the Winchesters. Two armed and relatively healthy Winchesters versus ten or twelve ungulus equals no problem.
One injured Winchester with his arms full of things that were mostly useless for fighting versus half a hundred ungulus was a different situation entirely and Sam would have really liked to back away unnoticed and return with armed back-up.
But he'd barely contemplated the thought when every triangular ungulu head rose in perfect unison and turned blindly toward Sam as if scenting the air. Swallowing, Sam looked down at the shirt he was holding. Apparently, a demon had cursed the poor rodent and his friends, because otherwise the ungulus wouldn't have been very interested in Sam.
Sam sucked in a long, slow breath. "Goethe, get back," he muttered quietly. Exploding into motion, he shot-putted the squirrel bone package toward the truck, hoping it would distract the ungulus long enough for him to get back inside and retrieve a shotgun and a brother. At the same time, he turned as fast as he could to head back to the room.
Like a wave, the ungulus flowed down the side of the truck and over the squirrel without even slowing. Before he'd even gotten to the corner of the building, the first ungulu reached Sam.
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AN: The Latin spell was put together using Google translate. Potres redire ad lapidem relinque corpus hoc et somnum means "Return to stone, leave this body and sleep."
Yes, ungulus are made up. According to Mr. Internet, "ungulu" means vulture in the Hausa language, which I thought was appropriate since they're like demonic scavengers.
Jenjoremy: I figured! LOL. It was something that I knew as soon as I was wrote it, but it was too fun to leave out. I absolutely loved having my brother here. He and I have always been very close even though we're not that close in age. He left yesterday and I miss him already! I know this chapter gives you another cliffie, but (DV) the next chapter shouldn't take all that long to get out. Quick preview: I'm going to be beating up one of the guys and totally messing with the other. LOL
muffinroo: Thank you! You are very sweet. Yup, they definitely need to take Goethe's hints seriously. It's a good thing they have him along. I felt sad for Noah too, which is why I made sure to have Dean be extra sweet to him.
Colby's girl: Thank you! Your description of Sam's shirt "doing a slow shuffle" (and sylvia37's statements) inspired me to describe its movements a lot more than I originally intended.
Shazza: Dean is so good with kids! I love writing that. And I knew that you'd like some hurt Dean mixed in there. Happy New Year!
stedan: Whumpage all the way around! It's so nice to "hear" that you and others liked the banter in this chapter. Maybe it came easily because my own little brother was in town. Do you think that Sam enjoyed the "pleasant" surprises he got in this chapter? Hehe.
sylvia37: I love that image! I had way too much fun totally building on that. I used to have a cat (RIP, Finley!) who always jumped on beds when I was making them because he loved to have the covers put over him. He was a sweet weirdo.
Kathy: The guys still don't know what they're facing, but they're starting to rule some things out. I made up all the stuff about gargoyles, I'm afraid. The ritual that they have to do with the tongue exists purely so I can mess with them, to be honest. That warded sack is such a weird thing...sometimes I wonder about myself! LOL. But so much potential for future stories. No spoilers about Goethe yet, except that you and other commenters have had some ideas that are on the right track and some that aren't. Thanks for your nice words!