Thanks to Wolfschild and K. Hanna Korossy for looking over this.

Thanks to my reviewers, you make it worth my time.

Here we go; the chapter that begins the story proper. I hope that you enjoy it.

--Kohadril

Chapter 3: Onset

The tiny church buzzed with noise in the warm light of the Sunday morning. So many filled the cherry pews that nearly a third were forced to kneel or crouch in the aisles. There came a knocking sound from the front of the room, and there was silence.

The preacher smiled inwardly at the crowd before him as he rapped his knuckles against the pulpit. Not since the Great Depression had sermons been delivered from this pulpit before standing room only audiences.

"You are afraid, my friends," the pastor intoned. His voice was the powerful baritone of an orator, and his subjects looked on as if spellbound. "You have reason to be."

He looked around the room, not for anything other than effect.

"It seems to me that I am seeing many of you for the first time," he said, looking down at the pulpit to pull an ancient King James from a lower shelf. "And most of the rest of you are here only for the second time, this week."

He brought the book down hard upon the yellow pine of the dais, and dozens recoiled in fright at the resounding clap.

"In sports, we speak of fair-weather fans. Those who follow their team only when they're winning. We look down upon such people." His glare was icy and hard. "You, all of you, are a bad-weather flock."

"Yes, sister. Yes, brother. I speak even of those of you who have been in here every Sunday since the day you were born. Because for the first time, you donate what you legitimately can, rather than what assuages your guilt. For the first time, you ask me for my counsel about matters of the heart, matters of moral right, even on days other than the Sabbath. This week, for the first time, you have all arrived early and will no doubt stay as late as I ask you to." He built momentum like a master, each sentence compounding judgment and shame.

"For the FIRST time, sisters and brothers, I have your FULL and UNDIVIDED ATTENTION!" he fairly shouted.

Women wept. Children trembled.

"You are afraid, my friends," he repeated. "And you have every reason to be."

Dean had let Sam accompany him to the public library for two reasons: first, Dean was pretty sure there wasn't anything there that could trigger a vision; second, something was wrong with Sam and Dean didn't want to leave him alone.

The younger man was sitting at the far end of the low table, almost comically hunched over, their journals and several local history texts spread out in front of him. Dean had accumulated a similar pile on his end, but he couldn't concentrate.

Sam didn't think Dean got it, but recently he had started to. He had figured out some things about dealing with Sam over the last year. He understood enough to know that he'd made a mistake this morning, when he'd tried to boost Sam's spirits with empty praise. He'd seen Sam's eyes shift, and knew Sam had noticed. He'd braced for the bitching-out he knew he'd earned, but it hadn't happened. Sam had just sat there and taken it.

So yeah, something was fucking wrong.

He'd barely said anything on the way over, and Dean hadn't wanted to push him. He knew his brother didn't like to be treated like a kid, and Dean had been doing that quite a lot lately. He figured it had been necessary with what was going on, but he also knew the dangers of going too far.

Still, Sam didn't look good. He wasn't staring into space—his focus on the research was actually pretty intense—but he wasn't saying anything, or reacting to anything. Usually when Sam found something, he couldn't tell Dean fast enough. He'd get all excited and come bounding up to Dean like a puppy with a prize, like he had the previous morning when he'd told Dean about Kidney-Dude. It was honestly pretty cute. But today he wasn't saying anything. Dean hadn't seen a change in his expression, or intensity level, or anything, over a period of several minutes. Sam hadn't even looked up; if he had, he might have noticed how closely Dean was watching him.

"Dude, are you going to help me figure this out? Or are you going to stare at me all day?" Sam asked, mildly annoyed.

Shit. Okay, so whatever was wrong with Sam wasn't affecting his peripheral vision. "You're the research savant. I'm too pretty for this work," Dean replied, grinning, trying to provoke a smile.

"Savant?"

"Too much?"

"No, I just didn't think you knew that word," Sam replied flatly, his eyes never leaving his work.

Dean sighed in frustration. "Look, Sam, you're writing tons of stuff down. Do you have something you'd like to share with the rest of the class?"

Sam looked up at that, and Dean saw uncertainty and disquiet. It lasted a split-second before the disaffection returned.

Sam pushed their father's leather-bound journal over to Dean, open to one page in particular. Dean kept his eyes on his brother. Sam's eyes left Dean's for a moment, and there was another split-second where he wasn't in control. Then Sam gestured at the book. Dean picked it up and grudgingly took his eyes off Sam to inspect it.

"It doesn't fit perfectly, but most of the general details are right," Sam began. "Phyraks are pseudo-demons that drive people to kill themselves. They can take all sorts of forms, but they can't actually touch or harm someone. They have limited powers of suggestion that are based on fear—the more afraid you are, the more power they have over you—and they stalk their prey for weeks before they make them kill themselves.

"So no one is going crazy, they're just being hunted by these Phyrak things," Dean concluded.

"There are a couple of inconsistencies. First, not everybody has killed themselves or even tried to." There was another momentary break; Sam was really having trouble keeping his shit together. "Second, Phyraks don't hunt together, and this is way too many crazy people for one of them."

"No, this is good, man. It explains almost everything," Dean replied, not to bolster Sam but because it genuinely made sense. "I was going to test the water, but this is way better than that."

Sam looked down again and this time it wasn't just for a second.

"It explains my visions too," Sam almost whispered. "If there's more than one, I think I can explain why."

Dean knew immediately what he was suggesting. "You think the Demon has something to do with this."

Sam nodded slowly. Dean searched for something he could say to persuade Sam he was wrong.

"Dad's journal says that these things serve powerful demons, and that sometimes a really powerful one will use them to drive people crazy so that they can be possessed easier. Which would also explain why not all of the victims have tried to kill themselves."

"No," Dean protested, not persuasively.

"It explains everything, Dean. I wouldn't be having visions if this wasn't somehow about him." In a flash, Sam's emotionless demeanor returned.

Dean, God help him, Dean wanted to punch his brother in the face, or yell at him, or even give him a hug, anything that would provoke some kind of serious reaction. He was just sitting there, not seething, not pacing, not even really brooding. Sam was a lot of things: sensitive, excitable, intense, annoying, but he wasn't cold. Not ever. He didn't deal with shit this way, by shutting down. Sam dealt with his feelings by facing them head on; Dean had only seen him fail to do so when Jessica had died. This couldn't possibly be that bad, right?

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Sam fidgeting and heard a gasp, and that brought his attention back to his brother just in time to see him collapse to the floor.

Sam's mind screamed at him in protest—it was not meant to take this kind of strain. The images that came were fuzzy at first, an outside view of a street sign and a house, a view of a woman coming home from grocery shopping. They came out of order and were initially nonsensical. Then they started to sort and align.

He was dimly aware that his brother was holding on to him, but he was more out of it than was usual for a vision. Sam tried to speak, and hoped that Dean could hear him.

"17994 Melnore Drive." He couldn't understand Dean's response; it seemed like it was coming from miles away.

The woman set her groceries on the countertop and started to put them away. It appeared she lived alone, but she was otherwise unlike the first victim.

Another flash, and suddenly, illogically, time had skipped ahead. The light in the room had changed and the woman was tearing through her house as though chased. Sam didn't see anything following her.

She ran up the stairs—why did people run up stairs?—and tried to hide in her bedroom. She locked the door and backed away, sobbing intermittently as though reacting to something Sam couldn't see or hear. She backed herself up to the bedroom window.

Finally, she broke. She shattered the window with a lamp and climbed out, cutting herself viciously on some of the remaining glass. She stumbled out onto the roof, and Sam saw it coming.

She tripped and fell, head first, onto the pavement beneath.

"God is love, friends and neighbors," quoth the pastor. "But love is not blind."

He played upon their insecurities and fears, played upon their guilt, because the faithful knew there was no forgiveness without remonstrance.

"Love is not blind and neither is the Lord," he seethed. "He has seen our wickedness, seen the evil we have let befall our town, and we have fallen from His graces.

"Could it possibly be clearer? Need you it said any louder? God is ANGRY with us! And so He punishes us with this plague of madness, which medicine can neither explain nor treat.

"I have chastised you all for your lack of faith, and let me add that I do not spare myself. Were I such a man as God asks me to be, as God has shown me how to be, you would never have strayed in the first place. But you and I…we are not the ones most deserving of scorn.

"Some of you here have family members who have been afflicted, and my heart goes out to you. But I do not grieve most deeply for you, or even for the stricken. For we are not the worst off.

"No, my friends. My greatest condemnation goes to those who are not here yet. Those who have seen God's fury and remain in their homes on His day. Those who spend their Sundays with the mewling mainstream Methodists four blocks from here, whose pretension to faith is so absurd, so utterly alien to God that they may as well be heathens or atheists.

"And it is also for them I weep, for when the Lord reaches down to heal the faithful, His hand will not linger a moment upon them. He sees the marks upon our houses, as He did in the days of old when He visited the plagues upon Egypt. Only this time it is those He touches who will be spared, and the passed-over who will suffer."

They cried and prayed, shook beneath the weight of God's Word, caught up in the awful tide of terror and penitence. The tide of God's Grace. The preacher breathed deeply, then slowly exhaled.

"God is love, but love demands respect. Love demands faith. Love demands obedience and He has yours. You have paid, and with your blood and tears you are baptized again…You are forgiven, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, for the sins that have brought His judgment upon us. And this, THIS you shall not doubt, even despite your imperfect faith. For He has given me the power to prove to you, to all of you in this room and to the pitiable wretches without, that His punishment is His love, made manifest. For it is through His punishment that He calls us back to Him. And through His love that we shall find relief." He positively shook with his passion, and the crowd shared it, reveled in it, rejoiced in it.

"Bring before me a man that God has stricken!" he bellowed. "For by my hand, and by God's love, he SHALL be HEALED!"

There were in the car, on the way to the address Sam had picked up.

"You're saying you didn't see it."

"Yeah, I wasn't seeing the thing from her perspective this time. Apparently it was only visible to her." Sam's mind was going a mile a minute. This was a break, right? They were close to finding out what was going on.

"Wait, this doesn't make sense. I thought you said these things usually take a long time to scare their prey enough to get them to kill themselves," Dean prodded.

"No," Sam spat, suddenly angry, before he considered it and realized Dean was right. "Well, yeah. But I don't know how much time passed. It was all scattered and weird."

Nothing else makes sense.

"Nothing else makes sense," Sam said, though he wasn't certain why.

Sam felt something brush across his neck and he swatted at it.

"You all right there, Sam?"

"Fine, just a fly or something," Sam said, scratching absently. Dean eyed him suspiciously. "It's nothing, all right? Keep your eyes on the road so you don't get us both killed," Sam snarled. Dean looked miffed and turned back to the road.

This thing, it was—had to be—connected to him. To the Demon. To everything. This could be it; could be the key to everything. To his visions, to his "destiny." Why the hell wasn't Dean more excited?

God, it felt like something was crawling on him.

Look.

Something out the side window caught his eye; a field. Knee-high grass and everything.

"Dean! Stop the car," Sam demanded.

"What the fuck is it now, Sam? What is up with you?"

"Just stop the goddamn car!"

"Fine." Dean hit the brakes, hard, jerking Sam forward against the seatbelt. Sam barely noticed. He stumbled out of the car and ran into the field. Dean called after him, "Sam! What the hell are you doing?"

Sam dropped to his knees in the grass, in front of the stone altar. There was no blood on it, but still, he'd found it. The field from his dreams.

Dean walked up to him, slowly, carefully, and Sam was dimly aware that he looked worried. Sam stood and turned to his brother with a broad smile.

"Sam, what is going on here?"

"This is it, Dean! This is the field!"

"The one you dreamed about?"

Sam looked around and was suddenly less certain. There were trees. There hadn't been trees, had there? No. Or maybe…well, the altar was here at least.

"Yeah," Sam said. Whatever had been crawling on his neck was now positively fucking buried in there, so he scratched harder. Dean still looked unconvinced, so Sam gestured at the pile of stones. "This is the altar."

"Sam…" Dean said cautiously, moving in towards him. "You're bleeding."

No.

There was a sudden flash of white-hot rage, a momentary sense that his space was being invaded. Sam tensed and chambered a punch. Dean saw it and brought his hands up defensively.

Wait…he didn't want to hit his brother. This wasn't right. The sky was wrong and the trees—maybe this wasn't the field. But the altar… And his neck was driving him crazy. He dug in deeper.

"Stop that, Sammy," Dean said quietly but not without authority. He stepped in closer, but Sam couldn't keep his mind off the stones.

It's here. Something. It's right here.

Sam turned back to the altar and dropped down in front of it, touching it where he'd touched it in his dream. The blood was there, he could see it, and that had to settle the question, didn't it?

Why couldn't he get this goddamn thing off his neck?

Sam felt a hand on his left wrist and…no! He jerked away and spun to face his attacker. His eyes found Dean's and he stopped. Dean. Right. Dean was here. His brother crouched in front of him, and there was pain there, a sorrowful earnestness.

"Come on, man," Dean said, low and stern, putting a gentler hand on Sam's side. Sam stilled, almost as if by instinct. Dean again reached for his wrist.

Dean pulled Sam's hand away from his neck and out in front of them. Sam's fingers were practically covered in blood. That was bizarre. He didn't remember getting hurt.

"How did that happen?" Sam asked blankly.

Dean looked away for a moment, and Sam heard that one uneven breath, the little hitch that always let him know that Dean was really hurting. And as Dean turned back to him, it set in. He figured out what Dean was thinking.

"No, Dean. The altar is right there. The bloody symbols…" He started to turn back toward it but Dean stopped him. Sam felt caught. Hurt and humiliated that his brother didn't believe him. And terrified that, more and more, he didn't believe himself.

"Sam, that's just a pile of rocks. There's nothing here."

Though Sam trusted himself, trusted his mind, he knew—knew—that his brother wouldn't lie to him about something like this. He trusted that knowledge more than his own senses. Things started to clarify, and the realization was nauseating. The trees were wrong. The blood was gone, and the rocks? They were just big pieces of basalt in the middle of a field. They weren't even arranged like an altar.

And his neck hurt. Badly.

"Dean," Sam started carefully, not sure if he really wanted to ask this question. "What's happening to me?"

Dean walked him back to the road and Sam slumped down on the pavement, back against the car. Dean grabbed the first aid kit and cleaned and bandaged Sam's neck. Sam just sat there, basically catatonic. When Dean was done, he crouched in front of his brother.

"Sam," Dean said. Sam didn't respond. "Sam, look at me."

Sam didn't turn his head, but his eyes went to Dean's.

"We're going to have to go to the hospital."

Sam looked down and nodded silently. Defeatedly.

Dean put a hand on his shoulder. Sam just sat there, staring at the ground. He didn't fight it. He didn't scream or beg. He didn't cry. Dean would have felt better if he had.

"You're going to be okay, kid," Dean said, wishing there was anything he could say that would make Sam believe it.