This one should've been a two man job.
The motel room sat in silence, save the random bark of a dog or maybe the passing rev of a car. The lamp on the bedside table was on even though no one was there, and the sheets of one bed were rumpled and clearly slept in while the second bed appeared untouched. The door sported a peephole and a list of local numbers; pizza delivery, chinese food, police department, and porn pay per view...
The sound of a rumbling car grew loud outside the room, and then cut off. A squeak of an un-oiled car door, and a slam, plus a curse. Uneven steps sounded, and ended with a thump against the door. A low groan accompanied the sound of keys in the room's lock.
Dean came nearly falling through the door, hissing at the sharp pain in his right left side. He let the door fall slowly shut behind him, stepping stuttered toward the bed, dropping his duffel and stripping his jacket and flannel as he went, a steady stream of darkened red drips following him there.
The poltergeist was a pissy little mother. No, really - the matriarch of the family, short and angry, and way past vengeful spirit into straight out flying knives and quaking beds territory.
"Always with the flying knives," Dean groaned, sitting on the bed closest to the door and gingerly feeling the slice to his side. It wasn't too serious - would take a whole lot of stitches, but I'll live, he thought dully.
He looked over his shoulder toward the bed behind, knowing it was empty, but just looking for it anyway. He sighed.
It was just stitches. No big deal. They'd suck, and he'd hate everything for the half hour it'd take to do them, but it wasn't like it was something he couldn't do.
Of course, that didn't mean it wasn't something he'd have preferred Sam to do for him. It felt stupid to care about it, but Dean had never really been alone to patch himself up like this before. Sure, there'd been times when he'd had to sow himself up, but even then Sam was there in the room, or Dad was there. Even in unconsciousness, it was easier than them being gone. With one or both of them there, it still sucked but it was easier. Everything had been so much easier when Sam was there, it had been so so much easier than...
this.
Dean stared blankly at his feet for another minute, then forced himself up and headed to the bathroom to get towels, reaching into his bag and popping a pill en route, trying to remember where he'd put the suture kit.
The dishes in the sink were covered in bubbles, and Bobby was soaked to the elbow in water and dish soap, his sleeves rolled and the stereo in the corner playing Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree. He sang along without really thinking about it, even thought some small part of his mind was cringing, knowing that if the boys ever saw him doin' this, he'd never live it down. Even though it was a classic...and his wife had always loved it, so...
He washed dishes, more at peace than he'd been for a good while, singing and thinking 'bout the time he'd come home from visiting family in Oregon, and seen a hundred yellow ribbons tied on the porch beam. She'd done it just to remind him how much she loved him, she'd said...
"Bobby?"
"Yeah?" Bobby called back, still smiling at the thought.
Silence.
Then Bobby gasped, blinking, and jumped away from the sink with the sponge still in hand, whirling. Everything seemed to slow, the bowl he'd been handling tumbling toward the ground, still sudsy, to shatter across the wooden floor.
Bobby faced the empty room, hand to his chest, hovering above his pounding heart, breathing heavy and eyes frantic. He'd known that voice, he thought, feeling suddenly sick. He knew that voice like he knew anything.
"S-sam?" Bobby whispered, hating himself for even asking it, but almost wishing it were true, and simultaneously horrified by the fact that it might be, it just might be...
Nothing moved, it was quiet save for the running water, his panting breaths, and the stereo playing next to him still. Bobby's face screwed up, and he cussed as he threw down the sponge in the sink, his eyes stinging again with his gut feeling twisted and hollow. He shut off the water and bent to pick up the shards of the bowl, putting them on the counter and then putting his hands on the sides of the sink, glaring at the window. Warring within himself.
It might've just been his imagination, Bobby knew it very well could've been. He'd been a wreck for the last month, and he missed Sam like he'd been his own son, missed him for himself and for Dean. It might just be my imagination these past few days. I could be losing it entirely for all I know.
Yeah, he told himself dully, it might just be my imagination.
He looked over his shoulder at the kitchen, and down at the pieces of broken porcelain bowl on the counter.
Or it might not.
Bobby closed his eyes as the last chorus of the song died, and every bit of peace he'd felt when it had started was gone.
Dean was taking a second look at those car deaths.
He couldn't figure out what bugged him about them. One was a man, one was a couple. Different cars, different states, different jobs, different nationalities, different ages. Nothing seemed to link them. It didn't make any sense, but he had this gut feeling that there was something there, something he was missing...
And then this morning, trolling around for hunts, he'd found two more just like them.
He had a feeling - this was one of those hunts, it had to be. The kind that his dad used to put together, months and months of reading the simple signs and connecting dots that nobody else saw, finding a hunt in the small small curiosities across counties and states.
He took a look at the third one again, bringing up the article on the laptop's screen. Frustrated, he toggled the tabs, glanced at the fourth, and then something clicked, and his head cocked.
His eyes widened.
This last one was a name he recognized.
A sharp sliver of something between fear and panic shot up from his stomach through to his throat, and he didn't even know why, but he could tell that he was about to be clued in, he was close to the something he was missing.
He double and triple checked the other names, but the first three he didn't recognize.
The fourth was a Jon D. Ramirez of San Bernardino, California. Dean scrambled from his seat, almost falling, aiming for his duffel. John is a common name, and he'd hazard a guess at probably a million people witht he last name Ramirez in the world, but he knew he recognized San Bernardino. He ripped through his bag, breathing fast, finding the envelope with the money, the printed out ebay receipts. He puled out the one at the bottom of the pile, the first part of the Impala he'd sold after getting out of the hospital.
Hood, hood hinges, and dash harness sold for $871.00 to Jon David Ramirez in San Bernardino, California. Dean looked back to the article, and then down again at his receipt.
Same person. It had to be the same person. Oh god.
He stood again, bringing his receipts to the table with him, returning to the first article.
Craig Taylor. A name he didn't recognize, but the city, Westbrook.
Westbrook, Maine.
Dean rifled through his receipts. Username classik_buff_941, address in Westbrook, Maine. Alternator brackets and pulley, clutch forks, boots, springs, and z-bars.
Dean lifted his face to stare at the computer screen, trying to catch his breath. He'd sold parts of the Impala to both of these men just before they died.
Dean all but attacked the computer, typing frantically, calling up the other names, the other cities, comparing and checking. There was no question, each checked out. He reversed the process, looking up the rest of the cities, searching their newspapers, choking on the discovery of a 19-year-old kid killed in a garage, a collector found dead at an car show, three throats slit at a post office Gary Shorr's P.O. Box was.
Dean gripped his hair with his hands, standing and backing away from the computer, pacing madly through the room.
He was an idiot. A cautionless, empty headed, irresponsible idiot!
"What the hell? What, what the HELL!" How could he have missed this? How could he not think - the Impala had been bloodstained by countless people, played temporary storage house to countless bodies and body parts of creatures and victims and weapons and supernatural objects.
It was the epitome of 'recipe for a haunting'. People were dead now. A 19-year-old kid.
Dean cursed repeatedly, hand still gripping his hair and on the verge of hyperventilation.
What was he gonna do? Hunt down every single piece? God, that would take forever, every new owner could die before he found just one. He needed to find out what it was, what was doing this, and fast. It would be anything, or anyone who spilled blood in there and died after, or even died in-
All at once it was like the world shut down.
"No," Dean's voice reflexively spouted, hollow, weak.
It couldn't be. Never.
"No, no," Dean shook his head, gazing stricken at the laptop, as if refuting an accusation from it.
It couldn't be. He'd been cremated, salted prior. Bobby had the ashes. They'd gotten everything, it'd been possibly the most torturous process of Dean's life.
"It's not him," Dean breathed to himself, almost begging his mind to stop following the train of thought, "it's not..."
Except that it made all the sense in the world. Sam had bled all over those seats, all of his life, even the trunk, and on weapons. It was his home, equivalent to his house. It was the one thing that had been as constant as Dad or Dean himself had been in his life. The car was like a piece of Sam, just like it was for Dean. The Impala could easily be his house to haunt...
"Oh my god," Dean gritted out, not even aware that tears were streaming unchecked, no conscious of the fact that his breathing had morphed, and as the first sob hit, so did the wave of sheer nausea, and Dean stumbled to the bathroom to be sick.
He retched, all the while his mind chaos, fighting one side against the other.
Sam's body is salted and burned.
The car soaked up more than enough of Sam's sweat, tears, and blood to count as remains.
Sam would never hurt another person.
Sam is a trained killer just like you.
Sam has no reason to stay a spirit.
Sam would never leave if he could help it.
Sam couldn't kill a kid, couldn't hurt a woman.
Sam as a spirit wouldn't be Sam anymore.
Dean reached for the sink, to pull himself up. He gulped back another sob, leaning over the sink, turning the faucet on to splash his face.
Looking up into the mirror, he knew which side in his head had won.
Everything pointed to Sam. A spirit. A violent spirit.
A monster. One of the things they hunted.
Dean felt himself crumble just outside the bathroom, falling to his knees in the middle of the room, and he buried his face in his hands to cry, wondering how he could ever possibly find the strength to do what he knew he had to.
He wondered, jagged and searing the thought was, how he could ever hunt his pride and joy.