Bleeding Through the Edges of the World--Chapter 2
Author's Note: Sorry it's taken me so long to update. I think I finally have the flow of this story figured out (I know what the story is and where it's going, but some of the middle bits have been a bit obscure). If you're reading, I'd love to hear from you--good, bad, or indifferent. Thanks for giving it a look. Please review if you've a mind to.
"What are you wearing, Hope?"
"Clothes."
"I know they're clothes. But, Jesus, we're going clubbing, not to Farmer Bob's Country Hoedown. You make me go camping with you, you come clubbing with me first. That's the deal."
"But look, this top. It has sparkly bits."
"That's because you stole it from me."
"And your point is...?"
"Those jeans..."
"What's wrong with them? People wear jeans all the time."
"Do they show off your ass? No. Are they designer jeans? Boys would wear those jeans."
"They're comfortable."
"You are so hopeless."
"Look at you. You're wearing combat boots."
"Fashionable combat boots."
"Right."
Hope gets up at five o'clock every weekday morning and runs three miles before Dean ever even moves. He stays up sometimes until one or two in the morning prowling the house like a caged lion, watching old football games on cable, staring at the tool bench in the basement wondering what the hell it's there for. Neither one of them knows, wouldn't have the words to explain it if they tried--Hope is afraid of waking up and Dean is afraid of sleeping.
It's in the moment between waking and sleeping that Hope feels most loosely connected to the world, as if the life she's built is less substantial than her dreams. And she can't even remember her dreams, every time she wakes she knows she dreamed something, thinks it might have been important. But it's gone, like the aftermath of rain and she can never figure out just what it was and why she cares.
She puts coffee on and leaves a steaming mug on the nightstand for Dean while she showers and dresses. Hope wears narrow skirts that skim her knees, silk tops in pastel colors with a single strand of pearls and tiny mother-of-pearl earrings. She owns one pair of jeans, which she rarely wears--she's all shorts and khakis and denim skirts on weekends. Hope is cool and tailored, never casual or sloppy.
Dean comes out of the bathroom as she's slipping on her shoes--low-heeled pumps that match her outfit. He tastes like strong coffee when he kisses her and that more than anything--more than waking or running or getting dressed for work snaps her back into the world--solid, cool, and clean.
"Busy day?" she asks him as he dresses in freshly-pressed khakis and a dark green polo shirt.
Before Dean can reply the phone rings. He picks it up and has a one-sided conversation, his replies clipped off and sharp, "Yes?" "OK." "I can be there in twenty minutes."
When he hangs up there is a darkness in his eyes that startles Hope. She almost reaches out to him, then hesitates; she can't, for a moment, remember whether that is something she normally does or not. Then, he is touching her shoulder, turning with her to the door, walking downstairs, saying, "That was Mark. His wife--Jen--Jen didn't come home last night. He's called the police, but..."
"What can you do?" Hope asks.
The muscles underneath Dean's right cheekbone twitch, like a flinch, and Hope doesn't think he's even aware that it's happened. "I--" he begins to say.
And there it is again, only this time Hope thinks she can see the pain flash through him, like it's a physical thing, a long thin spear right down through his cheekbone, through his jaw. Flash, stab, out, gone--quick like distant lightning. It hurts her more to see/not-see it than it does for it to stab through him--at least that's how it seems to her.
"Dean--" she puts her hand out.
"I can be there," Dean says. A simple answer but the way he says it like it's dragged out of him, like it's not the thing he wants to say at all. He stands there for a moment, his mouth half-open as if there's more to say but he can't quite remember what.
Hope holds her breath and has no idea why. There's a shadow across his face even though he's standing in a pool of sunlight from the wide front windows. The sky outside is clear.
"I have to go," Dean finally says.
He leans over and kisses her, then leaves. For a startling moment, Hope can see two doors, one leading into darkness and one to light, the dark one painful to look at, frightening. She blinks. The world slides back into place. There's just one door, just one Dean walking through it into sunshine. Just another day.
Shit.
Hope doesn't say it out loud. She can't remember the last time she swore.
She sits down on the couch. On the coffee table is a small collection of rocks, a collection Hope has had since childhood--'Hope's childhood,' in fact, is what she and Dean call it, as if the rocks contain it all, every event and every memory; 'Dean's childhood' is two RC cars and a plastic gun sitting on the mantel in the family room.
Hope picks up a river rock she plucked from a creek in Alabama a long summer vacation ago. She closes her eyes and runs her thumb along the edge. This rock is real, she thinks. She can feel the rock in her hand, her hand resting on her thigh, the back of her thigh against the microsuede upholstery on the couch.
She is real. She is here.
She...it is so tiring...she is so tired...and she thinks that can't be right, she can't be tired. Because what does she do all day except sit and stare at computer screens and type empty words that... Her eye twitches, like a bright electric shock. She opens her eyes and for a fraction of a second she can see that door again, the black dark hole of a door, the door that leads to hell. She blinks again, it's gone. She stares at sunshine and brand new Berber carpet and the gleaming glass top of the coffee table.
Shit.
Her head hurts like a thousand electric needles and her nose is bleeding.
"Where have you been, Dean? And why do you smell like--what do you smell like?"
"There was a fire."
"So?"
"I thought it might be a supernatural fire."
"Was it?"
"Well, no...it was actually a pig barn."
"That would explain the smell."
"I saved those pigs' lives, Sammy."
"Maybe someday they'll repay you."
"Yeah, well. I think I'll take a shower."
"And maybe burn those clothes."
"Okay, Sammy. I get it."
"Oh, and Dean? When you get out of the shower--"
"Yeah?"
"I think I found something."
"Yeah!"
Sam checks himself out of the hospital in spite of the doctor's disapproval. She looks at him with one eyebrow raised. She probably means to tell him to keep his fluids up, to get some rest, but there's a sudden flurry of activity--a bad car/motorcycle accident up on the freeway and she flings the papers at him and leaves him alone to make his slow way to the desk and finish signing himself out.
He checks for Dean in the waiting room, but doesn't expect to find him there. There's a slow anxious burning feeling growing in his gut--something is really wrong. The world looks just the same, same people, same weather, same everything--except it's wrong, he knows it's wrong. And it isn't Psychic Boy kicking in. It's something bad and twisted and marked by the continuing absence of Dean who ought to be here.
Except he isn't.
The world is no longer spinning and his head has settled down to a dull throbbing. At the front desk when he left, they gave him the card of an Officer Clemens and said that he needed to call and go down to the station and make a report. He stands on the sidewalk out in front of the hospital and thinks about what to do next. It's a sign of how bad he's still feeling that he has to think about this.
Find Dean.
That's the priority, but first he has to remember where they were staying and why they were here.
"Need a ride?"
Sam looks over and sees a black and white police car, a uniformed officer behind the wheel. Officer Clemens, he assumes.
"No," he says, "You know, I think I'll walk. Clear my head."
Officer Clemens frowns but he can't make Sam get in the car. At least, Sam doesn't think he can.
"You staying at the Montrose?" he asks.
Okay, Sam thinks. Maybe. Out loud, he says, "Yeah." Half a question, but saying the word actually triggers his brain. "Yes," he says, "I'm staying at the Montrose." He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an old-fashioned key. "The Montrose," he says. As if repeating it enough times will unlock the rest of his brain.
Officer Clemens' frown deepens. "Come down to the station in the morning," he finally says. "I need a statement." He doesn't wait for Sam to answer, just puts the car in gear and pulls away.
"Okay," Sam says to the back of the police car. "Sure."
The hospital is on the edge of town so he starts walking in the only direction that makes sense. As he walks his head starts to clear and he remembers the Montrose Motor Inn. He remembers how to get there. He remembers where he is and what he and Dean were doing here.
Shit.
"Okay, run this by me one more time, Sammy."
"There've been three reports in the last fifteen years of people disappearing in the Green Mountain National Forest."
"People who don't exist."
"Well, right. I mean, someone reports them missing, obviously."
"Huh. Obviously."
"But the police can't find any trace of them--no birth records, no bank accounts, nothing. Except the people who were with them when they disappeared insist that they were real."
"What happened to those people?"
"The people who were with them? Most of them are dead."
"Shit."