Chapter 3

Jimmy Novak sat bolt upright in bed, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, a silent scream pressing its way out of his throat. He pressed a hand against his chest, remembering. His wife sighed in her sleep. Jimmy's heart galloped wildly. He touched her shoulder as she rolled deeper into the blankets, just to be sure she was real.

She was.

Jimmy swung his feet over the side of the bed and snuck out of the room. He glanced around. The hallway, lit softly by princess nightlights, was empty. Nothing lurked where adrenaline told him it should.

He crossed the hall to Claire's room and peeked in. His daughter lay in her twin bed, a peaceful smile on her lips as she slept. Nothing looked amiss, and the heart-hammering feeling of evil that had woken him now slipped into a quiet sense of unease.

Jimmy closed the door and padded downstairs to the dark kitchen. He chewed worriedly on his lower lip as he filled the kettle and set it to heat.

He still saw the dream vividly. The boys must've been about twelve, scared and huddled on the steps of his house. The brown-haired boy cradled the other and fixed his eyes on Jimmy with a stare so hard that Jimmy could see darkness hiding behind them. The boy was young, but he was a predator.

And he hadn't let Jimmy get a night's sleep for days now. The feeling, which made him restless, never left. Not really. It might subside for a few hours, it might even let him get through half a day in peace before he turned a corner and felt his skin crawl.

Jimmy measured out a cup of instant coffee and poured steaming water into his mug. He added honey and stirred, trying to breathe evenly. His hands shook.

He unlocked the back door and sat on a green metal patio chair with a silent, plaintive prayer for understanding. Cool night air blew through Jimmy's still-damp clothes. He sipped his coffee, enjoying the strong bite of the grounds mixed with the subtle taste of honey, and glanced skyward. An airplane shared the night sky with a million points of starlight.

Even with a thousand miraculous innovations, human technology could not hold a candle against the night sky. Infinity stretched between each dot of starlight, empty with promise. Who was man to believe in his own pride, to ask truth from the universe and demand to be answered plainly? Who was man to play at God?

Each in its own time, Jimmy thought, and he smiled.

Pontiac was a small city, and so there were relatively few local companies willing to buy ad space AM radio. Jimmy consoled himself of this fact because 98.3 WPCR was a popular station. It broadcast the little league baseball game live every Saturday morning and played gospel music on Sundays. The other five days of the week balanced national news in the morning with political straight talk and eclectic music in the afternoon and evening. People trusted WPCR for news and local event coverage, so Jimmy was glad to help keep the station running.

He parked in the small gravel lot behind the two-story radio station and went inside. He greeted Janice, the receptionist, with a smile as he headed for the break room. He hung up his coat in the closet. Someone had brought bagels and left a little sign to Help Yourself! =)

He fixed up a plain bagel with butter and ate it on the way to his cubicle. He paused on the way to wave at Tom and Kate, the morning DJs, through the soundproof glass pane of the station's solitary studio. Then he sat in his swivel chair and rolled to his computer.

Jimmy turned on WPCR and began sorting through his morning emails. Tom and Kate were talking about a news story from a few states over. Police recovered two missing children and solved a serial kidnapping case after some passersby heard screaming and stopped to investigate.

Jimmy paused halfway through responding to a lead. He remembered hearing about the Amber Alert last week. He'd prayed for those children - siblings - but a week is a long time in abduction cases.

The crawling sensation returned. Siblings. Jimmy's heart beat a bit faster. Sales lead forgotten, he did an Internet search for the case and followed the first link to a news clip. The article had almost identical information to what he'd heard on the radio. Two men rescued the missing siblings from an abandoned building. Police had no leads on the kidnapper, who escaped during the altercation.

So far, the good Samaritans had not released a statement or been willing to speak to the press, but police sources mentioned that at least one remained hospitalized. Meanwhile, the children were treated for minor injuries and would be released that day.

Jimmy wondered how one of the rescuers was hospitalized if the police hadn't found evidence of the kidnapper at the crime scene. The hair on the back of his neck rose, and he inexplicably found himself thinking of the dream - he refused to think of it as his, exactly - again. Two boys. Brothers.

The dream ate at his concentration the rest of the day. Pieces came back to him in flashes of certainty he couldn't articulate, like a memory from something he hadn't experienced yet. It had to mean something, didn't it? Sometimes Jimmy was sure he could feel the significance - the untapped energy lying dormant in that memory-certainty - pushing to escape. He wished he could pry the mental block free and understand.

Tom stopped by Jimmy's cubical after he'd finished taping his show, but it took Jimmy a moment to realize Tom was talking to him.

"What?"

Tom sighed heavily as if repeating himself taxed his strength. "I'm going out of town in a couple weeks," he said. He paused, waiting.

He didn't have to wait long. Jimmy was genuinely interested. "Where to?"

"Conference in Vegas," Tom said. He shot Jimmy a sly smile that suggested he would be up to more than gambling. "Lucky me, right?"

"Oh. Ah, that's nice." Jimmy's lips pressed into a thin line as he struggled to find something better to say. "Need me to take care of anything while you're gone?"

Tom smiled. "There's an open spot for cohost if you want it."

The request took Jimmy by surprise. He sold ad time, and he was okay with that. The people he met were usually nice, the job paid decently, and he didn't have to travel often. Sure, he was friendly with the hosts, but he'd never expected anything from it. Friendship was enough.

Jimmy accepted Tom's offer graciously. After all, it could be fun.

/A.H.O.F.\

Brilliant autumn sunlight beat down, distorting the white gravel parking lot. Jimmy unlocked his sedan and opened the door. A wall of heat rushed out at him. He slid into the driver's seat and tugged his neck tie loose with a sigh. He stared at the whitewashed brick of the building, thinking about the dream and those children and the prickling sensation shivering down his spine despite the midday sun.

The sweltering heat brought sweat to his brow. Jimmy wiped it away and checked his wristwatch. It was well after five, and if he didn't leave now he would be late for … something. He turned on the ignition and pulled onto the crowded streets with a ferocity that surprised him. Jimmy wasn't known for driving aggressively - he didn't get flustered during rush hour - but now anxiety burbled through his body like water in a poisoned brook. He didn't want to know what would happen if he was late.

He was afraid.

When he arrived home, Jimmy slammed the door shut and sprinted across the lawn instead of waiting to open the garage door. He forgot about the rain garden and nearly plowed through a tangle of flowers. He twisted and leaped clear, managing to avoid the statue of Saint Francis poking up through the plants.

A blast of cold air greeted him as he opened the front door and tossed his keys onto the foyer table. The sweat soaking through his clothes seemed to evaporate immediately. Jimmy could have sighed in relief, but the hairs on the back of his neck still stood at attention. He spun in place, searching for the cause of this irrational fear, this newfound anxiety worming through his subconscious mind like a parasite.

"Forget something?" said a voice from behind him, cutting through his panic with an amused tone.

Jimmy turned to Amelia, head cocked. He couldn't remember what day of the week it was let alone where he ought to be.

"It's Wednesday," his wife hinted.

"Ah," Jimmy said. He frowned in concentration, trying to think of what Wednesday meant. A thought surfaced momentarily then slipped away when he tried to grasp it.

Amelia pursed her lips. "Wednesday is your day to -"

"-pick up Claire from dance class," Jimmy finished. He shook his head and forced a chuckle at his lapse. "And she's right ... right about to get into my car because I'm on my way now."

Jimmy made it to Claire's practice before the parking lot of dutiful parents emptied, but he slammed the car into Park and sprinted to the dance studio. He'd never forgotten before. How could he have forgotten?

He didn't want to think about it, but he knew how. His pride had gotten in the way. Jimmy felt ashamed now for thinking the dream to be more than it was: a nightmare. Who was he to receive messages from On High? He was just an ad salesman and a family man - and he wasn't sure he was very good at that, either.

Jimmy swept his daughter into a hug with a breathless apology. She forgave him easily. That was her nature. Still, he carried her duffle bag to the car and apologized three more times on the drive home.

After dinner, Jimmy told Claire a bedtime story and tucked her in. When he returned downstairs, Amelia had finished loading the dishwasher and was waiting on the couch with a remote control. Jimmy grabbed a notepad and pen and sat beside her.

Jimmy couldn't draw, but he started doodling anyway. He sketched a pebble on a sidewalk and added grass, which improved the doodle, but he found it wanting and began sketching the figures. The pencil strokes, alternating sharp and smooth, came from a place inside where Jimmy had never visited, a place ruled by reflex and muscle memory. The less he thought about drawing, the more the picture formed on paper.

Pain lanced his eyes. Jimmy's vision swam. The notepad fell from his lap. He pinched the bridge of his nose, a small moan escaping through tight lips.

Amelia touched his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Slowly, he shook his head. "I've been having the strangest dream." He hesitated. Amelia was his wife. They'd never kept secrets before, but the dreams left him uncertain. Fearful.

"About what?"

He picked up the notepad and tapped the drawing with his pencil eraser. He flipped the pencil between his fingers and shaded the taller boy's eyes darker. The pupil covered too large an area, leaving the eye a liquid, ink black. The effect seemed wrong. But it looked true.

Amelia peered at the drawing and drew back, her lips curled in distaste. She shivered. "It gives me the heebie-jeebies."

He nodded. "Me, too."

/A.H.O.F.\

Jimmy Novak was a normal guy. He graduated high school with top honors, then college with a slightly lower grade point average. Once, he rushed a fraternity but decided it was not for him. He met his future wife in the library where they had shared a study table and Jimmy watched her books while she ventured into the stacks. He thought she was beautiful but didn't ask her out until years later when a friend introduced them. Nothing in Jimmy's life was profound or unexpected except his continued belief in a higher power – and even that he would shrug off as normal.

Now Jimmy sat at the breakfast table holding his head in his hands. He'd had the dream again, and that was definitely not normal. It was as though the dream was focusing, because he could see and remember it clearly. Every detail stuck in his mind, twisting his gut into nervous knots. That made eight in as many nights, and all he could thin through the fear was "Not Normal."

He'd thought he could shake it, and if anyone asked precisely what "it" was Jimmy might've shrugged. I week ago he would've called it a nightmare. Days later, an omen. Now? Jimmy called it fate.

Jimmy saw darkness in the boy's eyes, but his feet stepped forward anyway. A thought possessed him that the dark-eyed boy was a demon. But he cradled the blonde one protectively. Jimmy thought demons couldn't love like that, which was good because he knelt before the boys.

He peeled the smaller one's jacket back and saw a dark red blossom of blood over the boy's heart. Jimmy wanted to reel back in horror, but he placed a hand over the boy's heart. Light began to glow.

Jimmy didn't think he could go through another day of work tired and frightened like this, but he couldn't tell his wife. She was worried about him. Jimmy stopped mentioning the dreams to her after the notepad incident. It had made her uncomfortable.

The house was peaceful in predawn silence. Jimmy watched out the window as the sky lightened. In twenty minutes Amelia would see him missing and get up. Thirty minutes after that Claire would rise. But now there was only the steady ticking of the wall clock and the refrigerator's hum.

Each time he prayed for guidance the dream came back to him. He didn't know what the it meant. Yesterday he'd gone to the library on his lunch break and looked it up on the Internet. Hearts, hands, healing … until he was sure the dream wanted him to be involved in 4-H.

He'd prayed. He'd invoked the angels. Sometimes he felt a presence close enough and imagined he could hear the flutter of wings or a distant, electronic hum, but nothing gave him answers. Jimmy thought his wife might be right to worry, but in the same breath he thought he could use professional advice.

So Jimmy went to mass. He waited until the other parishioners left the chapel before approaching the priest. He needed help, and it wasn't something simple that could be discussed in front of anybody. Jimmy didn't have car problems or an alcoholic uncle in need of prayers – but if he could trust himself somebody sure did. His problem was "Not Normal."

Father David presided over his parish like a familiar uncle. He was at once confidant, adviser and friend despite only arriving in Pontiac five years previously. Jimmy accompanied the older man to the rectory and took a seat at the kitchen table, a familiar spot he'd taken at least three times before when overly vexed. A pot of coffee kept warm on the counter. The priest poured two mugs and carried them to the table.

"How've ye been, Jimmy," he said, sitting down and pushing one steaming mug across the table.

Jimmy ran a hand down his face, picked up the mug with shaking hands and sat it down again. He sighed heavily and looked up with honest eyes.

"I have this dream," he said. "I need help. I don't know what to do about it."

Father David gestured for him to continue. Jimmy did, but when he tried to relay the story to the priest it came out wrong. The boy with demon eyes became a child. The blond boy and the blood faded until all he could convey was that he had touched a sick child and healed him.

"What does it mean? What kind of – what is this?" he asked, wringing his hands.

The priest set his cup down. "Sometimes dreams are just that."

Jimmy shook his head. "It was something more. This dream… it feels like destiny." He couldn't explain, but the dreams were stronger now. Jimmy could smell the sweet odor of humidity, taste the boiled eggs on his tongue when he had walked across the porch steps that morning. Fantasy was crossing into reality, and Jimmy wasn't prepared.

The priest shook his head. "You may have a higher calling, son, but don't be so quick to call it fate. The Lord gave man free will to choose his path as surely as He laid the dirt at the dawn of creation."

"When will I have to choose?" he asked, his voice small. Unable to look at his adviser, he studied his hands. Ordinary hands. He'd calloused them building a playhouse for his daughter last month, but his day job had little use for carpentry. His hands were already growing soft again. How could he heal anyone?

He took a breath. "I know I can't do miracles," he said, "but what can?"

Jimmy left the rectory an hour later with a head full of caffeine and promising leads. He got into his car, drove downtown and parked in the free lot two blocks from the library. The day felt humid under the heavy fabric of his trench coat. A bead of sweat prickled at the base of his neck and slid down his back. He shivered, almost chilled, and hurried onward toward the answers.

The radio station called forty minutes later to see if he was coming into work. Fifteen minutes later Amelia called, and Jimmy ignored this call, too. Jimmy needed answers, something to follow or fix before the dream returned that night. He couldn't distract himself. When Amelia called a second time he turned off his phone.

Jimmy knew what he should do. He should pray, just take some deep breaths, calm his mind and focus. But his heart beat unsteadily and Jimmy could not think of where to start a prayer this time around. That sense of being lost scared him more, perhaps, than the dream or the lingering sense of foreboding.

It never rained, and by late afternoon the bright sunlight made Jimmy sweat inside his trenchcoat. He left it open as he shuffled from the library past the Route 66 Hall of Fame to the lot where he'd parked his car. Something in the air set his teeth on edge, and Jimmy began to walk faster. He needed to get home.

/A.H.O.F.\

Sam sat up and tapped Dean's shoulder. "He's here."

Dean rubbed his eyes and blinked twice. A sedan pulled into the driveway across the seat. He watched the figure inside, waiting for a creepy-crawly feeling to shoot up his spine. Sam opened the driver's side door. Dean grabbed his jacket and pulled him back.

"Dean, what are you-"

"What if he's a monster?" Dean said. "I just think we should-"

"Dude, he's fine. I checked." Sam pulled away and hopped out of the Impala.

"Make sure he's not a shifter!" Dean shouted after him. "Or a demon, or-"

Sam slammed the door, shot his brother the middle finger and crossed the street as the man stepped out of his car. The man had a beige trench coat draped over his arm. He wore a suit, the tie loosened around his neck. Judging by the five o'clock shadow on his jaw, he was having a bad day.

Sam hesitated, uncertain. "Excuse me, Mr. Novak?"

The man turned. His eyes widened with a look of horror. Sam had a chance to notice his eyes were pale blue before the man dropped his coat and bolted.

"Mr. Novak, wait!" Years of training rushed back to Sam. Adrenaline flooded his system. He sprinted after the businessman, running shoes hitting the pavement hard.

The other man swung left through a manicured lawn and disappeared through the door in a privacy fence. Sam tore after him without hesitation. He dodged a Big Wheel and headed for the chain link fence separating the backyard from the alley. There was no gate.

Sam vaulted the shorter fence and heard the man's shoes slapping against the street. He was moving slower now. Clearly, he wasn't a runner. "Mr. Novak, stop!"

Mr. Novak didn't listen. "You're not real!"

Sam thought that was an odd thing to say to a stranger chasing you through an alley in mid-afternoon, but he didn't dwell on it. If he let the man get away, Dean would die. He wasn't going to let his brother down. Sam heaved a breath and ran hard.

His feet moved faster, gaining on the tiring businessman. Sam was only feet behind now. He saw that Mr. Novak had doubled back and returned home through the alley. It was a terrible idea – unless he was a gun owner. Sam couldn't take the risk. He leapt.

Jimmy fell hard when the man jumped him from behind, crashing into him like a speeding truck. He managed to twist and fall on his arm, but his suit shredded. Jimmy shouted in pain as the gritty asphalt tore his skin open. The other man's weight pinned him down.

Jimmy closed his eyes tight and prayed to God he was going crazy. This man couldn't be here. This man who had the same dark eyes as the dream boy, the demon boy … he couldn't be here, not really. This was a mugging. A plain old suburban mid-day mugging.

"I don't have money," Jimmy said, trying to think fast. His side cramped so hard he wouldn't be able to run for a month. And no one would go out to the alley at this hour. He couldn't get away. "Please! I have a family!"

"Just … help us!" The mugger didn't sound murderous. He sounded … exasperated?

Jimmy risked opening an eye. Sweat dampened the young man's shaggy hair, making his skin glisten. He looked like a grown up version of Jimmy's dream, but he didn't have black demon eyes. There was no malice. No trickery. No rage. If anything, he just looked scared.

The young man eased off Jimmy and sat on his haunches. He was breathing hard but was not out of breath, a practiced sprinter. "I'm real sorry about your suit," he said, looking Jimmy up and down.

"You're not what I expected," Jimmy said hesitantly. He shifted slightly and winced as the movement irritated his road burn. His suit was torn and bloody from the fall.

Sam extended a hand and helped Jimmy to his feet with a few more reassurances that he wasn't there to maim the man or his family. Mr. Novak didn't seem too calmed by his explanation, but he led Sam through his backyard back to his coat.

Sam kicked along behind him, looking at the two story house with its patio furniture and the empty Impala across the street. Shit. He scanned the yard but couldn't spot Dean. "I thought you might be able to help us."

"Look." Jimmy turned and found himself gazing up at the tall stranger. "I don't know how you found me-"

A dark shape leapt from around the corner and bowled into Jimmy. The man toppled to the grass in a heap but staggered to his feet and away.

"Dean!" Sam shouted and moved to intercept his brother's right hook before it could break the accountant's nose. The punch rocked Sam back but didn't hurt. "Dude, seriously?"

Jimmy peered around Sam. "You want me to help him?"

"He's not that-" Sam began but was cut off as Dean's legs gave out beneath him. Sam grabbed his brother beneath both arms, pulling him upright before he hit the ground. He dragged Dean to the porch stairs and helped him sit. Jimmy followed.

"Dean?" Sam jostled his brother. When Dean didn't respond, he slapped his face. He put his arm around his big brother and waited, hoping the movies were right. "Dean?"

"Is he-" Jimmy started forward then stopped. He looked between the two men, a feeling of déjà vu creeping over him. The tumblers of fate locked into place. A cold wind blew through Jimmy's soul.

"You're brothers."

Leave a comment on the chapter if you liked it or hated it! Personally, I've always wanted to know more about Jimmy Novak, so it was fun for me to write this chapter - and the rest of the story. See you around, yeah?