Of Earth and Above
Chapter 2

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

- T. S. Eliot

Sam was smart and the teachers liked him well enough, but seeing as how he had Dean as his brother, they were very cautious around him, like they were expecting him to show the same behavior at any time. Behavior like Dean's; Dean who was always late with homework, or never really bothered. Dean who would cut classes and start making out with girls in broom closets or behind buildings. Dean Winchester who, ever since he had arrived, had been at the top of every teacher's 'naughty' list.

And ever since Dean had nearly broken Mickey Jenkin's nose after he had dumped a tray of food onto Sam, Sam had found it very hard to make friends. He wasn't shy by any means, and he would have loved to play with the other kids, football, rugby, whatever it was that they were doing with that ball they were kicking around on the field. As it turned out, Sam had no friends thanks to Dean, and spent every lunch break sitting beside his brother, chewing mutely at the half-stale bread that had been packed into a paper sack.

The same was true of the second Thursday that they spent in the school. Dean was sitting on one of the tabletops outside, his legs dangling off the edge as he bit into his sandwich. Truth be told, the meat was cheap and rubbery, and the cheese tasted sort of odd, but for them, that was the norm. Sam was sitting so that his feet touched the seat of the bench, his side turned to Dean's back, "Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy?" Dean mumbled around the half-chewed mass in his mouth.

Sam picked at the plastic wrapping of his sandwich, "I kind of want to make a friend. How do I do that when no one here likes me?"

He heard Dean snort, and then cough a little, before Dean turned around completely so that his shoes clunked onto the wood beside Sam's, "You don't need to, Sam," he said with a grin, "Dad's gonna be finished with those monsters any day now, and then we'll leave. No use makin' friends when we're gonna leave 'em behind."

Sam didn't say anything, just unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite, chewing dully as Dean spoke again, "You get it, don't you, Sammy?"

He swallowed, the food compiling together and making the sad lump in his throat even thicker. Once it had gone down, he nodded, "Yeah, I get it."

Dean drove them home again that afternoon and their 'borrowed' car- Dad never let them use the Impala by themselves, a fact which Dean hated- rolled to a smooth stop just in front of the shack-house. Sam swung his legs out of the car, wincing as his backpack hit the side of the door and knowing that Dean had heard it. Luckily, his brother was not in a mood to argue about it, and so Sam sat down on the porch and pulled out his book. Funny, how he was thinking of it as his own, that silly little book of birds.

He continued sitting there until Dean had unlocked the door and stepped inside. It took his brother a full eight minutes to realize that Sam was still on the porch, and when he did, Dean poked his head around the wood and looked down at where Sam was sitting, "What'cha doin', Sammy?" he asked, "Ain't coming inside?"

Sam shook his head with a small smile, "No, I'm just going to read out here for awhile 'cause there aren't any good chairs in there. 'Sides, I already finished my homework."

He turned back to his book and heard Dean snicker behind him as he walked back into the shack-house, "Nerd."

He smiled to himself, but it fell away soon after. There were times when he hated this life, the Hunter's life that their dad loved so much. Sometimes, Sam thought to himself, he felt as if he hated Dad. Those moments were short-lived, of course, but still, they lingered.

So Sam sat on the porch, the concrete blocks that comprised it, and read. He read until around five o'clock and he heard Dean grumbling loudly from inside, slamming the cabinets in the kitchen shut. The motions made the shack-house shake, and Sam would have gone inside then, if not for the familiar shape of the Impala roaring closer, dust spewing out behind it frantically. Sam stood up quickly, shoving the book inside one of the concrete blocks and running over to the car.

Deep gashes marred the usually pristine top, thick marks like claws by the driver's side door. Dad stepped out soon after the engine had ceased its murmurs, one hand pressed tight to his left side. Blood dripped steadily through his fingers as he looked down over at Sam, leaning his weight on the open door of the car, "Get Dean."

And Sam did.

"It wasn't just werewolves," their dad hissed through his teeth, "More whiskey, Sam- vampires too. A whole damned den of them. The things've been fighting over territory here for months. Can't believe I didn't notice."

Sam held the whiskey bottle as Dean stitched up Dad, the thread slipping past flesh with ease, guided by the needle. Dad's teeth were gritted tightly, and his body shivered with the nerves beneath his skin. As Dean snapped the thread, tying it first so that it wouldn't unravel, their dad leaned over and spoke to Sam, "D'you mind looking in the shed out back for some rags? Need to get my blood off the floor."

Sam nodded and placed the bottle on the table, running outside towards the creepy shed.

It was late in the evening, but there was still some daylight, so Sam knew that the monsters wouldn't be out and about yet. He wondered why they wouldn't have some rags in the house somewhere, but the only ones he could remember seeing were the soft cloth ones that Dad used to clean the guns with.

He treaded through the grass, pushing the taller blades out of his way and trampling the shorter ones. When he had reached the shed and pulled the wood plank-door away and peered inside, he could hardly see anything. Thankfully, he had grabbed a flashlight before leaving the little house. His hands gripped the sides of the opening and he flicked on the flashlight. The building wobbled a bit and Sam stepped cautiously inside.

There were old dressers and cabinets that had surely seen better days, a table and a pair of chairs were shoved towards the far back corner. There was a thick tablecloth on top and a solitary plate nestled amongst that. Sam went forward, all intents on grabbing the cloth, when he saw what had been on the plate. Remnants of now rotted meat and cheap, waxy cheese were separated into specific chunks on either side of the plate. Lettuce had been shredded across the table itself and the dried up tomato seeds stuck to the edges of the plate and to the cloth. A few crumbs here and there were all that remained of the bread, the buns from the burgers that Dad had brought home…

Sam swallowed and carefully looked around the room, a shiver racing up and down his spine. He saw nothing, no monsters, or demons, or boogeymen, and deemed the room safe for now. With wary hands, he gathered up the cloth, careful not to break the dish and set it aside, tucking the cloth up under his right arm.

It was thick and heavy and moth-eaten, but it would work, he thought. He turned around and the floor beneath him creaked oddly. He looked down and saw a beat up old rug covering a patch of floor. He knelt down curiously and pulled it aside, his eyes widening when it had been moved enough. A small knob was centered in the revealed space, cleaner than the rest of the floor due to be covered for what must have been a long time. The wood there was thinner than the rest of the floor, the boards lighter and farther apart.

Sam bit his lower lip. He should have left right then, taken the table rag-thing that he had found and ran inside with it. But he didn't. Instead, he pulled up on the knob until it lifted, the other pieces of wood clinging to the edges of it tightly. When he had propped it back against the table and look down, he could see the beginnings of a ladder.

Sam took the cloth with him and gripped the flashlight in his teeth, walking around and stepping down the ladder, rung by rung. Children are the most curious things, aren't they?

When his feet hit the floor, he turned around, looking this way and that. There were old posters on the walls from classic movies and plays. Men with guns and women dressed up like southern belles, advertisements from musicals in old yellow paper hung loosely by tacks. Aside from that, there was nothing of interest down there. And then Sam looked into the back of the room…

There was a man down there. He was curled up against the corner of the far wall, his knees pulled up tight against his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around them. His nose was tucked into the crook of his elbow. Sam breathed out slowly and waved the flashlight more over the slumped figure. He didn't stir and Sam continued looking, fear curling in his stomach at the fact that there was something down there with him.

His skin was grey and sallow, looking overly thin like rice paper, and his body was lanky, but thin- skin pressed over bone, no muscle in between. From what Sam could see of his face, his eyes were closed gently, but there was a crease to his brow that Sam knew was from some sort of pain. Dad had come back often enough with that same near-frown- much like today- calling for Dean to fetch some bandages, a needle, and the can of dental floss.

Matted strands of hair fell this way and that over the man's face, long and short and everywhere, like he had tried to cut it himself in the dark with a pair of old scissors. Looking closer, as close as he dared to creep with the groaning floorboards, he saw the the man's knuckles were swollen badly and that some of his fingers didn't bend like the others did, one of his ring fingers bent inwards while the others jutted out straight. The clothing he was wearing was all covered in dust. For all intents and purposes, the man looked like he had been there for a very long time…

Sam thought he was dead.

But then, where was the decay?

"SAMMY!"

He dropped the flashlight when he heard Dean shouting for him, the glass shattered on the floor and the light went out, "C- coming, Dean!" he shouted up, grabbing tighter to the cloth under his arm as he ascended the stairs, "I'm coming!"

He looked back once at the figure, and decided that he didn't want to go back for the flashlight. It was probably broken anyways. He closed the trapdoor and roughly threw the rug over it and rushed out of the shed. He stumbled through the black towards where some light was shining in, knocking his shins several times on something or other. He scrambled out and bumped his face into Dean's chest in his hurry.

He pulled back just enough to remove the tablecloth out from under his arm, "I- I found this. Will it work?"

Dean gave him a funny look- a what-took-you-so-long? look- and shrugged, "It's fine, Sam." He took it from his hands and gestured to the shack-house, "Let's get inside, it's gettin' dark."

Sam nodded and followed after his already walking brother. He stopped a few feet forward and turned around, looking at the shed door which was shoved off to the side. He ran back and slid it over the opening just in time for Dean to shout back at him, "Sammy! Let's go!"

"Alright, I'm going!" Sam shouted in response, leaving the shed behind him and endeavoring to forget the corpse-like man he had seen. It had only been his imagination...

Sam woke up the next morning to a heavily beating heart and the scent of bacon. He was still in the same clothes that he had worn yesterday, but he was still too drowsy to care. He ambled into their little makeshift kitchen to a very rare sight; Dad and Dean were arguing over breakfast.

"You can't take it out yet!" Dean was protesting, but it was with a smile, "It has to be really crisp!"

"I'm making bacon, not grits," he heard Dad grumble back, "It ain't supposed to be burnt. And look at those pancakes, they're still soggy!"

Sam tried to keep the smile from his face, but it was pretty much impossible. He laughed loudly before he could help it and the two men turned around towards him, "Mornin', kiddo."

"Hey, Sammy, how'd you want your bacon?" Dean asked with a grin, only to get a small hair-full of flour from Dad, "Hey!"

Sam walked into the kitchen, his bare feet padding over the wood, "Why don't you two just switch? Dad can make the pancakes and Dean can make the bacon?"

Dad shared a look with Dean, who turned back to Sam, "Sure thing, genius. Gimme that fork."

The two shuffled and changed positions, Dean clapping a metal lid over the bacon and Dad crossing his arms and watching the sizzling batter carefully. Sam stood between them, watching. It felt so nice, so normal, that he completely forgot to tell their dad about the dead guy in the hidden floor of the shed…

Breakfast was quite the affair that morning. Sam pulled a carton of orange juice out of the little fridge which Dean tried to drink straight. Dad groaned and grabbed the carton from him and poured the contents into plastic cups, setting those on the table.

The plates were napkins, folded across their laps. The bacon was burned at the edges as Dad had finally gotten sick of Dean burning it all up into shrivels and stolen back the plastic fork that they had been using to flip the pieces.

The pancakes were still a little wet in the middle, but they were wrapped up like tortillas and eaten quickly. Dad was still at home, intending to call other Hunters because a nest full of vampires and a pack of werewolves was not something that just one man could handle. Dean's eyes had lit up and he had asked to use the Impala. Dad had agreed, as long as Dean could run her by a body shop after school and get her fixed. Sam never understood why the car was always referred to as 'she', but if he brought it up, Dean would sigh and shake his head and give the Impala a sympathetic look.

Dad was on the phone by the time they left, Dean shoving a tape into the deck and singing along obnoxiously to something loud. Sam smiled anyway and curled up in the passenger seat, staring out the window as they drove on.

When they arrived at the school, it was wrapped in police tape and officers were hustling people backwards. A pair of adults were aside from the rest, the woman sobbing hysterically into the man's shoulder. The tape blocking off the school was so yellow that it was garrish, like someone had doused it in neon paint. Sam took one look at Dean and saw how his brother was staring at the scene.

A group of men were lifting a gurney into the back of an ambulance, the blue and red lights of it still spinning wildly even though it was parked. One of the men hopped inside and peeled off the curb with a screech, tearing down the street and weaving between cars that didn't move to the side of the road fast enough.

Dean stilled the car, and they could both here one of the police officers talking to the couple, words filtering in over the scream of sirens, "… wild animal… not certain… can't disclose…" and so forth.

They were both quiet as Dean drove to the body shop on the other end of town. Sam spoke with the burly, bald mechanic as to what they wanted while Dean called Dad. The werewolves must be getting careless, Sam thought as he gave one of Dad's many business cards to the man, the one that was labled John Carlise, lawyer.

The man took it without a second thought…

By the time Sam had gotten home, Dad was already gone. And that, he thought to himself, was a good thing. He didn't want to see Dad dressed in that black suit again, knowing that there was Kevlar underneath it and a shotgun underneath the seat of the spare car because "The Impala's still in the shop, dammit."

Every tiny piece of normalcy from the morning was gone, and replaced with monsters. Again.

Sam was bored, and Dean was with Dad, and the only company he had was the book that he had shoved underneath the concrete. The book that wasn't there anymore. Sam felt around the underside of the block, shoving his hand deep inside of it and feeling around, drawing his hand back with a soft "Ouch."

Something had stung him and he pinched the skin together, pushing out whatever was in there. And then the little brown scorpion had crawled out of the block and Sam decided not to stick his hands in there again. But now his book, the library book, was gone. He kicked at the dirt, scuffing his shoes, and noticed how that there was another scuff mark beside the porch where his book had been.

It trailed back into the overgrown weeds, from the porch to the shed. It was hard to see unless you were looking straight at it, like someone had tried to hide it or blown dirt over it. Dad must have been in a hurry, or, Sam knew, he would have seen it.

By the time Sam had found another flashlight, it was already dark, much darker than the night before. He had a small pocket knife in his other hand, the one that Dad had made sure had a silver blade and had let sit in holy water for a week before giving it to Sam on his eleventh birthday. Sam had never used it, but he supposed paranoia ran in the family.

His shoes crunched over pebbles and dry grass as he stepped closer to the shed. He wished he was quieter, and when he touched the side of the shed it clanged lightly, and he could hear a loud rustle from within. He hadn't turned on the flashlight yet, but he could hear it through the walls; the steady, heavy drag of something on the dirty wooden floor.

He heard the clunk of the trapdoor shutting, and his heart felt like it had jammed itself into his throat. Sam wondered if Dad or Dean ever felt like this, like they were scared to death but kept going anyway. He side-stepped around the small building, his feet sinking slightly into the mud twice, until he reached the door.

It had already been moved, so that the long end blocked the entrance snugly, and Sam moved it more until he could squeeze through. He saw more of the dust on the floor had been moved when he finally turned on the light, there wasn't any blood down there with it though, and it puzzled him. He would have thought that whoever, or whatever, would have been really hurt to be dragging itself along on the ground.

He walked forward, to where the table was, and there was his book. It was splayed open widely, the spine bent open so that it propped itself up. It had been opened to the page that Sam had stopped on, the one where the bones were detailed, how hollow they were and how airy. Lines of dirt followed the scapula and the humerus in particular, a tear in the page of the picture where they connected to the body.

Sam frowned and looked down at where the rug had been moved aside, just barely covering the knob. He stopped then. This wasn't normal, normal people didn't follow monsters around in the dark, no, normal people took one look at a monster and ran away screaming. Unless of course they were stupid. Dad had often griped about having met his fair share of those.

But his life wasn't normal, and so Sam pulled the door up, rested it against one of the chairs, and descended into the dark…

The last step clattered under his shoes and Sam gripped the edge tightly as he turned around and lit up the center of the room with the flashlight. His stomach felt light and his throat felt sticky. He swallowed and stepped into the room, looking at the pictures on the walls again. He heard a noise to his right, and the light followed it immediately, Sam flicking the blade of the knife out with practiced ease. It should have alarmed whatever normal parts of his brain that normal kids didn't have a skinner's precision with a blade…

It didn't though, as all of his thoughts rushed to one question; how had the body moved? He sucked in a breath, because a moving corpse meant a zombie, and a zombie meant get Dad now, call him call him call him!

But it wasn't moving, it was just lying there with its face in the dirt. It was almost too still. And then it breathed.

Sam jumped backwards with wide eyes at the minor twitch of its chest. The knife was up in front of him and he couldn't remember what to do with zombies. Was it salt-and-burn? Or did you shoot it? He hoped it wasn't salt-and-burn because he had no salt. And he didn't have a lighter…

He thought of running up the stairs, but everything screeched to a halt when it turned its head and looked up at him with one narrowly open eye, its mouth set in a frown, "Don't gawk at me," it said in voice that sounded like it was choking on its own throat.

"Huh?" was the intelligent response that came out of Sam's mouth. He hadn't lowered the knife just yet, but he didn't think that zombies talked.

It huffed from across the room, and Sam could see the dust that skittered away from its exhale, "Don't. Gawk. At. Me."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" and Sam realized that he was apologizing to a dead thing, or what looked like a dead thing except for the whole alive-and-talking thing, "Are you dead?" he asked instead, taking a step backwards and making sure that he could get to the ladder.

The man-thing's head rolled up with the movement and rested its chin on the hard-packed dirt of the floor, saying in its choking voice, "Do I look dead to you?"

"Kind of."

It still only had its left eye open, and that one eye was too bright. It was almost like someone had torn the sky open and dropped the colour right inside. The other remained closed, and from what Sam could see of its mouth, it was frowning, "What are you?"

"Tired."

Sam shook his head, "No, I meant, uh… who are you?"

"I'm nobody, who're you?" it croaked, raising the pitch of its voice and almost singing the words. It was still frowning, but it didn't look angry. It just looked bored.

"I'm Sam," he replied, wondering if he should leave, if he should tell Dad or Dean about… whatever this was. And then he wondered when they would be home…

The thing muttered something lowly under its breath and began pulling its arms out from underneath its body. Sam froze, gripping the knife tighter as it began to drag itself back into the same corner that he had seen it in before. He watched numbly as it scraped and clawed its way across the room, flopping over onto its back and shoving itself up onto the wall with its hands. The fingers were stiff, that one ring finger crooked inwards, but just as motionless as the rest.

It pulled its legs up against its chest, and Sam supposed that the man-thing was paralyzed as the legs fell over, like it had no control over them when they moved, that gravity did all the work.

Finished with its motions, it looked up and stared at Sam with its one eye, "Are you staying?"

Sam looked at the ground and shook his head.

"Then go."

He looked up, but the creature, man, thing was already tucked into itself, just like it had been before. Sam backed up, eyes focused on the whatever, until his back touched the ladder. He turned and grabbed it, pulling himself up, quickly and quietly.

Once he was at the top, he climbed out and grabbed the door, dropping it down over the space where it belonged and stomped on the crease with his foot, making sure that the trapdoor stuck. He threw the rug back over it and ran for the door, the flashlight guiding his way, until the rough voice gargled up from below, "Book."

Sam stopped about a foot from the door and turned around. He had left his book on the table in the back of the room. The tunnel-light made the distance seem much too far, and the longer he looked, the less Sam cared about getting that book back. Like Dean said, they'd be gone soon, "Keep it." he whispered down through the floorboards as he turned back towards the opening and left the shed.

He wasn't sure if he should tell Dad about this one…

A/N: So. Many. Words.
And hurray for weird things that live in decrepit sheds!

... I wonder if Sam tells John...?