Ch 3. Ghosts of the Past
Howie's was half a mile south of the Raywood Motel. From the outside it was a typical bar, complete with neon signs of Flamingos and beer mugs. The interior of the bar was covered in dark, wood paneling that screamed 1975, while the jukebox at the entrance hinted at its sock hop past. The standard macho bar types were littered around playing pool and darts; they all wore flannel and suspenders instead of stereotypical leather vests.
The three men found an empty table in a dark, abandoned corner of the bar, out of the way of curious glances. They slid into the empty booth just as the bubbly waitress hopped up to their table.
"What can I getcha gents?" she asked as she twirled what was left of her pencil in her curly, blond hair.
"Uh, I'll have a Guinness." Kale replied with a smile.
"I'll take whatever you recommend, sweetheart." Dean answered coyly.
"A rum and cola for you then, stud." She giggled. "And for you tall, dark and handsome?" she asked as she turned towards Sam.
"I'll just have water," he looked past the spirals of golden hair at her nametag. "Thank you, Molly."
"You're welcome, dear." She wrote the final order down and tucked the pencil behind her ear. "Those are comin' right up."
"Water?" Dean laughed as Molly skipped her way to back the bar. "Water, Sam. Are you serious?"
"Let the man drink what he wants." Kale raised a hand in Sam's defense.
"Well, if you two are gonna be drinking for the next two hours, we need someone who's sober enough to drive back to the motel without getting pulled over." Sam retorted. He laughed at his brother's confused response to his logic.
"I'd have found a way to get us out of it. These cops here aren't the brightest badge in the glove box."
"Sure, you just keep telling yourself that, Dean." Sam shook his head. They were raised to keep out of the laws' way as much as possible, considering that their line of work wasn't as law abiding as they would have hoped, but they weren't used to being dead fugitives.
"Here ya are." Molly cut in and passed the drinks around the booth. "A pint of Guinness for Mr. Harley, a rum and cola for Mr. Smooth, and a nice, cold, ice water for Mr. Designated Driver."
"Thank you." Sam gave her a sheepish smile as she set the sweaty glass down in front of him.
"If you boys need anything else you just say the word." Molly turned and hopped back to the bar. She was eager to pick up the conversation she was having with the bar tender prior to the boys' arrival.
"So, you're John Winchester's boys," Kale started up after Molly was out of earshot. "If you boys are half as good as he was then you're better than most hunters out there. That's some legacy to uphold. He was a great man and a brilliant hunter. I'm sorry he left us so soon." He hung his head and twirled the bottle around on the tabletop. The wet rings left behind from the amber bottle's condensation caught the colored lights that hung near the ceiling.
"Yeah, he was something else." Dean took a swig of his concoction and wished it were stronger.
"How did you get started in the business, Kale?" Sam attempted to fill the awkward silence and hoped he hadn't trampled over a sensitive area in the blond hunter's past.
"How else does anyone get started in this line of work?" Kale laughed as he spread the water around the surface of the table, making intricate designs that slowly faded away. The smile across his face faded and his eyes became distant; images of the past flashed through his mind. "It was my brother." He confessed with a sigh.
Dean failed to hide the chill that ran down his spine as he processed those words. Neither of the men noticed.
"It was the end of spring break and I'd promised him that I'd take him out hiking before he had to go back to school. He was sixteen, the youngest of us three boys; my mother's baby. She was so worried that something would go wrong - that we would get hurt or lost - but she was our mom. It's her job to worry. Our dad kept telling her 'Kale's eighteen now, he's old enough to take care of himself and his brother out in those woods.'" Kale smiled at his poor imitation of his father. The man had had an authority in his voice that Kale could never possess.
"It was our third day out. We would have been on our way back home the next day. Aaden was tired, so we made camp for the night not far from a small pond. There were so many bugs around that the poor kid was covered in mosquito bites before we finished putting up the tent. I went out to gather some dry wood for a fire and he stayed behind to make the fire ring. I was gone maybe two minutes, tops when I saw it. Something moved through the bushes. It was only a flash, but I was sure I saw something.
"By the time I got back to camp, Aaden was hanging by his feet from one of the Redwoods. That monster had cut him up and left him there. It was only after I had started to get him down that I'd realized it was a trap.
"That thing, that Wendigo, it was smart and so fast. I don't know how I did it, but somehow I'd managed to get him in the heart with my knife. By the time I got Aaden on the ground it was too late. He'd bled out. My family never forgave me. My parents won't even talk to me. My older brother's the only one that can stand to look at me for more than five minutes. They all think I'm crazy. I mean, how could they believe that some supernatural creature, some monster, killed their son?" Sam and Dean turned away at the rhetorical question. They knew all too well how society reacted to the nightmares they hunted every day.
"I don't know why I was lucky enough to survive the attack. I got out with a few minor scratches, but Aaden, he lost his life. I think about that every day. Why was I the one who got to live? What makes me so special? Aaden was good person; he was young, smart and had his whole life ahead of him. Me…I'm just, just," he sighed. All the tortuous feelings of that day flowed through him again. His hands clenched into fists and he banged them on the edge of the table. "I couldn't let his death go un-avenged. That's when I decided that it was up to me to keep this from happening to anyone else. I'd fight the monsters lurking in the shadows no matter what it took. I'd make it up to Aaden. I'd make him proud." Kale choked back the tears. He struggled to keep down the lump that had developed in the back of his throat. "Well, that's my sob story. I'm sure every hunter has their own version of it. Even Riley, but she refuses to talk much about it."
Kale's last statement piqued Sam's interest. Why would she not talk about it? He wondered. It can't be that bad, can it?
"That Riley, she's something else, isn't she?" Dean latched on to the subject change. He'd had enough of thinking about what could be and would rather talk about the attractive, young brunette he'd met earlier. "How did you guys meet?"
"Well, actually I was told to go after her. I had no idea who she was or what she even looked like, but I was supposed to follow her on a hunt. You boys know Ellen Harvelle, right? Harvelle's Roadhouse?" Kale questioned.
"We sure do." Dean confirmed. Sam nodded in agreement.
"I'd been a regular there for about three years. It was where I'd learned the most about hunting and how not get yourself killed. One day I go in for my afternoon drink and Ellen and Jo are arguing, which was nothing new. All of the sudden Ellen turns to me and tells me to make myself useful and go out and keep Riley safe. She'd gone off on a hunt after a Siren in Maryland. Jo was sore because Ellen allowed Riley to go but wouldn't let her go even though Riley was younger and practically Jo's sister."
Dean laughed. The Winchesters had been pulled into the middle of one of Ellen and Jo's fights before and it was not a pretty sight.
"Anyway, I did what I was told, mostly because I was afraid of what would happen if I disobeyed Ellen. I found Riley right smack in the middle of a bar fight. Someone had touched her or said something wrong to her and it got her all worked up. I got her out of it by saying I was her boyfriend – not a cool thing to do with her by the way. She kept trying to get rid of me after that. Apparently I'm "not her type", but that sure didn't stop her from saving my butt from that Siren. She was pretty good for a kid. Seventeen, on her first hunt and she had no problem taking that Siren down on her own." Kale paused and drained the last remnants of his bottle. He called Molly over to the table and ordered another round of drinks for the group.
Sam spent the rest of their time in the bar in his own world, pondering his vision of Riley and what it meant now that he had some insight to her history. Dean and Kale continued downing round after round of various ales until last call.
------
Thanks so much for reading, I really appreciate it!
**In case you guys are curious, the part where Kale says he killed the Wendigo with a knife I got from The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls. In the section for Wendigo (pg.85) the author states that you can kill a Wendigo by shattering it's heart with an iron or silver blade as opposed to the way they did on the show (flare gun to melt the heart of ice). So, in this case, Kale was lucky that he happened to have a knife made of iron.