The Supernatural characters belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me. No money is being made from this story. It is for entertainment only.
A/N: A lot of the first few pages of this Chapter refer back to the ending of "Sons of the Morning" for various characters and locations
Hunter's Moon
Chapter 11
Over the Hills and Far Away
Were I laid on Greenland's coast
And in my arms embraced my lass
Warm amid eternal frost
Too soon the half year's night would pass.
ooOoo
And I would love you all the day
Every night would kiss and play
If with me you'd fondly stray
Over the hills and far away
ooOoo
Were I sold on Indian soil
Soon as the burning day was closed
I could mock the sultry toil
When on my charmer's breast reposed.
ooOoo
And I would love you all the day
Every night would kiss and play
If with me you'd fondly stray
Over the hills and far away
Traditional English song from the late 17th century
Recorded also by Led Zeppelin on their 1973 album, Houses of the Holy
Fall laid its finger on the Boreal forest. Barely the middle of September and the deciduous trees lining the riverbed, sugar maples and beech, aspens and birch, showed off their blazing fall colors. In the Mountain Camp activity was at a high pitch.
Those that were staying for the bitter winter were laying in supplies and those that would leave for the flat lands, predominately the college students, were packing up. Everyone had a job; everyone was looking to prepare for the winter.
Sam and Dean were sitting together on the Medical cabin's front porch where Dean's adoptive 'older brother', Digger, found them.
"You guys better be ready to get out of here before the snow flies. That back road is a real bear when it freezes over." he said.
"I know, Digger," Dean answered, "We're getting ready to go. Are you and Wapun and Sokanon going to be OK up here?"
"We've been doing it for years." Digger replied. "We're not dead yet".
"But it can get down way below freezing up here. We're just worried about all of you." Sam interjected.
"The coldest it has ever reached here was -27F." Digger said. This camp is located on the wind protected side of the mountain. It stays below freezing from mid-October to April but it's not really that bad. But you're right; Calgary is warmer by an average of about 20 degrees."
Dean jumped in to the conversation, "We're taking Ayamis down to school and getting her set up but Wapun is staying here; can't take the Medical Tech away. Who's going to take the X-rays when you fall off that snowmobile of yours and bust a leg?" Dean glanced up at Digger, his hands busy cleaning some mysterious car part.
Digger huffed. "Don't you worry, little brother, I'll keep a close eye on the woman for you. Nothing's going to happen on my watch."
"Ayamis is ready to go. " Sam said. "She's looking forward to getting back down to the University for winter classes. We'll help her settle in at U of C and then we're going to do a little job for Garth. After that I think we'll be on our way to Indiana."
"Digger, did you ever go down to the hotel and settle scores with that snotty desk clerk? What was his name? " Dean stopped and thought for a minute. "Cubby, wasn't it Cubby?
Digger laughed. "Yeah, I got to have fun there. The tribe leases the land to them that they built their golf course on. I got your friend Cubby sent back to Hotel Management School for a refresher course in 'Guest Hospitality'. I hear from some of the maids that he took it very poorly. "
"How did you pull that off?" Dean asked.
"I told the hotel manager that Cubby had been rude to my cousins, Dean and Sam Campbell. If you guys go back they'll give you a free room if you mention my name, Dalton Webb."
"Your name is Dalton Webb? I thought it was Digger." Dean snickered.
"Be nice, little brother, or I'll kick your ass." Digger replied. "Yes, my non-Nations name is Dalton Webb. Respect it."
XXXXXXX
The next morning was spent lugging Ayamis' luggage and boxes down to the garage and stuffing it all in the back seat of the Impala. They didn't leave camp until late morning and decided to go on and tease the Banff Hotel's pet desk clerk by stopping there for lunch.
"I want to check on the bride and Diana," Sam said. "Just want to make sure they are still under control and haven't bullied some poor sucker into being King of the Wood."
Ayamis had heard the details about the bride that Sam had constrained by placing her under a spell and she was curious to see an example of her husband's 'work'. She also wanted to see the inside of the Banff Springs Hotel.
They parked in front of the impressive Scottish Baronial manor and trooped through the lobby.
"Hi ya, Cubby," Dean exclaimed and waved at the tall, thin man dressed in somber colors, a striped necktie the only bright spot. It looked to Dean like the man shuddered as he caught sight of their party.
"Mr. Campbell, Mr. Campbell and Madame, welcome to the hotel." He hissed out through gritted teeth. With a massive effort Cubby forced out a ghastly smile. "Will you be staying with us again today?"
"Sorry to disappoint you, Cubby, but we're only here for lunch." Sam responded while Dean stood grinning like a crocodile looking over the water hole menu.
They passed through to the dining room and Sam immediately went to one of the large multi-paned windows overlooking the pine forest. He waved Dean over.
"Try to get them to seat us here", he whispered to Dean. "I'm going out on the veranda and down those steps to check on the Diana spirit."
Dean shook his head. "Should you go alone? She's dangerous."
"If you watch me from the window you should be able to tell if I'm in trouble. But If I get in trouble I don't know exactly what you would do about it. She's a spirit, you can't shoot her."
"I can sure as hell insult her." Dean replied. "I'll be there, Sam, if you need me."
Dean watched Sam go. The hostess came up and he pulled out a chair for Ayamis, who promptly got with the program and sat down.
"If you don't mind, we'd like to sit here. Mrs. Campbell is pregnant and she's really tired." Dean smiled his very best smile at the young hostess. "We wouldn't want her to move for no good reason, would we?" The hostess handed him the menus and left.
Dean sat and kept his eyes on Sam, leaving the ordering up to Ayamis, telling her to just not make it too healthy for him. He watch as his brother came to the edge of the trees and braced one hand on a trunk. Sam lowered his head and become motionless.
"Get me rabbit food and prune juice and you'll crash my system. I'll go into burger withdrawal and have convulsions. You don't want that to happen, do you?" Dean wiggled his eyebrows at Ayamis, who responded by slapping him on the shoulder.
XXXXXXX
Sam stood under the edge of the pines and listened for the rustle of Diana's footsteps. He heard only the chatter of squirrels and the occasional shuffling of a browsing herbivore, a hare or lemming. The heavy steps of the caribou, grazing on conifer needles, were easy to pick out. Beneath his feet he could feel the slow tunneling of the voles.
But nowhere could he find a trace of Diana. He most likely needed to go deeper into the wood but that would make his brother go off like he had a rocket up his ass. Sam grinned at the thought of Dean throwing himself off the veranda to chase after his little brother.
He lifted his head and listened again to the world. The wind heaved the pine branches and high above he could hear the calls of the birds. Nowhere could he hear or feel the rushing of Diana's hunt, the cry of her hounds or the thrum of her arrows. Perhaps the loss of the bride as her in-house pimp had caused her to move hunting grounds.
No warrior charged from the forest to challenge him for the invasion of Diana's sacred grove so, if she had found some fool to become her new King of the Wood, she had taken him with her.
They would have to find out where she had gone. He hoped it was nowhere near the Mountain Camp. Another smile crossed his face. If she tried to take Digger on she would find that she met her match. He turned and trudged back to the steps and up to the Dining Room. He could see Ayamis through the window, waving at him.
Once seated at the table, with his lunch in front of him he gave the news to Dean. "I can't find her. She's not near the hotel where I found her before and I don't want to go hunting for her deeper in the woods without back up."
"That's too bad," Dean responded. "But we're going to have to put off hunting her. She could be anywhere out there." He put his half eaten 'Scots' burger down." I did two things while you were out playing in the woods."
"Oh, really?" Sam pointed his fork at Dean's plate. "Why is that called a Scots burger?" Ayamis had clued Sam in.
"I don't know," Dean replied. "It looks and tastes like a bacon burger. Maybe there are a lot of pigs in Scotland. Maybe it's the only way they could get twelve dollars for a cheeseburger. Who knows what evil lurks here, other than us?" He took another healthy bite. "Tastes good."
"Alright, piggy, what did you learn?" Sam laughed.
Dean nodded at Ayamis. "Ask her. She actually got the first bit" He went back to his burger.
Ayamis took a bite of her salmon then put down her fork and smiled at her husband. "I asked the waitress about the bride and if we might be able to see her if we stayed. She told me that the bride was still around but they had noticed that she wasn't coming around so often any more. She also said that the ghost seemed calmer and quieter than usual so I guess your spell worked."
"Good," Sam said. "If she's calmer and I can't find any trace of Diana then this place might be safer now. Dean, we should warn Digger that the Diana spirit is most likely prowling the hills and he should keep a look out for odd stories or men disappearing into the woods.""
"What's your story, Dean?"
"I called Garth about this Calgary hunt he wants us to do. It's called the Deane House and it's part of the Fort Calgary preserved historic site. How 'bout you research that, Sam, and we'll talk about it in the car."
Sam snorted then gave his brother a military salute "Yes, sir, jerk sir, yes. Right away sir. I'll get right on it,sir."
"Shut up bitch." Dean replied.
Ayamis rolled her eyes. "You two just don't stop, do you? Eat your lunch."
XXXXXXX
They drove the 80 miles to Calgary after lunch and delivered Ayamis to her dorm. As a married woman and a First Nations native she had certain privileges at the University like her own private room in the dorm. She could have elected to live off campus but the dorm connected to the underground tunnels that networked the University buildings together. She could get around the campus in winter and never be exposed to the snow and the cold.
During the drive Sam had held forth on his research of the Deane House.
"Interesting building," he started. It was a mansion built in 1906 inside the perimeter of the old Fort Calgary. Fort Calgary was the local base for the North-West Mounted Police who were charged with keeping order in the region among the whiskey traders and outlaws. The fort's superintendent, Captain Richard Deane, built the mansion for what was, at the time, the jaw-dropping amount of $6,900.00 dollars as a home for his wife, Martha. Unfortunately she never got to see the house as she died of a sudden illness while traveling to meet her husband.
The fort was closed in 1914 and Captain Deane retired and moved back to England. The fort was sold to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway which promptly tore down all the Fort Calgary buildings with the exception of The Deane House, which they kept to house officials. They did, however, move the house to the diagonal corner of the block to clear way for a project. This was the first time the Deane house was moved.
In 1929 the house was sold again to a local entrepreneur who moved the building again. This time it was moved to the other side of the Elbow River and became a boarding house. It was floated on the river using boats and giant flotation devices to move it to its current location. II was a remarkable feat and it made a 1930 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine. Many speculated that C.I. Jacques could have saved money by simply building a new house."
"Sam, this is nice, but could we move on to the ghosts, please?" Dean whined, sucking on his empty straw and making a drain-clearing noise.
Ayamis took away the empty soda cup Dean was sucking on and gave him a can of soda. "Don't play with it. Drink it" she ordered him.
Sam huffed, "Alright I'm getting to the ghosts but you need to know all this stuff first."
"Fine, continue." Dean waved a hand at his brother.
Sam went on, "After it was moved the house went steadily downhill. It became a seedy boarding house and had such a bad reputation that the Military declared it off limits to personal during the Second World War. It was the kind of boarding house that rented rooms by the hour."
"I know those kinds of houses," Dean exclaimed.
"I know you do, Dean. Please shut up."
"During the boarding house years there were murders and suicides. A man was shot to death on the front steps. No one was ever arrested. An enraged husband stabbed his wife to death in front of their children and then killed himself with the same knife. In 1933 a father and his epileptic son were boarders. The 14 year old boy was bullied by the other children and he committed suicide in the attic.
Ten years later Jacques sold the house to Alex Brotherton, who continued to operate the house as a boarding house. He would sit for hours, smoking his pipe in the window of the front parlor. Brotherton's daughter died in the house in 1965, Brotherton himself died in the house in 1968. There were many unconfirmed rumors of other deaths and murders in the house. "
"Almost too many possibilities." Dean said.
""You're right. The place is wall to wall ghosts and all of Calgary knows it. The city took over the abandoned house in 1973 and restored it as a part of a historical preservation project. It was in the 60's and 70's that its reputation began to grow. Currently there are historical tours where they have had to add spiels about the ghosts to cut down on the questions, mostly from the kids and there is a restaurant on the first floor."
"Good job, Sam. Now can we get to the ghosts? I know that the City Council is worried about liability. Garth told me that we were going to get paid by the city for cleaning the place up. Our friendly ghosts have evidently crossed the line from tourist attraction to actual scary phantoms."
Sam started up again. "Alright, here's the most current list: we have the elderly Native in the basement who supposedly tells people they are trespassing on sacred land. I don't believe that one for a second. If he's guarding a sacred spot why does he keep moving with the house? This house gets around, remember. There is the old style telephone with no guts or electricity that rings every now and then in the bar."
"Evidently Alex Brotherton is still sitting in his chair in the window smoking his pipe. Only some supposedly 'sensitive' people claim to have seen him but almost everyone has smelled the pipe smoke. We have the body on the outside steps that appears and disappears, usually when restaurant guests are arriving or tying to leave. There is the sad 14 year old suicide in the attic who cries at night."
"The staff hears footsteps coming from upstairs when there is no one there. Then there is the man in the black cape that rushes down the stairs and out the front door. You wouldn't know he was a ghost until you notice that he his legs stop at his knees."
"Good grief, Sam. They have one of everything. What the hell is going on there? These are all supported sightings?"
Sam shrugged. "It's been going on for years. There are tons of police reports, journals, and personal newspaper interviews. Something is happening there and lately it's been happening a lot."
"I know where we are spending tomorrow night." Dean said.
"Can I go?" Ayamis asked.
She got "No" in stereo and settled back in her chair. "Why not?"
Dean looked at Sam. "She's your wife. Good luck."