Ghost Rider
Chapter Three: Ticket to Ride
Author's Note: Thanks, as always, for the reviews, favorites and follows! I'm very bad about not responding to reviews, and I apologize. Please don't think I don't appreciate you. I rarely have time to get on my actual computer and usually wind up reading reviews on my phone while I'm on break at work or standing in line somewhere. Responding to reviews from a phone is possible, but time consuming, and time is one thing I never seem to have enough of. (Time and money - where does it go?) I do love hearing your reactions to my story, though, and I get a real kick out of it when someone figures out where I'm headed before I get there.*
Sorry this chapter is a bit late. Like many of us, I've been involved in this year's Relay For Life, which took place last Saturday, and I got so tied up with last-minute preparations that I didn't get any writing done at all.
I think I'm all out of excuses now, so I'll stop blethering and get on with the story. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy it.
Disclaimer:I can't think of anything clever to disclaim.
Ghost Rider
Chapter Three: Ticket to Ride
Cas knew many things. He knew that the Earth was constantly in motion. He knew that in the middle latitudes of the United States, where he was, it spun on its axis at between 700 and 900 miles per hour and it circled the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. He knew that the solar system moved around the center of the Milky Way galaxy and he knew that the galaxy moved out and away from the center of the universe. He knew that, at any given second, he was hundreds of miles away from the point in space where he'd been the second before.
He also knew that everything around him was moving at the same speed and in the same direction he was, and that the park and its inhabitants weren't really revolving in a wobbly, clock-wise motion around where he lay on his back on a park bench, his head pillowed on the last stuffed animal in his possession, his collection of amusement-park food scattered on the cobbles underneath.
When he had first been stripped of his grace and left human, the angel had noticed only what he'd lost. As time progressed, however, he realized he'd received some surprising compensations. Angels had no imagination - that in itself was an incredible boon - but even if they had he never would have imagined the feast of sensations that came from existing as a human within Earth's biosphere. Who, not having experienced it, would have believed that rain on the skin could be warm or icy, soothing, punishing, soft as flower petals or sharp as thorns? Bees still enchanted him, but they enchanted him from a distance since he'd received his first bee sting. Everything he encountered he wanted to touch, examine, smell, listen to. Taste.
Taste was a big one. The whole process of eating amazed him, the way appearance and aroma made food enticing, the efficiency with which the body broke it down, took the nutrients that it needed and discarded the rest.
Dean and Sam were less taken with the subject. Not only had Dean flat refused to examine the contents of the toilet before he flushed it, they had asked him to refrain from discussing his bodily functions and he was no longer allowed to eat broccoli in the bunker.
Cas' stomach burbled and he wondered if it would count as talking about bodily functions if he phoned one of the brothers and asked them if they knew why it was doing that. He wondered if it was something he'd eaten. He'd been trying new foods, but all of them were combinations of foods he'd had before and none of them had ever had this effect on him. He ran down the list in his mind.
Cotton candy - that was just spun sugar. He'd eaten sugar before. The salt-water taffy was also mostly sugar and the oddly-spelled "sno cone" was just sugared ice, as was the slushee. Ice cream was sugar and dairy products, funnel cakes were grain-based treats fried in oil and coated with powdered sugar and so, essentially, were donuts. Peanuts were a legume and contained vegetable proteins. Corn dogs were beef - he'd asked - dipped in a batter made primarily of corn meal and fried in oil, and nachos were simply triangles of unleavened bread made of corn meal, deep fried and coated with flavored cheese.
Certainly nothing odd there.
Puzzled, Cas lay an arm across his stomach, covered his mouth politely (as the Winchesters did when they weren't deliberately trying to "gross each other out") and allowed a small belch to escape, noting the mix of flavors and the tang of stomach acid as it passed through his mouth.
Perhaps he was coming down with something. He hoped it wasn't serious.
**SNP**SPN**SPN**
Dean Winchester didn't like to think of himself as a bully. That accusation, when he'd caught ghost fever shortly after getting out of Hell, had hurt. It had hurt that it had happened, it had hurt that Sam and Bobby had accepted it so easily, and it had hurt that neither of them even seemed to consider that the designation might hurt. Mostly, though, it hurt because he knew it was true. He was a dick. He was a cold bastard and a hard son-of-a-bitch.
A more objective person, of course, might have seen it differently. They might have pointed out that he was only cold and hard to those that deserved it. They might have called him a clear-eyed judge of the heart and soul. An avenging angel. A righteous man.
In any case, the fact remained that every once in awhile Dean Winchester would encounter someone whose life he could not resist making a living hell.
The boarding shed for the roller coaster called Dizzie Lizzie was built in among the track supports. There was a long ramp leading up to it and loops of track passed both above and beneath it. The entire metal building shivered and vibrated with the rhythm of the trains and Dean, waiting just behind the chain at the edge of the platform, resolutely ignored the long drop beneath the slender metal rails and did his best to block out the noise by humming Led Zeppelin.
One thing Dean was not was psychic, which meant that the images in his head of the trains collapsing and crushing the shed and all its occupants was just his imagination and not a premonition. Trying to distract himself from his fears, he dropped to one knee and was re-tying his right bootlace when a familiar voice came over the speakers.
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Dizzie Lizzie, the park's most eye-popping roller coaster. Why is it eye-popping? Because the cumulative g-force of its 26 curves and switchbacks is enough to suck those baby-blues right out of your head! That's why it's important, as you ride the Lizzie, to keep your mouth open and your pinky finger in your left ear to monitor intra-cranial pressure and please! Be sure to blink three times between curves to reset your eyes to a g-neutral state!"
It was the same little punk announcer that had tried to frighten him off the Timber Rattler.
Dean stood very slowly and scanned the shed, locating the announcer's podium. The kid wasn't looking at him this time. He was watching - Dean tracked his eyes - he was watching two teenaged girls standing in the queue next to him, waiting to get into the seat ahead of the one he would be in. They were about fourteen or fifteen, awkward and coltish. One was overweight and wore glasses. The other had braces and a bad case of acne. They were wearing matching tee shirts that had the current date on them and the words: "Westwood High Latin Club Fall Fling - Tempus Fugit! Carpe Diem!"
A rush of sympathy fueled Dean's annoyance. He turned his attention back to the ride announcer, held up his hand and snapped his fingers. The kid glanced over at him and stuttered into silence in mid-bs. Dean raised one eyebrow and Turbo-Punk turned a satisfying shade of greyish-green.
Dean glanced at the girls. They had noticed him and were gaping in awe. He gave them a smile and they both blushed dark red.
"Non timete," he told them, keeping the grammar simple. "Stultus est." Fear not. He's stupid.
"You speak Latin?" the one with braces squeaked.
"A little."
"This ride won't really suck out our eyes, will it?" the other one asked. "I mean, it couldn't right? They'd get in trouble. Nobody would let them run it if it did."
"Nah, it's okay. G-force doesn't work the way he wants you to think it works. It isn't going to build up between the curves or anything like that." He launched into an in-depth explanation of g-forces and the engineering that went into making roller coasters safe, drawing it out in ways that made it easy for them to understand. Their conversation filled the time until the next train had rolled in and unloaded and it was time for them to board.
The two girls climbed into the car in front of him, chattering happily and excited about experiencing the different forces for themselves. Dean would never know it, but he'd had a profound influence on these young women. He'd awakened in them both an interest in science and engineering that each would eventually turn into a lucrative and rewarding career. Years later, looking back over their educations and the multiple advanced degrees each held by then, they'd agreed that they never did find an instructor as brilliant, as easy to understand, or as drop-dead gorgeous as the guy on the roller coaster.
For his part, Dean clenched his fists around the restraining bar and swore, again, that he was going to find a way to gank Metatron and get Cas' grace back. Then he was going to make the newly-re-powered angel take him back in time, so he could find the guy who invented roller coasters and kick his ass.
**SPN**SPN**SPN**
The clown's face was melting.
Sam flung himself back against the Fun House staircase in horror and scrambled for a weapon. They'd come into the amusement park mostly unarmed, but no hunter went anywhere completely unprotected. Sam dug into his pockets and came up with a handful of salt packets. Hastily ripping them open, he threw them at the clown.
The clown abruptly stopped his burbling wail, quit pulling at his weird orange hair, and stared at Sam.
"What in the hell did you go and do that for?"
"I . . . uh . . . "
He held out one gloved hand, staring at the white crystals stuck there. "Is that . . . salt? You salted me? What the hell? Do I look like a french fry to you?" He raked his hand across his melting face, dragging gobs of smeared, psychedelically-colored grease paint up into his hair.
He wasn't melting, Sam realized suddenly. He was . . . .
"Were you . . . crying?"
The clown drew in a long, shuddering breath. "Of course I'm crying! You hate me!" He let out another sobbing wail. "It's bad enough when little kids do it. And they do it allll the time. I bounce out and give them my big, happy, HI! face." (He demonstrated his big, happy HI! face and Sam tried to press himself through the wooden wall of the staircase and reached for a gun he wasn't carrying.) "And what do they do? They scream! They cry! They run and hide and sometimes they throw up on me. But I tell myself it's okay. They're just little kids. They don't know any better. I'm bigger than they are and they're bound to be a little scared of me." He paused for breath and gave Sam a hurt, accusing glare. "But you're nine feet tall and you're still scared of me and IT'S NOT FAAAAIIIIRRR!"
It was a human, Sam realized. Not a monster. Just a - probably psychotic - human in bad makeup and weird clothes. Damn. That means I can't gank him. Probably.
"Look," Sam tried reasonably, "I don't hate you."
"Can I have a hug?"
"NO! Stay back!"
"You see? You do hate me! And you salted me! I'm having a nervous breakdown and you salted me!"
"I . . . can't explain that. But, look, it's nothing personal, okay?"
"Nothing personal? Nothing personal?! How can it be nothing personal? You hate me!"
Sam opened his mouth, casting about for something to say that was soothing and reassuring. Something that would defuse the situation. What came out was, "is that your real hair?"
**SPN**SPN**SPN**
"Hello?"
"Dean?"
"Cas? What's wrong?"
"Dean, what are the symptoms for the bubonic plague?"
Dean paused a moment before answering. "Are you sick?"
"I believe I may be," Cas admitted. "My stomach feels too tight and it's making odd noises. This is extremely unpleasant."
"What rides have you been on?"
"I have not ridden any of the rides."
"Okay, then. What have you eaten?"
"Nothing untoward."
"Be more specific."
"Well, I did eat some cotton candy. But it's not really cotton. It's only spun sugar. I got some for you and Sam, too. It doesn't come in beer flavor, I'm afraid, so I got you blueberry pie."
It took Dean a long moment to respond. When he did, Cas could hear the suppressed amusement in his voice, and the undercurrent of concern. "Thanks. That's, uh, real kind. So, anything else? Just cotton candy?"
"Nothing unusual."
"Details, Cas. Details!"
Cas gave him the details. ". . . and three corn dogs and an order of nachos."
"Geez! You ate all that?"
"It's all variations on things I've eaten before," Cas protested. "I don't understand why it should make me ill."
"You ate too much, Cas. It's like," there was a brief silence over the phone while Dean gathered his thoughts. "It's like a couple of weeks ago when you broke the food processor, remember?"
"I told you I was sorry," Cas said, a hint of rebuke in his voice.
"Yeah, yeah. I know. That's not the point. The point is, you remember what you did? You stuffed a whole, big chunk of ham in it, completely filled it and then turned it on. There was too much in it for it to process and it burned out the motor trying. That's what you've done to your body now. You've stuffed too much food in it all at once and now you feel sick because it's having trouble processing it."
Cas felt himself fill with horror and couldn't speak. Dean, fortunately, read into his silence.
"No one's going to have to take you apart and rebuild you," he said. "You're going to be fine. You just need to rest and take it easy for a bit. Give your body time to deal with all the food you shoved into it. Try going to the restroom, that might help."
"The restroom! Of course! I should have thought of that! Should I attempt to urinate or defecate?"
(A woman on the next bench over gave the former angel a very odd look.)
"Gah! Don't talk about it!" Dean squawked. "Either. Both. Whatever. Just do it. Don't talk about it. Just . . . don't talk about it!"
"Very well," Cas said, a bit truculently. "It's just that I've never been ill before. I thought you might want to share the experience with me."
He could practically hear Dean grinding his teeth over the phone. "Cas, you're talking about going to the bathroom. That is not something you share. Ever. If you need help, I will stand outside and throw you rolls of toilet paper. That's as close as I come." He sighed. "Where are you?"
"I'm in the food court at the end of Funnybone Lane."
"Okay, well, I'm just about to board the Bone Shaker. You're only about a hundred yards from the exit, so I should be there in five minutes or so. If you're in the toilet when I get there, I'll wait for you outside, okay?"
"You can come in if you want to."
"I don't!"
**SPN**SPN**SPN**
Dean turned his phone off, tucked it securely into his pocket and glanced around. The elderly couple standing at the head of the next queue were giving him an odd look.
"My, uh, friend," he said, "grew up in one of those weirdo cults. Just recently got away from them. He's, uh, never been out in public before. Having a little trouble with his social skills." By the time he'd finished speaking they were nodding understandingly. Dean shrugged to himself. Whatever story worked, he guessed.
The train pulled to a stop in front of them and there was a short wait while the last bunch of riders climbed out on the opposite platform and drifted away. When they were all gone and the platform was empty, the ride workers closed and latched the bars on the exit side and opened the bars on the entrance side.
For the third time that morning, Dean climbed into a little metal death trap and fought down three separate phobias. There was a fear of being restrained that he had earned the hard way during his time in hell and the claustrophobia that came from waking up in your own coffin, four months in the grave, plus a fear of not being in control that had only worsened, oddly enough, after his dad died and left him with no one to give him orders.
One of the attendants stopped by his car, closed the bar down over his lap and locked it into place, trapping him on the ride until someone released him. Dean forced himself to take deep breaths and not hyperventilate.
A familiar voice came over the loudspeaker. Dean snapped his head around, seeking out the podium. What the hell? Is he following me?
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Skeleton Harbor Amusement Park's premier attraction - The Bone Shaker!" The kid looked up, caught sight of Dean, faltered for a second and then started talking really fast. "It's a good ride! A really good ride! Safe! And, uh, fun! Yeah! It's lotsa fun. You'll love it! I promise! And, um, I wasn't gonna say anything about old people shouldn't ride it 'cause of osteoporosis and it really doesn't shake your bones. That's just, y'know, a name. A . . . a . . . a . . . motif! That's it! It's just a motif, because of the whole Skeleton Harbor thing. And it's high! Yeah! Highest . . . uh . . . highest ride in the park. The third hill is. You can see, like, a long, long ways away. And . . . and . . . " he stuttered to a halt and looked around. Everyone in the boarding shed was staring at him. He flushed bright red. "And, um, everyone have a good ride," he finished lamely.
Dean caught his eye, lowered his chin and gave the kid a look. The kid flinched, closed his eyes, and hit a button on the podium. The train began to move.
The long, slow, rattling climb up the first hill was the worst, Dean thought. He gripped the bar in front of him in a death grip and desperately hummed Ramble On under his breath while his stomach tried to crawl out his spine and go back to the Impala. When they finally reached the top there was a pause that lasted a second and an eternity and then they were whipping forward and down and around. The world was spinning past in a dizzy blur. Everyone around him was screaming and, just for a moment, he was back in hell, surrounded by the cries of demons and the wailing of damned souls. They went through a triple-loop inversion, around a curve, up and down the second hill and then the pace of the ride slowed again as they got to another lift, carrying them up the long, steep slope to the top of the third hill and the highest point in the park.
They reached the top and hung there for a long moment. Then they hung there some more. Then they continued to hang there. From Dean's vantage point in the lead car, he couldn't see the track beneath him, only thin air and the long, long view out over the park and across the sea to the distant horizon.
"Is it supposed to do this?" someone behind him asked.
The old lady who'd been next to him in the line answered uncertainly. "Maybe they do this so we have time to take in the view. Like that boy was talking about. Maybe?"
"This isn't right!" That was the punk kid from the Timber Rattler. Now he was the one who sounded scared. "This isn't right! It doesn't do this. I've ridden this ride a thousand times. It doesn't do this."
Somewhere in the back of the train a girl started crying.
"I think the coaster's broken," the punk continued. "I think we're stuck."
**SPN**SPN**SPN**
"I can't take it anymore!" the clown sobbed. "I might as well be dead!" He pushed past Sam and ran off up the crooked stairs.
"Wait!" Sam called out. "What are you thinking? Hey, come back here!" With a growl of frustration, he took off after the guy.
It was the strangest pursuit he'd ever been part of. He chased the sobbing clown through the hall of mirrors, down a spinning tunnel, through a trap door, down a slide, up a slanting, spiral escalator, through a maze and finally up a ladder and out another trap door that led to the roof. He found his quarry sitting at the very edge of the roof. The building sat right at the edge of the cliff here, and the clown was staring down, down, a hell of a long ways down to the tide curling in over jagged rocks at the base of the cliff.
"Stay back!" the clown warned. "I'll jump! I will. I'll do it. I know you don't believe me. Nobody ever takes me seriously."
"Well . . . you are a clown. Look, let's just talk about this, okay? I'm sure we can find you some other options." Sam wasn't about to stand back and let the clown just kill himself. Partly that was out of kindness and a sense of duty to his fellow man and partly it was due to a sneaking sense of guilt at having been the one to tip the (obviously unstable) individual the rest of the way out of the sane canoe. Mostly, though, it was because of his experience as a hunter.
This guy was prime vengeful spirit material. No way in hell was Sam going to allow for the creation of a vengeful clown spirit.
He settled himself as close as he felt he could safely get, arranged his features into a mask of concern and compassion, and resolutely ignored the little voice in his head that was screaming push it off! Push it off!
* Kudos to SquirlK for figuring out what was going on with the clown. ;)