A/N: Just two or three chapters left to go here. Thanks for sticking with me!
AND FEBRUARY WAS SO LONG
Chapter Seven
"Even after the anger, it all turned silent."
-Dar Williams, "February
The sun's only been up an hour when it starts to set.
Wait … what?
It takes John far too long to understand. First, he thinks his vision's screwed up, or it's something to do with his own scrambled brain, but then Bobby sees it, too – "Now what the hell is this shit?" – and John feels a stab of trepidation.
Followed swiftly by a rush of hope.
"Now we're getting to it, Bobby," he says.
Bobby cuts eyes sideways at him, and their gazes meet. With a slight nod, they pick up the pace.
For hours, through odd twilight, they soldier on, cutting snow drifts higher than their knees in places. It's tough to actually see the sun, for all the trees, but they both can tell the day's getting darker. When the trees finally lean apart long enough for the men to make out what's happening in the sky, it makes sense – the sun hasn't actually set. It's still above them. It's just wrapped in layers of thick, silver fog, so dim you can look right at it without hurting your eyes.
Soon it will be gone completely.
The men don't speak much. A soft curse from John when his head betrays him and he has to sway against a tree for a minute. A tired mutter from Bobby as he commandeers a sapling as a walking stick. They're both listening, straining their ears for anything that's not the quiet rush of falling snow and the soft creak of the wind. For anything that might signal Sam or Dean's presence.
The snow's getting shallow now. Almost totally gone.
About the time night falls completely, Bobby and John step out of the woods into the grassy edge of somebody's back yard. There's just enough light for John to make out a sagging trampoline – something Sammy wanted so bad last year, after he bounced on one at a school friend's house – and a leaning swing set that clearly hasn't seen a child in years.
There are no lights on in the house.
The further the men walk into the yard, the harder it gets to see. John walks by feel, stops Bobby pulling out his flashlight with a slight shake of his head. He doesn't want to give away their position.
Three streets into town, though, it becomes necessary to break out at least the smaller flashlight. There hasn't been a light on in any of the houses. Power must be out to the whole town, but the odd thing is, it's half past ten in the morning. And completely dark. And John has yet to see any signs of life. Nothing is moving. Nobody is out.
He tries to remember that he's a Marine and a hunter and not just a frightened father. But the ground shifts under him every so often and he's not entirely convinced it has anything to do with the concussion. From the look of things so far, they've arrived in town too late.
Nobody's left.
Behind a broken lawnmower in somebody's toolshed, Sam clings to his brother and briefly considers crying again.
He is hungry. He's tired – only slept a couple hours last night – and his head hurts from squinting into the dark. Ever since the thing grabbed him, he hasn't been able to get warm, and his clothes are damp from the heavy air. He's shivering hard, like one of those kittens he found in the junkyard last spring. He hopes he doesn't end up like those kittens, dead of some stray-cat illness before their third morning.
He can still see the fog, but he hasn't told Dean that. It swirls, silver and glittering, just outside their hiding place. He doesn't think it's pretty anymore.
The boys don't talk much. Dean checks on Sam occasionally, nearly quiet as the fog itself. Sam chews on the inside of his cheek to keep from complaining. He has to remind himself: Dean knows he's hungry. Dean knows he's tired and cold and scared. If Dean could fix it, it would already be fixed, so there's no point in annoying his brother by complaining. Still. It's hard not to give voice to the feelings of fear and frustration inside him.
Sitting still for so long, fear is difficult to maintain. The new emotion swelling to take front and center in his brain is boredom.
Before the little light on his watch died completely, it confirmed seven a.m., and that's been hours. Since sometime yesterday evening, the boys have been sitting behind a lawnmower, scarcely moving. Once the panic of their escape died down, they played a whispered game of word association, but all the words seemed to lead back to something dark. They talked about food, but that was ill-advised. Dean produced two miserable MREs from the pack he snagged on the way out of the trailer – like an overnight bag, only for crazy people, Sam can't help but think. Full of military food and salt and holy water and weapons. Sometimes he likes to take a step back and look at his family from an outsider's point of view.
No – not likes. Sometimes he can't help it, and it's frightening to see how different his family is from all the others. And, he often thinks, how different he is from his family.
No wonder the kids at school don't talk to him. He isn't like anybody.
Sam sighs, and blows upward through his hair. He can feel it falling into his eyes even though there's no vision to obstruct, save the swirling colors of fog he can just see through the crack under the door.
"Sammy," Dean says, in that low voice he's got for when they're in danger. But even in that low voice, Sam picks up strains of the same things he's dealing with: hunger, and cold, and tired, and bored.
"Sorry," Sam says. He knows he shouldn't be sighing and making noise and possibly giving away their position. That is, if fog can hear. And why shouldn't it hear? Apparently, it can think, and attack, so hearing's not out of the question.
"No ..." Dean seems confused by Sam's random apology. "Just making sure you're still with me." He shifts uncomfortably, stretching long legs as much as possible in the short space. "You should try to get some more sleep. I'll keep watch."
"Dean, it's like ten in the morning."
"What, is the sunlight in your eyes gonna keep you awake?"
Sam turns the tables. "Did you sleep yet?"
"I don't need to sleep. I'm bionic."
Sam snorts. "Uh huh."
"Anyways, if I sleep, who'll play weatherman and keep an eye on this fog?"
Sam doesn't tell him which one of them is actually able to keep an eye on the fog. He doesn't want to admit to Dean that their odd enemy is still visible to him – that it marked him somehow when it had its hands on him. The thought terrifies him in a familiar way. For a couple of years now – ever since he read the journal – he's worried that he's long been marked by another evil, the one that started everything. And if he's marked by evil, what does that make him?
"You can't keep an eye on anything right now," Sam says. "I'm serious, Dean, go to sleep for a minute, okay? I'll keep watch."
"Like that's gonna happen," Dean snorts.
"You've been awake over twenty-four hours."
"I'm fine."
"Dean. I can keep watch. I'm not a little kid."
"Yeah, I know," Dean says, in a voice that underlines just how little a kid he still considers his brother. But he can't hide the exhaustion in his voice, either, so Sam presses on.
"Listen. This thing is going to attack at some point. I mean, we already know it's out to get us." Sam rubs at his ankles, which have never thawed.
"And that should make me want to go to sleep because …?"
"Because it's not attacking right now, and when it does, you need to be rested!"
"Sam, I'm fine!" Dean growls.
Sam shrugs one shoulder, though his brother can't see him. "Fine. Suit yourself. Fall over unconscious in the middle of battle and let it grab me again because you were too stubborn to sleep when you had the chance."
Dean's arms reposition themselves around Sam. "Nothing's going to grab you again," he says, fiercely. Then there is quiet, while he mulls things over. "Okay. I'll take ten minutes. You wake me in ten minutes. That'll be plenty."
"Better than nothing," Sam agrees, knowing he will wait at least an hour before he wakes Dean. Unless, of course, the colorful fog swirling under the door of the shed decides to actually come inside. So far it hasn't. So far all it's done is wait.
Dean leans back against the wall, keeping his arms around Sam, fingers gripping his brother's sweatshirt. He clearly intends to wake if Sam so much as moves a muscle, which is kind of annoying for the younger brother, but, given the circumstances, not just a little bit comforting. Sam listens for Dean to fall asleep, and for a while his brother is only faking it, but then his breaths get heavy and slow and Sam knows Dean's out for the count.
Almost immediately, Sam starts to get scared.
It's creepy, being the only person awake in this situation. It's so creepy, Sam has to work at not poking his brother awake, even though he's the one who insisted Dean go to sleep. He knows Dean had no intention of actually falling asleep, and the fact that he has points to how much he needs it. And there is something valid in Sam's argument that when the fog does decide to attack again – if something tries to grab Sam by the ankles again – his brother needs to be rested enough to react quickly.
But …
Dean's breathing sounds so relaxed, now that he's asleep. And he's got Sam gripped so tight, even in sleep, that Sam is forced to stay still, leaning back against his brother. And Sam's so cold and his brother is so warm and all of a sudden, Sam feels really comfortable … he's so sleepy … maybe he'll just … only for a minute ...
Outside the shed, Dawn swirls and spins and dances with the fog. She is confident, like the fog itself, in that way that only weather can be, doing what it wants, when it wants, regardless of picnics and parades. She does more than control the fog – she is the fog, can feel it as if it is her own fingertips, seeping into cracks and crevices, gaining entrance to homes all over town. She whispers sleepy words in the ears of the few children who have managed to hide, even as their parents were pulled screaming from their beds, and frozen into silence.
These are the children she wants - the strong ones, who can hide, who can escape her brother Dusk when he comes for them. She has been waiting for these special children to fall asleep.
When children fall asleep, they dream, and when children dream, the fog can get to them, can wrap itself around the pictures in their heads and make the dreams as dark as the sky above. Bad dreams are scary. And when children are scared, they want light.
When the children of Dusk Valley wake from their nightmares, they will come running. They will seek the light that hides within the fog.
They will hand themselves willingly to her.