Chapter 18. So close and yet so far
John sighed in relief as he reached his destination. Sliding his way across the dirty floor was definitely not the most dignified escape plan but it was all he had to work with for the moment. Every time his injured leg accidentally hit the floor the continuous aching turned into a searing pain but he had no time to stop and deal with it. All the moving around was causing his ribs discomfort which in turn was not helping his breathing but he wasn't going to stop now. He was so close. The knife stared back at him teasingly. He needed to get situated so that his back was facing the knife in order for him to pick it up considering his hands were still bound.
It hadn't been easy but John eventually made into the position he wanted. He laid there for a few moments to get his breathing under control and so his injured leg had some time to rest. He just hoped that he would be able to pick up the knife let along cut himself free. His hands were pretty numb.
As ready as he would ever be John reached back a little with his arms and winced. Even reaching back a little bit was painful but it was worth it when he could just barely feel the wooden handle of the knife with his numb fingers. John sighed in relief. Half the battle was won and now it was time for the hard part. Cutting through the cords were not going to be easy because they were tied pretty tight around his wrists but hopefully if done right they wouldn't be able to withstand being sliced into, without cutting his wrists in the process. The last thing he needed was to bleed out because of the stupid mistake while escaping.
Thoughts of his boys entered his mind as he worked on cutting through the cords. He wondered what they were doing. His gut was telling him that they were searching for him. That scared him because he didn't want either of them coming to the house but if the inevitable was going to happen then he at least hoped that Dean had enough sense to keep his brother out of danger. Caleb would be with them, of that he was sure so Dean had decent backup. He didn't need his brother for this hunt. Once again Dean's birthday had taken a backseat to a hunt.
"Daddy?"
John sighed when he heard the little voice of his youngest son. He loved his sons, really he did but what he was researching was very important and he had just managed to get rid of Dean and Caleb.
He had been entrusted with the care and feeding of one Caleb Reaves for the long weekend. The sixteen year old had seen a hunting opportunity and had asked his father if he could accompany John and his son's to Bobby's to help him with the hunt. Of course Mac had said yes with the assurance that John would bring his son back to him in on piece. So here he was in Bobby's kitchen while the mechanic/hunter himself was out seeing to business in the junk yard.
Caleb had been helping him with research on a house where a suspected poltergeist was terrorizing its occupants. That was until Dean had come in from the junkyard and asked to help the two hunters which John had no qualms about. Dean had always shown such an enthusiasm for hunting, always wanting to join them in whatever capacity John would allow.
Today had been different though. The eight year old hadn't been able to sit still or keep quiet for more than a minute at a time. He had kept up a steady chatter about basically nothing at all for ten minutes before John had put his pencil down and looked at the two boys seated in front of him. Caleb had seemed torn between bantering with the younger boy and being annoyed with the interruption.
Deciding Caleb could use a break and he could use the piece and quiet he sent both boys outside to spar, comfortable with the fact that Caleb knew how to spar with Dean despite the age difference. Plus he was certain that secretly the sixteen year old was itching to show off the new defense moves that John had taught him the day before. John smiled as he remembered Caleb griping to Dean that it was 'all his fault' that he was being sent out like a little kid.
John looked up from the kitchen table where he was set up to where his four year old son was waiting in the doorway. Sam's shaggy brown hair hung in his eyes and John thought briefly that maybe it was time for a hair cut.
John really should have wondered where his youngest had gotten to when Dean had come in alone. Sam was usually Dean's shadow.
"Daddy, are you busy?" Sam looked up through his bangs and scuffed his feet on Bobby's floorboards.
John sighed but smiled and shook his head. "No Sammy, come here." Maybe he could use a small break too.
Sam ran over to his dad's side and climbed up onto his lap as John opened his arms. He had a piece of paper clutched in his small hand.
"Are you looking for monsters Daddy?" Sam asked looking at the papers spread out before them.
John quickly reached around Sam's body and placed all of his papers into their folder. "Something like that buddy and what have you been up to?" John ruffled Sam's hair. "You haven't been pestering Bobby have you?"
"Nope." Sam shook his head emphatically and then held out the piece of paper he had been holding for John to see. "I've been working too. You wanna see?"
"Sure kiddo." John took the piece of paper from Sam's hand and looked down at it.
There on the piece of paper was an exquisite drawing of a dragon which had been coloured in with green pencil. At the top of the page it read 'To Dean' and at the bottom 'Love Sammy'
"Do you like it Daddy?" John looked from the drawing to his son's big expressive eyes.
"This is great Sammy!" and it was. John had no idea where he had gotten the picture of the dragon but the kid had done a terrific job with the colouring, especially for his young age. It looked like he had put all his effort into making sure that his colouring was all inside the lines. "You did this all by yourself?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "I didn't do it all by myself. Caleb drew the Dragon for me last night."
"He did?" John was surprised. He knew that Caleb was talented but he hadn't realized that the kid's talents were in this area. He was quite an artist. John was willing to bet though that Caleb didn't just draw dragons for anyone. So much for the tough guy image, he thought.
"Yep! It's Athewm, the green Dragon. Just like in Pastor Jim's stories," Sam explained. "Dean is the green Dragon because he protects the prince."
John nodded. He had overheard Jim telling his boys the dragon stories that the Pastor had fabricated specially for Sam and he knew the little boy took them very seriously. Their entire small group had a character in the stories and Sam often related to things that were happening around them to the stories.
"And you made this for Dean huh?"
"Of course Daddy, it's his birthday on Monday."
Damn. He had been so fixated on the hunt that the date had totally slipped his mind. John kissed the back of his baby boys head. It really was a sad state of affairs when his four year old son had to remind him about his brother's birthday.
"Do you think Dean will like it?"
"I know he'll love it Sammy."
Pain radiated from his wrists and up his arms as the shock of release penetrated his brain, bringing him back to the present. As the blood flow came back into John's hands it hurt like a bitch. He slowly brought his hands around to the front of his body and held back a groan. His arms were incredibly sore having been held behind his back for so long but it also felt good to be able to move them again.
He shivered and for a moment he thought he might be sick. He swallowed thickly and managed to hold the nausea at bay. He lifted himself onto one elbow and breathed in and out slowly. His chest felt tight. He looked around the room at the devastation that had been left behind after Carlson's last attack. There was a small blood trail from where he had woken up to where he had crawled over to the knife. The wound to his leg wasn't bleeding half as much as what it had been but being thrown around hadn't helped to stop the blood flow entirely.
He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked down at his wrists. They were raw and bloody but feeling was slowly coming back into his hands. Now he just had to get up and out of his house. Taking another steadying breath leaned onto his right side and pushed himself up onto his good knee. He grit his teeth as the movement pulled on his injured leg and ribs and he couldn't contain another small groan.
The knife he had used to cut himself free was still on the floor in front of him. With some effort he managed to get his foot under him and quickly snatched the knife off the floor before pushing off with his hands to a standing position. He balanced on his good leg as the new altitude coupled with blood loss had him feeling lightheaded and John worried for a moment that he might pass out.
The oldest Winchester spent a few moments steadying his breath and getting ready to move. He wondered briefly if his truck would still be parked out front. It would be handy but he wasn't going to put all his hopes into that. Right now he just had to concentrate on getting up the steps. Once he had accomplished that then he could work on his next form of action. One step at a time, he kept telling himself. Problem was patience wasn't really his forte.
A few minutes later John opened his eyes. He hadn't even realized he had closed his eyes. John shook his head to clear it and realized that maybe that wasn't the best idea. Okay now he really needed to get a move on.
With a tight hold on the wooden handle of the knife John reached out to the wooden steps and steadied himself before testing out the injured leg. He gasped loudly and quickly took the pressure off it again. The leg obviously wasn't up to having much weight on it. He could deal with that.
John hopped a few spaces so his body was close to the steps, every hop jolting his ribs. He pulled himself up onto the first couple of steps, breathing through clenched teeth. He was so tired and sore but he had made it almost halfway up the steps, half crawling, half hopping.
"Where do you think you are going John?" a voice from behind him stopped him in his tracks. He spun around as best he could to stare directly into the face of Carlson. The maniac was waving his finger back and forth in a negative gesture. "I'm not finished with you yet."
John lashed out with the knife he still held in his right hand. He was only half shocked when Carlson disappeared before the knife had a chance to hit home. He felt something tap him on the shoulder and he spun half his body around to look behind him and received a foot to the face for his trouble. He saw stars as Carlson grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and lifted him up against the wall. Carlson held John to the wall with one hand and with the other he caught John's wrist that had already been coming down for another shot with the knife.
John cried out as his chaffed wrist was twisted and smashed up against the wall making him lose his hold on the knife. It fell out of his hand to bounce down a couple of steps before coming to a stop. "You are not leaving John until you have paid for what you have done." Carlson hissed in his face.
"Go to hell!" John replied with as much gusto as he could.
"I don't think so." Carlson drew John away from the wall and spun him around. Before John knew what was happening he was flying through the air. The flight didn't last as his body hit the last two steps, striking his head before landing at the bottom of the cold hard floor of the basement. He couldn't contain a scream as heard a snapping noise. Seconds later a fiery pain erupted in the upper half of his right arm. Despite his foggy brain he'd had enough broken bones to know that his arm had just been broken.
The pain of the break had overshadowed the pain that his injured leg had caused when he hit the floor. After a few minutes all his injuries came back with a vengeance and it was hard to breath under all the pain. His arm was throbbing to the sound of his heartbeat. It was thumping and all consuming and this time he was really afraid that he was going to be sick.
"That's it John. I want to hear that pain." Carlson's voice came from somewhere close by but John wasn't sure where and right now he wasn't sure whether he really cared.
His moment of misery was interrupted when he was yanked onto his back by a strong hand, eliciting another cry of pain that he had been unable to hold back. A shiny shoe was placed against his throat pinning him to the ground. He was panting with blood running down the side of his head from a gash just below his hair line.
"Hurts don't it?" Carlson smiled down at the hunter. "You deserve much more pain that what I am causing you now but I'm just about finished with you John. I don't have much time left but rest assured, I am going to hunt down your sons and I am going to kill them. Send them down to hell with you where they belong."
Carlson shifted his foot to rest lightly on John's broken arm and applied a little bit of pressure. "Ahhh!" John screamed. He hated showing any weakness at all but he couldn't stop the outburst.
Carlson sighed. "I am going to miss this." He reached down to John and pulled him up best he could and with a strength only known with supernatural powers he threw the injured hunter across the room and into wall.
John hit the wall with thud and a grunt and then slid down into a silent unconscious heap at the bottom. Carlson smiled. The man looked like a casualty of war. He really was going to miss torturing the man but he was sending him to hell. What better place to send someone like John Winchester. As soon as he was finished with John, the man he had hated for so long, he was going to hunt down his offspring. He got the distinct feeling that they were closer than he had originally thought. His revenge against Mike Guenther would have to take back seat to the Winchesters.
Carlson started to advance towards John but only got a few steps when he heard a noise coming from upstairs. He stood standing in the middle of the basement listening.
"Dad?" came the young voice from upstairs. Carlson smiled. "Are you here?" he couldn't believe his luck. Had one of John Winchester's children actually come to him? Things just kept getting better and better.
xxxxxx
Dean was very surprised that they hadn't been pulled over by the cops by now. Caleb was driving like a maniac and in his car! If it wasn't his father and brother's life in danger he would have grabbed the wheel and demanded that Caleb pull over. That wasn't to say that he hadn't made some warnings or comments which had seemed to have little affect on Caleb's driving other than to distract him so Dean had wisely decided to keep his mouth shut. He could berate that man laterManiac driving and distraction combined was not a good thing and as much as he was worried about his family he was also worried about the state his beloved car could end up.
Dean's hands were tightly clutching the door and the dash as Caleb navigated through traffic and turned a corner even a little too fast for Dean's liking. "God Damn it Damien. Are you trying to get us killed?"
Caleb didn't take his eyes off the road this time but he did look apologetic. "I don't want to be late."
"You weren't rushing this much before." Dean pointed out. He was surprised to find that he knew exactly how to get to his old home but he was even more surprised that Caleb seemed to know where he was going without even asking for directions.
"I can't explain it but there is never a strict time frame for when my visions come true and the fact that Missouri rang to tell us that Sam is already missing … I just think we need to hurry."
Dean nodded. Caleb had explained to him about what he had seen in his vision but only gave him the bare minimum and Dean hadn't asked for more. Caleb had that look on his face and Dean could tell that he really didn't want to talk about the vision. It must have been bad because this time he hadn't even told Dean the details. He was still in a little bit of shock that they were heading back to his old childhood home. Not once did he think this hunt for his father would bring him back there. It was the second bombshell since this whole thing had started, first his mother and now their old house. It was all hitting too close to things that Dean had decided he didn't want to deal with again. When his father had first told him that he wad going to Lawrence he had been interested but now he didn't want anything to do with the place. It obviously wasn't safe for Winchester's at any time. Every time they were here something bad happened.
One thing he knew for sure was once he got to Sam and made sure he was alright he was going to kill him for leaving Missouri's. He had left the kid there for a reason but obviously the little shit hadn't grasped what Dad had been trying to drill into him about following orders.
"So how are we gonna kill this doppelganger?"
"I'm working on it." Caleb glanced quickly at his friend and then back at the road as he cut someone off who honked at him in retaliation.
"Short of bringing the original Gaylord with us as a weapon we don't have much to go on." Dean continued more to himself than to Caleb. "Maybe silver might do the trick or maybe at least buy us some time to get Dad and Sammy out of there, sort of like rock salt does with spirits, ya know just get rid of him for a while."
"Maybe," Caleb agreed.
"Or maybe even rock salt itself. I mean a doppelganger isn't exactly …. Well it's sort of like a spirit, sort of. I mean in Dad's journal it says that some believe that everyone has a doppelganger and that if you are evil then the doppelganger would be good and vice verser." Dean rambled on. "Sort of like an evil twin."
"Yeah and the world is apparently supposed to end if the two of them meet too." Caleb added.
"Really?"
"So I've read."
"You can read?"
"Haha."
"So you're sure we can't use Carlson. Coz if that was his good side that we met …"
"Don't tempt me." Caleb groused. "It sort of makes sense though. I mean a lot of people believe that a doppelganger is a death omen for either the person that sees it or the original person themselves. The murders didn't start till just after Carlson was diagnosed with his death sentence. It brings us back to my theory about Carlson's repressed emotions."
Dean smirked but it was soon replaced by a frown. He could feel it coming and grabbed his head just as the first wave of pain came crashing in his head. "Oh God, not this again," he groaned and squeezed his eyes tightly shut against the sharp pain.
Caleb didn't know what to do. Dean was having another one of his headaches and it seemed to be worse than the last one. The knowledge didn't made Caleb feel any better and he almost pulled over but the realization that he had just pulled onto the old Winchester street stopped him and he continued on down looking for the house in question while Dean began to writhe next to him.
He saw the black truck before he saw the house and pulled up directly behind it and slammed the car into park before shutting off the engine and turning to his friend and grabbing him by the shoulders. The kid's nose had started to bleed. Now Caleb was really worried. Something was seriously wrong with the younger hunter. A bleeding nose from a headache was never good. The decision was made that as soon as he had saved Johnny's ass he was admitting Dean to the hospital along with his father.
"Dean, come on buddy don't do this to me now," Caleb said as he wrapped his arm around the kid's shoulders when Dean tried to fold in on himself. "Aghh!" Dean cried and Caleb was afraid he was going to pull his hair out.
He lifted Dean up into a sitting position again and took his head in his hands. "Come on Dean. Snap out of it!"
Dean's panting was beginning to slow to a more regular breath intake and Caleb sighed in relief.
Once Dean's body seemed to have calmed down a bit more Caleb took his hands from Dean's head and reached into his pocket where he was sure he had some tissues and then looked back up at his friend again. "Deuce, you with me man?"
"I don't know." Dean mumbled as he waited for the still remaining headache to recede a little more.
"Here hold this to your nose." Caleb shoved the tissues into Dean's hand and then guided it to his bloody nose.
Dean opened one eye and halted the movement and looked at Caleb warily. Caleb got the meaning immediately and rolled his eyes exasperatedly. "Dude they're clean just hold them there before you bleed all over the interior of your precious car."
Once Caleb was satisfied that Dean was doing what he was told he opened his door got out of the car. He jogged around to the trunk and opened it, opening the secret weapons compartment and picked up the small case he knew to be filled with silver bullets. He really wasn't sure what he would need. In all his years of hunting he hadn't actually came across a doppelganger. Shape shifters for sure, even a werewolf once but he had never battled with a doppelganger. Maybe they should take silver and rock salt with them. The psychic shrugged and grabbed the case of silver bullets and the two shotguns that would no doubt already be loaded with rock salt.
As Caleb closed the trunk Dean exited the car and walked to the back to meet him, still dabbing at his nose with the tissues. He accepted some silver bullets and pulled out his gun and began replacing the bullets with silver ones. "That's Dad's truck."
"No shit Sherlock."
Dean rolled his eyes but was stopped from remarking further by a familiar voice. "Dad?" Caleb and Dean locked startled eyes with each other. "Sammy." They stated simultaneously.
TBC ...
Well there it is. what did ya think? Johnny almost made it but to be fair to the poor guy he has taken quite a beating. I borrowed a certain green dragon from Ridley because i couldnt help myself ... i love the dragon world she created for little Sammy :) Thanks Ridley and thank you everyone else who is reading and i'll hopefully see you all again soon :)