The Aspen Spirit
Chapter Eight
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"I told ya," Joe said, pushing the meagre contents of a drawer around disconsolately. "There ain't nothin' up here. I got shot of it all years ago, not that there was much anyhow."
John rasped his fingers through his stubble. "You say they were cremated, her and the… baby?"
"Yeah."
"She have folks around here still?"
"Nope. They moved away soon after she died."
"So, if there aren't any possessions, no remains, what in hell is keeping her here?" John leaned up against the rough timber of the cabin wall, pondering. "Do you think it's the cabin? You said your brother built it for them to live in?"
"He did." Ben glanced around the dim interior. "Wouldn't that mean she was sorta tied to it though?"
"She's not?" John cast a glance out of the open doorway to the spectral figure that had lingered at the edge of the trees the entire time they'd been at the cabin.
"Nah." Joe shook his head. "She turns up all over the goddamn place. Other side the mountain, my place, on the highway the other side of town…"
"The other side of town!" John was incredulous. "That's gotta be 30 miles from here!"
"Yep."
John scrubbed his fingers across his chin again, rasp, rasp, rasp. "Anyone else see her?"
"No. You, your sons… I guess the guys that got taken. One had his girlfriend with him and she wasn't sure what she'd seen."
John straightened, his gaze sharpening. "It's gotta be on you. You still got anythin' of your brother's you carry about."
"Nothin'."
The single word conveyed so much loss that John shuddered, a startling memory of Dean's devastated face in Flagstaff slamming itself into the forefront of his thoughts.
Joe gulped, audible in the silence of the cabin. He studied his hands, as though he could still see something on them. "Wasn't enough left to bring anythin' home."
"You were there?" John asked, shocked.
"Yeah." Joe's voice was a dry husk. "Couldn't save him. Nobody could've."
He turned away abruptly and slammed the drawer shut. "Better get back down afore dark, fetch those boys of yours."
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"C'mon son. Time to go." John kicked the toe of Dean's boot gently with his own.
His eldest startled awake, blinking sleepy eyes at him and flushing with embarrassment when he realised he'd dozed off on the couch, duffle by his side, while his father and Sam were taking the rest of their possessions out to the vehicles.
He stretched and stood up quickly, his cheeks still burning. John raised an eyebrow at him, the intense smoulder of his gaze interrogating Dean.
"You need your brother to drive?"
Dean read the second, unspoken question in the depths of his father's dark eyes. "You okay there, son?"
"Nah, I'm good to drive." Dean dropped his eyes, ducked his chin a little. "Been better."
"Meds making you sleepy, huh?" John slapped him on the back on the way past. "Good. You'll heal quicker."
Dean wasn't sure how to read that one.
The drive over to the ranch took about thirty minutes; thirty minutes of Dean feeling strangely exposed away from the protection of the salt lines. He drove close behind John in a tense, slightly hunched forward position, until a warning ache in his shoulders and a foul glare from John as they made a right turn made him realise what he was doing. He flicked a quick glance over at Sam, glad to see that his brother had his nose buried deep in a book and appeared to be oblivious to any discomfort on his sibling's behalf.
Dean took a deep breath and forced himself to relax into his normal driving position. He dropped back a few feet further away from John's tailgate and tried not to check the rear view mirror more than necessary. By the time they pulled up in front of the ranch house he'd almost managed to convince himself there wasn't anything following him.
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"Good of you to let us bunk down here." John tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, amusement crinkling the skin around his eyes as he watched his sons wandering around the ranch. Dean's tousled spikes and Sam's unruly mop were close together as they poked into one corner after another and hovered over each new discovery. Sam's excited gestures and Dean's grin gave an impression of kids half their age and it made him wonder briefly what it would've been like, if they'd had a normal life. He squashed the thought quickly, because thinking like that took his mind on dark paths that led inevitably to the bottom of a whiskey bottle.
Joe smiled at him, shrugging easily. "Nice to have the company. 'Sides, it makes sense. If Lacey turns up we'll all be in the same place; make it easier to look out for your boys."
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"Good thing Dad had a good supply of salt on the truck," Sam noted, deftly swiping the last sack out of Dean's fingers. "I'll finish off."
"I got it," Dean grumbled, but he made no attempt to take the sack away from his brother; the ranch house had a lot of windows and the hot tub was becoming more appealing by the minute.
"If I had a house like this," Sam observed, "I'd invent some kinda automatic dispenser along the window ledges and doors." He poured the last salt in a neat line across a window, his forehead screwed up in concentration. "Maybe there's a way you could put a salt block inside the frame, so it never got wet…"
By the time he started on about ionic compounds and electrical conductivity, Dean had filed the idea away for future reference and stopped listening.
"Dean!" Sam sounded exasperated.
"What?" Dean jumped, guilty.
"You're not listening."
Dean flapped a hand at him. "I got it dude. Salt doesn't conduct electricity, so ghosts can't get across it until it gets wet." He lifted a corner of his mouth in a smirk. "Talkin' about wet, I'm gonna hit that hot tub. Wonder if there's any hot chicks hangin' around."
Sam pursed his lips. "Gross. That's gross. 'Sides the only chick after you around here is kinda cold."
Dean scowled. That was a thought he could've done without.
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The hot tub was as good as he'd expected. Dean lounged around in it for quite a while, soaking in the warm water and just letting his mind drift. It was the most peaceful place he could ever remember being in, all golden lamplight reflecting off the honey shades of the wooden walls and timbered roof. The gleaming glass of the big picture window showed the reflection of his head super-imposed over the velvet dark of the night. He was nearly asleep when he realised the room was suddenly much colder than before.
He sat up straight warily, something more than the cold making the hairs lift along his arms and shoulders. An amorphous white shape was hovering just outside the window. It wavered, wobbled, forming into a young woman… Lacey.
Dean splashed out of the tub, water streaming down off his body as he snatched at the towel. He dried off quickly, keeping one eye on the ghost as he dragged his pants and t-shirt on over damp skin. As soon as his feet were laced in his boots he set off at a jog along the covered-in veranda towards the door into the main part of the house.
The others were around the low table in front of the log fire in the lounge when Dean burst through the door. "Bitch is here," he said without preamble.
Almost instantaneously, the main door slammed back on its hinges. Lacey stood poised on the far side of the salt line, her pretty features drawn into an angry scowl.
Joe was on his feet immediately, inserting himself in front of the Winchesters.
"You can't have him," he told her.
"He's mine," she hissed back, giving off a low crackle of energy. "I've been waitin' so long."
"No!" Joe stepped towards her. "Ben's dead. You need to let go, move on. He ain't never comin' back."
"He's back," she insisted. "I can feel him!" Her dark eyes fixed first on Dean, then Joe, then back on Dean. She looked a little confused, the energy pulsing, unstable. "He's here."
John pushed forwards, obscuring Dean's view of the door. "Stay back," he growled out of the corner of his mouth.
Lacey flickered, a low hum filling the room. She rose higher from the ground, fixing her gaze on Dean. He squared his shoulders, determined not to let the uneasiness in his gut show on his face. "Get away from me, you freak."
"You're mine." She told him, pointing a pale finger in his direction. He opened his mouth to reply as a massive pulse of energy flew across the room. It slammed into John's torso, throwing him sideways into wall. His head cracked against the timber with a sickening thud and he sprawled forwards across the salt line.
Lacey seemed to flow like smoke across the bridge formed by John's huddled form. She surged forwards towards Dean. He palmed Sam's arm, propelling his brother away from him as Lacey took hold of his shoulders and swung him around, hurling him through the doorway. He tucked and rolled, coming up on his feet, well outside the protective salt lines.
No sooner was he on his feet when Sam slammed into him, thrown through the doorway in his wake. They went sprawling over the top of a low wall, coming to a bruising halt on the far side.
Dean got his head up over the top of the wall. He could see John, lying still, only his dark hair stirring in the wind as it brushed to and fro across the scattered white of the salt crystals.
Joe was in front of the wall, Lacey's ghostly fingers twisted in his hair. She was shouting, violent flickers erupting around her.
Dean fought against the weight of his brother's limbs. "M'okay," Sam reassured him, sounded winded, trying to assist.
Lacey tore the shirt off Joe's back, flinging it behind her. His face twisted in agony as she thrust a pale hand into his shoulder, the sound of cracking bone sharp and sickening. He cried out, once, the sound cut off abruptly as she said something into his ear. He slumped forwards onto his hands and knees, the pale light given off by her skin making the huge snake tattoo curling from his wrist up and across his shoulders seem to writhe with a life of its own.
Dean made it onto his feet, dragging his gaze away from the thick rope of blood oozing from Joe's shoulder and sliding down the coils of the snake to his wrist and onto the grass. He launched himself towards the shotgun lying next to John's outstretched hand, but something snatched him up and threw him through the air as though he was no more than a rag doll. He slammed into the truck, the windshield shattering beneath his weight as he hit it with his shoulder. His torso and head dropped through, legs still sprawling across the hood. For a moment he thought he was going to be okay but then a hand took hold of his ankle and pulled hard and somewhere on the way back through the broken windshield his head smacked against the dashboard and then there was nothing.
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Oops sorry, cliffhanger again, sorry. Just seems to happen that way!
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