PART TWO - SAM

They don't hang around long in Palo Alto after the fire. Sam makes his rounds as the grieving boyfriend, talks to Jessica's parents and the police, their shocked and teary-eyed friends. But there's really no consolation. Sam drifts through the whole ordeal while his father keeps busy restocking supplies and breaking into the taped-off ruins of Sam's apartment for damp clothes that stink of smoke. The soot-stained picture frames and Sam's journal from the bedside table are tossed into the bundle carelessly, as an afterthought. There's not much to salvage, either of belongings or friendships, and Sam is eager to follow his father's orders once again – to have direction and a purpose – when it's finally time to go a couple of days later.

Sam doesn't ask, but John supplies the information as they climb into his truck and head East. "A few campers went missing in Colorado. Rangers seem to think it was a bear attack, but I don't think that's the case." He details the history of the area, how there's a pattern with the disappearances, and that the bodies are never recovered. Sam nods at all the right parts, but his mind is still stuck some three-hundred miles back, buried in a pale pink steel casket six feet beneath freshly turned dirt. He knows he should tell his father about the dream, about the nightmares he'd had as a kid that only Dean could calm him from and which eventually went away about the time Dean started having his own.

After nearly ten hours on the road, they finally pull off Route 50 in eastern Nevada at the small town of Ely. John bypasses all the modern, brightly lit hotels and finds the most decrepit-looking motel, complete with sagging roof and flickering neon sign, on the outskirts of town. There's a truck stop quarter of a mile further down the road that Sam points out. "I'm gonna go see what they've got for food. You want anything? Coffee?"

John nods, grabbing his bag from the narrow space behind his seat. "Coffee sounds good."

"I'll be back in a few." He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he makes his way across the lot towards the street, holding tightly to his phone as he glances left and right, and quickly crosses the empty highway. The gravel of the shoulder crunches under his shoes and for the first time in days he feels like he can finally breathe again. There's a thin layer of snow on the ground and stinging chill to the air that promises more, but for now the frigid air is calming and helps to clear his head.

The truck stop is nearly empty, just one semi pulled up to refuel at the diesel pumps, the driver inside at the counter with a large styrofoam cup and what looks to be some kind of Danish wrapped in a napkin. Sam nods at the tired-looking woman at the register and turns down an aisle filled with candy bars and snack mixes. The Hostess display at the end of the aisle makes him think of Dean and he suddenly realizes – cover of his cell slick against his sweating palm – he's just accepted his father's word, hasn't tried calling Dean himself. He shakes his head, slightly disgusted with himself for not even thinking to try calling.

Dean's number is still set as his number two speed-dial – at least, the last number Sam ever had for his brother is. He flips his phone open and holds down the button, waits for it to dial automatically. The line rings and rings, and he feels his hope ratcheting higher with each passing second until the automated message interrupts. "The voicemail box for the cellular customer you are trying to reach is full. Please try your call again." Sam hangs up and shoves the phone back into his pocket. At least it's still ringing through, meaning the phone isn't dead or off, and that means Dean's still out there somewhere. Or that somebody else came across his phone. Or a hundred other scenarios that Sam's overactive imagination is suddenly spinning.

But, no. Dean's still out there. Sam knows it. He feels it.

He grabs a pack of Twinkies from the rack, a bag of Chex Mix, and an Almond Joy for his dad, and heads over to the wall where there's a cappuccino and hot chocolate machine and a couple of pots of coffee. He pulls two styrofoam cups off the stack and fills one with cappuccino for himself, dropping in a couple of ice cubes from the fountain pop dispenser to cool it down, and snugs a lid onto it before filling the other with coffee for his dad. It takes some creative finagling to get everything over to the counter without dropping anything, but he manages. He pays for his haul and asks for a bag, tentatively sips at his cup as he heads back outside.

John's at the small table underneath the window by the door when Sam gets back to the room, journal and some loose pages spread out before him. He gratefully accepts the cup of coffee with a thanks and takes a healthy swig after testing the temperature on his lip. He offers a smile when Sam drops the candy bar on top of his notes.

"So. Any idea what we're gonna be up against?" Sam asks, sitting on the foot of the far bed.

"Not yet," John answers, "but I've got some leads."

They start out early in the morning just as a fresh snow starts to fall, tiny flakes that sparkle in the pink-orange glow of the sodium lights that ring the truck stop parking lot. John fills the truck's tank up with gas as Sam goes in for more coffee and day-old doughnuts. The sound of the heater running full blast and the low drone of a static-filled classic rock station keep the silence in the cab comfortable as they eat. Sam finds he doesn't really have much to say anyway.

Halfway across the state of Utah, they stop for a bathroom break and Sam finds his teeth aching from the processed-sugar sweetness of another package of Twinkies. He washes the spongy, creme-filled concoction down with half a bottle of Dr. Pepper, wincing at the aftertaste and wondering, not for the first time, how the hell Dean could be so fond of the junk. He catches his dad's gaze out of the corner of his eye as he's balling up the cellophane, and Sam wonders if he's thinking the same thing.

As they cross the state line into Colorado, John turns the radio down, but still has to compete with the noise of the heater when he speaks. "I'm gonna drop you off in Blackwater to get a start on the case while I run over to Manning."

"What for?" Sam asks, noting his father's hesitation.

John shakes his head, muscle in his jaw twitching beneath the stubbled skin as he clenches his teeth together. It's all too familiar. "An old... friend of mine lives there," he finally says. "Might have something to help us against the demon."

Sam nods and keeps his mouth closed, not voicing the questions that come to mind because at least his father's given him something. And, while he understands finding the demon is important, it's not nearly as important as finding Dean. Right now, it kind of feels like his brother's disappearance has been pushed to the back burner, the demon and this job in Colorado their current priorities. Sam can keep himself from asking questions about this thing that some old friend of his dad's may or may not have that concerns the demon, but he can't not ask after his brother. "What about Dean?"

John's clenching his jaw so tightly Sam's sure he could hear his teeth creaking from the strain if the fans in the heater weren't so loud. "I know, Sammy. I've got someone looking into that."

Again, Sam lets it go, having learned after many years of butting heads with his dad how to pick his battles. He knows they're no closer to finding Dean than they were before Sam went down to Louisiana; he hates that there's literally nothing he can do about it, there's no way to find Dean or figure out where he's been.

It's early afternoon when John drops Sam off at the visitor's center across from a motel in the small town of Blackwater Ridge. It's only a few degrees warmer here than it had been in Ely, the air holding the promise of snow but none yet dusting the ground. Sam just hopes that whatever it is that they're looking for, they'll find it before the mountain weather sets in and they're forced to hunt in the freezing cold woods in a snowstorm.

Sam checks them into the lone motel and crosses the street to the visitor's center. There's a local area map on the wall, faded and creased, a pin where the town is, and Sam sees the little pine tree symbol where the Lost Creek Trail Ranger Station is located a few miles into the woods along a dirt access road. He figures that's his best bet in finding any information about the missing campers and the similar disappearances in the past. But the ranger he meets in the small log structure takes one look at him and narrows his eyes. "I'll tell you what I told the Collins girl – people lose cell signals up in these woods all the time. There's no reason to think her brother's missing just because she didn't get a goodnight call."

Sam's taken slightly aback at the ranger's acerbic tone. He moves forward half a step to read the name stitched into the fabric above the pocket of the man's shirt. "Look, Mr. Wilkinson-"

"Ranger Wilkinson," he corrects.

"Ranger Wilkinson," Sam amends. "I know that, and I'm sure, on some level, she knows that, too." It's obvious he's going to get nowhere with this ranger, but at least now he's got a name – or, half a name.

He makes the trek down the access road and goes back to the motel, digging the local phone book out of the drawer in the nightstand between the beds. To his luck, there's only one Collins listed and he notes the address before flipping to the front of the worn phone book to find the town map.

It's not far, just a few blocks, but Sam knows he's too late to convince the girl to stay back when he sees her, a younger boy, and an older man dressed in drab colors loading into a truck. He's not sure what he would've said anyway to get her to trust him – making up stories on the fly was always Dean's forte and Sam always felt bad about lying to the people they were trying to help. And, especially now, when he has no idea what they were facing out in the woods, he couldn't even try to tell her the truth.

Sam calls his dad as he starts heading back towards the ranger station, hoping Ranger Wilkinson will at least give him the location of the supposedly missing campers' camp site. The line rings and rings and goes to voicemail. He curses the automated message that precedes the beep. "Hey, Dad, it's me. The sister of one of the campers left with a guide this morning to go find her brother. What do you want me to do?" He can't very well go after them because he's on foot and who knows how far up into the woods they're going. "Call me back when you get this."

Ranger Wilkinson isn't any more helpful the second time Sam sees him but he begrudgingly gives up the most probable location for the camp. Sam takes a chance and asks if this kind of thing has ever happened before. "What, exactly, kind of thing are you talking about?" Ranger Wilkinson asks. "Campers going missing? Yeah, it happens from time to time. Kids with no training go out there and get off-trail, get lost."

"How often do they not come back?"

Ranger Wilkinson eyes him warily again. "It happens," he concedes. "If the elements or starvation don't get to them first, sometimes the bears do."

"So, if you know what risks there are to these missing campers, why not send somebody out after them?"

"Because we don't know for sure that they're even missing. We're understaffed as it is, and if there's no certainty they're in danger, there's no reason to mobilize volunteers."

Sam nods, understanding even if he doesn't agree. It's up to him and his dad on this one.

When John arrives later that afternoon as the daylight starts to wane, pale yellow and watery as the sun starts to sink towards the jagged line of the horizon, Sam's got a half dozen sheets of paper in his lap that he'd printed off at the tiny public library. He'd managed to do some research into the previous disappearances and discovered a pattern – every twenty-three years – and gets a clap on the shoulder from his father. John rifles through one of his duffels until he produces his journal – the story sounds familiar. There's a furious flipping of pages for a couple moments, then he's setting the thick, bound book on top of the printouts in Sam's lap. "The location, the missing campers, the cycle." He taps his finger on the page, the grotesque sketch of an emaciated, humanoid creature with claws.

"A wendigo?" Sam asks disbelievingly. "This far west?"

"It's our best bet."

Sam's wishing he'd had more time to research when he finds himself alone in the woods, the terrified voice of a girl calling for help drawing him and his father deeper into the thick trees and effectively separating them when Sam manages to pull ahead. "Dad?" he calls out. There's no answer, but the thorned bushes behind him rustle and shake before whatever's there darts off, a trail of flapping branches left in its wake. Whatever it is is fast and not at all small. He thinks back to his dad's journal entry, the description of the wendigo. He needs to figure out where the thing's lair is at.

He finds it by accident when he's chasing after what he's not certain is his father's voice – the ground beneath him gives away mid-stride, collapsing out from under him in a crash of dirt and overgrowth and shale – and he's underground in some kind of cavern. Sam thinks it might be an abandoned mine shaft, but it's dark save for what little light filters through the canopy of the trees in the dense wood above him. He dusts himself off as he stands, debates which direction to go as he fumbles for the flashlight in his pocket.

Sam stumbles across a heaping pile of camping gear after fifteen minutes of slowly following the tunnel. Some of the packs look new, others are covered with dirt and show signs of age. "Dad?" he tries tentatively.

There's a quiet, shaky breath then, "Hello?" - hopeful, relieved, but not his father.

"Hello?" Sam echoes back, panning the weak beam of his flashlight over the bags and higher, seeing a bend in the tunnel.

The Collins girl is trussed up to a warped, wooden support beam, feet barely brushing the ground. Sam takes the knife out of his pocket – the one of Dean's he found – and cuts her down. She sobs against his chest.

"What happened?" Sam asks, gently setting her down on one of the bags in the earthen room.

She shakes her head. "I don't know. It- it came out of nowhere. It killed Roy and then- then it took Ben. I was looking for him when-" She breaks off on another sob, shrugging and wiping at the tears cutting through the dirt on her cheeks with her fingers. "I ended up here. I heard- I don't know what I heard." Her body shudders and she looks up at Sam. "It was screeching and growling and I could hear it… eating." She closes her eyes then and presses her clenched fists to them.

"I'm gonna get you out of here," Sam tells her, dropping down to his knees to look her in the eye.

"What about Ben? And Tommy?"

Sam glances around for a moment and turns back to the girl. "Okay, we'll look. For a little bit. We don't want to be down here when that thing comes back."

She nods.

"I'm Sam, by the way."

"Haley."

"Okay, Haley." He pats her knee. "Let's go through these bags quick to see if we can find anything to start a fire with." He pulls a bag to himself and pushes another towards Haley. "Lighters, matches…anything."

"Flare guns?" she asks, pulling the plastic, pistol-like gun from an expensive-looking black canvas bag.

Sam grins at her. "Perfect." He helps her back to her feet and she takes a tentative step before nodding at Sam.

"I'm okay."

They continue down the tunnel and barely make it twenty yards before they come to a three-way fork. There's a faint brightness in the branch at the left and Sam thinks that's their way out, but that leaves them to choose between right and straight ahead. A high-pitched shriek makes the decision easy. Sam passes one of the flare guns to Haley, presses it into her palm before pushing her towards the left branch of the tunnel. "Go," he says. "If it comes at you, shoot it."

"But what about-"

"I'll find them. Go."

When she finally nods and does as she's told, Sam starts down the tunnel straight ahead, beam of his flashlight illuminating only a handful of feet in front of him as the batteries start to die. It's why he doesn't see the body on the ground until he's tripping over it. The guy's not much older than Sam, bandana tied around his forehead, long gash spanning his torso from collarbones to bellybutton. Sam can see the clean, white bone of his ribs and the cavity where his heart and lungs and liver and everything else used to be. It takes a monumental effort to hold back his urge to vomit and he barely succeeds, stumbling past the body. The screeching of the wendigo draws him further down the tunnel until he comes across another wide space with wooden supports giving the room structure. There are three more bodies bound to the beams here, arms taut above their heads, and Sam recognizes one of them right away.

"Dad?" This is his fault. He shouldn't have run.

John lifts his head weakly. "Sammy?"

"Yeah, Dad. It's me." He goes for his knife, staggers under his father's weight when the ropes give way. When he gets his dad to the ground, he sees the wound. It's not nearly as bad as the kid's in the tunnel, but it's bad. The three ragged cuts are oozing and filthy. "Oh, God."

John pushes Sam's hands away. "Check on them," he says, "before it comes back."

Sam hesitates and eventually nods, moves over to where the other two hang motionless. There's a younger boy – the one Sam saw with Haley yesterday morning, he thinks – and Sam finds him with a thready pulse, a little banged up but otherwise no worse for wear. "Hey," Sam says quietly, slapping his cheek gently at first, then harder until the kid's eyes flutter open.

The kid starts with a sharp gasp, jerking away from Sam's hand until his eyes can focus on Sam's face, then he sags against his bonds. "Haley," he says, voice shaking. "My sister."

"She's okay."

The kid nods. "And Tommy? Is he…?" He struggles in Sam's hold, trying to look at the body beside him. "Is he okay, too?"

Sam glances at the body – at Tommy – and feels his gut clench. "I don't know. Haven't checked yet." He gets the boy cut down and sets him against the tunnel wall beside his father. He goes back for Tommy and knows it's not good. His gut's cut wide open and empty, the dirt beneath his dragging feet is stained dark with blood. Sam cuts him down and gently sets the cold, stiffening body on the ground. "I'm sorry," he says, turning back to the kid, shaking his head.

John interrupts the kid's protest. "We need to get out of here, Sam."

"I know, Dad." He looks at the kid again. "I'm Sam. Are you Ben?"

"Y-yeah."

"Can you walk?"

Ben nods jerkily. "I think so."

"Okay. Then we need to get moving." He hands the flashlight over and helps his dad to his feet. "You go ahead of us. There's a fork in the tunnel not far from here – I think we can get out that way. Your sister's down there."

Ben nods again and stands. He waits until Sam's got his dad up, John's arm wrapped over his shoulders and Sam's around his back, the flare gun in his free hand.

Sam knows when they've reached the body because Ben suddenly stops. Sam nudges him forward. "Just keep going." The fork in the tunnel is just visible when the wendigo gives another terrifying wail, much closer this time. He shoves at Ben's back. "Go! Go right!" They're at the mouth of the branch, he can see the beam of Haley's flashlight at the end, then he's knocked off his feet when something – the wendigo – tries to tear his father away from him.

John screams in pain and Sam can see it. He can see its dark, leathery skin stretched tight over its bones, the long claws buried in his father's belly, and he shoots. The tunnel lights up, bright as day, when the flare is launched into the wendigo's chest and starts sparking. It catches on its papery skin and spreads like a brush fire out of control, reducing the creature to bones and ash before the thing gets out half a shriek. Sam drags his father after Ben and Haley, both of them pale and beyond scared when he reaches them. He can feel warmth seeping into his side and, even with the wendigo dead, fear rises in his chest. "Is there a way out?"

Haley's eyes and the beam of her flashlight are trained on John and her face somehow manages to get even whiter.

"Haley?"

Her gaze darts up to Sam's face. "It's chained shut." She points the flashlight at the corroded lock.

Sam gently lowers his father to the ground and digs his gun out of the back of his waistband. It's loaded with silver bullets, but they should still do the trick. "Stand back," he says, holding the end of the barrel to the top of the padlock. The shot sounds like mortar fire in the small space, makes Sam's ears ring loud enough he doesn't hear the lock fall away to the ground. But the rusting chains slip from the handles easily and Sam kicks them to the side before pushing the doors open. With the full light that comes in through the opening, Sam can see the state his father's in. "You're gonna be okay, Dad," he says.

He binds John's wound the best he can with the flannel shirt Ben had tied about his waist, then Haley silently helps him bear John's weight as they navigate back through the woods, finding a trail that Haley vaguely recognizes and should lead back to the ranger station. The trip takes nearly an hour and John's unconscious by the time they've finally reached help.

John's taken to St. Mary's in downtown Grand Junction with injuries from a bear attack. Sam's confined to the waiting room while his father's in surgery, but a nurse comes out for him a couple of hours later. "Sam Winchester?" she asks. At his affirmative nod, "I need you to follow me."

"Is my dad okay?"

"His surgeon would like to talk to you." She stops halfway down the hallway at an open door and gestures him inside.

The man sitting behind the desk is about John's age, tired, dark eyes meeting Sam's as he stands and offers his hand. "Mr. Winchester? I'm Dr. Henshaw."

Sam shakes the surgeon's hand and tries not to think of how it was just inside his father's body, trying to save his life. "How's my dad?"

Dr. Henshaw's gaze drops slightly before returning back to Sam's. "He lost a lot of blood. His wounds were extensive and we had to remove quite a bit of his small intestine."

"But he's going to be okay?"

"I'm sorry, son, but we did everything we could. He doesn't have much time. We'll do our best to keep him comfortable, but you should start getting a hold of family."

Sam nods, tears thick in his throat, barely managing his next question. "Can I see him?"

"Of course." He leads Sam out of his office and further down the hall, through doors marked ICU.

Sam takes a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself before he enters the room bearing his father's name in fading black marker on a dry-erase board.. His dad's on the bed in a pale blue hospital gown, white blanket pulled up to his chest, face ashen beneath his dark beard. He's hooked up to a couple of machines to his left – a heart monitor that beeps slowly, and something else – and another behind him that Sam thinks is the oxygen that's fed to him through the tube under his nose. He looks bad, but he doesn't look like he's going to die.

"Hey, Sammy," John says, rough voice quiet.

"Hey, Dad." Sam sinks into the chair beside the bed and reaches for his father's hand. "There's gotta be something we can do."

John shakes his head. "Nothing worth what it would cost."

Sam refuses to believe that. "There's gotta be something-" he starts again, but John cuts him off.

"No. Now you listen to me. Everything I've got on that demon is in my journal. You gotta let me go and you've gotta find Dean. Find him and you go after this demon together."

"I will, Dad. We will. But how am I supposed to find him?"

"You gotta go back to Lawrence, go to Missouri Moseley. She- she can help."

"Does she know where Dean is?"

"Maybe. But she can help with other things, too."

Sam's confused. "What other things?"

"Have you been having…visions or anything like that? Or noticed you've had other abilities?"

"What?" Sam thinks about the dream.

"I know it sounds crazy, but it's important, Sam. When you were a baby, when your mother died, the demon- He did something to you."

"What?" Sam can't help the way his voice raises at that – that a demon, the demon, gave him some kind of psychic ability when he was a baby? It's insane.

John licks his lips and shifts on the bed, wincing in pain but pushing through it until he's sitting up straighter. He looks a decade older than his fifty-one years. "Sam."

Sam rubs at his face with his hands. "I've had weird dreams," he finally says. "Before Jess died, I dreamed about it – about the fire, about her on the ceiling – months before it happened. I just thought it was end-of-the-school year stress. Then- then it happened."

"Was that the only time?"

"I think so, yeah. I mean, I used to have crazy dreams all the time as a kid, but they went away not long after I found out you were a hunter."

John reaches for Sam's hand. "When I- You have to go to Missouri. She can help."

"Okay."

"There's a revolver in the lock box in the back of my truck. It's the only gun of its kind, made by Samuel Colt a hundred and seventy years ago, and it can kill anything."

Something in his father's voice piques Sam's curiosity, sets his thoughts turning. "Like the demon, anything?"

"Exactly. The combination is- it's the date your mother died." He pauses. "And you need to call Pastor Jim. He can take care of everything."

"Dad."

"You shouldn't have to do this, Sammy."

"But I can and I need to. It's my fault." He shakes his head and buries his face in his hands.

"Hey, Sammy. Sam. It's not. It's not. Now, go call Jim." At Sam's defiant look, "That's an order."

PART TWO - DEAN

It takes a few frustrating hours to get Dean halfway back to where he was when he'd shown up at Bobby's door just a week ago. He pores over the notebooks in his room, some of what he's written striking familiar, but much of it just doesn't come back. Bobby chocks it up to the lack of human interaction – Dean has been puttering around the house, alone save for Rumsfeld, with nothing to keep him mentally engaged. It takes nearly the rest of the day before Dean lets his guard down around the older hunter and he feels absolutely worn out from being constantly on edge. Bobby scrounges up a piece of rough, yellowing paper and passes it off to Dean with a stubby, but sharp, pencil before situating himself across from Dean at the table in the kitchen.

"What's this for?" Dean asks, pushing his mug of coffee aside.

"Draw me," Bobby says. He scratches at his head through his cap and tugs at the bill to settle it back into place. "Maybe if you have visual reminders, you won't forget."

Dean thinks about the notes he found when he woke up, the one with his name and where he is on it and the others in his wallet. It doesn't seem like it could hurt. But Bobby's idea hinges on whether or not he can even draw. He shrugs and sketches out a tentative oval approximating the height and width of Bobby's head on a smaller scale, a couple of lines for his neck and shoulders before he moves up to draw in the man's ever-present ball cap. It's not all that bad, starts to look like Bobby as he fills in facial features and smaller details: the squint of his eyes under the shadow of the bill, the slight scruff of beard. After fifteen minutes or so, it's not bad at all. He holds the sketch out at arm's-length and looks from it to Bobby and back again. "Hm."

"Well?" Bobby sits up a little straighter and reaches for the page.

Dean hands it over with another shrug. "Could be worse, I guess. It's not a stick figure."

The corner of Bobby's mouth quirks up at that. "Boy, nobody'd ever draw me as a stick figure." He peruses the sketch for a while, eyebrows arched with slight surprise. "Never knew you to be artsy."

Dean grins and snatches the drawing away. "If you're going to make fun-"

"That's not it at all, Dean. It's good. Looks like me. You even got the wrinkles right."

"Yeah, well." He flips the paper over and writes out Bobby Singer – Sioux Falls, SD. Under that he adds hunter, mechanic, has an extensive library, skips a line, can be trusted, makes the best chili and cornbread. He knows there's a lot more to the list, but he can't remember it. It's the basics and the important stuff.

Bobby stands from the table and pushes his chair in. "You 'bout hungry, yet?"

"Starving," Dean answers, opening his most recent journal and putting the sketch in the back for safe keeping.

"You and your brother," Bobby muses, turning towards the pantry, "always starving. Think the lot of ya were born with hollow legs."

Dean pauses mid-reach for his mug of lukewarm coffee and turns in his chair to look at Bobby. "Brother?"

Two days after Bobby's return, Dean found himself in Doctor Lionel Curtis' office – after hours, of course – for an extensive battery of testing and brain scans that lasted for the worst part of three hours. He'd hated the MRI; he felt like he was in a coffin, buried alive. Some of the results they got back right away, others they would have to wait for. But nothing Dr. Curtis saw looked abnormal in any way.

Bobby admitted, as they left the hospital that night, that he was starting to think whatever was going on with Dean's memory wasn't something science would be able to explain. Especially after how quickly Dean's condition had deteriorated in the couple of days Bobby had been gone, he was nearly positive something supernatural had caused the amnesia. But they still haven't found anything in Bobby's vast library that points to a culprit – Bobby's thinking it's the result of contact with a cursed object or some kind of spell, but there's no way to tell what or which one or if there's even a way to break the hold that's on him.

As much as Bobby wants to help Dean get to the bottom of this, he has other responsibilities. It's Dean that points it out after another four days immersed in the library with Bobby dodging calls offering I'll get back to yous or passing along the cases he's called into. "There's gotta be somewhere else I can go where I won't be so much in the way."

"You're not in the way, son," Bobby says, like it's the most absurd thing he's ever heard. "We'll get to the bottom of this."

"It's not gonna be any time soon," Dean contends. "We've been at this for a while."

"I know."

"And we're not much closer than we were when we started, are we? All we know for certain is what's going on in my melon's not normal." He closes the book he's been leafing through for an hour and sets it aside. "Can you think of anybody that'd be willing to take in a headcase like me?"

Bobby rolls his eyes and sets his own book aside. "I guess there's Jim Murphy-" he interrupts himself with a minute shake of his head as though he's dismissing the thought. "Actually, I think I know who I can send you to. Last place your daddy'd probably look." He nods, gaze stuck in some middle-distance just over Dean's right shoulder. "I'm gonna make a call."

And that's how Dean finds himself with his two duffels, a couple of his journals and the few weapons he's still got, as well as a half dozen new spiral notebooks and a sketchpad and pencils courtesy of one Bobby Singer, in the passenger seat of Bobby's Chevelle as they head west on I-90 the following morning. The drive passes slowly, the view a bleak winter landscape beyond the window, the coffee in his waxed paper cup gone a cold, undrinkable sludge.

Bobby turns off the highway at what he tells Dean is the halfway mark, the small town of Kadoka, a handful of miles north of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He stretches his legs while Bobby refuels, then both of them head inside for more coffee and a couple stale-looking pastries. It's not a lot, but it'll tide them over until they reach the Roadhouse. Bobby promises there's a juicy, grease-dripping cheeseburger and a bottle of Corona waiting for him at the end of this road-trip.

Another four and half hours in the car brings them some twenty-plus miles from the Wyoming and Colorado state lines, another tiny, Midwestern town just off I-80 in the southwestern corner of Nebraska. Kimball isn't much of anything; it looks just like every other farm-town with more than two paved roads on the rolling prairie land that stretches between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Main Street is quiet, nearly empty, only a few rusting cars and pickups in the parking spaces along the slush-filled road. Most of the storefronts are dark – the only lights Dean sees as they pass are the red-and-blue neon of a PBR sign in the window of a bar, a dimly lit diner, and a corner store with flickering fluorescents beneath the tattered blue awning over the door.

No more than five minutes later, the houses at the edge of town give way to barren, snow-covered fields and they're heading back into open country. "It's not far," Bobby says, turning on the headlights as the sun starts to sink behind leaden clouds to the west. A couple miles out, Bobby takes a left on a gravel county road and, another mile more, a couple low buildings appear on the horizon. One stands tall and dark on the rise of a hill with a squatty, undefined shape of a shed or some other outbuilding some seventy-five yards or so off to the north; the other, settled in the slight valley, is only one story, windows bright with a warm, yellow light. As they approach, Dean can read the neon sign above the door: Harvelle's Roadhouse.

Bobby parks next to a two-tone El Camino and turns off the engine. Dean leans forward to look out the windshield at the bar. "So... this is it?"

"Home sweet home," Bobby intones before climbing out.

Dean follows a moment later, grabbing his bags from the backseat. All he knows about this place is what Bobby's told him on the drive: the Roadhouse is a bar, has a few rooms in the back that are rented out to weary hunters for cheap when they're passing through and need a place to stay; it's become a hub of sorts in the hunting community over the years where hunters come to trade war stories and try to track down leads and jobs alike; it's been run by Ellen Harvelle for nearly twenty years, the last twelve on her own. Bobby didn't go much into Ellen's history after that, just mentioned that she now ran the place with the help of her daughter, Jo – "If you know what's good for ya, you'll keep your hands to yourself. Ellen's doing the both of us a favor and she's protective of that girl," Bobby had told him. "Treat her like a sister."

Hefting his bags over his shoulder, Dean pushes through the door after Bobby, drawing the curious gazes of the few patrons gathered around a handful of the tables in pairs and the attractive woman behind the bar. She's older, dark hair tucked behind her ears to keep it out of her face as she leans over the sink to empty beer bottles and rinse out glasses. A smile curves her mouth when her eyes land on Bobby and she pulls the towel off her shoulder to dry her hands as she rounds the end of the counter to intercept him. "Hey, Bobby," she says warmly, slapping away his hand and giving him a brief hug instead. "It's been a while."

"Too long," Bobby agrees, and Dean gets the impression it's not just platitudes. "You remember Dean."

Her dark eyes focus on him, gaze appraising. She nods, offers her hand. "Ellen Harvelle."

"Dean," he says, slightly surprised by her firm grip. "Uh, Winchester. Dean Winchester."

Ellen stares at him curiously for a moment before turning back to Bobby. "So, amnesia, huh?"

Bobby glances at Dean out of the corner of his eye. "Seems like. He was fine – well, mostly fine – when he got to me, but when I came back from that job with Rufus..."

"Well, I can put him to work here, keep him busy."

"Whatever you need," Dean says, not really liking that they're talking about him like he's not standing right there. "But I don't know how much use I'll be."

"Tending bar's not rocket science, kid. You'll do fine." She gives Dean another once-over and nods again. "Long drive – bet you boys are starving."

Dean meets Jo while Ellen's back in the kitchen frying up his and Bobby's burgers and he understands the older man's warning. Jo's young, pretty, Trouble-with-a-capital-T plain as day in the false innocence of her bright blue eyes and the coy curve of her mouth. She heads behind the bar with two handfuls of Walmart bags that she sets aside out of Dean's line of sight before pulling off her jacket and hanging it on an empty hook on the wall next to the doorway to the kitchen. The flakes of snow in her pale blonde hair melt to nothing in the time it takes her to turn around and level an interested gaze at him.

Bobby interrupts before she can even speak. "How're you doin', kiddo? Last time I saw you, you were all knobby knees and pigtails."

The flush on her cheeks from the cold darkens further with her embarrassment. "It hasn't been that long."

Dean smirks at the slight whine in her voice. He finishes his beer and waves the empty bottle at her. "Mind getting me another, kiddo?"

The stare she turns on him could put Medusa to shame. Blue eyes wild, she pulls another Corona out of the cooler behind the bar, pops off the cap, and slams the bottle on the bar hard enough to make the beer inside slosh out and down the neck. She whirls back around and stalks off into the kitchen.

He turns to Bobby with a sheepish grin. "Must've struck a nerve."

Bobby's shaking his head and scratching at his forehead with his thumb. "Just remember you're playing with fire, there."

Dean laughs. "I'll make a note of it."

After dinner – cheeseburger just as delicious as Bobby promised – Dean gets a chance to have Ellen and a very reluctant Jo sit down long enough for him to sketch them. As he did with Bobby's, he writes the key information on the back of the drawings, a big, underlined, HANDS OFF! on Jo's. He glances at Ellen as she's wiping down a table and adds the warning to the back of her portrait as well. Better safe than sorry.

It's nearing midnight and Jo shows Bobby to one of the back rooms. Dean heads over to Ellen where she's emptying more beer bottles into the sink. "What about me? Where'm I staying?"

"I've got a place for you out back." She dries her hands on her towel and comes out from behind the bar. The place has been dead since ten when the snow really started to fall and Ellen crosses the room to lock the front door and turn off the outside lights and the signs in the windows. "Grab your bags and follow me," she tells him, going back behind the counter for her coat and moving towards the kitchen doorway.

Dean pulls on his jacket and shoulders his bags, following her through the kitchen and past the steel door of the walk-in cooler. On the hill behind the Roadhouse, the third point in an obtuse triangle, is an old Airstream camper. One of those slick, silver bullet-shaped RV's right out of the seventies. There's a vague path in the crust of snow that they follow silently. Ellen pulls a key ring from her pocket and passes it off to him.

"The green one is for this door," she explains, and Dean sees that the few keys on the ring are color-coded with rubber grips. "There's a note on the counter by the microwave for what's what and another one behind the bar – I'll show you that tomorrow. I figured it'd be easier for you."

Dean selects the green key and opens the door. "Yeah, that'll help. Thanks." He's been getting this odd vibe from her from time to time that makes him feel tense and he wonders if it has to do with the past that Bobby wouldn't tell him about. He's grateful that the strain has dissipated for now and heads inside.

Ellen flips on a switch beside the door. "We converted it a few years back to make it a little more...livable. The bedroom's down that way, at the end of the hall," she says, pointing to the left. "The bathroom is the first door on the right and there's a small closet next to it. The furnace and water heater are in there. Um..." She rubs her hands together and looks around. "Kitchen there." She hooks her thumb to the right where there's a half-wall separating the kitchen from the living room. "It's not much-"

"It's more than enough," Dean interrupts. "Really."

Ellen shrugs. "If you need anything else...?"

"I think I'm good."

"All right, then." She turns to leave and Dean reaches for her elbow.

"Thank you."

Some emotion he can't name crosses her face and she offers him a half smile. "You're welcome."

Dean watches her trudge down the hill and back into the Roadhouse before he locks the door and kicks off his boots. He drops his jacket over the arm of the couch and drags his duffels back to the bedroom, pausing to look into the bathroom on his way. Everything looks clean and fairly new and he somehow knows it's more than he had a lot of the time, growing up.

The bed in his room is big enough it nearly fills up the small space. It's pushed up against the far wall into the right corner, two high windows covered with gauzy, time-yellowed curtains above it. Next to the low mattress, in the two short feet between the low frame and the wall the doorway's on, there's a nightstand with a lamp and alarm clock. He pulls out his journals and sets them in front of the lamp and digs a pair of sweats from his bags before shoving them into the closet to his right. Only the wall to the left is completely open, no windows, nothing shoved up against it, and Dean knows what he's going to use it for.

While in search of a roll of tape, he finds the kitchen fully stocked. In the cabinet beneath the sink, there's a tool box with a few different half-rolls of lint-covered tape. Thin roll of off-white masking tape in hand, he fills up a glass with water from the pitcher in the fridge and heads back to his room. After setting the glass on the nightstand, he takes the three sketches out of the back of his journal and tapes them onto the wall by the top two corners. Dean turns and sits on the edge of the mattress, looking at the small portrait gallery of the only faces he knows.

The alarm goes off early the next morning, an annoying buzz that sets Dean to slapping aimlessly in the direction of the noise. He manages to knock his journals to the floor as he flails a blind arm and nearly catches the lamp, too. He'd rather stay immersed in the good dream he's having – it's the only thing that'll take the edge off the nightmare that woke him from a dead sleep barely an hour after he'd turned in last night. Hand finally connecting with either the snooze or off button, the alarm falls into silence, and Dean lays there for a moment, trying to hold on to the comfort of his dream. It's no use; he's awake. With a groan, he rolls over to the edge of the mattress to flip on the lamp and pick up his fallen notebooks, opening his dream journal to detail the nightmare before it fades from memory.

It's hazy and dim, trees casting heavy shadows, and there's a monster taunting a man. The man's visibly scared, calling out for someone that Dean can't see. The monster is fast, a dark blur as it runs circles around the somehow familiar man. He's older, dark hair just starting to go gray at the temples, salt-and-pepper scruff of a beard. The creature mimics him, throws his voice around, gets him confused before sprinting at him from behind, and Dean can see it in the split second it slows, thin, leather-skinned arm reaching out a clawed hand to catch the man in the gut before tearing off through the woods with him.

It leaves an unsettled feeling in his stomach that the face in his good dream can barely chase away. But he closes the dream journal and takes his sketchpad out from beneath the short stack of notebooks. As he puts the pencil to the page, though, the man from his dream becomes elusive, features falling away until all he can keep sight of in his mind are a pair of bright hazel eyes, corners tilted in a way that lend his stare something mischievous. Dean commits what he can to the page, adding in the thin bridge of a nose and the vague suggestion of a long, strong jaw, the dark fall of hair across a high forehead. No matter how hard he tries to remember, the eyes are the only thing the dream has left behind in his mind.

Dean tears the sketch from the pad and tapes it to the wall a few feet to the right of the other three portraits that hang there. Bobby, Ellen, Jo, he reads from the bottom left corner of each sketch. Half-formed memories of the previous day rise to the surface and he recognizes the hunter, the woman that runs the bar and her daughter.

The alarm clock starts blaring again and Dean turns from the wall and puts the sketchbook away before turning off the alarm again. There's a post-it on the face of the clock, over the numbers: Harvelle's Roadhouse – Kimball, NE – new job. He glances at the portraits behind him and feels the tug of memory. The Roadhouse is Ellen's bar and it's just down the hill from this trailer. Bobby brought him here. The previous day's entry in his regular journal tells him he's right, and that he remembered anything at all is a surprise.

He showers and dresses, looks at his reflection in the mirror and the lone note stuck to the steam-fogged glass that is curling with the moisture in the closet-sized bathroom. "My name is Dean Winchester," he reads from it. For now, his name is something he knows. Knows it like he knows how to speak and write and breathe. It's ingrained into him. For now. His memory is fading, the fabric of it wearing thin, threads fraying until everything it holds is slipping through and away. The notes, the journal, the sketches – they're all just patches, slapped on in desperate haste. They'll give one day, maybe soon, and every last bit of who he is and what he knows will spill, and there'll be nothing left.

It makes Dean's chest ache and his stomach turn with inexplicable fear. The feeling makes him remember the look on the man's face in his nightmare. The absolute terror in his eyes as the monster sunk its claws into his belly and carried him away as he screamed for help.

Even as he trudges down the hill through ankle-deep snow, the fear twines around his insides and chills him in a way that even the frigid air of the Nebraska plain can't. It clings to him more closely than a noonday shadow, leaves him uneasy all morning. It's a struggle to keep up while Ellen shows him the ropes and he scrawls notes in the pocket-sized notepad she gave him first thing.

It's early afternoon and he's in the walk-in for a case of Old Mill when a searing pain behind his eyes whites out his vision and sends him to his knees.

He can smell the decay of the woods through the crisp, thin air, can hear a man calling out, terrified. It's the nightmare. Then it's dark, musty and dank, and he knows he's underground. Pain twinges in his hip from the fall. He's in a cave. No, it's a tunnel. The beam of his flashlight is anemic, but it's better than nothing. There's a girl, tied to a wooden beam overhead – she's alive. As they move deeper into the tunnel – abandoned mine shaft – they can hear the monster screeching. At the fork they come to, he sends her down one branch while he keeps going straight ahead. He nearly stumbles over a body, the kid torn open, gutted. The thing with the claws – that did this. But he continues on, finds more bodies strung up- DAD! It's the man from the nightmare, the one the creature carried away. The man's alive and relief washes over him. The younger boy is okay but the other one...The older boy is left on the floor because nothing can be done for him now. They're nearly back to the fork in the tunnel when the monster – wendigo – attacks them from behind as they make their way back through the tunnel. He just needs to get the man and the boy to safety, but there's no time. The man – his father – is gored by the wendigo again and he levels the gun clutched in this hand at it, pulls the trigger and sets loose a shower of light and sparks. The wendigo bursts into flame and disintegrates even as it screams. They're safe. But not all of them are going to survive.

Dean's curled over his knees on the cold, cement floor of the cooler, trying to catch his breath and calm his heart. His head throbs when he opens his eyes but he pushes past it to dig his notepad from his back pocket and write down what he can remember of the vision. Abandoned mine, woods, thin air, wendigo.

Vision.

This is bad – worse than memory loss and nightmares. This is- He is-

He can't think it. All this time, all the nightmares he's had, and maybe...

Dean shoves the notepad back into his pockets and climbs up off the floor, grabbing the case of beer he was sent in for. He nearly runs right into Jo when he comes out of the walk-in.

"There you are," she says, the exasperated expression on her face becoming concerned when she gets a good look at him. "Hey, are you okay?"

No, he thinks, pasting on a fake smile that makes him feel hollow. "Peachy."

Bobby's at the bar when Dean comes out of the back room, coat on, keys in hand.

"You headin' out?"

"Yeah. Got a case in Minnesota."

Dean nods, rounding the counter to offer Bobby his hand. "Thanks for everything." He knows he should say something about the vision, but he can't get the words out.

"You're welcome, kid," Bobby says after a moment. He looks like he wants to say more, but he shakes his head and pulls Dean into a half-hug. "Be careful and mind Ellen."

"Yes, sir." Dean wonders at the warning, wonders if Bobby suspects there's more wrong with him than just his strange case of amnesia.

The notepad in Dean's pocket feels heavier and heavier with every step Bobby takes towards the door after his goodbyes to Ellen and Jo. The words to stop him are right on the tip of Dean's tongue but he swallows them down.