Author Note: I appreciate those reading and taking the time to review. Thanks!


Maelstrom


Chapter Three

The snow picks up in earnest before they arrive at the old resort, and shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon as it blows in slick, dangerous drifts across the blacktop and piling quickly on the wide windshield. It's starting to make a lot of sense why they were passing so many people leaving town as they were coming in.

Dean hits the wipers to clear the glass, making a mental note to get new tires on his baby before leaving her in his brother's sweaty, grandma-driving hands. Sammy always forgets to turn into the slide, and he's going to need all the help he can get.

Sam takes it upon himself to manipulate the radio dials away from the only station Dean found that he could stomach, filling the car with an ear-splitting burst of static until he finds a local weather report confirming suspicions the storm will be continuing at least through the night, but likely tomorrow, as well. That's more than a bit concerning, and not the kind of detail Bobby Singer overlooks or ignores.

It doesn't matter much. Sam is even more annoyed, if such a thing is possible, but Dean can make do with a little snow. He's got some bigger fish to fry at the moment. Namely, this even more annoyed thing little brother's got going on. The morning's hangover headache has subsided to the much more manageable ever-present twinge, but ever since they split up from Bobby, an odd feeling has clung to Dean like a static-y t-shirt straight out of the dryer. Sam hasn't said much, but hasn't needed to for Dean to tell the perpetually annoyed little jerk is bogged down in near-epic levels of irritation. It's a safe enough assumption most days – hell, most hours – but this doesn't feel like just another something bugging his brother, so much as it feels like somethingaboutDEAN.

And Dean doesn't know how he knows that.

They're close, obviously, and he's gotten used to intuiting any of Sam's various moods, and sure, many of those moods come about because Dean himself said or did something stupid. He doesn't always agree, but he gets it. But the kid's so pissy right now, and has been for a few days, it's almost too easy to know there's something off. Maybe on the drive out here, he hadn't diffused the emotional bomb named Sam Winchester quite as well as he'd thought.

Dean leans over the steering wheel and blinks through the blanket of fat white flakes, peering into the weighty gray clouds covering the skies, stretching as far as he can see in any direction. "Would've thought Bobby might've mentioned the blizzard scheduled to hit town."

"It's hardly a blizzard. Stop being dramatic." Sam's posture is one it doesn't seem he'll never outgrow, the one that screams sulky teenager, elbow propped on the door and face screwed up. Stuck in his head, in yet another bout of serious thought or needless anger.

I don't think I'm the one who's being dramatic here, Sammy Boy. Dean feels a familiar sense of obligation building inside, the need to speak, to comfort or good-naturedly tease. That obligation that comes from being the big brother, the one he doesn't quite know how to squelch. The reason he's staring down the barrel. "You okay over there?"

"Yeah," Sam says quickly, and without a lick of honesty to it.

Dean's not sure how he knows that, either, but he does. He frowns. "You lyin'?"

Sam shakes his head. It's not denial so much as it is shut the hell up already. "Dean…" Like he's disappointed. Maybe a little angry. But Sam always seems a bit disappointed and angry, and always withDean. Sam in a completely good mood would be as strange as if it were raining upside-down.

The heater rattles, and outside the warm confines of the Impala the snow picks up in speed and volume. Dean adjusts the windshield wipers, taps the brake as the lights flare red on the ass-end of Bobby's rusty ride, and glances again at his perpetually petulant passenger. "What's with that tone, Sam? You sound like one of my high school teachers."

Sam snorts. "Yeah, Dean, I don't think you spent enough time in class to actually know what any of your teachers sounded like."

Touché, dickbag. Dean cocks his head and silently concedes that point to his brother. "Still, I mean, I feel like I'm in the doghouse or something here, man. I should at least know what I did, don't you think?"

Sam scoffs, and snow blows off of the drifts steadily building on either side of the two-lane, gusting across the asphalt in swirls that tug at the worn treads of the Impala's tires. The rear-end of Bobby's ride wiggles all over, and Dean keeps both hands firmly on the wheel, thinking again about those bald-ass tires and letting things go unattended too long. In a moment of stability atop the road, he lets his eyes stray once more to his brother.

"Let's just work, okay?" Sam's words are too purposefully hollow, and he's likewise working too hard to put on a blank expression. All of his tells give him away. The flaring nostrils, the twitching lip, the muscle jumping in his jaw. Sam doesn't know how not to be mad at Dean. "That's what you want to do, right? Just hunt?"

Frustration mounting, Dean pulls an expression that sends his headache ratcheting back up a few points. "Do we have some kinda problem here, Sam?"

Sam sighs. THE sigh. "Just drive, okay? This snow picks up any more we're gonna lose sight of Bobby."

Dean can't argue the validity of Sam's concerns, but doesn't fight the smirk that crosses his face, either. "Thought I was just being dramatic?"


Sam's pensive to a possible fault, and he's used to being stuck with the constant barrage of thoughts inside his own busy mind, the hamster wheel relentlessly spinning and his obsessive need to deconstruct every word or phrase spoken to him, any situation he finds himself in. He likes to have a handle on and understand every moment of every day, so sue him. But he knows it drives his brother crazy.

Sam's just not quite sure how he knows right now exactly how much it's driving his brother crazy.

Dean likes to throw accusations and punches, and he's not typically the strong, silent type but he'd given into Sam's own thirst for silence a few miles back. The snowfall has grown in intensity to a dangerous degree, and this last leg of the drive has taken a bit more focus and concentration on his part. Maybe Sam shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss his brother's take on this storm as a veritable blizzard, because it very may well be just that.

"Finally," Dean exhales, perhaps a little moody, himself, as Bobby's car jerks to stop in front of them, the glaring red brake lights barely cutting through the dense blanket of snow falling. He throws the Impala into 'park' and throws open his door immediately, like he just can't escape this captivity with Sam quickly enough, allowing a swirl of fat, wet snow to blow into the car and all the way onto Sam's lap.

Dean turns up the collar of his jacket and rushes through the pelting snowfall to meet Bobby just as the other man is climbing from his car. Sam follows suit, and a gust of wind whips his hair across his forehead as he glances up at the façade of a crumbling brick building he hadn't even seen approaching as their final destination. Needless to say, the initial view leaves much to be desired. What he can actually see of the structure through the snow, that is.

The windows are large and many, but boarded over or missing pieces. Sam can only assume there is plentiful shattered glass to be found littering the ground beneath nearly a foot of accumulated snow, and drifts of the same that have blown into rooms through the broken windows. Bright graffiti decorates the boards and the impressive double front door. The resort appears bleak, desolate, and this first impression is not helped by the stringy, skeletal trees lining what presumably must be sidewalks and parking lot or the blanket of snow quickly accumulating on every available surface, the entire area empty and silent but for the faint pat pat of falling flakes.

"You sure you wanna get started tonight, man?" He's in Bobby's face, but Dean nearly has to shout to be heard over the howling, gusting winds. Snow gathers almost immediately in the creases of his jacket and coats his hair, flattening it to the side of his head. "It's like the end of days out here, Bobby. Shouldn't we find someplace to stay until this storm blows over?"

"Storm ain't blowin' over, kid." Bobby rolls his eyes and jerks open the trunk of his ride. "And we aren't lookin' for someplace else." With a grunt he hefts a pair of worn, ratty duffels and a rolled sleeping bag from inside and raises an eyebrow. "Any more questions?"

Dean's frustration is evident on his fallen face, and his cheeks are ruddy, wind-burned from these few moments spent outside. Sam's own disappointment in these squatting arrangements seems oddly amplified in stereo inside his head. He writes it off as the abusive wind.

He bumps Dean with his elbow and they hurry to grab their own necessary supplies from the trunk of the Impala, prepping for the cold night and a ghost hunt. A fine coating of pristine snow already covers the otherwise dusty black metal, and Sam spots that discarded and discounted quart of motor oil crammed into a far corner, behind loose soiled clothing and a week-old bloodied towel.

"Don't forget the cooler," Dean orders, tucking the double-barrel under his arm and gripping the lid of the trunk to shut it.

Sam shoots his brother a loaded glare that he's sure doesn't need much interpretation, but scoots around to the pull open the back door and scoot the green mainstay from the bench. It feels full, and ice sloshes audibly inside, and Sam shakes his head. He couldn't honestly say when his brother ferreted out the time to fill the cooler, but leave it to Dean to ensure quick and easy access to alcohol, because his priorities are still those of their father. Leave him alone, he berates himself, and hefts the cooler under an arm.

By the time they're fully loaded down with weapons, duffels and their own sleeping rolls, and, by God, the beer, Bobby has already cut through the padlock and thick chain looped through the door handles.

Once inside, Dean huffs and grumbles indecipherably while he stomps snow from his boots and brushes it from his hair. "Bobby, this is insane," he complains. With his red cheeks and tousled, wet hair, he looks like a sullen little boy who was called in for dinner before he was finished playing outside.

Bobby grins, cocking his head. "It ain't like we're campin,' boy. You can quit your hand wringing. There's still a roof over your head."

Dean tilts his head back, squinting up at the high, textured ceiling. "Yeah, kinda." He whistles, low. "Bobby, are we safe here?"

Bobby gives him a look like it's the dumbest question that's ever been asked of him. "From the ghost?"

A piece of the ceiling comes loose and smacks to the floor between them. "From the building," Dean says, eyes widening as he points upward.

Bobby simply chuckles, and Sam scrutinizes their surroundings, himself. The roof is, admittedly, dripping in more than one spot, and the walls are streaked with black mold and decorated with holes and cracks, chunked plaster spotting the bare, dirty cement floor. A split double staircase stands at the opposite end of the large space, the stripped cement adorned with the same bright scrawls and poufs of spray paint that littered the outer walls.

The sight of the dim, decrepit lobby – the massive stone fireplace stretching nearly wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, specifically – is vaguely familiar. Sam had put it together in the car but hadn't seen fit to tell the anecdote, that he'd done some coincidental research on this very place a few months back, when he was trying to put together a list of things Dean might like to do during his last year, and he'd somehow mixed up Grossinger's with the Stanley Hotel. That was before Dean became such a colossal ass about the whole thing, and it's a mental gaff he's kept to himself, didn't really see the need in bringing to Dean's attention that he'd mistakenly identified this decaying property with the setting of one of his brother's favorite movies.

From this research and his ongoing general curiosity, Sam knows the resort closed for good back in eighty-six, but from the look of the place the years that have passed have been unkind, and it appears to have been abandoned a lot longer than that.

"Bobby…" Dean continues, shaking his head. He throws his arms out to encompass the state of the building, roughly depositing his bags to smack atop the cold cement. "Okay. This is not a hotel. This is a breeding ground of ick and…and yech and it's probably going to come down on us before the snow stops. Also? It's fucking freezing, man."

"Bet you wish you'd taken that shower now, huh?" Sam says with a smirk.

Bobby hefts the strap of his own bag over his shoulder. "You want me to find you something more comfortable, Your Highness? Maybe something with an ocean view?"

No one quite knows how to handle Dean like Bobby does, or how to fluster him. Dean fumbles wordlessly for a moment, and Sam's pretty sure he sees his brother stomp his foot.

Bobby sighs, points his sleeping bag in the direction of the large, boarded over windows at the far end of the lobby. "Storm's pickin' up out there, and if we didn't get up here now, chances are we weren't gonna."

"And we couldn't wait the storm out why?"

Bobby shrugs. "Figured this was gonna give us our best shot of seeing the place without the chance of any other wayward visitors."

Sam lifts his chin, getting it. Doesn't mean he's the plan's biggest fan, but Bobby's got a point. "And no one else can get hurt."

"Well, that's just fantastic." Dean's head bobs, as he digs a flashlight out of an inside coat pocket. "You can tell my frostbitten ass that at least no one else got hurt."

His continued complaining is for show, Sam knows. He's never put his own well-being ahead of innocent blood being spilled, and he's not about to start now. "He hit his head yesterday," Sam tells Bobby.

"Ah," Bobby says, crouching to unzip his duffel. He drags out a flashlight of his own and a shotgun, and drops a handle of spare salt cartridges into a deep pocket of his coat.

"What does that mean?" Dean asks, shooting a glance between Sam and Bobby that looks a little like a kicked dog. "I barely hit it, and what does that have to do with anything, anyway?"

Bobby chuckles as he lays out his bedroll. "You boys are gonna be the death of me, I swear."

"Yeah, well," Dean comments darkly, turning to point his flashlight into the black corners of the cavernous lobby. "That's pretty much what we do."

Sam clenches his jaw, resists the urge to grab Dean by the lapels and haul his sarcastic ass up against a wall. He knows his brother is just deflecting his feelings, but he doesn't have to be such a dick about it. "Just make your bed, Dean."


Bobby's come predictably prepared with a map of the property; they wouldn't expect any less from the bookman. The grounds are huge and sprawling, with multiple buildings and smaller cabins, an indoor pool, tennis court and a golf course that still functions during the appropriate months. If it's a ghost they're looking for, and therefore most likely some sort of remains, there are dozens of places they'll need to search.

"We're lookin' for the usual," Bobby says, counting the shells in the deep cargo pocket of his vest. "In all the usual places."

It goes without saying, but Sam finds himself listing anyway, "Walls, floors…"

Dean hops on his balls of his feet where he's crouched inspecting the contents of the weapons duffel. His eyes once more survey the large lobby, wide flashlight beam trailing not far behind. "What kind of square footage we lookin' at here, Bobby?"

"You got somewhere else to be?"

"Couldn't get there if I did."

Bobby props the barrel of his shotgun against his shoulder and nods. "You're damn right. So buck up and let's handle this ghost, ladies."

Due to the severity of the storm, they decide as a collective – and Dean rather enthusiastically – that the best course of action for the time being is to stick to the main building of the hotel. They've already armed up with the shotguns and salt rounds, and the next strategic move is to split up to cover more ground, Bobby wandering off quickly to another wing of the building. He usually only makes himself scarce like this when they've gone to squabbling "like an old married couple," but Sam really doesn't think they've been that bad. In the very least, they've certainly been worse.

Night has fallen quick and dark and they've already lost the benefit of what little daylight had been filtering in through the windows that aren't boarded up, and are now completely at the mercy of sharp, trained eyes and flashlight beams.

The entire time they prowl the narrow, crumbling corridors of the hotel, there's something nagging in the back of Sam's mind, and has been since they stepped into the ruins of the resort. Maybe even since before. Something there on the edge of everything he's aware of, but that he can't quite put his finger on well enough to put a label to.

Dean's bitching has lingered as heavy and persistent as the chill in the air that's leaking in through the many holes in the building's exterior. Every bit of it is bullshit, so Sam pays it no mind. It's better not to engage.

"Oh, we're gonna get tetanus, dude," Dean groans as the hallway opens up to another cavernous room with floor-to-ceiling windows along every wall, smelling excessively of rot and maybe somewhat of sewage.

In the middle of the room is a mildew-y pit that used to be the sizeable, and probably pretty nice, swimming pool. Sam steps up to the very edge, boot sole slipping a bit in the muck slopped across the cement lip, and he throws out a hand to steady himself against the diving board, grimacing as his palm contacts something he'd rather not inspect any more closely. The tiling along the sides of the pool is, rather unsurprisingly, covered in even more graffiti, clouds of blue and orange stretching from the bottommost tile right up to kiss the cement slope over which his boot is currently propped. Three ripped and ragged beach chairs stand in a line in the shallow end, their vinyl supports stretched and sagging.

"This was probably a nice place, huh?" Sam wonders aloud, wiping the grime from his palm across the thigh of his jeans. "Once?"

"Yeah, it's great." Dean steps carefully over a pile of rubble, of metal rods and a wayward, rotting tree limb that had blown inside some time ago. He lets the beam of his flashlight lead his way as he moves to the other end of the room, giving the large empty basin a wide berth. "Don't fall in. I'm not comin' in after you."

Sam watches his brother drift in and out of patches of moonlight across the room. "Sure you are."

Something about his own hypothetical and outlandish scenario has irked Dean, and his voice is somewhat rough as he mumbles a coarse, quiet, "Whatever."

Sam smirks and moves to follow, then is brought to an abrupt stop in his tracks, staring at the back of his brother's head. Somehow, he suddenly knows exactly what it is that's been tugging at the edges of his awareness.

Fear.

It's now very clearly fear that is roiling through his mind, coming in subtle but unstoppable waves, like an irreparable leaky faucet that's more annoying than wasteful. Nothing excessive, but certainly persistent, and Sam hadn't been able to put his finger on the emotion before because his body isn't responding in kind. No chills, no cold sweats…at least nothing due to more than the oppressive chill in the air.

This fear he's sensing but not feeling, it isn't…it isn't his.

That realization rocks Sam back a step, sends him slipping once more against the slick cement floor, because it doesn't make any sense at all, and it's just about the oddest damn thing he's ever thought.

His eyes go immediately back to his brother, taking in Dean's pasty complexion and the sheen of perspiration across his brow despite the relative chill of the room. Both are obvious in the rising moonlight and fairly par for the course the past couple of…well, maybe months, but he's perhaps grown used to the look on the man, just like he has the scrapes and bruises. At least, enough so that he'd never thought to put a label to what he was seeing there in the depths of Dean's dark eyes.

Sam makes a face, shakes his head like he's got water in his ears. "Dean, are you…"

"Am I what?" Dean responds quickly, like someone pushed a button. He whirls back to face Sam. "Hilarious? Adorable? Better than you in every possible way?" He lifts his flashlight, pointing the beam in Sam's eyes. "The answer's yes, by the way."

The waves of fear are still faint but rolling insistently through his mind, crashing in tandem with the pulse jumping visibly beneath his brother's jawline. He can't believe he didn't notice before. It's been there for a while, just beneath the surface. It seems so obvious now. "Afraid," Sam supplies tentatively, eyebrows knit together.

Dean grins, but it's forced, nervous. Caught. "Not of anything more dangerous than lockjaw from the rusty nail I'm gonna step on any minute now." He frowns, flashlight bobbing as he crosses the space. "And what the hell kinda question is that, Sam? You haven't talked like that since…I thought your shining got turned off when Yellow Eyes died."

"It did." Sam frowns.

Dean's eyes are wide, covering what's really going on. "Well, if it's back, you need to return it, because it's defective. I'm fine."

"This isn't…it isn't that. I didn't see anything…I can, I don't know." Sam shakes his head again, brings a hand up to scrub at his temple. "Sense it?"

"Sense what, Sam?"

"Fear. And it isn't mine." He hears it as he says it, and can't but think, well, that's about the stupidest thing I've ever said.

Dean blinks, and seems to agree with him. "You say a lot of strange things, Sam, but that right there might take the cake."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Okay. So maybe it's this ghost, or…whatever, man, you're telling me you don't…you don't feel that?"

"Feel what?" Dean's eyes are dinner plates in the beam of Sam's flashlight. "Brother, I feel tired and hungry and goddamn cold, and that's about it."

Sam stamps his foot, worries his bottom lip. "You don't get a sense that there's something else here? Like, something with us?"

Dean shrugs. "Well, like you said, there's a ghost. Somewhere. According to Bobby."

"I think…" Sam cocks his head and averts his eyes. He takes a moment to assess what he's feeling, before he says what he wants to. When he's sure, he turns his gaze back to his brother, locks on Dean's eyes in a way that leaves the other man squirming, because Dean doesn't like to feel vulnerable, or on display. And if Sam's right, that's exactly what's happening. "I think it's you, Dean."

"You think what's me, Sam?"

"The fear that I'm…Dean, it's you. You're afraid of…I don't know." Sam swallows, and finds himself unable to maintain that eye contact with his brother. "I don't know. But you're afraid of something. And I think it's something big."

Dean makes the not-quite-a-laugh sound Sam last heard right before his brother slugged him outside of that motel in Red Lodge more than a year ago. It's get the fuck out of my face and how did you know all rolled into one. Dean says more without words than he does with. "That's not me, Sam," he says finally. "I don't talk like that."

Sam nods, and he's almost never been surer of anything as he says steadily, "But you think like that."

Dean brings a hand up to scratch at his chin, drags a knuckle under his nose. It's kind of amazing the guys cleans up at poker like he does. But then again, he doesn't win quite as often when it's just the two of them. "You don't know anything about how I think." He raises his flashlight and points in the direction of their point of ingress, signaling the end of this train of thought. "Let's get the lead out. We've got a lot of real estate to cover, and it's not getting any warmer."


He's not mad. At least, he doesn't think he is…didn't think he was…but there's something red and angry, raging and churning like a tornado on the outskirts of his consciousness, confusing the hell out of him and gaining traction the further they move into the hotel.

The ghost, Dean guesses. Something strange this particular spirit's got brewing, because the anger is there but he's calm, and a pair of fingertips pressed discretely against the inside of his wrist confirms this. This feeling of anger itself is an unfamiliar brand, and he really doesn't have any reason to be mad at his little brother. Despite Sam's asinine claim to be picking up on some kind of fear in the area he seems to think is coming from Dean. Which is clearly ridiculous.

Obviously.

It's a big-ass building, creepy as hell and, sure, chunks of the ceiling are randomly crashing into their path, but there's nothing to be afraid of here. A little garden variety spook, sure, who'd booed a couple of dumbasses into early graves, but he and Sam are trained for this, and Casper's not getting the jump on either of them like some random prick with a can of spray paint.

But Sam's a dog with a whole fucking bag of bones, and after roughly ten minutes of beautiful silence, he isn't letting up. "Dean, are you sure – "

"Oh, my GOD, Sam," Dean exclaims before he can properly put a stopper in whatever well this anger is spewing up from. His fingers tighten around the grip of his Maglite, and that's unexpected, because he's not usually the one who throws things when angered. That's Sam's jam, pretty much exclusively. "I'm fucking sure, okay?"

"Yeah," Sam says quickly, jaw clenched as tight as the muscles in Dean's own neck. "Okay. Okay, I'll drop it."

"Thank you." Shit. Dean's legs send him stomping away down the hall. There's a phantom itch under his skin, something crawling and just not at all right, and he really can't seem to figure out a way to get away from Sam fast enough. The kid's annoying, sure, but no more so than any other days. Still, he finds himself shooting a sideways glance at his little brother, formulating an exit strategy. "It's a big-ass place," he says, giving voice to his observations.

"Mmm hmm." Sam seems distracted, maybe butt-hurt over Dean's outburst, maybe just thinking about things he won't ever say. Same as always.

"Maybe we should split up," Dean puts forward, trying to make it sound like a casual suggestion, but he's pretty sure it comes out rushed and desperate. "Cover more ground."

Sam sighs. "Dean, I really don't think splitting up is our best – "

"Sam," Dean barks, still not truly mad but feeling some degree of irritation all the same. "Bobby's…well, God knows where. Could be outside building a friggin' snowman for all we know. We're already split up. So quit it with the dewy eyes and goddamn hand-holding, okay?"

It's all said with a bit more bite than was necessary or intended. Sam just blinks, because he's typically the one that has these sorts of outbursts, and Dean's gone and done it twice now in the span of five minutes.

Dean's not even sure what's brought this about, himself. He shakes his head as the anger inside spirals around on itself, picking up speed like a hurricane and pounding mercilessly like a jackhammer to his skull. A hangover on crack. The fucking Rawhead had more finesse than whatever the hell this is. Or maybe that hit to the ol' noggin in Ohio was a little harder than he'd thought.

In any case, he wants this deer-in-headlights version of Sam to be not standing right next to him anymore, that he does know, and Dean hefts the shotgun gripped in his right hand like he's going to do something with it. "Got a big 'ol can of spook repellant right here, and you're makin' my trigger finger itchy. Now start walkin' before I start shootin.'" He narrows his gaze, as if to tell his brother, you know I owe you one.

Sam raises his hands in mock surrender, jaw still clenched to a point of pain. "All right. I'm going. Call me if you find anything."

Dean gives a sarcastic salute with the shotgun, and his brother stalks down the corridor without a moment's pause, taking long, frustrated strides.

"Don't get killed," Sam calls over his shoulder, loud and dripping with sarcasm the same way cold water drips from the ceiling overhead.

Dean rolls his eyes and turns on his heel to wander in the opposite direction. Whatever was going on in his head just now is abating, and he knows he shouldn't have said that thing about shooting Sam. He'd never do it, he didn't mean it, and he doesn't know what made him say such a thing. He has a strange feeling, like it wasn't even him that really said any of it, thought any of it. You know I owe you one? Hell, that was a lifetime ago, and he's never come close to being pissed enough at his brother to say something like that.

Dean gives himself a well-deserved mental cuff across the back of the head and turns, every intention of calling the kid back for the manliest hug-and-cry he can muster, but Sam's already gone, swallowed by the guts of the hotel.

Dean sighs and tucks the shotgun under his left arm, digging his right hand into the pocket of his jeans to withdraw his cell phone, because now he literally has to call hisbrother back to him. Before he can get far enough into the motion of sending his brother some weak-ass apology in the form of a text message, the EMF detector in his jacket wails and draws his full attention.

He stuffs the phone back into his pocket and pulls out the device, narrowing his eyes at the flaring red bulbs across the top. That's a bit predictable, he muses. But hell, he'll take predictable, so long as he gets to gank this ghost and get the hell outta this pit and snowstorm and somewhere a little warmer. With preferably a sizable amount of beer and/or whiskey.

Dean cocks his head. And maybe a strip club, he decides, because Sammy's got a point, and it is his birthday.

He climbs a set of narrow stairs at the end of the corridor, and then takes a right turn into a new hallway, finding himself at the start of a stretch of guest rooms. He leads with the flashlight and EMF, coming to a stop when another bulb atop of the device flares red.

He steps cautiously into the tiny room to his left, training the beam of his light along the edges of crumbling crown molding, pausing briefly on the gap where a vent cover is missing, and where the torn, dirty drapes are caught up on the wall. Both Dean and his light come to a stop as his eyes lock onto a fluffy, overturned object lying in the center of the room. He steps forward and nudges the item with the toe of his boot, flipping it over to reveal a blood-stained brown teddy bear, its handstitched mouth contorted into a terrifying grin.

Dean looks up and glances around the room with wide eyes. "Oh, yeah, that's comforting," he mutters to himself.

His fingers once more feel out the plastic casing of his cell in his pocket as he crouches, but upon further inspection decides the blood is old, not bright but rust-colored. With a tentative hand Dean confirms the matted fur of the teddy bear is rock-hard. Wherever, whoever the blood came from…it's been a long time. Years, probably.

Dean kicks the useless fluffer aside, bouncing it off of the wall. "Thanks for nothing, ya little red herring."

He has just enough time to reassure himself that he's used the term correctly and he should do so again, but in front of Sam, when the EMF detector squawks to life once more in his palm. Dean finds himself narrowing his eyes at where the bear now lies grinning in the corner. "Have I upset you in some way?"

A draft blows in through a gap in the windowpane with a low whistle, rustling the drapes. Dean exhales forcefully, studying the cloud of his breath in front of his face before giving himself another mental cuff. "Look," he nervously addresses the room. "I don't know if you've noticed, but the usual things aren't really gonna work right now, so if you could maybe…"

A figure blows past the open doorway to his right, bright and feathery and ethereal. It sets the hair standing straight on the back of Dean's neck and he nods, slowly tucking both his flashlight and the EMF detector away into his deep jacket pockets, swapping them for the salt-loaded shotgun. "Yeah, that'll work."

He lets the sawed off double-barrel guide his path as he moves slowly and steadily back into the hallway, instinct and sparse moonlight leading him back toward the empty, spacious lobby. He pauses at the railing overlooking the room, near the mouth of the wide main staircase. He spots where they'd deposited their bags but there's no sign of either Sam or Bobby. Big-ass place. Another sizeable piece of the ceiling comes loose and smacks to the floor as he stands there. Fantastic digs.

Even though it's just him, he doesn't seem to be alone; Dean catches the figure in the corner of his eye, hovering near the staircase, and brings the gun up as he turns.

Dean lines up a shot but before he can pull the trigger he's punched in the chest by – from the feel of it – a battering ram he can't see.

Arms frantically windmilling, he feels out a hard surface to his left and almost catches himself against the wide railing, but his boot heel slips across a patch of something slick on the concrete, and gravity pretty much takes it from there.


To be continued...