(Thank you Lenail125 for the review. And don't worry about it, I know that life has a funny way of keeping you busy. Be it work, or school, there is always something that demands more time from us. Once again the episode Home is featured, but I'm not dragging it out. It's until the end of the chapter then we're moving on.)

Chapter Ten

"Poltergeist for sure." Dean bit solidly into his burger. He waited until he chewed most of his bite before talking. "Nothing is wrong with the wiring, and no rats. Not even squirrels in the attic. All signs point to a spirt."

Sam stirred around the salad in front of him, and started to separate the chopped up veggies and order them. "Well, Missouri wouldn't have informed us that it was a poltergeist if she wasn't sure." He ignored his big brother's harsh glance as he didn't eat the food he'd ordered. "Besides, the kid's seen it. Place is being haunted by friggin' Johnny Storm. Using her words; it is human shaped and on fire."

Dean scowled. "That can't be right. I mean besides the fire years ago, there hasn't been another incident right?"

"Not that I can recall." John thought. When he'd purchase the house those years ago the realtor didn't say anything about fire's or homicides. "Unless the demon doesn't do it by himself. Maybe he has some kind of sidekick. Maybe it's some perverse team."

"I'm thinking it's just attracted to the home. I mean Missouri said that the home is a magnet for trouble. What if the spirit was attracted to the home because of the fire?" Sam stabbed his fork into the food and left it there. Dean gave him another purposeful glare and Sam rolled his eyes before picking up the fork and taking a hearty bite. Sam's face turned serious as he chewed though. Sairie had shown Sam the room while her mother had been downstairs. On his way up the stairs he'd felt something awful but the second he'd stepped inside the room he'd felt…safe. A wave of love nearly knocked him down. But how, and why?

"Earth to Sam." Dean waved his hand in front of Sam's face and Sam reeled back in his chair. "Hey, enjoy your trip?"

"Sorry." Sam awkwardly rubbed at his head. "Oh nothing. Just thinking."

John made a face and seemed to want more answers, but before he could ask Sam shook his head and said, "nothing important, just about the case."

"Well, then please enlighten us." Dean bit out. Something was puzzling Sam, and it was clearly bothering Sam on a much deeper level.

"For starters, how do we get them out of the house long enough to put the gris gris bags in?" Sam ticked up an eyebrow and played off his confusion with irritation. Dean looked startled. He evidently hadn't thought of that. "Yeah. I mean sure, she's invited us back in the home so we can fix the houses problems, but is she really going to leave us alone in the home long enough to put holes in her walls and put the bags in?" Nobody responded and Sam nodded before taking another bite. "Yeah, that problem."

John thought hard. "I don't know. She's skittish. She says that she's moved from Wichita to make a clean start, and I can tell whatever happened there wasn't good. It'll be a while before she'll trust anyone like that."

Sam's phone buzzed and he slipped it out of his pocket and frowned in confusion at the number that showed. Not one he recognized. "We could bring along Missouri. She gains a lot of peoples trust with the knowledge that she has." He pressed the accept button and brought it up to his face. "Hello?"

"Sam!" The little girl's voice was panicked, and for a short while Sam was unable to place her. "Are you Sam?"

"Yeah, Sairie, you okay?" The discussion Sam spurred between his father and brother stopped as soon as it had started. Evidently he had left out to his family that he had left the girl his number in case there was an emergency.

The girl's voice didn't calm when he confirmed his identity. "It hurt Richie."

"Wait, wait. Is he okay?" Sam stood up instantly his hand going to his wallet and throwing down a few bills before motioning his family out of the diner. "You, and your mom okay?"

"Mom took him upstairs to warm him up." Sairie wasn't making any sense.

Sam left the diner before his family and didn't head towards the car until he was sure his family had followed him. "Hey, what happened?"

"I went to my room, and Mom left the kitchen. The latch was undone on his pen, and he wasn't anywhere." The girl wasn't taking any breaths between words. "Mommy found him in the fridge."

"Doesn't your fridge have a lock?" Sam asked slipping into the car, and put the phone away from his mouth to tersely tell his family to head back to the house.

"Yes, it opened it."

He didn't need to know what it was. It was the spirit terrorizing the home. "We are on our way, Sairie. We're about fifteen minutes away and I will call you once we get there."

"Okay." Her voice quivered. "Please hurry."

Sam punched out of the conversation first. "I don't know if Mom will be so opposed to the idea now. The thing undid the latch on his play pen, and the fridge. Trapped the boy in the fridge."

"The little girl called?" Dean questioned, his hand fumbling for a hand gun containing salt rounds.

"Yeah, before we left I gave her my number. She knows we're monster hunters." Sam stated his hand tapping at the glass on the car. He felt rather than saw the incredulous looks he was receiving. "Kids believe these things much more easily, and I didn't give her a detailed book on the different kind of things out there. Besides, she was scared. She needed to know that someone was on her side."

Dean practically growled. "No, you tell them something else."

"Like what, that they are crazy?" Sam ticked up an irritated eyebrow. "She already was ticked off that her mom didn't believe her. What was I supposed to do, laugh at her? Sometimes the younger ones are overlooked and whatever they have to say ignored. Kids have instinct too. I had instincts as a kid. Remember Churchill?"

Dean and John remained quiet. They remembered. John had gotten a frantic call from his youngest about a dead woman. That he had been right something bad had been going on. The hunt had been abandoned temporarily to return to the motel only so that John could look into the lifeless eyes of the woman his son had been so worried about. Not a day went by that he wished his son had never seen that.

"We'll discuss this later." John pressed harder on the gas and high tailed it back to the home.

xxxOOOxxx

Once Jenny had opened the door she was frazzled, holding on to her son swaddled in blankets. Ritchie was still crying and Sairie was peering around her mother's leg to look at the men. There was a sharp sound of glass breaking and Jenny flinched.

"I uh- now's not a really good time."

John stuck out a calming hand. "We're here to help."

"Help?" Jenny bitterly laughed. "Uh, I actually don't need you to come fix anything anymore."

"No, there's something going on with the house, right. Something that isn't the plumbing and lights." Sam smiled reassuringly at the little girl then the woman. His dimples were on high power. Sam could tell she wanted to ask, but she didn't quite believe what was happening. At least not yet. Everything hadn't processed yet.

Dean was tired of dancing around the topic. "We know about the poltergeist. It's trying to hurt you and your family. We can help."

Something else broke inside and Jenny shoved Sairie through and followed before closing the door. "I don't believe it myself. Isn't this the thing of horror stories. First Ritchie got stuck in a locked fridge, then things started flying around and breaking. I didn't touch them. None of us did. Then it." Her voice hitched. "It lifted me. No wires…nothing, just shut the door and tossed me back."

"Dean's right. We can help." Sam held up a bag that smelt strong of spices. "There are twelve of these. You take Sairie and Ritichie out to get some ice cream, and we stick these in your walls. By the time you come back everything is done. It's gone."

"How do I know you didn't rig something before you left?" Jenny's eyes suddenly blazed. "I left you alone with Sairie, maybe you planned for this."

Sairie tugged on her mom's pants. "I was with him. He says he can help mommy. Please let him help. It's the thing in my closet and I don't want it there anymore."

Jenny was still processing everything, but Sam knew it was too much. He went to his pocket and pulled out his wallet, freeing one of the hundred dollar bills he'd received when he emptied his old accounts. "Take Sairie and Ritchie and go to the movies, eat something, get ice cream. Go out and let us help you. When you get back we'll be done."

Sairie tugged on her mother again and she sighed. "Fine. I find anything missing."

"You won't." John assured her.

She looked back at the house and seemed a little worried. She didn't want to go back inside. "I'll need a sweater, shoes and socks for the kids and I, and my wallet and keys."

"We can get them." John nodded.

xxxOOOxxx

It was quiet. Sam didn't like that. The sounds of breaking glass had stopped when they had stepped in the home. John headed towards the basement, and Dean helped Sam go around the home to pick up the miscellaneous items Jenny had listed. Once handed off, they separated, Sam heading upstairs and Dean starting on the living room.

Sam really hoped that whoever it was in the home with them wouldn't cause any trouble. He'd experienced a mild mannered spirit before. Caused no problems. He simply popped up and spooked grievers at the cemetery. When they had started digging up his body he'd retaliated. The mild mannered sprit, started to throw things and fling his uncle around. With the poltergeist being as violent as it was, he wasn't sure what to expect.

On the path upstairs Sam's thoughts trailed. He imagined the woman he'd seen in all those pictures his father had shown him walking around the very halls with a very tiny him in her arms, and an innocent, four year old Dean tagging along behind. He imagined his father, without the sharp distinction of salt and pepper amongst his dark hair, and the woman kissing and laughing. Getting up to check on a fussy him at early hours of the night. His younger father rushing down the stairs with Dean close after, a football firm in his father's calloused grips.

He wasn't sure if anything we was imagining was real. He wasn't sure if these sweet thoughts he was coming up with were actual memories that occurred in the home, or if the films of his youth had over dramatized the family dynamic he'd so dreamed of. All he knew was that if it had been real, it had all gone up in flames. Just like his own happily ever after.

No. He couldn't do this. Not now. He recalled one of his father's rules. The one he'd pounded in his son while he was training him to go on his first hunt all those years ago. No emotion on a hunt. He set his face. No emotion. He wouldn't break down. Not here not now.

He had a job.

First he headed towards the small bathroom. He felt a twinge of guilt before raising the hammer and giving it a good whack, created a hole in the newly painted wall. He fit the bag in and went the opposing side of the house where, he assumed the little boy slept. The room was overtaken by tracks for large plastic trucks and a strange square cartoon character. He assumed it was a sponge and it seemed annoying. He put another hole in the wall and popped the second little bag in.

Dean must have been done with his. The pounding downstairs had stopped. He headed towards the little girl's room his hands his hands instinctively tightening on the hammer and not too far away from the gun hooked through his belt. It had been quiet for far too long. The poltergeist hadn't retaliated yet. And Dean. Once Dean was finished downstairs, Sam half expected Dean to come tearing up the stairs. He was still very protective. After the fire and this being Sam's first official hunt in a long time Sam was half expecting Dean to attach them by the hips. Be it super glue or needle and thread.

He gave a firm thump time around didn't care so much for the appearance of the hole. This just needed to get done, and preferably now. By the fourth hole Sam wasn't too concerned about appearance. He hovered his hammer on the wall in the mother's room just next to the spot he planned on putting the hole. In his peripheral vision he noticed the lamp starting to shift. Prepared for it to be flung he stopped.

"Sam! Move!"

Years of instinct had Sam rolling away before recognition of the command or the voice. It was Dean. Something sharp and silver whizzed by Sam's head and thunked firmly in the wall. Sam turned his head and recognized the small hatchet his brother had taken to put the holes in the wall. Between it sat a severed electric cord.

"It was going for your throat." Dean gripped the pistol he'd slipped in the waist of his pants and scanned the room. His other hand gripped a device that resembled a souped up Walkman and when he flicked it on it lit up and wailed. "It's still here, put in the last bag!" Dean nodded towards his brother.

Sam didn't wait to acknowledge the demand. He gave the wall a firm whack and popped in the final gris gris bag. He waited for a second adrenaline running through his veins and the shrill shriek of the strange device in his brother's hand echoing in his head. A brilliant light started from the final bag in the wall and it expanded out causing Sam and Dean to grunt and shut their eyes in shock. When Sam opened his eyes again save for a few spots in his vision he could see that everything had gone back to normal. The whine of the device had even stopped.

"It's gone." Dean breathed. "Jesus…he was a tricky bastard."

Heavy footsteps thudded up the stairs and stopped in the hallway. "Head count, boys."

"We're good." Sam grinned. "All limbs intact and still breathing."

John came into sight and he took in sight of both his boys. "Good. I take it we're clear."

"Yeah." Dean held up the device before switching it off and sticking it back in his pocket. "The EMF isn't reading anything."

"That's an EMF reader?" Sam pushed himself up. He scowled at the hole in the wall and the hatchet stuck under a hanging photograph, before turning back to his brother. "Looks like a Walkman…"

Dean shrugged. "Was a Walkman. Made a few modifications and now it tracks ghosts."

"It would have been nice if we had one for the other hunts." Sam muttered softly. (A/N-No joke, I was thinking about adding an EMF reader to this chapter then I thought, oh yeah I could have added that for the other two ghost hunts. Stupid me.) He walked over to the hatchet and plucked it from the wall. "We should clean up before Jenny comes home."

"As much as we can. The kitchen was wrecked." Dean rubbed at the back of his head feeling slightly guilty for the blades sticking out of her wall.

xxxOOOxxx

The gris gris bags had been placed, and the home cleaned up the best they could after the attacks the poltergeist planned against them. Jenny seemed more concerned that they were all safe. She even took the time to locate the pictures she'd found and give them to the family.

Driving away from the home was the best feeling Dean had. Only they weren't done. Sam wouldn't walk away from the home. John and Dean threatened to leave without him, but Sam remained resolute, he was going to make sure that they were really safe. He'd hitch back home if needed. So there they had been sitting across the street from their old home, waiting for…something. Sam's eyes pinned to the home, but Dean focused on the dark swirl of his coffee.

And if the kid wasn't right.

Sam hadn't explained he exited the car, and sharply called his brother's name. John and Dean jumped from their slumped over positions and followed the kid's line of vision. There was Jenny, franticly banging on the window, the curtain shifting around her.

"What the hell?" Dean cursed sharply exiting the car himself. He took towards the house at a run. "I thought it was over..."

John simply grunted and rushed forward keeping at his eldest son's ankles. "Apparently not."

Sam wasn't bothering with pleasantries before he kicked the door in and stormed inside. Besides furniture rattling and shifting he could hear the screams of the kids and mother upstairs. "Crap." He took the stairs two at a time careful to avoid anything flying at him. He reached Sairie's room first and kicked in the door again. The poor girl was curled up on her bed using her comforter as a shield as a spirit completely encased in flames slowly padded over to her. The girl was a mess of tears. Sam scooped up the child and pressed her to him, careful to avoid the flames as he slipped out.

John was already ushering out Jenny and Dean was exiting the little boy's room. Sam put the girl down and gave her a rough shove. "Go with Dean, Sairie." She looked reluctant but her eyes widened as Sam whipped out the rifle he'd belted before coming. "This is to protect against it, I need you to stay with Dean though."

The girl nodded and the brother's exchanged purposeful glances before Sairie nearly attached herself to Dean. Sam hung back and waited for his father to pass with Jenny in tow. He followed behind them all shooting occasionally at thing's the poltergeist would fling at them, and stopping the momentum of the object. Dean and the kids were out the door first, Jenny and John last, and Sam as he moved to follow found the door promptly slammed in front of him.

"Shit." Sam brought his hands up and stopped himself from hitting the door head on. "Crap." He ducked when a vase exploded over his head. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." Sam felt himself go down as something wrapped around his ankle and jerked back. He landed hard on his chest knocking the wind clear out of him. Then whatever was around his ankle pulled and he was being dragged back. Away from his weapon. "No!" He gasped breathless clambering for the gun.

xxxOOOxxx

Dean's heart stopped the second he heard the door slam. The little group still winded and frantic turned around only to find they were missing someone. "No! Sam!" Dean grunted and a little forcefully pushed the boy into his mother's arms.

John barely kept his cool as he pointed towards the yard and told them to get away from the home. His eyes were wild though and his body tense. He was anything but calm. Once John was certain that they were clear, he turned back towards his eldest who was busy slamming himself against the door.

"Keep at it. I'm getting the axe." John burst and he shot towards the car parked across the street.

xxxOOOxxx

They were trying to get him. Among all the noise of the shifting furniture Sam could hear the frantic pounding on the door. He was sure though that whatever this was didn't want his family inside, and was keeping a firm hold on the door. It would be a while before anyone was there to help him, and he was weaponless.

He wouldn't go down though. Not today. He kicked at the cord that was wrapped around his ankle dragging him into the dining room. Going with the motion he pushed his body up and bent at the waist to reach his blade tucked into his boot. A firm slice on the cord had him loose and he didn't let that go. He was up and dodging items. Grimly he noticed it was forcing him into the kitchen. The kitchen filled with countless sharp objects, and heavy things to hit him with, however he didn't want the dining room table to hit him either.

Suddenly he didn't have a choice. One second he had his feet firm on the ground and the next he was off of them flying through the doorway to the kitchen and smacking back first into the wooden cabinets. Once again the breath left his lungs. He didn't fall though like gravity dictated. He remained firmly pressed against the cabinet the wood and shards of plates digging into his back. The pressure intensified and Sam couldn't hold back a grunt. From his peripheral he noticed the knife drawer start to shift and pull open. No… Sam fought to free himself but it didn't do any good.

"No! Leave him."

He had heard that voice before, only it wasn't a clear sound. It was an echo, like it had been heard in a dream, and he couldn't quite get the details correct. The flaming spirit entered the kitchen at a slow walk and positioned itself in front of Sam.

"SAM!" Dean crashed through shoving aside the dining table, the discarded pistol raised and ready.

"No! Wait." Sam called. "It's not doing it. It's stopping it."

Sure enough the drawer of knives had stopped wobbling in the presence of the spirit. Even Sam felt himself sliding down the hold keeping him up loosening.

Dean looked confused. "What?"

"You don't see her?" Sam cocked his head to the side looking through the flames to see the beginnings of curled blond hair, and a simple white nightgown. He'd seen her before. He'd heard that voice before. They had been in dreams or in pictures, but he knew her. "It's-"

John put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "It's your mother. It's Mary."

"Huh?" Dean squinted, but his face read recognition the longer he looked. "How- what?"

Sam heard less movement in the home now. Things were falling. "She was protecting Jenny and her kids. She was standing guard in Sairie's room…"

"Oh God…" John stepped forward. "I didn't know…If I had known-" John trembled at the sight of his wife. He didn't want to think it. He hadn't even considered it an option. He'd always figured his wife was in Heaven cursing his name, not cooped up in the very place she'd died. He even walked the place with Missouri that single time, and there had been no recognition from the older woman. "I never came back to check again; I was so sure you had gone to a better place."

"Oh John." Mary sighed. She stepped forward her imaged now clear of any flames. She pressed a cold hand to John's face and he bent his head down in response, melting in her hold. "It's not your fault. You didn't know. You didn't know a lot."

"God, I love you Mary. I miss you every day."

"I love you too John." She pressed a kiss to his lips and released the hold on his cheek. "Dean, you did good." Dean was crying now. Although Sam knew he'd never get his brother to admit it later.

"Mom." The gun tumbled from his hand.

"I'm proud of you. You kept everyone together."

"Of course." Dean's voice cracked.

"Sam." She turned her head towards Sam and her expression turned guilty. "I'm sorry."

Sam was stunned. He pressed a hand to his cheek when he felt something wet; he was crying too. "For what?"

"For the deal. It's my fault." She now looked at everyone. "It's all my fault, boys." She turned her head upward at the shaking light.

"Mom?" Sam stuttered. "What deal?"

"I invited him in." She looked determinedly at Sam. "I couldn't stop that night but I can help you now. I love you all." Before any more questions could be asked she stepped forward and glared up at the ceiling. "Now, get out of my house."

She erupted into flames again, this time they grew brighter. John and Dean turned away, and Sam shut and shielded his eyes from the bright light. When it had stopped they blinked tears and dots out of their vision. Sam was the first to speak.

"Now everything's gone. Even mom."

(Soo, you've reached the end? Well leave a review, or give me a PM.)