Glass Half Empty
Summary: Sam and Dean run across a ghost who just won't let them have any fun... Season one - Post Shadow.
Pardon the delay. Unexpected hiccup cause by real life. Darned annoying things, hiccups.
Chapter Five
"What do you think you're doing in here?" the frightened woman demanded, trying to sound like she was in charge despite her obvious trembling. She brandished the hatchet, attempting to give the impression she would happily chop them to pieces if they came any closer. She looked to be about fifty, maybe older if her somewhat leathery face was to be believed. It was hard to tell what kind of figure she had because she was wearing a nightgown and a fluffy terrycloth robe. Sam saw that she had come down a set of stairs and guessed she was a caretaker that they allowed to live on the second floor of the house.
Sam looked toward Dean. He was blinking and clearly trying to get his eyes to focus. Instinctively, he raised his shotgun and aimed it in the direction of the woman.
The woman's eyes widened in panic and the hatchet wavered. "Wh... wait... don't... don't hurt me! Take whatever you want!"
"Dean, don't!" Sam ordered, but he needn't have bothered. His brother had already started to lower the gun as soon as he heard the terrified woman speak. "We're sorry," Sam said quickly. "We didn't know anyone was here. We just wanted to see the house."
Dean snorted in disbelief, and Sam supposed rightfully so. It was pathetic as far as explanations went, although he didn't know that his brother could have come up with anything better.
"With guns?" she managed to squeak out.
"Yeah," Dean smirked, "why did we bring these, Sammy?"
"Dean." Sam shot him a quelling glance, not that it ever really had much effect.
"You work here?" Dean asked.
"What?" She frowned, clasping the edges of her robe together over her chest.
"Do you work here?" Dean said again slowly. "Are you a tour guide?"
The woman looked from one of them to the other and then back to Dean and his shotgun held down at his side. "Yes, but there's nothing here of value. I... My purse is upstairs. You can have it. There isn't much cash, but-"
Dean held up his hand and she stopped abruptly. "Keep your money, lady. Is there anything in this house that actually belonged to Carry Nation? That's all we need to know and we'll get out of your hair."
She shook her head in disbelief. "No... we... Carry left here to continue her work and never came back. Mr. Nation divorced her for abandonment. He didn't have anything of hers either."
"She just sort of took off and left the guy behind to hold the fort, huh?" Dean shot a look toward Sam, though he just as quickly looked away.
Sam didn't like that look at all. He knew Dean was still upset about his desire to leave again once the demon was killed, but what was Sam supposed to do? Lie and say he would stay? Sam hunted, but he wasn't a hunter. He never had been.
"Even if she'd been here," the tour guide continued nervously, "Carry had almost nothing when she died... the few things we have are donated pieces that would have been appropriate to the time period."
"How about the hatchet?" Dean asked, pointing with his shotgun.
"Replica," she managed, barely above a whisper.
Dean realized he'd scared her again unnecessarily. He frowned guiltily and Sam knew Dean's rules of conduct regarding women had kicked in. A chick he met in a bar was one thing, but a scared lady was another.
"There's nothing here that belonged to her, not even something small?" Dean asked more gently.
Horrified and scared out of her wits, the woman just shook her head. Dean sighed. "Great. We'll be going now. You... uhh... you can go back to bed. Have a nightcap. It'll settle you right down."
"You did not just say that," Sam groaned, already feeling the sudden drop in the room's temperature.
Dean just looked at him. "What?"
The caretaker, who'd allowed the hatchet she was still holding to fall to her side, now raised it. She looked from one of them to the other, her face suddenly twisting in fury. "You dare come into my home and try to ply me with liquor?" she seethed.
"Ah, crap," Dean said, realizing what he'd done.
She flew at him, swinging the hatchet like she knew how to handle herself. Sam started forward, but with a sweep of her arm, Sam was thrown into the table holding all of the magazines. He toppled over it backwards, landing in an awkward heap.
"Drunkards! Fornicators! Have you no shame?"
Sam got to his hands and knees. He crawled out from behind the table to see Dean grappling with the woman and to Sam's surprise it looked like Dean was losing. He managed to push her back and she lashed out furiously with the hatchet catching Dean's arm, tearing through his jacket and the skin underneath.
"Son of a b-"
Her hand snaked out and she smacked him hard enough across the face that Dean rocked back. "I will not tolerate your foul mouth either!" She began to circle him and Dean moved to counter her, stepping right into Sam's line of vision. "Keep your filthy, swearing mouth shut!" she shrieked.
"Sammy? You ok?" Dean called.
"Yeah." Sam used the table to help himself stand. "You?"
"She's strong as an ox," Dean replied, not really an answer. "Can you get back to the door?"
The caretaker flew at Dean again and this time he met her halfway, pushing her toward the other room on the front of the house, away from the kitchen and the back door. Sam could tell he had to put all of his weight behind it to keep her back and he was fighting to keep her from swinging the hatchet again.
"Sam, get your ass to the door!" Dean ordered, the effort it was taking to hold her also evident in his voice.
Sam obeyed uneasily. He ran toward the back door, but instead of going through it, he stopped just inside. As he'd expected, Dean came barreling toward him only a few seconds later. Sam followed him and slammed the door shut. The door opened in, so the best he could do was hold onto the doorknob to keep the possessed woman from opening it right behind them.
Dean wrapped his hands over Sam's and it took both of them to hold the door closed as soon as she began pulling on it.
"Salt," Dean said through clenched teeth. "We gotta keep her inside the house."
"I've got the lighter fluid. You have the salt," Sam snapped. Dean removed his hands to get the salt out of his jacket pocket and Sam started to lose his grip as she pulled on the doorknob.
The pressure on the door abruptly ceased, but was followed closely by the hatchet crashing through the glass portion of the door. It caught Sam just above the wrist and sliced through the skin in a searing line of pain. Sam released the door and Dean turned him and pushed him down the steps.
Sam frantically looked in both directions, and finally nodded toward the stockade museum next door. The entrance was only a few yards away. "There!"
Dean ran ahead of him and with a grunt rammed the door with his shoulder. The blow broke the flimsy lock and the door flew open. Sam hurried in behind Dean and he quickly slammed the door shut again. Dean pointed toward a hutch to one side and together they pushed it in front of the door. That left them in complete darkness and Sam felt around near the door until he found a set of switches.
The lights came on to reveal nothing more than a large display of flyers for local historical places and a glass counter with a cash register on it. Behind the cash register was an eight foot tall partition made of pegboard. Beyond the cash register was a doorway that Sam guessed led into the museum proper. There weren't any windows, so at least they had a few moments respite from Carry and her hatchet.
"Dude," Dean said, breathing heavily and leaning against the hutch, his arms wrapped close to his chest, "I've managed one stinking beer and no fornicating, and this freaking woman won't leave us alone! How fair is that?"
"You forgot your kick me sign," Sam said, deadpan, jerking a thumb toward his own back.
"Right. Forgot. Universe against me." Dean plucked at the tear in his jacket and gave a quick peek at the damage to his arm beneath, then his eyes shot toward Sam's wrist that had practically been laid open by the hatchet. "Guessed I'm a black hole, sucked you into my crappy orbit. Sorry 'bout that."
Blood was seeping from the wound and spreading to cover his hand. Sam glanced around to see if he could find anything to stem the flow. Dean immediately recognized his problem. Before Sam could even say anything, Dean had already pulled his knife out of his pocket and was cutting off the bottom two or three inches of his own t-shirt. He tucked the knife away and grunted for Sam to hold out his arm. Sam obeyed and Dean quickly wrapped the wound with the strip of cloth and tied it off.
"That good?"
"It's fine. Thanks," Sam answered. It wasn't really. It hurt like a bitch and they both knew it.
Dean pursed his lips unhappily. "It should hold until we get back to the room anyway."
They both jumped at the sound of glass breaking and a hatchet thunking into the hutch blocking the door.
"Crap. Was really hoping she wouldn't follow us."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Cause your luck has been so great today."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean headed past the cash register and through the door leading into the museum. Sam followed and they both stopped dead. It was a large room packed with glass cases, stuffed full. A quick look told them that almost nothing in the cases was museum quality. It was all just old stuff that was too old to be useful, not in good enough shape to sell or be really interesting, but that made whoever had owned it feel too guilty to throw away. Tools, school photos, clothes, old spectacles, hat pins. These people hadn't been wealthy or been able to carry much from the East beyond what was actually needed for daily living. As Sam looked around, he decided this was the town's storeroom for their old, pseudo-valuable junk.
"Ya know," Dean muttered, almost to himself, "sometimes old crap is just old crap. Get yourself a Hefty bag and move on, people."
Sam nodded. They'd seen too many people bogged down by the past, holding onto trinkets that even the person who'd owned it would say to throw away. Their lives had been a never-ending lesson that sentimentality wasn't just counterproductive to the living, it was dangerous. Best case scenario, it just bogged people down and they couldn't move on, worst case scenario, someone really couldn't move on and people got hurt.
Moving on. That's what it was all about. Sam could feel his wallet nearly burning a hole in his pocket. He had one picture of Jess, and right next to it was a metal button.
Sam had lost everything in the fire, Jess first and foremost, but beyond that all of their clothing, furniture, books, souvenirs from their trips, pictures… everything. The only reason he'd found the button was because he'd been desperate to find some tiny trace that Jess had been there, that she'd been part of his life. He didn't even know what shirt Jess had been wearing the day she died, but he guessed she'd thrown it over a chair in their bedroom like she normally did when she undressed for bed. Sam had found no sign of the shirt, only the button in a pile of ash near the remains of the chair.
The button was even more useless than all of the things in the cases in the museum. Just one little button. Nothing in the grand scheme of things, but he couldn't bear the thought of losing it, or throwing it out. He couldn't stand to think of someone else touching it or using it, or even looking at it without knowing who it had belonged to. Just the idea of it one day being abandoned to a place like this made him ill.
"You see anything?" Dean called. Sam looked up to see his brother combing through all of the cases.
"No."
Dean must have heard something in his voice because he stopped what he was doing and looked up. He met Sam's gaze and held it for just a second. "One thing at a time, man," Dean said evenly. "Find what's keeping her here or she's gonna chop us to pieces."
Sam turned toward the front door suddenly realizing there was no sound. She was no longer trying to hack her way in the front. "Dean, can you see out the back?"
"This place was meant to be a fort, dude. No windows," Dean shot back impatiently. Still, he headed toward the back to see if he could find another door. Sam ordered himself to focus and once again began searching through the thousands of items in the cases.
After several more minutes of searching, Dean came wandering back toward him. "I don't see anything. Maybe the fence is keeping her out. Or maybe she got bored and went back to keep an eye on the bar."
"We should be so lucky," Sam replied.
He and Dean kept looking, commenting occasionally on some item or another, Dean most notably impressed by a mastodon tusk some farmer had tilled up in his field. Finally, Sam stopped. He'd almost gone past it before his eyes had backtracked to the small brooch made of mother of pearl. "Dean? Is this what I think it is?"
Dean hurried over to look. "What?"
Sam pointed through the glass countertop using his uninjured hand. "It looks like a hatchet pin. Like one of the pins she sold to her groupies to fund her speaking tours. I can't read the tag on it."
Not given to subtlety, Dean grabbed his shotgun and brought the stock down on the glass top, shattering it. He snatched the pin out, shaking off the bits of glass clinging to it, then handed it to Sam.
"Temperance Union membership pin worn by Carry A. Nation at her final speaking appearance." Sam looked up at Dean. "Dean, she collapsed at that speech and died not long after that."
"Great. Some salt, some lighter fluid and it's Miller Time."
The back door crashed open and several seconds later the tour guide from Carry's house came around the corner, hatchet still in hand.
"Dude, just tell me to keep my mouth shut from now on, ok?"
"Ok," Sam answered. "Dean, keep your mouth shut from now on."
"Thanks, Sam," Dean said sarcastically. "You're a real lifesaver."
The woman let out a howl of fury. She brought her hatchet down on the nearest case, and every display case in the entire museum exploded in a shower of glass. Dean cried out and tried to cover his face while Sam did the same. He stumbled back into the shelf behind him and felt something large crash into his head.
Sam heard Dean calling his name, but it was too late. He was headed for the floor and nothing was going to stop him. As his vision faded, he saw two things. The first was Carry's hatchet pin, only a few inches away where he'd dropped it. The second was that freaking mastodon tusk Dean had said was the coolest thing ever. It had fallen from its shelf and knocked him out.
Dean didn't have any backup now thanks to that stupid tusk. Sam wondered how awesome his brother thought it was now.
The last chapter soon… And in case you were wondering, the Stockade Museum in Medicine Lodge is indeed the proud owner of a mastodon tusk a local farmer tilled up in his field. I believe I said something terribly intelligent like, "Cool. A mastodon tusk," when I saw it.