It's taking me forever to get to what I wanted to write about. But I suppose some type of a back story is necessary?
So sorry if this is boring! And as always, reviews are greatly appreciated!
Chapter 7
"God-fucking-damnit!" Annabel growled as she withdrew her leg from the low-pressure shower. It was cold – no, it was freezing.
She hated Maryland. First were the bug bites – the beds were probably infested with bed bugs, for all they knew; second, the hospital and its rancid water-logged tunnels; third, the hospital's ghost who managed to fling both Annabel and Dean against an unnecessarily embellished graffitied skull on the cement walls; and fourth, the fucking Knight's Inn.
The spirit – whom Dean was searching for on the mindblowingly slow internet connection in the room (though granted, at least there was internet) – wasn't particularly nasty in and of itself. It was just the fact that she had flung them against the wall, which in turn caused them to fall into the knee-high water. And that meant they were drenched from head to toe – or, at least, Annabel was. Dean was lucky – he'd somehow managed to fall on his ass – in a sitting position, and that was precisely why Annabel had called the shower first. He still got drenched, true, but at least he hadn't fallen flat into the water in a quasi-bellyflop a la his companion.
"You all right?" Dean yelled from the room, though he didn't really have to yell – the walls were paper thin – and peeling.
"Just fucking peachy!" she yelled back, bracing herself as she stepped back into the tub – with flip-flops, of course, because even though she was dirty as all hell, she didn't want to catch anything else from the godforsaken state. The water hit her skin like tiny icicles, and she could feel her hair rise immediately. It was disconcerting. But, she gritted her teeth and scrubbed down, squeezing a larger-than-necessary dollop of shampoo into her palms. Think of the desert, Annabel, she instructed herself, rinsing out the shampoo before repeating the process with her travel-sized conditioner. Death Valley. In the summer. Lost, no water. It wasn't that she wasn't imaginative – it was just that she always thought it silly that thoughts could contend against reality. No, she wasn't about to die from sunstroke in the middle of Nowhere, California. Nope. She was currently taking a dive in a stupid Polar Bear Swim.
Idiots. You wanna feel awake? Drink some fucking coffee.
Opening her mouth against the water, she forced herself to wait a few seconds before gargling and spitting out the tunnel residue. Then she rinsed herself off one last time before turning off the faucet with much more force than necessary. Though if she really put her will into it, she would have smashed the thing straight through the wall. But, Dean was still stinking up the room, and tomorrow would be a horrible experience for both of them if she had in fact broken the shower.
She grabbed one of the towels from the bar and cocooned herself into a gigantic body-turban, watching the disturbingly brown water flow into the drain. After fighting with her stiff joints, she managed to do the same to her hair. She was shivering, and hell, she resembled a ghost, but what seemed the strangest to her was that the bathroom was not all fogged up. It made complete sense, seeing as how the water was ice-cold, but it was plain weird. Her showers always fogged up the bathroom.
Bundling up her pajamas, she hugged them against her chest as she walked out, leaving her possibly sewer-drenched clothes on the floor. She dropped her clothes onto the bed – on top of her bag – and attempted to smooth the goosebumps on her arms. "Shower's all yours."
What she really wanted to do was snuggle up underneath the covers, but the thought of bed bugs and creepy crawlers making their way up her body made her reconsider.
So she just stood there, watching Dean write something down on a pad of paper.
"Found her," he announced with a grin. "Mary Ellen Smyth, sent in for TB in the late 30s, never came out. Remember we saw the rope burns around her throat? She hanged herself a couple of years later, in the children's hospital. I'm guessing that's where the tunnel led."
Annabel tried to look interested, tried to listen, but she was about ten words behind.
"Luckily for us though, she was buried in the cemetery on the grounds."
He was halfway to the bathroom when his words registered in her brain. "Why now?"
"She died on Halloween, and apparently the kids this year are bigger idiots than before. Usually the police do a pretty good job keeping people out – and that's saying a lot, coming from me," he replied, closing the bathroom door behind him.
It wasn't until she heard Dean let out a long stream of curses when she realized she should have warned him. And karma was a bitch, even though her forgetfulness wasn't intentional. But still, karma didn't give a damn, because right at that moment, a spider with the longest, thinnest legs she'd ever seen was slowly making its way across the wall.
So of course, when Dean came out of the shower minutes later – though it seemed like hours to Annabel – all fuming but relatively clean, he saw her huddled in the center of the room, on top of the chair, staring frightfully at a spot on the wall.
"Where is it?" he sighed, grabbing a piece of paper from the trash.
"Right there," she squeaked, pointing to the offensive creature.
"I can't believe you've gone up against Wendigos and spirits, but are still afraid of these things," Dean said with a shake of his head, crushing the daddy-long-legs with one easy swipe.
"Thanks," she replied, still frozen in her spot. "Sorry I forgot to tell you 'bout the water."
He shrugged, swiping at the water droplets threatening to fall on his forehead. "That should take care of all the cold showers I'll need for the next year."
"Classy."
"What can I say," Dean responded with a grin before turning to his bag. "You gonna put some clothes on, or are you settling with the terrycloth look?"
"It's cold."
"So put on some clothes," he said, throwing a sweatshirt at her face. "And don't forget to blow-dry that cast."
She peeled it off her face and slipped it on over her towels. Apparently Dean's brains hadn't yet had time to thaw out, because he'd thrown one of his own sweatshirts at her. Thankfully. Because it was larger – and thus had more fabric…and almost reached her knees. Oh, the perks of being short…and of having a sometimes-not-so-observant older half-brother. "I'll dry it later."
"Don't get too comfortable," Dean warned, settling back in front of the laptop like taking cold showers was normal for him. "We should be off in an hour or so. It's already getting kinda dark."
"There's no such thing as 'too comfortable,'" she replied, electing to sit on her duffel bag instead of either of the beds. "Hey, you think if we finish this job up soon…we can head down to DC? I'd rather see Lincoln's full body instead of just a head."
Dean grunted, his eyes trained on the screen in front of him.
"I'm going to take that as a yes," she announced, unraveling the towel on her head.
"What? Oh – yeah, yeah, whatever," he said, waving her off. "Okay. So besides the one we saw today, there have been two other documented suicides. All happened a week or two around Halloween. Joel McCarthy – swallowed an entire bottle of pills in the fifties, and Carver Johnson, slit his wrists with a kitchen knife. Huh. Anyway, they're all buried in the same cemetery, so that makes it easier for us."
"Hm, Carver Johnson was pretty cute," she mused, peering over his shoulder. "In a dashingly handsome kind of way. Anyway, sometimes I wish we could just dig up and burn every single body. Now that would makes things a lot easier," she said, bending over to dry her hair. Instead, the towel fell to the ground, forgotten, as she sneezed violently into her knees.
By the time she straightened up, Dean was looking at her with an extremely amused expression on his face.
She scowled at him as she kicked up her towel. "What, you've never seen anyone sneeze before?"
He grinned. "Not like that, from a chick, no."
"Oh, I'm sorry, did I offend your delicate sensibilities?" she crowed before focusing her attention on the state of her towel. She shook it out violently, hoping to rid it of whatever dust mites it may have picked up from the carpet, then proceeded to dry her hair.
"Yeah, you did," he stated, eyeing her with faux disgust as he closed the laptop. "Get dressed. I'm gonna grab us some food from down the street. And go dry that cast already – or else you'll have to get it redone at the hospital."
"I'm going, I'm going," she replied, staring at the slightly smudged "squirt."
He grabbed his jacket on the way out, and reminded her to lock the door behind him.
I'm not a kid, Dean, she wanted to whine, but she bit her lip and nodded. She wasn't a kid…until she acted like one. And hell, she certainly felt like a kid when caught up in unfortunate situations she was so adept at finding herself in.
So she locked the door.
Annabel couldn't help out with the digging, so Dean had her standing guard – with a flashlight strapped to her right hand and a shotgun loaded with salt rounds in her left – as he did all the hard labor. The shotgun was just there for comfort, seeing as how she couldn't very well take full advantage of it with just one hand. No, it was there so she could throw it to Dean if need be, and if she couldn't do that, she'd just have to wield it like a bat…or attempt to shoot it with a cast for support and a left hand for aim. Why couldn't spirits – scratch that. Why couldn't everything be killed by coming in contact with silver or iron? No one ever needed two hands to use a blade.
Being the paranoid, somewhat neurotic person she was, she was either a terrible person to have stand guard or the best. Usually, she was pretty good at keeping guard, but the fact that she didn't have full usage over both her hands would most likely prove to be a disadvantage.
She stood relatively far back from the gravesite, since her current position provided her with the most expansive view, should the spirit decide to make a visit.
"Hurry up, Dean!" she called, jiggling her leg impatiently as she scanned the surroundings for the hundredth time.
"Yeah, I don't see you doing any of the work here," Dean panted, throwing the shovel up to the grass.
"I can't," she said simply, waving her cast in the air. "But I would if I could, if that matters any."
"It doesn't," he grunted.
She didn't see it until she was flying through the air, so yeah, she clearly wasn't in tiptop guarding shape. And what's the point of looking everywhere when you can't even see spirits sometimes?
"Fuck," she breathed as her leg hit a tombstone on her way down. The force wasn't enough to cause anything but a bruise, but somehow cursing always seemed to make things better. That was something she learned long, long ago, and the theory hadn't yet been proved wrong.
"It's Carver Johnson! Go dig him up – I'll distract him!"
Dean cursed as he pulled himself up from the grave he'd just technically dug, already reaching into his pocket for the matchbook before he even stood upright.
The second grave didn't take quite as long to dig, probably due to the fact that he knew Annabel's powers of distraction weren't enough to keep them both in one piece. And the third? A piece of cake. Though, he knew his body would hate him in the morning.
The silence from above ground was enough to worry him.
But first thing's first, he thought, throwing the lit match down into the gasoline soaked coffin. He lingered for a few seconds, just to make sure the fire was going strong, before he grabbed his bag and attempted to discern where she'd gone.
It wasn't so easy. If only she'd dropped some bread crumbs – or, you know, if she'd managed to find a way to distract the thing within the confines of the cemetery.
"Annabel!" Dean called in a tone just a fraction short of a bellow.
Johnson and McCarthy were both roasting in their graves, so Dean had expected Annabel to return a while ago. Unless she'd gone straight to the car…God, they really needed to set up some standard operating procedures or something.
He pulled the bag over his shoulder and began the trek to the Impala, all the while checking his cell phone just in case. Although working with partners definitely had its perks, it also meant looking out for another person, and that sometimes didn't sit very well with Dean. Hell, sometimes even being responsible for keeping Sam safe irritated him.
"Damnit," he growled as he came upon his lone car. "If you were arrested for trespassing," he said in a warning tone to her entry in his cell phone, "you're getting out if it by yourself."
And as life would have it, his call went to voicemail after seven rings.
He threw the can of gasoline into the trunk and pulled open the weapons cache. If he knew Annabel and the situations she often found herself in – and he'd like to think he did – he'd need as much help as he could get. With a shake of his head and after making sure he had the usual iron, silver, shotgun and salt rounds, he reached for the holy water and stuffed it into his pocket.
Now for the hard part. How the hell was he supposed to find her?
Okay, think, he thought, where did it sound like she was running to? God only knows. He'd heard her circling around a small section of the cemetery when he was still digging up Johnson, but after that, nothing. If nothing else comes out of this – besides bruises and scars, maybe I'll have learned to pay more attention to every little detail, he mused, heading for the building closest to the cemetery.
He tried calling her again just before he reached what appeared to be the building where the kids were quarantined. It was smaller than the building they had explored earlier in the day, but it was no more inviting.
"C'mon, pick up the phone," he muttered aloud, all the while staying low to prevent being spotted by pesky cops. "Some sleep would be lovely." Then, "God, how long do you think it takes me to dig up two graves?"
It probably said something about his sanity, the whole talking to his cell phone business, but he shrugged it off. Of all the things he could be carted away for…
Dean snapped his phone shut and stuffed it back into his pocket. What's the point of having a phone if no one ever picks up? Making sure no cops – or daredevil teens – were around, he ducked through the doorway and clicked on his flashlight.
"Annabel!" he called in a sing-songy whisper, slapping himself mentally upside the head the second his voice rang out.
He held his gun at the ready and pivoted as he reached the end of the hall, scanning the area for signs of movement. All he saw were toppled rusty desks, some loose paper, and dolls. He shuddered. Dolls, like little girls – boys too, sometimes – were creepy. He kicked the Little-House-on-the-Prairie doll at his feet, and it rolled into what looked to be a small auditorium. Streamers – or what was left of them – hung from the ceiling above the stage, and the steps had rotted away.
Just as he was about to step into the auditorium, his cell phone vibrated against his hip. "Where the hell are you?" he barked, panning his flashlight across the room.
"Waiting for you by the car," she replied, her tone indicating that it should have been obvious. "You should stay low though. Cops wandering around."
"I'll be there in a second. And don't move" he ordered.
She brought her knees to her chest and stretched the sweatshirt over them, determined to prevent unwanted critters from crawling on her. Why they didn't just find another hotel, she didn't know. But Jessup certainly didn't seem to have many options.
"Are you pissed because you had to do all the digging?" she ventured cautiously, eyeing Dean's prone form across the room.
He was bent over the desk, focusing intently on the dissembled walkman and the assortment of wires, tools, and other such gadgets spread across the surface. "What? Why – nevermind."
"No, seriously. You're annoyed, aren't you?"
"I am not annoyed."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Making a new EMF meter," he replied, waving a wire cutter in the air.
"Out of a walkman?" she gawked. She scooted closer to observe the process, having never seen anyone make a homemade EMF, let alone an EMF out of an old walkman. "Where'd you get a walkman anyway?"
It was clear he'd had experience in the art of making EMF meters out of discarded walkmen, since his hands were moving with almost surgical precision.
"So where'd you go earlier?"
"When?"
"When you were distracting the spirit."
"Oh, had an encounter with a cop. Said that I was rushing for some sorority, and that they left me there as part of a hazing."
"And he bought that?" Dean asked incredulously.
"Don't they always?" she grinned. "Okay fine. I exercised some of my womanly wiles, if you must know."
He snorted. "Good thing it was nighttime."
"Hey!" she protested, throwing the closest thing she could find at his head. It was the remote, and it was probably a good thing he caught it before it connected with the back of his head, because then she'd never really hear the end of it.
How he knew something was flying towards his head, she didn't know.
"You're okay though?"
"You mean, did I break anything else? No. We were pretty much playing tag the entire time, and then he burned up. Kinda anticlimactic if you ask me," she sighed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes.
"Anticlimactic, huh?" Dean asked, turning his head to look at her. "You could go for another spin in the cemetery, if that'd help."
"Nah, I'm good. Hungry, but good." She straightened out her legs as she hopped off the bed. "You want something to eat?"
"We have food here. It's late."
"I'm sick of instant noodles," she replied. "I'll just be going down to the convenience store anyways."
"Be back in five."
"Yes, dad." Annabel rolled her eyes and stepped out before he could notice she'd swiped his wallet.