Singer's Auto Salvage, outside Sioux Falls, North Dakota 11:45p.m.
Dead silence.
No crickets, no sounds of traffic on the highway, no breeze. No dogs barking in the distance, no restless cattle lowing. Nothing moved. No branches swayed.. The utter stillness in the cool night air brought a chill to Dean's very core.
Sam fished a keyring out of his pocket, straining to see in the dark, finally finding the keyhole, then turning the knob slowly as Dean stood by, .45 in hand.
Inside, as outside; nothing.
Bobby Singer was nowhere to be found, his battered Chevy Nova and usual Army travel duffel missing. No phone call to alert them to a change of plans, no note on the kitchen table. A hasty search first, then a slower more thorough one; both turned up the same results. Nothing.
Half an hour later, Sam looked once again around the untidy living room, desperately searching for a clue to Bobby's absence.
"But.." he said for the fourth or fifth time, "He knew we were coming. He knew we were on our way." He prodded the fringe on the rose-patterned rug with the toe of his boot. "Dean?"
Dean was speechless. They had tried repeatedly to contact Bobby by phone after Dean's discovery in the gas station bathroom, but time after time, the call went straight to Bobby's voice mail. Dean was at his wit's end. Periods of frantic planning, interspersed with long stretches of nervous silence filled the hour and a half drive from the Fill 'Er Up. Both brothers assumed that Bobby would somehow have the clue, the key, the missing piece they needed to make this whole nightmarish incident make sense.
But now, Bobby was gone. And Sam and Dean were left, once again, to handle things alone.
Sam had the sense of mind to at least make a pot of coffee in the face of impending doom; he and Dean sat in Bobby's dusty book-crowded office, hoping for a spark of inspiration.
"I don't get it, dude," Dean said "And by that, I mean," he leaned back in the creaky wooden desk chair and plunked his heavy boots on the scarred walnut desk top. "I have been over this a million times in my mind. We've hashed out every angle, gone over every detail.. and we still got nothin'."
Sam shifted in the leather wing chair, an intense scowl on his face. It was what Dean called his 'thinking face'.
"Dean..." Sam started then stopped, pursing his lips. He continued, all in a rush, like he did when an idea had hit him suddenly. "Dean, what if maybe.. maybe it is? I mean, maybe it was Dad?"
"Dean ran a hand through his short hair and sighed.
"News flash there, Sammy. Dad is dead, real-live dead." He puffed out his cheeks in a sigh. "It's somethin'... it's the same thing, man. Some freaky demon trick, some, I dunno.. spirit or djinn or what the hell ever. We know it's the same thing that lured us to Illinois and all the hell over the place... just like it was screwin' with us." He reached for his coffee cup and drained the last swallow. "Dad is not gonna walk out of Hell. Trust me on that one."
The lights flickered suddenly, and Sam and Dean were instantly alert. There was a crash in the front room, wood and glass splintering and raining down on the plank floors.
Somebody was home, and it wasn't Bobby Singer.
Singer's Auto Salvage, 1996
Dean called it "The Summer of Debra"... never to Dad's face, of course, but that's what it was: the summer Dad "fell in love" (Sam's version)/"got the hots for" (Dean's version) a gum-snapping, smart aleck waitress in Des Moines. In truth, it was more like "The Two Weeks of Debra," but that didn't have quite the same nostalgic charm...
During a hunt in Iowa, a casual breakfast at the Happy Clucker Diner changed John Winchester from an obsessively compulsive demon hunter to a doe-eyed lovestruck teenager... somewhere between the cheese grits and the second cup of coffee. John met Debra for lunch at the diner, dinner at Little Italy and breakfast... well, Sam and Dean did not want to know. Somewhere during Day Three of the Summer of Debra, John handed Dean the keys to his Impala, told him to pack up his fourteen year old brother and insisted the boys head up to Uncle Bobby's, for a little R&R.
That was when the trouble really began.
Under John's watchful eye, and oppressive thumb, Dean and Sam rarely got to indulge in the usual brotherly spats and scuffles. Sure more than a few times they'd come to blows, but inevitably danger brought them closer than before... until they were so close, they became almost an extension of each other.
The Summer of Debra changed that forever.
Bobby refused to intervene, called it quits when it came to refereeing. He told them to figure it out on their own.
"Unless one of you idjits is bleedin; from the ears or the house is on fire, I don't want to hear about it. You all just fight it out however you see fair. But lemme warn you both," he said, eyes narrowing, pointing a beefy finger at each brother in turn, "you both best keep it fair. We don't fight dirty in this house, and we don't break no furniture. Anything to the contrary, I'll be getting' the belt off that hook in the closet, you hear me?"
True to his word, Bobby let the brothers hash it out in bloody, knuckle-scraping, name-calling showdowns. Dean was bossy, foul-mouthed and full of himself. Sammy was whiny, irritating and sneaky. They kept it fair, or as fair as possible, and the belt stayed on the hook in the closet.
The Summer of Debra passed in a flash, as time does in a kid's world. Back on the road with John, both Sam and Dean silently longed for the comfortable familiarity of Bobby's overstuffed flea market of a house; regular meals at normal times, a chance to sit around the scarred maple table and talk, just talk... about anything and more often, about nothing at all. At Bobby's house, Sam and Dean were never expected to be more than what they were; not soldiers, not warriors, but just two normal kids growing up influenced by their father's very eccentric lifestyle.
That was also the summer when both Sam and Dean started to regret being Winchesters. They never shared it, but they were having almost identical fantasies; Dad leaves, or dies, or runs away with some woman, and leaves them with Bobby. Most often, Dean's fantasy had Dad dying while bravely fighting evil. Sam... well, Sam just wanted him to go away, in whatever way was necessary. Dean always felt guilty after having those thoughts.
Sam never did.