Chapter 5
The shotgun blast was deafening, and the second the shards of salt collided with the ghost, it vanished, leaving Dean staring down at a scared teenage boy. The silence that settled over the room in the wake of the gunfire was deafening.
After a moment, Susan pushed roughly past Dean and pulled Robby bodily off the floor, clutching him to her. Dean noticed the way her hands immediately began stroking her son's hair, lovingly and protectively, and he had to shove down the still-fresh memories of a world that didn't really exist.
"What the hell was that?" Robby asked, voice hushed and shaking, and Dean looked at him sharply. He debated with himself, but could see no other option; they had witnessed too much to brush it off now.
"Ghost," Dean said promptly. "Spirit, specter; whatever you wanna call it."
Susan detached herself from her son and took a step forward so that she stood in front of him. "What are you talking about?" She asked, her voice hard but her eyes wide inside her pale face. "There's no such thing."
"How else do you explain it, then?" Dean asked, waving his hand at the spot where the ghost had been just seconds previously. "I'd give you another explanation if I could."
"But, what…" She looked and sounded afraid now, all false bravado draining from her. "Why my son?" She cried, reaching for him again. "Why's it after my son?"
"Because a long time ago your husband killed someone," Dean said bluntly. Sam would probably have used more tact, but Dean didn't have the patience for it. "And that somebody stuck around."
"What are you talking about?" Susan said again, disbelief back on her face and accompanied by anger. "What are you doing here, anyway? I think you lied; my son never stole your wallet. Get out of my house!"
Dean shook his head and took a step forward; Susan moved closer to Robby. "Look, I get that this is hard to swallow, but we don't have time for the Seven Stages of Acceptance right now, okay? You're going to have to trust me."
"Why should I?" She responded defiantly, chin tilting upward. Dean wondered why everyone always had to ask him that.
"Because if not, your son could die."
This, more than anything, seemed to reach her. She sucked in a sharp, pained breath and moved her shaking hand through her hair in a jerky, anxious motion. Then she turned toward Robby and stared at him for a moment; Dean took the time to do the same. He had removed most of his piercings and the fear on his face made him seem younger, more vulnerable than Dean had seen him thus far.
"Why?" She asked again, turning her attention back to Dean.
"It's a complicated story," Dean said, waving her off as he began to move around the room. He stopped at a plastic rendering of a skull with two long, slender swords shoved through the cranium. The two blades crisscrossed and emerged on opposite sides to form an X. Dean wondered if this was the rendition the ghost had been planning on using. He shook his head and took a few steps forward, still looking around.
"What are you doing?" Susan asked, her voice shaky but gaining strength.
"Research," Dean replied, turning back toward the pair. "Stay here for a minute."
"Wait, where are you going?" Susan questioned as he moved toward the door, a look of confusion flitting across her face.
"For protection," Dean replied, a little impatiently. "That thing'll be back, and it'll want Robby."
He left the room, moving as quickly as he could in case the ghost decided to make his reappearance during Dean's temporary absence. He went outside and grabbed the bag he'd left by the doorstep. Then he stepped through the doorway again headed upstairs.
Susan had her head bent close to Robby's and was talking hurriedly in a low voice. Dean cleared his throat and the two looked up at him. He pulled out the canister of salt.
"What's that for?" Robby asked, the first time he'd spoken since he'd posed the question about the ghost.
"Wards off spirits," Dean replied, lifting the tab and walking towards the two in the center of the room. "Hold still."
Robby looked confused, but complied, and Dean began tracing a ring of salt around the place where he stood. He finished and stood upright again, examining the circle for signs of broken links.
"As long as you stay in this, you'll be okay. It won't be able to cross the line," Dean explained carefully, gesturing toward the salt.
"But what will you do to get rid of it?" Robby asked, shaking himself from his mother's grasp as he did so.
"Salt and burn the bones," Dean replied promptly, figuring he might as well go all the way with it.
"So why aren't you doing that?"
"You remember the guy you rammed into earlier today at the cemetery, right?" Dean asked, eyebrow raised at the kid's suddenly insolent tone. "He's working on it."
Robby smirked suddenly, a mocking and almost cruel twisting of his lips, and Dean found himself taking a disliking him. "Are you two—?"
"Brothers," Dean interrupted, glaring fiercely. "We're brothers."
"Sure."
"Dude, you want me to leave?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. "'Cause if I drop this right now, you'll be stuck sitting in that circle forever." Or until the end of the month, but why split hairs?
"Robert, stop it right now," Susan said, her voice foreboding and superior; clearly she was a mother who'd had to deal with rebelliousness before. Robby glanced at her, impertinence shining on his face, but he didn't say anything else. "He's not a bad kid," Susan continued, shooting her son another stern look. "But since his father…. Well, it hasn't been easy for him."
"Yeah," Dean said after a moment, glancing at Robby. "I get that."
"Why, did your dad die, too? Did he kill himself when you were a kid?" The coarse, mocking way he posed the question didn't hide the pain underneath it.
"No," Dean replied, as mildly as he could manage. "My dad died to save me. And I was an ass about it for awhile, too."
Robby looked slightly taken aback. After a few moments' ringing silence he said, "That kinda sucks."
Dean shrugged and started draining the salt around the edges of the room. "As long as we can wait—,"
The lights began to flicker and a chill crept into the room, turning Dean's breath into fog. He tensed and raised his shotgun. Robby was safe in the ring of salt, but Dean hadn't managed to block off the entire room.
Then he was thrown off his feet and hurled into the wall on the opposite side of the room. He fell to the ground with a crash and a tangle of limbs, shotgun clattering to the floor.
A man, ghostly pale and wearing tattered clothing materialized in the center of the room. Were it not for the dim, milky cast of his eyes and the blurred lines around the edges that suggested he was not quite real, he would have seemed alive.
"Forty years," He croaked, his voice cracked and broken as if it hadn't been used in decades. "Forty years I lived in that house, dealing with hooligans bent on scaring the wits out of everyone. Forty years."
"Alright, we get it," Dean said gruffly, still recovering from colliding headfirst into the wall. He glanced to where the gun sat, just out of reach. The ghost rounded on him, looking almost surprised.
"Every year!" The ghost's voice was deafening. "Every year I had to deal with this godforsaken excuse for a holiday! And then those kids showed up and they killed me! They surrounded and my heart—my heart exploded…" His voice faded into cracked nothingness at the memory of the fatal heart attack, and there was a moment of silence. Then the spirit faced Robby again.
"And you!" He shouted, deluded rage flickering through his broken syllables. "You put up these things, these horrid decorations like it's acceptable to mock the dead! But I'll have my revenge. I've had it once—and again and again…" The madness of his soul was revealed then, the way his being had been twisted and warped into something heartless after years and years of obsessed fury.
The ghost raised its gnarled, insipid hand and a pair of swords began to fashion themselves midair, hanging weightlessly as if they were some gruesome illusion. At that moment, the window near Dean sprang open, and a sudden breeze whirled the air—the grains of salt began to quake and scatter. Dean realized the spirit's intent and lunged for the shotgun; the newly created blades pointed in his direction, but he quickly loaded and pulled the trigger.
Again the ghost disappeared in a swirl of dust and shrieks, leaving the room silent once more.
"Dammit, Sammy," Dean grumbled, eyes still scanning for signs of reappearance. "Hurry up."
Sam jammed the shovel into the ground, stomped hard on the edge, and then lifted the dirt away. He paused to wipe the sweat beading his brow, his chest rising and falling at an accelerated rate. This digging-up-the-body thing was a little harder solo.
He shrugged that thought off, knowing that it would lead to other, much less pleasant ideas, and shoved the spade into the ground once more. He was about a third of the way there—not bad work in fifteen minutes—but he had no idea what was going on at Dean's end and it didn't feel fast enough.
He continued with his repetitive task for another fifteen minutes or so, making a decent dent in the once-smooth ground. He kept a wary eye out for any onlookers, because digging up a grave in the dead of night was a hard thing to explain. The wind blew through the trees as he worked, cooling his fevered skin a little. It would have been almost peaceful if he didn't feel a steady tug of urgency with every clump of dirt.
As he jammed the point of the shovel into the ground again, his cell phone began to vibrate. Momentarily stalling in his work, he pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open.
"Dude, you about done?" Dean asked curtly.
"Still digging," Sam replied, holding to phone to his ear with his shoulder and beginning to work again. "Things not going well over there?"
"Things been here twice in the last thirty minutes and the kid—," A shout cut through Dean's words and Sam heard a muffled scuffle break out on the other end. After a few more yells and the distinctive blast of Dean's shotgun, Dean returned to the phone. "Make that three. Man, we gotta salt and burn this son of a bitch. I bet the neighbor's are already freaking out. That's the third shot so far."
Sam paused and shifted nervously, disliking that idea.
"Don't worry, I'll handle it," Dean broke into his thoughts, and Sam shook his head even though he knew Dean couldn't see it. "Just get it done, alright?"
"I'm trying, Dean," Sam grunted.
"Try a little harder," Dean replied. A retort rested on his lips, but Sam could hear the anxiousness in Dean's voice and he decided not to push.
"Yeah, alright," He said instead. Then he flipped the phone closed and gripped the shovel more firmly in his hands.
"Why won't it just give up?" Robby asked, his voice trembling a little despite his valiant attempt to muster up some anger.
"Because it doesn't think like that," Dean replied as he replaced the salt-lines again. He glanced at the kid and found him looking both mystified and defiant. Dean resisted the urge to sigh. "Ghosts stay behind for a reason, and they can't just let go of that reason. Well, I guess they can, but most of them don't."
There had been exceptions to the rule, but Dean had only seen a handful.
"So, it really exists, doesn't it?" Robby asked faintly, and all trace of the obstinate kid he'd been an hour ago was gone.
"Unfortunately, yeah." Dena shifted uncomfortably; disillusioning people was never an enjoyable task, but Dean really hated ripping that innocence away from the young.
Then again, Robby's father had apparently killed himself when Robby was nine. It had probably been the ghost's work, but the depression and alcoholism weren't, at least not directly, and Robby had had to live with all of that for a long time. Maybe he hadn't had that innocence to begin with.
"But once you get rid of this thing, once you… salt the bones and burn them and everything, it'll be over?" There was hope in his tone, and it was strange to hear. Hope wasn't something they ran across very often.
"Yeah, it'll be over." Dean stayed quiet after that, wanting the conversation to end there.
"But there are other things, right? Things like this?"
Dean checked the number of rounds left in his shotgun and didn't answer. If Dean told the truth, the kid would probably flip out. If Dean lied, the kid would know he was lying and get angry—and then flip out.
"Yeah," Dean said finally, almost unwillingly. "There are other things out there."
Robby nodded slowly, as if he had already come to that conclusion himself. "What can I do to… to protect my mom and me?" He asked. He sounded determined, and Dean was impressed.
"Salt," Dean said promptly, holding up the canister. "Always have a lot of salt. Make trails of it around yours and your mom's rooms if you want. And don't go out late at night, that's never a good idea. If the lights flicker, know something's up. Just be careful, mainly. And don't piss people off."
"Is this what you do?" He asked, and suddenly his eyes had a strange light in them. "Go around finding these things? Hunting them?"
"Yeah," Dean said, slightly wary at Robby's look. "My brother and I, we—,"
"Do a lot of people do that? Can I?" His entire face was alight now, almost hungry.
Warning bells went off in Dean's head. "Hey, slow down. You really don't wanna—,"
"Why not?" Robby asked, standing suddenly from his cross-legged position on the floor in the center of the salt-ring. "You do it, don't you? That thing, it must have killed my dad! It makes sense; he didn't commit suicide at all! I want to get back at it, I want—,"
"Revenge?" Dean asked, his voice rising to battle with Robby's increasingly fevered tone. "It doesn't work like that. You think it'll make you feel better, but it won't. It never does. Trust me kid, you don't want this."
Robby looked slightly taken aback, his face losing a little bit of that twisted eagerness. "Why not? I don't want this, either." He gestured around his room and to the house beyond it. "Do you even know how hard it is, living in the same house that your father died in? In the same town, with the same people he knew? I hate it. I hate it more and more every day."
Dean was tempted to scoff at this new burst of teenage angst, but he knew that there was a much deeper issue here. And if he didn't find a way to shut this down now, Robby would end up living a life he would hate much more than his current one.
"You have a mother who loves you," Dean said carefully, gesturing to the door Susan had exited just minutes ago to answer the phone. "You have a home and people who know you. You have a family. Don't be so quick to throw it all away." He shook his head when Robby moved to interrupt. "Look, kid. I've got a car, a brother and my job. That's it. Without them, I got nothing. And I've been doing this a long time, so believe me when I say you don't want it." He glanced toward the doorway again. "Just keep yourself and your mom safe. Be aware. But don't go looking for trouble."
Robby stared at him silently, face slack and eyes blank. Dean found the expression kind of amusing; Sam pulled the same one from time to time. "Who was it?" Robby asked, taking Dean by surprise.
"What?"
"You said revenge doesn't help. You sounded like you knew." He continued looking at Dean and damn, he was a sharp kid. "Who died?"
Dean shuffled through the bag of supplies at his feet, checking the amount of salt and extra rounds for his shotgun. Without pausing or looking up he said, "My mom."
And dad, eventually. And brother. Vengeance and darkness had touched every part of his life at some point.
A knocking sound echoed up the stairs, and a moment later Susan appeared at the door, looking haggard. "I tried to explain," She panted, pointed downstairs toward the phone she'd been using a few minutes before. "I tried to explain the gunshots, but not all of the neighbors called me and some of them,"
"What happened?" Dean asked, alert and slightly alarmed.
"There's a police car outside. They're at the door now."