The very stains and fractures on the wall,
Assuming features solemn and terrific,
Hinted some tragedy of that old hall,
Locked up in hieroglyphic.
O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted;
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.
-Thomas Hood, "The Haunted House" (1844)
"Okay, let's move," Dean said, moving back down the stairs, flashlight at the ready. It was unnerving how dark it was in the stairwell: he'd really taken for granted how much those creepy red lights in the basement had helped.
Sam followed behind after making sure Bethany was between them. "We get up there, we find what we need, we get out. Easy plan, right?"
Dean gave him a look. "Now who's saying shit that's gonna get us in trouble?"
Surprisingly, Sam grinned. "It's all gonna go to hell anyways, remember?"
With a snort Dean smirked back. "Bitch."
"Jerk," Sam replied after a long pause. When Dean glanced back at him, Sam looked a little in awe. After a moment, Dean realized why. When the hell had they last actually said that? It'd been their standard since they were kids. A way of saying the three most important words you could say to anyone. Didn't matter whether it was I love you or watch your back or I've got you. The Winchester had always been good at packing a lot of things into one small place, and words weren't an exception.
So it kind of really sucked that Sam actually looked surprised, honored, relieved to hear what had once been commonplace.
"What happens when we know the truth?" Bethany asked, breaking into his thoughts. "How does that help?"
Dean touched the handle, once again testing the temperature. Regular cool, not frozen. "Spirits are generally here for a reason," he said. "They stay behind because they're stuck or because they've got unfinished business."
"They want to tell someone they love them, they want someone to know who their killer was," Sam said, picking up the explanation. Sam had always been better at talking with people than Dean had. "Things like that. There's a reason all of these spirits are still here."
"Including the guy with the axe?" Bethany asked, and Dean had to grin at her succinct way of cramming their situation into six words.
"Including the nut, yeah," Dean said. He took hold of the handle and wrenched the door open, gun at the ready. The hallway was empty and dark, extending out ahead of him before branching out to the left. Right back to where they'd started. "We just have to find what it is that's tying him here. Once we do that, we can make him move on to a place where people know how to wield blades a lot better than he does. Trust me."
Even as the last words had dropped from his lips, he could feel Sam right beside him. Just brushing, barely really felt. Nothing in Dean's tone had given anything away. Except Dean knew why he was there.
God he was glad Sam was back.
"So that's why we have to know," Bethany said, as if still piecing it together. "The truth."
"That, and I just really want to know what the fuck went down here," Dean admitted. "Curiosity killed the cat and all that."
"Yeah, I'd rather not put 'curiosity' and 'kill' in the same sentence when we're talking about this case, if we could," Sam muttered.
"Go ahead Tinkerbell, think happy thoughts," Dean muttered back. "See if you can float up to the fifth floor."
The floor ahead of them creaked. All three froze, Dean and Sam both swinging their guns forward. When nothing else happened, they slowly began to breathe again. "Did we...close the door behind us?" Sam asked after a moment. Dean met his gaze for a split second, then quickly turned around. Only Bethany stood in the hallway, and the door was shut tight.
"Yeah, we did," Dean said. "We must've left the iron on, honey."
"You two are really strange," Bethany finally said.
"Stranger than a guy with an axe chasing after you in a haunted hotel?" Dean asked sarcastically.
Bethany pursed her lips. "I didn't say it was a bad strange. It's actually sort of...nice. In a strange way."
"Clear," Sam called softly from ahead. "I don't see the stairwell."
"It's down at the end," Dean replied, moving to catch up with him. "You should see a light-"
He stopped. The hall was empty, as Sam had said. From ahead, Dean could just make out the gold railing of the staircase from the lobby. Without the flashlight, he couldn't see anything.
The end of the hallway was swallowed up in black, no light to be seen. Dean stared.
"Think they'd have anything behind the counter?" Sam was asking. "Like a check-in book or something? Anything with a name?"
"There wasn't anything back there from when I looked," Bethany said. "Just empty space." She turned the corner and frowned, staring at the opposite end of the hall. "Where's the light?" she asked.
"What light?" Sam asked, frowning.
"Move," was all Dean said. "And move silently. You hear anything weird coming from the lobby, tell me."
He had a feeling they were on their own, as far as the guy with the axe was concerned. Against all of Dean's usual feelings regarding spirits, he had to admit that the woman hadn't been a danger. In fact, he was betting that it'd been her that had kept the psycho poltergeist away for so long. It was almost like she'd been...protecting them. And he had a feeling that her screams were a result of that.
Which meant if the poltergeist could do that to a spirit...
They were halfway down the hall, just far enough in that the lobby was opening up on their right, when they heard the sounds.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"Oh god, not again," Bethany murmured. "What does he want?"
Them dead? The hotel to himself? A puppy for Christmas? Because if that was the way he was going about it, Santa wasn't giving him anything except coal for his stocking.
Out of instinct Dean shone his light down on the lobby. Nothing came to mind, but the tap, tap, tap, still continued.
He was there. And any minute now, he was going to come up the stairs.
"Move," Dean repeated, and this time the three of them moved fast. Past the main staircase and down the other hall, and finally to the stairwell door. Sam grabbed the handle and swung it open.
Or tried to. The door stuck fast, refusing to budge. "You're kidding me," Sam said incredulously, glancing over his shoulder as if to gage where the spirit was. Dean spun around, flashlight aimed back down the hall. Nothing.
But in the silence, there was no mistaking the creak.
Creak.
Creak.
"That's him on the stairs," Dean stage-whispered. "Sam, the door-"
"It's locked," Sam said helplessly. He rammed his shoulder into it, but it wouldn't budge. "The handle gives and the latch falls back in, but the door won't open. He's got it locked down."
There were only two doors between them and the main staircase, and one of them was only a few feet away. Without waiting Dean kicked the door in, finding nothing satisfying about the way it flew inward. "Sammy, c'mon!" he yelled, darting inside. Bethany hurried after Dean, and two seconds later Sam was inside. The door was slammed shut, and Dean frantically looked around the room. An average hotel room, bed still completely made up and everything. Again, it was only a level of dust that separated it from being something clean and new.
They were going to Bobby's after this. If Dean so much as saw a sign for a hotel after this, it'd be too soon.
"The bed," Sam said, reaching to pull the mattress off. The frame looked old and made of metal, and the chance of it being iron was slim to none.
But it was heavy and it'd keep the door from getting opened. For awhile, at any rate. And then they were going to find out if iron worked at all. Though if it did work, then how the hell had the guy gotten through the iron bars in the basement?
...Or had he just back-tracked to the main lobby?
Between the two of them they managed to get the frame up and propped against the door. There were windows on the opposite side of the room that viewed out onto the town, and if Dean pressed himself against them hard enough, he could just make out the hood of his car below him. Now if they could just get to her.
"What do we do?" Bethany asked, eyes locked on the barricaded door. "He's going to get through!"
Sam was already grabbing one of the guns from the bag without iron rounds and aiming it at the window. One, two, three shots later, and the windows didn't even give. Sam stared in shock, checking to see if the chambers were loaded. "Three bullets missing?" Dean asked a moment later.
Sam nodded. "They fired. Just...didn't do any good."
Great. Sitting ducks, in other words. Frankly, Bethany's 'what do we do' was starting to become the most important question of the day, because Dean was all out of ideas.
There was a sharp thud at the door. All three of them backed away, and Dean could only watch as the bed frame jerked as the door was pushed. No, not pushed.
Chopped. The door was being chopped.
The blade of the axe cut through, and though it was only a small tip, Dean could see that it was stained with dark blood and still dripping. The axe chopped and chopped away, and soon there was a hole enough for a hand to stick through. Blood from the axe stained the edge of the hole, with more blood sliding down the wood.
Slowly Dean raised his gun, setting the bag down beside him. Time to see if it worked. He could hear Sam pulling the safety off of his gun from beside him, and Dean hoped to God that if one iron round didn't cut it, then maybe two would.
And if they didn't, then Dean really hoped that he could get in front of Sam before the ghost got to his brother. He'd already let Sam down once: he wasn't doing it again.
The axe stopped chopping, and the silence was almost worse than the rhythmic blade slicing through the wood. The wood around the hole shifted slightly, like something was brushing against it, and the handle of the door began to turn.
Bastard had his hand in: that was good enough. Dean fired at the hole, watching the bullet sail through like it had hit nothing.
But the howl of rage told him that he'd hit his mark.
Then, suddenly, he was falling. Bethany screamed and Sam yelled, and Dean didn't understand where the floor had gone.
Then everything went black.