Sam and Jessica's Apartment
Sam and Jess lie in bed, asleep back to back. Jess shifts position. A sound outside the room, like an opening window, becomes audible. Sam's eyes snap open. He leaves the bedroom and looks around the apartment.
Footsteps. A man walks past the strings of beads at the far end of the hall. Sam moves to another part of the apartment and waits. The man enters the room. Sam lunges forward and grabs the man at the shoulder. The man knocks Sam's arm away and aims a strike at him, who ducks. The man grabs Sam's arm, swings him around, and shoves him back. He kicks and is blocked, then pushed back into another room. The man elbows Sam in the face, so Sam kicks at his head. The man ducks and swings and Sam blocks. The man knocks Sam down and pins him to the floor, one hand at Sam's neck and the other holding his wrist.
"Whoa, easy, tiger."
Sam's breathing is hard and fast. "Dean?" Dean laughs. "You scared the crap out of me!"
"That's 'cause you're out of practice." Sam grabs Dean's hand and yanks, slamming his heel into his back and him to the floor. "Or not." Sam taps Dean twice where he is holding him. "Get off of me."
Sam rolls to his feet and pulls Dean up. "What the hell are you doing here? And where the hell is Olive?"
"Well, I was looking for a beer.-"
"And I'm right here. My damn shirt got caught on a fuckin' nail or something, man. Faulty windows suck ass." Olive mumbles the last part. Sam jumps at the voice. Olive walks over to Dean.
"Now, what the hell are you two doing here?"
"Okay. All right. We gotta talk."
"Uh, the phone?"
"If either of us had called, would you have picked up?"
Jess turns the light on. She is wearing short shorts and a cropped Smurf shirt. "Sam?"
Olive, Sam and Dean turn their heads in unison.
"Jess. Hey. Uh, Dean, Olive, this is my girlfriend, Jessica." Dean looks at her appreciatively. Olive rolls her eyes.
"Wait, your brother and sister Dean and Olive?"
Jess smiles. Sam nods. Dean grins at her and moves closer. Olive's eyes roll up into the back of her head as she rolls them, again, shaking her head in annoyance. "Oh, I love the Smurfs. You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother's league."
"Just let me put something on." Jess turns to go but Dean's voice stops her.
"No, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it. Seriously."
Dean goes back over to Sam and Olive without taking his eyes off Jess. Sam watches him, his expression stony. Olive just rolls her eyes, for the third time in the last 5 minutes or so.
"Anyway, we gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business." Dean smiles.
"But, uh, nice meeting you." Olive adds, trying not to make Dean and herself look like dickwads.
"No." Sam goes over to Jess and wraps an arm around her shoulders. "No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her."
"Okay." Dean glances at Olive then turns to look at them both straight on. "Um. Dad hasn't been home in a few days."
"So he's working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He'll stumble back in sooner or later." Sam says, looking between his siblings.
Olive sighs and ducks her head, then looks back up. "Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days."
Sam's expression doesn't change while he takes this in. Jess glances up at him. "Jess, excuse us. We have to go outside."
Sam, Dean and Olive head downstairs. "I mean, come on. You can't just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you guys."
"You're not hearing me, Sam. Dad's missing. We need your help finding him." Dean reminds him, again.
"You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? How 'bout the Devil's Gates in Clifton? He was missing then, too. He's always missing, and he's always fine." Sam glares at the back of Dean's head. Olive gets ready to break up a fight between her siblings.
Dean stops and turns around, causing Olive and Sam to stop as well. "Not for this long. Now are you gonna coming with us or not?" Dean growls.
"I'm not." He says icily.
"Why not?"
"I swore I was done hunting. For good."
"Come on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad." Olive mutters
Dean starts downstairs again. Sam and Olive follow.
"Oh, it wasn't? When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45."
Dean stops at the door to the outside. "Well, what was he supposed to do?"
"I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, don't be afraid of the dark."
"Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there."
"Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her." Dean glances outside. "But we still haven't found the stupid demon. So we kill everything we can find."
"We save a lot of people doing it, too." Dean says pointedly.
A pause. "You think Mom would have wanted this for us?" Sam growls, ignoring the muttered 'Oh god, here we go again' from Olive. Dean rolls his eyes and slams the door open. "The weapon training, the melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors." They cross the parking lot to the Impala.
"So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?"
"No. Not normal. Safe."
"And that's why you ran away?" Olive asks, narrowing her eyes at him.
Sam looks away. "I was just going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing."
"Yeah, well, Dad's in real trouble right now. If he's not dead already. I can feel it." Dean turns to him. Sam is silent. "We can't do this alone."
"Yes you can."
Olive and Dean look down. "Yeah, well, we don't want to."
Sam sighs and looks down; thinking, then up. "What was he hunting?"
Dean opens the trunk of the Impala, then the spare-tire compartment. He props the compartment open with a shotgun and digs through the clutter. "All right, let's see, where the hell did I put that thing?"
"So when Dad left, why didn't you two go with him?"
"We were working our own gig. This, uh, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans." Olive explains.
"Dad let you guys go on a hunting trip by yourselves?"
Dean looks over at Sam, eyebrows pulled together. "I'm twenty-six, dude, and I've been watching after her ass since I was 4." He pulls some papers out of a folder. "All right, here we go. So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy."
Dean hands one of the papers to Olive, who hands it to Sam. "They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA."
Sam reads it and glances up. "So? Maybe he was kidnapped. It does happen, ya know."
"Yeah. Well, here's another one in April." Dean tosses down another article for each date he mentions. "Another one in December 'oh-four, 'oh-three, 'ninety-eight, 'ninety-two, ten of them over the past twenty years."
Olive takes the article back from Sam and picks up the rest of the stack, putting them back in the folder. "All men, all on the same five-mile stretch of road." Olive finishes Dean's speech. Dean pulls a bag out of another part of the arsenal.
"It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. He hadn't called or anything since, which is bad enough." Dean grabs a handheld tape recorder. "Then I get this voicemail yesterday." He presses play. The recording is staticky and the signal was clearly breaking up.
"Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Just be careful, Dean-and watch after Olive. We're all in danger." Dean presses stop.
"You know there's EVP on that, right?" Sam glances down at his siblings. Olive's mouth is pulled into a sideways smirk, and Dean's mouth is turned up in a smile.
"Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like riding a bike, isn't it?" Sam shakes his head, rolling his eyes. "All right. I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got." Dean presses play again.
"I can never go home..." He presses stop.
"Never go home."
Dean drops the recorder, puts down the shotgun, stands straight, and shuts the trunk, then leans on it.
Olive sighs, clearly fed up. "You know, in almost two fucking years we haven't bothered you, haven't asked you for a damn thing."
Sam looks away and sighs, then looks back. "All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him." Dean nods. "But I have to be back first thing Monday. Just wait here."
Sam turns to go back to the apartment. He turns back when Dean speaks. "What's first thing Monday?"
"I have this...I have an interview."
"What, a job interview? Skip it."
"I can't just 'skip it', Dean. It's a law school interview, and it's practically my whole future on a plate."
"Law school?" Dean smirks.
"We got a deal or not?" Sam asks impatiently. Dean nods. Sam gives a curt nod and turns again, bounding up the small amount of stairs.
Sam is packing a duffel bag. He pulls out a large hook-shaped knife and slides it inside as Jess comes into the room.
"Wait, you're taking off?" Sam looks up, hoping she didn't see the giant knife he just shoved in the duffle. "Is this about your dad? Is he all right?"
"Yeah. You know, just a little family drama." Sam goes over to the dresser and turns on the lamp on top of it.
"They said he was on some kind of hunting trip." Jess sits on the bed. Sam rummages in one of the drawers and comes out with a couple shirts, which go in the duffel.
"Oh, yeah, he's just deer hunting up at the cabin, he's probably got Jim, Jack, and José along with him. I'm just going to go bring him back."
"What about the interview?" Jess's eyebrows shoot up as she asks.
"I'll make the interview. This is only for a couple days." Sam goes around the bed. Jess gets up and follows.
"Sam, I mean, please." Sam stops and turns. "Just stop for a second. You sure you're okay?
Sam laughs a little. "I'm fine, Jess." A smile rests on his face.
"It's just...you won't even talk about your family. And now you're taking off in the middle of the night to spend a weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is a really big deal."
"Hey. Everything's going to be just fine. I'll be back in time, I promise." He leans down, kisses her on the cheek and walks out.
"At least tell me where you're going." She calls after him.
Dean comes out of the convenience mart carrying junk food.
Sam is sitting in the shotgun seat with the door open, rifling through a box of tapes. Olive is pumping gas.
"Hey!" Dean shouts. Sam leans out and looks at him. Olive glances up over the car at him before bringing her gaze back to the rising numbers on the pump behind her. "You guys want breakfast?"
"No, thanks." Sam mutters.
"Doritos and Dr. Pepper?" Olive asks, shakes the gas out of the nozzle, and puts it back in the pump. Dean nods, says "You know it.", and Olive grins widely. "Then yes."
"So how'd you pay for that?" Sam looks over his shoulder at Dean. "You three still running credit card scams?"
"Yeah, well, hunting ain't exactly a pro ball career." Olive says. She holds her arms above her head to stretch, revealing a small sliver of slightly tanned skin before sighing in satisfactory at the small crack the movement produced.
"Yeah. Besides, all we do is apply. It's not our fault they send us the cards."
"Yeah? And what names did you write on the application this time?" Sam asks as Olive opens the door to the backseat, sits down, swings her legs inside the car and closes the door.
"Uh, Burt Aframian." Dean gets into the driver seat and puts his Coke and chips down. "And his kids Hector and Jazmine. Only scored two cards out of the deal, though. Olly's gonna need a card."
"It's Olive." Olive mutters reflexively. Dean closes the door and rolls his eyes. He tosses a bag of cool ranch Doritos back to Olive, then hands her the promised Dr. Pepper.
"That sounds about right." Sam looks down at the box in his lap as Olive rips open the bag of chips and stuffs one in her mouth. "I swear, man, you've gotta update your cassette tape collection." There are at least a dozen cassettes in the box on Sam's lap.
"Why?"
"Well, for one, they're cassette tapes. And two," Sam holds up a tape for every band he names. "Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?" Dean takes the box labeled Metallica from Sam. "It's like the greatest hits of mullet rock."
"Well, house rules, Sammy." Dean pops the tape in the player. He looks at Olive expectantly. She takes a gulp of her soda and sighs, dramatically, before finishing the words she had been reciting back to Dean for almost two years.
"Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole." She says, smirking at the glare Sam sends at her.
Dean drops the Metallica box back in the box of tapes and starts the engine.
"You know, Sammy is a chubby 12-year-old kid. It's Sam, okay?"
"Sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud." Dean shouts over the opening cords of Back In Black by AC/DC. Olive chuckles.
Dean drives off.
Sam is talking on his cell phone. "Thank you."
Sam closes his phone. "All right. So, there's no one matching Dad at the hospital or morgue. So that's something, I guess."
Dean glances over at Sam, back at Olive, then back at the road. At a bridge ahead of them, there are two police cars and several officers. "Check it out."
Sam leans forward for a closer look.
Dean pulls up and they take a long look before he turns off the engine. Dean opens the glove compartment and pulls out a box full of ID cards with his, Olive and John's faces. He picks one out and grins at Sam, who stares.
"Let's go." They get out of the car.
Dean and Olive walk into the crime scene like they belong there. Sam walks in slightly awkward, but also like he belongs.
"You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn't you?"
The deputy looks up when Dean starts talking and straightens up to talk to him.
"And who are you?"
Dean flashes his badge. "Federal marshals."
"You three are a little young for marshals, aren't you?"
Olive laughs. "Thanks, that's awfully kind of you." She goes over to the car. "You did have another one just like this, correct?"
"Yeah, that's right. About a mile up the road. There've been others before that."
"So, this victim, you knew him?" Sam asks, standing straighter when the deputy turns to him. The deputy nods.
"Town like this, everybody knows everybody."
Olive circles the car, looking around. "Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?"
"No. Not so far as we can tell."
"So what's the theory?" Olive goes over to Sam and Dean.
"Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?"
"Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys." Dean mutters. Sam stomps on Dean's foot.
"Thank you for your time."
Sam starts to walk away. Dean and Olive follow.
The deputy watches them go. Dean smacks Sam on the head. "Ow! What was that for?.
"Why'd you have to step on my foot?"
"Why do you have to talk to the police like that?"
Dean looks at Sam and moves in front of him, forcing Sam to stop walking and Olive, who was paying paying more attention to the tall, brown haired detective with the great ass, to walk straight into him.
"Come on. They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone on this. I mean, if we're going to find Dad we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourself."
Sam clears his throat and looks over Dean's shoulder. Dean turns. It's the sheriff and two FBI agents.
"Can I help you three?"
"No, sir, we were just leaving." Dean says.
As the FBI agents walk past Olive, she nods at each of them. "Agent Mulder. Agent Scully."
Dean, Olive and Sam head past the sheriff, who turns to watch them go.
A young woman is tacking up posters with Troy's face and the caption: "MISSING TROY SQUIRE". Dean, Sam and Olive approach her.
"I'll bet you that's her." Dean glances at his siblings to see if either disagree, but Olive gives a curt nod and Sam says; "Yeah."
They walk up to the young woman. "You must be Amy."
"Yeah."
"Yeah, Troy told us about you. I'm Dean, this is Sammy, we're his uncle's, and Olive over there is his aunt."
"He never mentioned you to me." Amy walks away. Sam, Dean and Olive walk with her.
"Well, that's Troy, I guess. We're not around much, we're up in Modesto."
"So, we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around."
Another young woman comes up to Amy and puts a hand on her arm. "Hey, are you okay?"
"Yeah."
"You mind if we ask you a couple questions?"
The five of them are sitting in a booth, Dean, Sam and Olive (who was squished between her brothers) opposite Amy and the other lady, who turned out to be Rachel.
"I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and...he never did." Amy explains.
"He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?" Sam asks.
Amy shakes her head. "No. Nothing I can remember."
"I like your necklace." Olive blurts.
Amy holds the pendant she's wearing, a pentagram in a circle, and looks down at it. "Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents," Amy laughs. "with all that devil stuff."
Olive laughs a little and looks down, then up. Her brothers look down at her. "Actually, it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing." Olive explains.
"Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries." Dean takes his arm off the back of the seat and leans forward. "Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything..."
Amy and Rachel look at each other.
"What is it?"
"Well, it's just... I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk." Rachel shrugs.
"What do they talk about?" All three Winchesters ask in chorus.
"It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago." Dean and Olive exchange looks, then look at Sam, who watches Rachel attentively, nodding. "Well, supposedly she's still out there." Sam nods. "She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever."
Sam, Dean and Olive glance at each other.
Dean types "Female Murder Hitchhiking" into the search bar, nothing. Dean replaces "Hitchhiking" with "Centennial Highway" with the same results. Sam and Olive are sitting behind him, staring at the screen with impressive concentration.
"Let me try." Sam offers.
Dean smacks Sam's hand away, Olive snickers. "I got it."
Sam shoves Dean's chair out of the way and takes over, while Olive tries to compose herself, keyword being 'tries'.
"Dude!" Dean hits Sam on the shoulder. "You're such a control freak."
"So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?" Sam ignores him.
"Yeah." Dean and Olive reply simultaneously.
"Well, maybe it's not murder." Sam replaces "Murder" with "Suicide" and finds an article entitled "Suicide on Centennial". Both Dean and Olive glance at Sam. "This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river."
"Does it say why she did it?" Dean asks
"Yeah." Sam answers, eyes fixed on the screen.
"What?" Olive raises her eyebrows.
"An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die." Olive winces in sympathy.
Dean raises his eyebrows. "Hm."
The article has a picture of Joseph next to a picture of Sylvania Bridge.
"'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch."
"The bridge look familiar to you?" Olive asks, glancing at her brothers as they shared a look.
Dean, Olive and Sam walk along the bridge, then stop to lean on the railing and look down at the river.
"So this is where Constance took the swan dive." Dean states.
"So you think Dad would have been here?" Sam looks over at Dean.
Olive glances at them, then looks out at the water again before saying; "Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him, so..." She lets her sentence hang in the air.
Dean continues walking. Sam and Olive follow. "Okay, so now what?" Olive asks, looking over at Dean expectantly.
"Now we keep digging until we find him. Might take a while."
Sam stops. "Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by-"
Dean turns around. "Monday. Right. The interview." Olive sighs, shoulders slumping slightly.
"Yeah." Sam says awkwardly.
"Yeah, I forgot."
"You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?" Olive asks, walking towards Sam.
"Maybe. Why not?"
"Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?"
Sam steps closer. "No, and she's not ever going to know."
"That's a healthy ass relationship. You can pretend all you want, Sammy, but sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are." Dean turns around and looks between his siblings. Olive and Sam stare eachother down.
"And who's that?"
"You're one of us. You're a hunter."
"No. I'm not like you guys. This is not going to be my life."
"You have a responsibility to-" Olive starts, but Sam cuts her off.
"To Dad? And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Mom looked like. Hell, I doubt you remember her either. And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone. And she isn't coming back."
Olive grabs Sam by the collar and shoves him up against the railing of the bridge, nostrils flared and chest heaving. "Don't talk about her like that." She growls through clenched teeth , face red with anger. Dean's eyes widen at the sight of his average sized sister glaring down his behemoth of a brother. Olive releases Sam, but still glares at him when he glances at her.
Dean feels a chill that make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and turns around. He sees Constance standing at the edge of the bridge. "Sam. Olive."
Olive comes to stand to the left of Dean, Sam standing to the right of him, still weary of Olive. Constance looks over at them, then steps forward off the edge. The Winchesters run to the railing and look over.
"Where'd she go?" Dean voices the thoughts of both himself and his siblings.
"I don't know."
Behind them, the Impala's engine starts and its headlights come on. Dean, Sam and Olive turn to look. "What the-" Dean starts.
"Who the fuck is driving your car?" Olive asks. Dean pulls the keys out of his pocket and jingles them. Sam glances at them, but Olive's eyes stay on the car, which jerks into motion, heading straight for them. They turn and run.
"Go! Go!" Sam shouts
The car is moving faster than they are; when it gets too close, the siblings dive over the railing. The car comes to a halt. Sam has caught himself on the edge of the bridge and is hanging on. He pulls himself up onto the bridge and looks around. "Dean? Olive?"
Below, a filthy and annoyed Dean crawls out of the water and onto the mud, panting. "What?"
"Hey! Are you all right?"
Dean holds up one hand in an A-OK sign. "I'm super."
Sam nods, relieved, and looks around for Olive, spotting her as she walks towards him, clutching her right arm and panting. "Olive? You okay?"
She nods, but the way she's clenching her teeth proves otherwise.
Dean shuts the hood of his car and leans on it.
"Is your fucking car all right, princess?" Olive asks, still mad at him for the; "On 3. 1...2...-" he pulled when relocating her shoulder.
Dean rolls his eyes at her anger. 'You should've expected that, Ol. That's how we've been doing it since day one.' He thinks, but only says; "Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now. That Constance chick, what a bitch!" He yells.
"Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure. So where's the job go from here, genius?" Sam asks. He settles on the hood next to Dean while Olive leans up against the Impale. Dean throws up his arms in frustration, then flicks mud off his hands. Sam sniffs, then looks at Dean. "You smell like a toilet."
"He always smells like that. Try riding in the car or sharing a motel with the bastard. He fuckin' stinks." She says. Dean looks down.
"Oh gee thanks, Ol. Feel the love, man, feel the friggin' love."
A credit card in the name of Hector Aframian lands on a home-made guest ledger. "One room, please."
Dean is standing at the motel check-in desk, still filthy, with Sam and Olive right behind him. Sam's hair is sticking up in some places. Olive's hair is raised off the back of her head slightly, from taking it out the ponytail that she had kept it in last night, and she's still rubbing her arm, which is sore.
The clerk picks up the card and looks at it. "You guys having a reunion or something?"
"What do you mean?"
"I had another guy, Burt Aframian. He came and bought out a room for the whole month." Dean looks back at Sam and Olive.
The motel door swings open. Sam is on the other side, having just picked the lock. Sam hides the picks and stands up. Dean and Olive are just outside, playing lookout, until Sam reaches out of the room to grab their shoulders and yank them inside. Sam closes the door behind them. They look around-every vertical surface has papers pinned to it: maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, notes. There are books on the desk and assorted junk on the floor and bed, including something with a hazardous-materials symbol.
"Whoa." Sam mutters.
Dean turns on a light by the bed and picks up a half-eaten hamburger sitting there. Sam steps over a line of salt on the floor. Dean sniffs the burger and recoils. 'I hope he wasn't trying to imply the 5-second-rule on that burger.' Olive thinks, but doesn't say anything.
"I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least." Dean concludes, putting the burger down in disgust.
Olive fingers the salt on the floor and looks up. "Salt, cats-eye shells...he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in."
Dean looks at the papers covering one wall.
"What have you got here?" Sam asks, walking towards Dean.
"Centennial Highway victims." Sam nods. "I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs," Sam crosses the room. Olive goes to stand beside Dean to study the pictures. "ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?"
While Dean talks, Sam looks at the papers taped to the other walls. Sam turns on another lamp. "Dad figured it out."
Dean and Olive turn to look. "What do you mean?" Dean asks, while Olive simply asks; "Huh?" with raised eyebrows.
"He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She's a woman in white." Sam explains.
Dean looks at the photos of Constance's victims. "You sly dogs." Olive breathes a laugh.
Dean turns back to Sam and Olive. "All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it."
"She might have another weakness." Olive points out.
"Well, Dad would want to make sure." Dean crosses over to Sam, Olive follows behind him. "He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"
"No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I'd go ask her husband." Sam taps the picture of Joseph Welch. "If he's still alive."
Sam goes to look at something else. Dean looks at the picture below the Herald article, of a woman in a white dress.
"All right. Why don't you two, uh, see if you can find an address, I'm gonna get cleaned up." Dean walks away, goes into the bathroom, and gets in the shower.
Sam turns to Olive. "Hey, Olive?" Olive looks at him with raised eyebrows. "What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry."
Olive holds up a hand, effectively cutting him off. "As Dean would say," her voice lowers in an attempt to immitate her older brother. "No chick-flick moments."
Sam laughs and nods. "All right. Short-squatch."
"Sampunzel."
Sam laughs again. Olive sighs, drops down on the bed muttering about getting some sleep, and is snoring within a minute.
Sam notices something, his smile disappearing, and crosses over for a closer look. A rosary hangs in front of a large mirror, and stuck into the mirror frame is a photo of John sitting on the hood of the Impala, next to a young boy in a baseball cap, Dean, a younger girl, Olive, with a big grin on her face, exposing the missing front tooth with an even younger boy, Sam, on John's lap. Sam takes the photo off the mirror and holds it, smiling sadly.
Dean, clean again, comes out of the bathroom and grabs his jacket. He shrugs it on one shoulder as he crosses the room towards the bed. "Hey, man. I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?" Dean asks over Olive's snores.
"No." Sam says
"Aframian's buying."
Sam shakes his head. "Mm-mm."
"Okay." He shakes Olive's shoulder, mindful of the right one for obvious reasons. She jerks awake, sucking in breath through her nose, and opens a bleary eye at him.
"Dean? (Which sounds more like Zean to Sam, but he doesn't say anything.) Wha'd'ya wan'?" She slurs, opening her other eye and blinking a few times.
"I'm going to go get some grub from the diner down the street. You want anything?" Dean asks.
"Yeah. The usual." Olive nods, curls up on her side, closes her eyes and goes back to sleep.
Dean leaves the motel room, pulling the jacket the rest of the way on as he crosses the lot. He looks over and sees a police car, where the moetl clerk is talking to two deputies. The clerk points at Dean, who turns away and pulls out his cell phone.
"What?"
The deputies start to approach Dean.
"Dude, five-oh, take off."
"What about you?" Dean can hear Sam shaking Olive awake and Olive grumbling at him about her beating him with a stick.
"Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad." Dean hangs up the phone as the deputies approach. He turns and grins at them. "Problem, officers?"
"Where're your partners?"
"Partners? What, what partners?"
The deputy glances over his shoulder and jerks his thumb towards the motel room. The other deputy heads over there. Dean fidgets.
"So. Fake US Marshal. Fake credit cards. You got anything that's real?"
"My boobs." Dean grins.
The deputy slams Dean over the hood of the cop car. "You have the right to remain silent-"
The sheriff enters the room, carrying a box. He sets the box on the table where Dean sits and goes around the table to face Dean across it. "So you want to give us your real name?"
"I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent."
"I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here."
"We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh, squeal like a pig trouble?"
"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall." Dean looks away. "Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect."
"That makes sense. Because when the first one went missing in '82 I was three."
"I know you've got partners. One of 'em's an older guy. Maybe he started the whole thing. So tell me. Dean." The sheriff tosses a brown leather-covered journal on the table. "This his?"
Dean stares at it. The sheriff sits on the edge of the table. He flips through the journal. "I thought that might be your name. See, I leafed through this. What little I could make out-I mean, it's nine kinds of crazy." Dean leans forward for a closer look. "But I found this, too." He opens the journal to a page that reads "Dean Olive 35-111", circled, with nothing else on that page. "Now. You're stayin' right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means."
Dean stares down at the page, then looks up.
Sam knocks on the door, Olive stands behinds him. An old man opens it. "Hi. Are you Joseph Welch?" Sam asks.
"Yeah."
Sam, Olive and Joseph are walking down the junk-filled driveway, Joseph holding the photo Sam found on John's motel room mirror. "Yeah, he was older, but that's him." Joseph hands the photo back to Sam, who hands it to Olive. She looks it over before putting it in her pants pocket. "He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter."
"That's right. We're working on a story together. This is the editor, she wanted to tag along." Sam adds quickly after he sees the confused look Joseph gave Olive.
"Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?"
"About your wife Constance?"
"He asked me where she was buried."
"And where is that again?"
"What, I gotta go through this twice?"
"It's fact-checking, if you don't mind." Olive adds.
"In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge."
"And why did you move?"
"I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died."
Sam stops walking. Joseph and Olive stop too. "Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?"
Joseph shakes his head. "No way. Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known."
"So you had a happy marriage?"
Joseph hesitates. "Definitely."
"Well, that should do it. Thanks for your time."
Sam turns toward the Impala. Joseph walks away. Olive waits a moment, then looks back up at Joseph. "Mr. Welch, have you ever heard of a woman in white?" Olive asks, ignoring the look Sam gives her.
Joseph turns around. "A what?"
"A woman in white. Or sometimes a weeping woman?" Joseph just stares at her. "It's a ghost story. Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really, but..." She trails off. Olive starts back toward Joseph. "Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona and Indiana. All these are different women." Olive stops in front of Joseph. "You understand. But all share the same story".
"Kid, I don't care much for nonsense." Joseph walks away. Olive follows, after muttering 'Kid my ass' under her breath, Sam trailing behind.
"See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them." Joseph stops. "And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children." Joseph turns around. "Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives." Olive's voice gets softer as she goes on. "So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again."
"You think...you think that has something to do with...Constance? You bitch!" Joseph shouts.
"You tell me." Olive says calmly.
"I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!" Joseph's voice shakes, whether from anger or grief it's impossible to tell. After a long moment, he turns away. Olive sighs.
"I don't know how many times I gotta tell you. It's my high school locker combo."
The sheriff is still interrogating Dean over the "Dean Olive 35-111" page. "We gonna do this all night long?"
A deputy leans into the room.
"We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road."
"You have to go to the bathroom?" The sheriff asks Dean.
"No."
"Good." The sheriff handcuffs Dean to the table and leaves.
Dean sees a paper clip poking out of the journal, pulls it out, and looks at it. Moments later he is out of the cuffs. Dean watches through the window in the door, ducks out of sight as the deputy approaches the door, and waits.
Dean escapes and climbs down the fire escape, carrying John's journal.
Sam is driving the Impala when Olive's phone rings. She pulls it out and answers it, putting it on speaker. "Fake 911 phone call? Sammy, I don't know, that's pretty illegal."
"That's what I said." Olive laughs.
"You're welcome." Sam grins.
"Listen, we gotta talk."
"Tell me about it. So the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so that should have been Dad's next stop." Olive says in one breath.
"Liv, would you shut up for a second?"
"I just can't figure out why Dad hasn't destroyed the corpse yet." Sam mutters.
"Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho."
"What? How do you know?" Sam's eyebrows raise.
"I've got his journal."
"He doesn't go anywhere without that thing." Olive adds.
"Yeah, well, he did this time."
"What's it say?"
"Ah, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going."
"Coordinates. Where to?"
"I'm not sure yet."
"I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that Dad would just skip out in the middle of a job? Dean, what the hell is goi-"
"Sam, STOP THE CAR!" Olive screeches, staring wide-eyed at Constance in the road.
Sam looks up and slams the brake, making Olive drop the phone. The car goes right through Constance as Sam brings it to a halt.
"Sam?! Olive?!"
Sam breathes hard. Constance is sitting in the back seat. "Take me home." Sam shakes his head. "Take me home!"
"No." Sam growls. He looks over at Olive, his eyes widening when he sees that she couldn't move, therefore couldn't do anything to stop the ghost.
He looks back at Constance in time to see the glare and the doors lock themselves. He struggles to reopen them. The gas pedal presses down and the car begins to drive itself. Sam tries to steer, but Constance is doing that too. Sam continues to try to get the door open. In the back seat, Constance flickers.
The car pulls up in front of Constance's house and stops. The engine shuts off along with the lights. "Don't do this." Sam pleads.
Constance flickers again. Her voice is sad as she says; "I can never go home."
"You're scared to go home."
Sam looks back and Constance isn't there. He feels her weight as she reappears in his lap, shoving him back against the seat hard enough to recline it. Sam struggles and Olive bangs her head against the seat lightly. "Hold me. I'm so cold."
"You can't kill me. I'm not unfaithful. I've never been!"
"You will be. Just hold me." Constance kisses Sam as he continues to struggle, reaching for the keys. She pulls back and disappears, a flash of something horrible behind her face as she vanishes. Sam looks around for a moment, then yells in pain and yanks his hoodie open. There are five new holes burned through the fabric, matching to Constance's fingers: she flickers in front of him, her hand reaching into his chest. A gunshot goes off, shattering the window and startling Constance. Olive jerks in the seat. Dean approaches, still firing at Constance. She glares at him and vanishes, then reappears, and Dean keeps firing until she disappears again. Sam manages to sit up and start the car. "I'm taking you home."
Sam drives forward. Dean stares after the car as it smashes through the side of the house. Dean hurries through the wreckage to the driver side of the car.
"Sam! Olive! You guys okay?"
"I'm fine." Sam and Olive reply simultaneously.
"Can you move?"
"Yeah. Help us out?" Olive asks.
Dean opens the door to give Sam a hand. Then he gets Olive out, wincing at the bruise on her forehead from hitting the dashboard. "There you go."
Constance picks up a large framed photograph of her and two children.
Dean closes the car door. They look around and see Constance; she looks up. She glares at them and throws the picture down. A bureau scoots towards the siblings, pinning them against the car. The lights flicker; Constance looks around, scared. Water begins to pour down the staircase. She goes over. At the top are a boy and girl They hold hands and speak in chorus. "You've come home to us, Mommy."
Constance looks at . Suddenly they are behind her and they embrace her tightly; she screams, her image flickering. In a surge of energy, still screaming, Constance and the two children melt into a puddle in the floor. Sam, Dean and Olive shove the bureau over and go look at the spot where Constance and her children vanished.
"So this is where she drowned her kids." Olive says.
Sam nods. "That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them."
"You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy." Dean praises, slapping Sam on the chest where he's been injured before he walks away. Sam laughs through the pain.
"Yeah, I wish I could say the same for you, Dean. What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?"
"Hey. Saved your ass." Dean leans over to look at the car. "I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car?" Dean twists around to look at Sam. "I'll kill you."
"Ya gonna beat him with a stick?" Olive asks, raising her eyebrows at her brothers. Sam and Dean laugh and Olive joins in.
The Impala tears down the road.
Sam has the journal open to "Dean Olive 35-111" and a map open on his lap and is finding coordinates with a ruler, a flashlight tucked between chin and shoulder. "Okay, here's where Dad went. It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado."
Dean nods. "Sounds charming. How far?"
"About six hundred miles."
"Not to far. If we shag ass we could make it by morning." Olive suggests.
Sam looks between Dean and Olive, hesitating. "Guys, I, um..."
Dean glances at the road and back. "You're not going." He sighs.
"The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there." Sam explains. Dean nods, disappointed, and returns his attention to the road.
"Yeah. Yeah, whatever." Dean glances at Sam. "I'll take you home."
Sam turns the flashlight off. They drive on in silence.
They pull up in front of the apartment, Dean still frowning. Sam gets out and leans over to look through the window. "Call me if you find him?" Dean nods. "And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?"
"Yeah, all right." Dean sighs.
Olive gets out of the car and grabs Sam in a hug. "Make me a niece or a nephew, Squirt." She says, smiling up at her brother, though inside she was screaming for him to stay with them, not caring how selfish it actually was of her.
"Squirt? I'm taller than you, in case you didn't remember."
"Whatever." She rolls her eyes. "Be safe, Jolly Green." She squeezes his bicep in a comforting manner, then get in the Impala.
Sam pats the car door twice and turns away. Dean leans toward the passenger door, one arm going over the back of the seat.
"Sam?" Sam turns back. "You know, we made a hell of a team back there."
"Yeah."
Dean drives off, Olive watches as he becomes a speck in the mirror. Sam watches them go and sighs.
Sam lets himself in. Everything is dark and quiet. "Jess?" Sam closes the door. "You home?"
He notices a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table, with a note that reads "Missed you! Love you!", next to a National Geographic. Sam picks one up and eats it as he sneaks into the bedroom, smiling. He can hear the shower running. Sam sits on the bed, shuts his eyes, and flops onto his back.
Blood drips onto Sam's forehead, one drop, then another. He flinches with each one and opens his eyes. He gasps in horror: Jess is pinned to the ceiling, staring down at him with unseeing eyes and bleeding from the belly. "No!"
Jess bursts into flame; the fire spreads across the ceiling.
Dean kicks the front door open. "Sam!" Olive and Dean scream.
Sam raises one arm to shield his face. "Jess!"
Dean comes running into the bedroom, Olive following close behind. "Sam! Sam!" Dean and Olive look up and sees Jess. Olive stares, frozen.
"No! No!"
Dean grabs Sam off the bed and bodily shoves him out the door, Sam struggling all the way. Olive snaps from her daze and rushes out the door.
"Jess! Jess! No!" Flames engulf the apartment.
A fire truck is parked outside the building, firemen and police keeping back gawkers. Dean looks on, then turns and walks back to his car. Olive is watching the people around her, rolling her eyes at how rude and childish they're being. 'I mean, come on people, someone just died. Show some fuckin' respect.' She sighs and goes over to Sam and Dean. Sam is standing behind the open trunk, loading a shotgun. Dean looks at the trunk, then at Sam, whose face is set in a mask of desperate anger.
Sam looks up, then sighs, nods, and tosses the shotgun into the trunk. "We got work to do." Sam shuts the trunk.
He gets into the car, closes the door with a slam, and stares at his home of two years.
"You heard the not-so-little shit. Let's get in the car before he huffs so hard the windshield shatters." Dean glares at her. "Too soon?" Dean nods. "Whatever." Olive says and reluctantly gets in the back, muttering about how skyscrapers should not be permitted as brothers, and that Sammy needs to grow down before he has to crawl in the car on all-fours.
Here it is folks! I hope you like it!