Chapter 22

Koven liked to think of dreams like rubber bands. You can stretch them, twist them, wrap them around your fingers. But what she didn't know, is sometimes they snapped back. And they snapped back hard.

It happened to her ever since she came into this world. Dreams of her childhood came back. Like the man in a black hood, who had a knife clutched in one hand and a large ticking clock in the other. Then there was the large black dog that would chase her through her house. And the wear-wolf that would circled a pyramid of boxes that she sat on top of, without actually attacking her, but not giving her any time to run.

Then there was a new dream. It was a large house, with black corridors. There was a single brown door that led to a large room that contained only a mirror. And when she'd look at the mirror, she was... different. Her eyes were gone and replaced by clocks. Her mouth was turned into two slimy worms. Her skin was grey and decaying. Her nose was a moldy strawberry, and she wore grass for clothing.

When she'd turn away, there's be the large black dog. But it was bigger. Big enough that it had the hooded clock-holding man sitting atop it.

Then, some medical conditions that hadn't bother her in years came back. Her Lactose Intolerance was the start. Then came her allergic reaction to eye make-up. And for a while, she had her head aches from childhood she got when she had began to talk to fast. But that went away quickly.

Now it was her insanity. She though that went away after it came. Now it was back. And it was... insane to say the least. But she straightened her coat, tucked her hair into her wig, and grabbed her fake ID. And she went to work.

"Mr. Reachbach I'd like to speak with Hannah." Koven said. Mr. Reachbach intertwined the fingers of his right hand, with those of his left.

"Mrs. N-Nightwing. You've b-been v-v-visiting Miss Jacobson al-lot since you t-took the c-case." Mr. Reachbach said.

"I have my reason's Mr. Reachbach." Koven said.

Yeah. Cause you're a useless piece of shit who makes friends with metal hospital patients because they're forced to talk to you because you're a fake cop. Pathetic.

Koven took in a deep breath, and breathed out. She just needed to calm down. They weren't there. There was only Theodora. No one else was there. There was only Theodora.

Oh look, she's still trying to convince herself. That is just down right rude. No wonder Dean doesn't like her.

They laughed. Chuckled. Giggled at their own comments, eating at Koven's self-consciousness.

"Can I just speak with Hannah?" She asked. Mr. Reachbach sighed unnecessarily before nodding. Koven left the office and walked to Hannah's door, which was closed. Koven knocked lightly before pushing the door open slightly.

Hannah sat on her bed, facing the wall, her head in her hands. She admitted no noise except for the small sound of breathing in and out her nose.

"Hannah?" Koven asked. Then, all noise stopped. Even Koven stopped breathing for a moment. The air was deathly still. The voices had quieted. Hannah had stopped breathing. There was no noise inside Mr. Reachbach's office, or from the room on either side of Hannah's.

Hannah, taking in an equal to the rest breath, turned to Koven. Her breathing and blinking were synchronized. When she breathed in, she blinked. When she breathed out, she blinked, and repeated.

The creaking in the walls had stopped to listen. Koven had slowly stepped into the small room and Hannah continues her synchronized blinking and breathing.

"Hello Hannah." The door suddenly closed behind her. Koven jolted forward a bit in fear. Trapped in a room with an angry spirit, a mental hospital patient, and being insane herself. This was going to fail.

"Why do you keep coming here?" Hannah asked, her breathing never failing to meet her blinking. Koven took in a deep breath.

"I'm working on the case of the young man who hung himse-"

"Don't lie to me." Hannah spoke calmly. "Why are you here." She repeated. Koven took in another breath.

"You're not Hannah are you?" She asked as calmly as she could.

"Why are you here?" Koven contemplated this in her head.

"Hannah seamed lonely. I know what it's like to be lonely. With no one told hold you." Koven said. "And I'm on a job."

"Go away. We don't want you here."

"We. Who are you?" Koven asked. Hannah straightened up.

"The girl you speak of. Hannah. She calls me Kayla." The voice faltered for a moment, deepening.

"You can't do it can you. You're a boy pretending to be a girl. You're a spirit lost and alone and you thought killing some girl's parents, then taking the girl would help. But you couldn't take the girl could you. So you made her crazier than she already was. And now you're going to kill her."

"Hannah has been dead for a while now." Kayla spoke.

"And I'm not willing to believe that." Koven said. Her one hand that was hidden by her sleeve, was holding her phone. She hit a button to send the text to Dean's phone.

"Is it really that hard to believe?" Kayla, or Hannah, or Franklin, or whoever the hell it was, stood. "She's been dead since she met me. She's been dead since her parents died. She's always been dead."

"And I'm just supposed to believe a ghostly slightly pedophilic bastard like you? Oh look I kinda-sorta quoted a great romantic, yet sad book. John Green, he always know how to make you laugh, then how to make you cry, then he just down right stabs your heart with a dull butter knife that is moldy and used." She began to ramble out random information. She was staling.

Then a gun was pressed into the back of her head. She took in a gasp.

"You should have stayed away Mrs. Nightwing." The now steady voice of Mr. Reachbach said.

"And here is the plot twist." Koven said, imitating a Scottish accent. "I actually, truthfully, had not seen this coming." She turned around to stare down the barrel of Mr. Reachbach's .45. "Would you believe this is not the first time this has happened to me." She asked calmly. But inside, she was freaking out. She had not expected this. Any of this.

The plan wasn't going to work as well as they thought.

"How'd Franklin die Mr. Reachbach? Did you hand him? Did he hand himself. Did you guys plan this all along? Are you a a ghost as well..." She trailed off. "No. You're a human. You're controlling Franklin's spirit? But why? And why kill your own patience? Kayla, Franklin, whoever it is, they can't leave the hospital can they?" She needed to keep staling.

Where the hell were Sam and Dean?

"Look, Mr. Reachbach you seam like a nice guy. Creepy, insane, but nice. I mean, yeah I'm insane as well. I have voices in the back of my head right now cussing me out. Going as far as the N-word to abuse me and my mind. But hey, that's just how it all works. You should know that, since I'm guessing you had to do something physically painful to get Franklin inside of Hannah. Ghost bonds, do those exist?" Koven pulled her wig off and tossed it to the floor, careful not to toss her phone.

Then she kicked off her shoes, and then fell next to the wig. Without her heels, she was about the same height as Mr. Reachbach, and about a foot taller than Hannah.

"You must be crazy to try to control a ghost using a girl in a mental institution, or whatever you call this creepy place. So, how did you do it Mr. Reachbach? How did you kill Franklin?" She stopped speaking.

"What makes you think I killed Mr. Groover?"

"No, no Mr. Reachbach, the question is, why would I think Franklin would willingly die for this." Koven corrected. "Franklin." She turned to Hannah's body. "How old are you?" She asked. He/She said nothing.

"He was sixteen." Mr. Reachbach said. "Not that it ever mattered. A bullet to the head did the trick."

"There we go, that's all I was looking for sir. You truly are one crazy bastard." There was then silence, and then the sound of Mr. Reachbach's gun cocking.

"I can't escape this hell," Koven began to vocalize. "So many times I've tried. But I'm still caged inside. Somebody get me through this nightmare. I can't control myself." She began to bounce to the music she was emitting.

Mr. Reachbach: "What are you doing?"

Voice: Stupid

Koven: "So what is you can see, the darkest side of me,"

Mr. Reachbach: "Stop that."

Koven singing louder: "No one will ever change this Animal I have become, help me believe,"

Voice: Idiot

Mr. Reachbach: "I said stop!"

"It's not the real me, somebody help me tame this animal! This animal, this animal!" She took a breath. "I can't escape myself. So many times I've lied. But there's still rage inside."

"What is she doing?" Kayla asked.

"Somebody get me through this nightmare, I can't control myself. So what if you can see, the darkest side of me, no one will ever tame this animal I have bec-" There was a loud crash as a door inside the building was thrown open.

"Koven!" A voice sand. "Koven, my child where are you!?"

"They're a little late." Koven mumbled. Then she heard the slapping of skin against the floor over and over, coming closer by the Nano-second. Banana was running full speed. "Oh shit..."

"Koven!" Banana sang out-of-tune. "Koven VERMONT!" Banana jumped atop Mr. Reachbach. "Hello!" She exclaimed, not even worried about the gun. "I am Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fana Bo Besca the third! Banana for short!" She giggled, hugging Mr. Reachbach.

Koven took this moment to run. Kayla fallowed after, but much more slowly. He or she, or whatever it was, kept fading in and out of existence. But it continued to walk briskly behind the fleeing Koven. She saw the exit, Sam and Dean in the empty streets, Dean with his bag slung over his shoulder, and Sam looking into the trunk, making sure no one passing by could see the weapons.

She ran for the door. A way out. Her only way out. Dean turned when he heard the sound of her bare feet hitting the ground, thinking it would be Banana cowering back.

"Dean!" She yelled. But before she could escape the crazy building, the doors snapped shut. She gasped when she came in contact with the see-though wall that now separate her and the Winchesters.

"Koven!" Dean rushed to the door. Koven began to bang her fists against the door, but they wouldn't break.

"Dean!" She screamed. "Dean help me!"

Freak.

A cold hand grasped her shoulder from behind and threw her across the room.

Stupid

Useless

Pathetic

Koven looked up at Hannah, who had a blank expression. She was no longer breathing, and no longer blinking. She was a walking statue.

"Hannah." Koven breathed out.

"Hannah is gone." Her voice has changed completely. It was no longer soft and girly. It was deep, loud and... teenagerish. Boy teenagerish.

"No. No she's not. Hannah's still in there. I know she is. She's the little girl I spoke to last night. She's the little girl who gave me a drawing of who she saw Kayla as. Well then Hannah. Here's my drawing." Koven pulled a hand mirror that rested atop a stack of magazines and faced it towards Hannah.

"You. Are. Pathetic." Hannah spat. Koven closed her eyes, waiting for something to happen.

"Shut up. Shut up and kill me already." Koven dropped the mirror and it shattered on the ground. Koven now lay on her side, her arms laying in front of her, her head rested on her bicep.

But then something else happened. The glass shattered, and there was a loud crack. A gun had fired. Hannah froze all together as she dropped. Behind the door, Dean stood, his .45 raised, and Sam behind him, worried someone had heard or seen.

Koven gasped and crawled over to Hannah. She searched for a pulse, but found nothing. She found herself crying harder with shaky breaths and nearly choking when she tried to swallow her saliva.

"Koven!" Dean broke the door. The crystalizing sound of glass shattering wasn't enough to brink Koven out of her sad state. "Koven." he brothers ran inside as looked at Koven worried.

"She was only a kid." She gurgled on some words and made them inaudible.

"What?" Sam asked. She looked up, her eyes puffy and red.

"She was a child! She was only ten!" she cried, looking back to the girl. Her eyes were still open, and her hair was fanned beneath her. But Koven didn't want to close her eyes.

Koven always wondered why when someone died, they have their eyes closed. To make them look like they were sleeping? What good did that truly do? It didn't hide the horrid truth that they would never wake. they would never talk to you again.

She almost asked if they could leave her husbands eyes open. So she could see them one last time. But no. The last time she saw his eyes, his beautiful deep-blue eyes. He was pleading for the men to let her go.

It never dawned on her, that maybe it was to keep something in, or keep something out. But she didn't want to believe any of that religious bull shit. She was not religious.

She sat in the back of the Impala, the boys having it parked a long ways away from the town. Inside a pit they had laid Hannah's body down, covering her from head to toe in salt and gasoline.

They had burnt the remains of Franklin which Mr. Reachbach had told them were in the basement. Then they had called the cops on Mr. Reachbach, who refused to admit to his crimes, but Banana had helped, claiming otherwise, saying she'd seen him shoot her daughter, Hannah-Bell (Koven found nothing about that funny).

After parting with the crazy cat lady, Sam, Koven and Dean had driven out here to burn Hannah.

Koven sat in the back of the Impala, clutching to the brown wig, her black heels on the floor in front of her.

Her long legs were tucked beneath her, and her eyes were watering. the door was open, so she heard the sound of the fire burning. She could smell the burnt hair as well. The horrid smell of burnt hair...

"Somebody get me through this nightmare, I can't control myself. So what if you can see, the darkest side of me, no one will ever tame this animal I have become." She sand slowly, her voice just barley above a whisper. "Help me believe, it's not the real me. Somebody help me tame this animal. Somebody help me through this nightmare, I can't control myself. Somebody wake me from this nightmare, I can't escape this hell." She was slowly drifting off. "So what if you can see...

"The darkest side of me..." she closed her eyes

"This Animal I have become."

And this is the end to another story line.