Ghost Rider

Chapter Five: Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Author's note: First, I want to apologize profusely for the delay in getting this chapter done! All I can say is that real life caught me and I was too distracted to concentrate on anything else. (One thing that distracted me - I went to my first ever Highland Games! I have SO got to come up with a way to put Dean and Sam in kilts! :D) Thanks so much to everyone for the reviews, follows and favorites! :) I really appreciate you sticking with me on this one and I do believe the end is in sight. One, maybe two more chapters at the most.

Disclaimer: I am not plotting to take over the world. Only those portions of it which contain Dean Winchester.

Chapter Five: Shake, Rattle, and Roll

There were five cars in the train that was stalled at the top of the highest hill on the Bone Shaker. Dean was in the front car, the only one that had started over the top of the hill. Gravity was trying to pull him forward, the lap bar the only thing that was keeping him from plunging to his death. An elderly couple was in the car behind his. The third car held the twelve-year-old playing hooky that he'd met on the Timber Rattler and an awkward teenage girl wearing the same Latin club tee shirt as the two girls from the Dizzie Lizzie. The last two cars held a pair of overweight, middle-aged couples who were obviously together. The teenage girl and one of the middle-aged women were crying and the guy in the last car was milky-pale and looked like he was going to pass out any minute.

Two fire department search and rescue members were climbing up the back side of the hill with heavy coils of rope and lifting gear over their shoulders. The sky was beginning to darken as the storm moved in and Dean could see almost continuous streaks of lightning striking the surface of the sea.

The EMF reader in his pocket was flashing like crazy.

He sighed.

I am so screwed.

**SPN**SPN**SPN**

"What skeleton?" Sam demanded.

Bobo jerked guiltily and shied away. "Skeleton? What skeleton? I don't know anything about any skeleton!"

Sam advanced quickly on the clown, got him by the front of his costume and loomed over him menacingly. "You said, 'I bet this is all because of that skeleton. Nothing at this stupid park has gone right since they found that skeleton. I knew they should have reported it.' What skeleton?"

"I can't tell you," Bobo whined. "They said they'd fire anyone who breathed a word of it to anyone! I'll lose my job!"

"You're going to jump off the Fun House," Sam countered. "Dead men don't need jobs."

"But . . . you're gonna talk me out of it!"

"Talk you out of it? Talk you out of it? If my brother gets hurt because you wouldn't talk to me, I will pitch you over myself!"

"But . . . it's not like it even makes any difference! I was just being superstitious. What's a dead skeleton going to do?"

"Listen to me. Remember when I threw salt on you? It's because I thought you were the vengeful spirit of the killer clown who worked here back in the 1930's. Ghosts are real. Monsters are real. And, in the last two weeks, a vengeful spirit connected with this park has killed three people."

"Ghosts are real?" the clown stared. "And people think I'm mentally unstable! Why on earth should I believe that ghosts are real?"

Sam picked him up and shook him like a rag doll.

"Because I said so!"

"Okay! Right! That works for me!"

**SPN**SPN**SPN**

"Hello, Dean?"

"Yeah, Cas. How's it going down there?"

"The computer that operates this roller coaster is, as I'm given to understand it, 'fried'. Apparently, a lightning strike somewhere at a distance caused a surge in the power grid that fused the motherboard. I was not aware that computers had mothers, but this is what I am told."

"Well, you know what they say. If motherboard ain't happy, ain't no circuit happy."

"I was not aware that they said that. Who is they?"

Dean sighed. "Never mind. Oh, and don't tell Sam that I said that."

"Very well. At any rate, the fire department is endeavoring to rescue you and I believe Chad is sufficiently cowed. I cannot think of anything else that I can do to help."

"Actually, I do have another job for you, if you're up for it." Dean looked back over at the Fun House, where a tall, familiar figure was engaged in a lopsided wrestling match with a smaller figure.

"Of course. What do you need me to do?"

"Go up on the roof of the Fun House and help Sam save the suicidal clown."

Cas agreed and they both hung up. Dean gazed down at his phone for a moment before tucking it away. And there's a string of words I never thought I'd put together in a sentence.

Dean's position on the roller coaster was completely indefensible. He ran through, in his head, all the things that could go wrong if he freed himself from his car and tried to climb back up to a more stable perch on the top of the train. He could fall to his death, of course. To get out of the car he'd have to unlock the lap bar that was the only thing holding him up. Doing that without taking a fatal plunge would be tricky, to say the least. He could get thrown off or crushed under or between the cars if they started moving again while he was unsecured. Or, he could get trapped and be struck by lightning before the fire department could free him and get him down.

On the other hand, the spirit was coming and, where he was, he had no way to defend either himself or any of the other people on this ride. Because he was Dean Winchester and danger to others always won out over danger to himself, he set his jaw and started looking for a way to free himself without doing a long pavement swan dive.

**SPN**SPN**SPN**

"Why is this corridor rotating?" Cas asked the empty air. As an angel, when faced with a conundrum, he could simply think his question. Other angels would hear his thoughts and often one or more of them would know the answer. He felt another small pang of loss every time he realized that didn't work anymore.

He considered the matter on his own. "This makes no sense," he decided. "The purpose of a corridor is to enable one to pass from one location to another. Having the corridor rotate makes this more difficult . . . so there must be a reason for that difficulty." He thought about it. "The corridor is cylindrical. A difficult passage through a cylindrical opening . . . could be a metaphor for childbirth?"

He fortified himself with another peppermint hard candy. His stomach was still a touch delicate and the spinning motion of the space ahead of him was exacerbating that delicacy. Then he gauged his timing and hurried through, staggering as he went and balancing himself on the walls as best he could. At the other end, he emerged into a wide space filled with a dizzying array of distorted mirrors. A thousand Castiels reflected back at him and moved as he moved.

They were short and tall and fat and thin, grotesquely, fantastically distorted. He knew there had to be a path through them, but the way was anything but clear.

A commentary on human potential at the time of birth, he thought. So many paths to choose, so many possible outcomes. He moved and the reflections moved with him, shifting and changing. No way of knowing the right way. There is nothing one can do but experiment, and every move you make alters your perceptions. He nodded, impressed.

This is very deep.

**SPN**SPN**SPN**

"I wasn't there! I didn't see it! I don't really know anything!"

Sam looked from the clown in his fists to the broken roller coaster to the dark line of approaching thunderheads. "Tell me what you do know," he growled, "or, so help me God, I will pound you into Silly Putty!"

Bobo whimpered. Sam shook him.

"I heard that, when they were digging out the foundations for the new roller coaster, they found a skeleton in an unmarked grave. You're supposed to report anything like that, and then you have to suspend your operations in that area and wait while they investigate it. And if they find more bodies or, like, old Indian artifacts or anything, then you have to wait some more while state archaeologists do a site evaluation and they contact the tribe and then it's nothing but delays and fees and jumping through hoops for the bureaucrats. Well, the owner didn't want to deal with all that hassle so, instead of turning it in, he swore everyone to secrecy and hid the bones."

"Hid them where?"

"I don't know! I swear! But . . . ."

"But?"

"Well, there is a rumor going around now. You know how there's plastic skeletons all over the park? They say that one of them isn't plastic anymore."

**SPN**SPN**SPN**

There was a metal bar running along the top of the back of Dean's seat, but it was too close to the seat back for him to get more than a hand grip on it. He slid his heavy, leather belt off, looped it around the bar and fastened the buckle, then shoved his right arm through the loop and got a one-handed grip on the rail. Picking the lock on the lap bar, even with his left hand, took only a moment. The lap bar fell open, his butt slid out of the seat, and he was dangling by one arm from his belt.

The old lady in the car behind his screamed.

Ignoring her (and her husband's, "oh, my God!"), Dean reached up and got a grip on the bar with his left hand too. Then he pulled himself up, flipped his body over the back of the first car and came to rest balanced on the back of his car with his right foot on the seat of the second car, between the elderly couple. He leaned forward and grasped their lap bar, realizing only too late that his hand was mere millimeters from the woman's crotch, gave her his most charming smile, and wriggled around until he had both feet on their seat. Hooking his toes under their lap bar, he reached back and unfastened his belt, slipping it back through one belt loop and buckling it loosely.

"Excuse me! Coming through!"

Shifting his weight again, he climbed awkwardly between them and came to rest with his butt on the back of their car and his feet on the seat of the car behind them. The hooky-playing twelve-year-old was staring at him in awe (or possibly shock).

"Dude," Dean said, "who's scared now?"

"You're insane!"

"That too."

One of the firemen who was waiting down at the top of the ladder had a megaphone and he was shouting at Dean through it.

"SIR! PLEASE REMAIN STILL! WE WILL GET YOU DOWN! OUR FIREMEN ARE ALMOST TO YOU AND THEY WILL HOLY SHIT! WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD IS THAT?"

Dean got his belt free again and took a good grip on the end of it opposite the buckle. My kingdom for a salt gun, he thought.

Midway between the climbing firefighters and the stranded roller coaster train, the specter had appeared.