3

Dean scrambled back up the slope, returning to the sunny clearing. He ducked the scratchy apple branches reaching out from the trees where the backhoe had gone over, looking for the rest of the stone. It didn't take long before he found it. It stood at the base of one of the trunks, near the clearing's edge. Old hand-tooled local stone, from the late 1800's by his reckoning. He was amazed that it still stood straight after being struck; he would've bet on the backhoe winning that battle. It was a small marker; spare and simple, one that showed more duty than love in its erection. He crouched to read the name. He read it over twice. It wasn't a typical name; wasn't a name at all, as far as he could tell. He placed the fragment against the place where it had been knocked off.

SIN EATER. That was all it said...sin eater, carved in unadorned block letters. Dean tossed the piece back to the base of the stone and stood, perplexed. -Weird thing to put on a gravestone- He checked again, front and back, and dug away at the stone base, just to make sure he wasn't missing any other wording, but nothing was revealed. It was just those two enigmatic words. It could be a name...maybe Sin was short for something, like Sinead. And people had all sorts of stupid surnames. He decided to call Sam.

"Hey. You awake?"

"I am now.. Find anything?"

"Yeah. It was just off the highway, west of that closed restaurant we saw. Seems like some old homestead. I found the backhoe; looks like it was clearing land when it hit a gravestone. The gravestone won; the tractor's upside-down in a gully."

"Huh. Could you read it? Are you picking up any EMF static? Do you really think there's enough to keep us here?"`

Dean swatted with annoyance at the cloud of insects. "Yeah, I'd say so. From what I can see, this should have been fairly easy for them to clear and build. EMF's quiet, but there's not much reason for any of the shit that happened. And get this; the words on the stone are Sin Eater...nothing else."

"Sin Eater? No other name?"

"Nope. Any chance that it could be one?"

"I don't know. Pretty weird. Want me to check those words while you wait?"

"Yeah, do that. You might as well earn your keep."

"har har. Hang on while I type this in." Sam googled the words and instantly, a wealth of information sprang up. "Ok; it's not a name. It's a ritualistic or superstitious practice. It's old, but I don't know if anybody still does it. Looks like it was done in places like Wales, and then spread to the New World, especially poorer areas, where money and education were limited..."

"Well what the hell is it?" Dean demanded impatiently.

"I'm getting to it! Ok, sin-eating was a means for a dead person to be absolved of their wrong doings. A bowl of beer and a loaf of bread would be placed on the deceased's abdomen, and then the sin eater would come. He'd be given some money, and with some ritual words, the sins of the dead guy would be transferred into the food. Then the sin eater would...well, eat them, and the sins along with it. They believed that the responsibilities for the sins were then assumed by the sin-eater. These guys were pariahs, Dean. A necessary evil, in their community's eyes. They were shunned and avoided, and the only time they were wanted was when somebody died."

"Really. Well that's pretty crappy. Why the hell would they do that, then?"

"It says here that it was usually the poorest of society...you know, desperate people who'd been reduced to doing pretty much anything for a buck. That, and sometimes a loving relative that was thrown into the position of eat the sins or let the dead loved one go to hell."

Dean grunted. This hit a little too close to home for his comfort. "Poor bastard. So the guy buried here was some lonely, shunned loser in life. They didn't even have the decency to write his name on his stone, for shit's sake. And then he died, and probably nobody came. I wonder if anybody ate his sins... At least he got a headstone. Any chance of getting a name some other way?"

"Maybe through local archives. Not likely that anything from this area will be online, but all the birth, death, and property records will be stored somewhere nearby. It'll mean a drive, and some time in local libraries, or some town hall.."

"Well your day's shaping up just right then, isn't it, Professor Sammy? I guess I should head back then. You're going to need wheels for your research, and I'm starving."

"I can make us some KD. How long until you get back here?"

"I don't know. Maybe a half hour. I'll just do a quick check around here to see if any other name or anything turns up. Not much left here, the old site was pretty much abandoned. I don't know why people didn't keep living here, it has an amazing view. There's no mystery as to why the rich guy wanted to build his log paradise here. May Adams said that this dead backhoe driver guy, Bert Munro, bought the land for back-taxes. Sounds like nobody else around here would touch it with a ten foot pole. You think it was because of the sin-eater thing?"

Sam didn't know. "Maybe. Superstitions run deep, even if people don't even remember the origins. I'll do what I can online, but like I said; most of this will be leg-work. Get here soon, will you? Otherwise lunch will be congealed and gross."

Dean agreed and hung up.

Sam waited a short while, then put the water on to boil. While he waited, he roamed online in search of information about the odd practice of sin-eating, and he tried to find any important anecdotal material for the area. Unfortunately there was little; this particular stretch of land was still fairly rooted in an older way of living, and internet had little meaning here. The best he could do was locate the nearest libraries and town halls, it would be the to start researching. Of course, they could always ask a local person, but somehow he felt that they would be met with more resistance and dead ends that way. They sure seemed protective of their privacy. Unless you could prove that you were a blood relative, you were an outsider, and apparently that meant you were going to stay on the outside.

Dean slipped his phone back into his jeans pocket. So sin-eater was a title rather than a name. He wondered what had brought the person to becoming one. And how he died. Judging from his unsympathetic grave marker, it was probably alone. Somebody saw fit to put him here and mark his presence, but neglected to add the personal touch of his real name. He realized that the sin-eater was probably deemed too 'unclean' to be placed in a churchyard. So much for his sacrifice, it sure didn't seem to get him much in life, and not a helluva lot more in death..

He was hungry. He decided he's poke around the foundations quickly, just to see if there was anything there that could shed light on the person buried in this lonely place. The grass was so tall, it obscured much of the ground. He found the well, and what must have been a stable, judging from the old pieces of tack that still sat in moldering piles where they'd fallen from the collapsed walls. There was nothing left of the house; he found plenty of evidence that it had burned long ago. Satisfied that he'd seen anything of potential interest, he snagged another apple and headed toward the other end of the clearing, where the road entered.

...sinner...

It was a whisper, barely audible. Dean whipped around, seeing nothing. He wasn't even sure he'd heard it. Until the second time...

...sinner...

He was sure he heard it right. It was a drawn out whisper; it seemed to float down on the wind, like it was breathed out. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. He wished he could see the car, but it's comforting shape was out of view. He dropped the apple and stepped up his pace, clutching the salt gun nervously. He heard it again, and was sure now that the air had cooled around him for a moment. -Definitely a presence- He stopped, holding the gun ready, and scanned around the sunny meadow. It seemed peaceful, nothing indicated anything unusual. As he stood, waiting, all he heard was the buzz of insects, or the distant song of a bird. The breeze was gentle and pleasantly warm. He was tempted to believe he was imagining it, when the EMF chirped. He glanced down at it, and saw the brief flash of warning lights. It stayed still for a moment, he shook it in case it was malfunctioning. But then it began to scream.

...SINNER...

The whisper was loud this time, a sharp hiss, it felt like the speaker was right on top of him. Dean ducked automatically and stepped away. He spun and levelled the gun, but saw nothing. "Who are you?" he shouted to the empty air. There was no answer to that demand, only the same maddening word, hissed in his ear. Dean backed away, and stumbled in the long, tangled grass. He leapt up and again pointed the salt gun at the place where'd stood. "Show yourself!"

The spirit was not enticed to do so. Instead it continued to circle the hunter, whispering it's accusation, tormenting him. Dean kept backing away, with equal measures of annoyance and fear. He tripped several more times, cursing. The grass seemed to hide a network of vines; wild grape, virginia creeper. The tendrils coiled around everything, choking whatever they grew up against. -Where the hell did all these freaking things come from? He hadn't noticed them before, but here they twined along the ground; dry, rough serpents, rising in tangled hummocks over rocks and stumps, and snaking through the grass in treacherous loops. He stumbled again, despite his scanning the ground for the obstacles. But he wasn't about to slow down now; he could see the road ahead, and the air had grown so chilled that his breath was condensing in puffs, despite the warm afternoon sun. The whispering seemed to surround him, as if it emanated from some constantly changing position. He wanted to cover his ears, but he kept both hands tight on the shotgun, pointing it frantically each time in the direction from which the sound came, but nothing ever materialized. The damned EMF kept up its screech, as if yelling an I-told-you-so, and warning him to hurry up and get the hell out of there. He fumbled a hand over it, finally shutting it off as it's message was already clear enough..

..SINNER!...

He felt a rising panic. It wouldn't leave him alone, but it wouldn't present itself either, and he could hardly hit a target that refused to show. He was startled by a touch; he felt it now, a cold wisp, an icy breath caressed his face as that damned word was whispered. No longer heeding the perils of the ground in front of him, he started to run.

He felt something strike him, and he whipped around to see what it was. More things pelted him; small stones, the stunted apples. He ducked what he could, and kept his head down to protect his eyes. The words hissed loudly all around him; he yelled back in fear and fury at the entity that attacked him now, and fired off several wild shots with no effect. The barrage of apples and rocks continued, forcing him back, away from the road, and he stumbled back toward the meadow's far edge, squishing through the raw, damp clay that had been turned over by the backhoe.

Afterward, he wouldn't be able to say whether he was tripped up by the vines, or if he'd been shoved. But either way, he suddenly found himself stumbling at the gully's edge, desperately trying to avoid falling. He lost his grip on the gun in a vain attempt to keep his balance. But his feet were caught in the damned grass, and the ground of the gully seemed to rush up to meet him. He reached with flailing arms toward something, anything, to slow his descent, but his nails scraped off loose bark.

He was struck and whipped by the twisted branches of the old apple trees growing over the precipice. He shut his eyes against their sharp points, and hit the ground rolling. For a second, he saw the crest of the meadow above him, and a figure there... He collided face first with the hulking backhoe, which abruptly halted his headlong tumble. There wasn't time to voice the curse that flew through his mind. The violence of the impact knocked him breathless, he fell back limply against the earth, and slid past the machine. If it hadn't been for the scattered hawthorns at the bottom, he'd have landed in the water.

Stunned, he lay for a moment against the trees, heaving to catch his breath, and blinking hard to clear his vision of streaming blood. But his momentary relief at being spared a cold soaking in the creek was short-lived. Above him, the backhoe groaned and creaked, and began to slide.

-Shit! He threw himself in desperation to one side as the heavy machine tipped and crashed down, the effort just sparing him from it's previous driver's fate. The backhoe screeched and ground and rolled, throwing up clods of earth and splintered trunks and a shower of leaves. The ruined hydraulics snapped free of the digging arm; it flailed loose briefly, like a broken neck on a dinosaur, and the iron-toothed bucket crashed down. Dean had no time to react before it landed squarely on him where he lay.

His own coughing woke him. He lay quiet, uncomprehending, for a long time, gradually becoming aware of his surroundings. He pried his eyes open with difficulty, as his eyelashes were glued together with drying blood. His vision was too blurred to see much, but it was still light. The more he gained acuity, the more his hurts made themselves known. He groaned, spitting out the copper taste of more blood, as the numbness that was spread across his face began to wane, replaced by throbbing of increasing insistence. He lifted a hand and moved his fingers carefully over his features. He traced the rise of an impressive goose-egg on his forehead, the skin split and bruised. He couldn't tell if he'd busted his nose. He ran his tongue over his teeth, relieved that they, at least, were intact. Instinctively, he tried to haul himself up to sit. He shocked himself to full awareness with his own yell, falling back again.

"Christ!...oh, sonofa-!"

He shuddered, as a breath-robbing pain shot through his arm and shoulder. He stopped moving and lay his head back down, catching his breath and evaluating. Passing his fingers gingerly over his left shoulder, he groaned again. The outline was all wrong, and his light pressing brought a stabbing pain that drove deep into the joint. It was dislocated, no question. The force of the digger's impact had wrenched it out, but it was a minor inconvenience compared to the rest. The backhoe bucket sat upside-down, like the top of a grinning predator's head, and it pinned his left forearm. One of it's great, rusty tines had pierced through, crucifying his arm to the damp earth. He reached his right hand out, fingertips just managing to brush the huge metal thing. He rolled a little and tried to push it, but it was immobile; a solid four hundred pounds of pitted iron. The motion brought a fresh rush of pain and he groaned involuntarily as whirling stars prickled his vision. He was forced to stop before he passed out, and he ground out a stream of choice words until the feeling faded.

His arm was already slick with blood. His shirt was fast becoming sodden at his armpit; blood had collected there from where it streamed from higher up. He gingerly pushed himself up now, careful not to move his shoulder any more than he had to, and scanned where his limb was caught. What greeted him nearly turned his stomach. The source of the bleeding was obvious; it welled lazily around the iron tine with each heartbeat, flowing down from the puncture in a sluggish stream, where it collected in the absorbant cotton of his sleeve. He groaned in dismay.

But there was still the bigger issue. He remembered what had brought him to this, and he was a sitting duck for whatever had been following him. He knew he had to get free somehow, or god-knows-what else was going to happen. Taking a ragged breath, he tried to flex his fingers, hoping that he could somehow pull his arm out from under the thing. He could hardly feel them, his hand was so numb, but he could feel the ripple of his tendons under his skin, relieved that the weight of the heavy metal thing wasn't fully carried by his arm alone. He thought he felt a little give, and he began to dig a hollow under his elbow, swearing at the pain as he clawed out handfuls of soil and leaves so that he could push his arm down into the void and free it from the tine. Roots barred his progress and he had to pull them out several times, and when they were stubborn, he tried to push them out of the way. It was painful and tiring, but he kept at it. When he thought there was enough room, he gripped his arm at the elbow, bit his lip and pressed, feeling the rusted metal slide a reluctant increment out of his flesh.

He didn't try it twice; he blacked out at the resulting agony. When he came to, a deafening hiss remained, but after several minutes it faded, leaving only the quiet burbling of the creek below him, and the sound of his own rapid breathing. He lay still, for some time, stunned by his predicament. Shivering in a cold sweat, he felt suddenly and overwhelmingly alone. He was swamped by impotent rage and pain, and he squeezed his eyes shut and choked out a bitter curse. Dean knew now, that he was in serious trouble.