Chapter 33
I could have cried in relief (it's possible that I did, but I was drowning so I don't really know) when I felt two hands reach through my arms and grab me. They started kicking and pulling upwards and I used what little energy I had to help kick. The mermaid was still latched onto Dean's leg and out of nowhere a harpoon attached to a long piece of rope shot through the water and right through the mermaids head.
She let go of Dean's leg and whoever was pulling me finally broke through the surface. I coughed and hacked up all the water from my lungs, breathing in the fresh cool air. It burnt horribly but I couldn't help but smile when I saw Rick reeling in the harpoon rope. John helped me back onto the boat and then dragged Dean up.
Dean wasn't moving.
"Dean," I gasped out. I crawled over and pushed John aside roughly and started to perform CPR. "One, two, three, four,"
I tilted his head back to open his airway and blew into his mouth before starting more compressions.
"Come on, Dean." I said, pumping his heart. "One, two, three, four,"
I blew more air into his mouth.
His eyes quickly opened and he rolled over to hack up all the water from his lungs. I fell back, beyond relieved.
"Come on, Rose," I looked up and saw John holding out a hand with a giant blanket in his other hand. Rick was helping Dean and the harpooned mermaid was splayed out on the deck a few feet away. John helped me up and wrapped the blanket around me and once Dean had his own blanket wrapped around him John helped me so I could sit next to him and maybe generate some body heat between the two of us.
"Are you okay?" I asked Dean quietly while John went below into the captain's quarters. Rick threw a tarp over the mermaid. Dean rested his head on top of mine and nodded.
"You saved me," he said, clearing his throat after a moment. I played with my fingers awkwardly.
"Actually your dad saved us." I told him. "We wouldn't have made it if he hadn't come after me."
...
Rick navigated us back to shore and we had a little celebratory bonfire, mainly to burn the mermaid. Rick had been a veteran from Vietnam like John and they were sharing war stories by the fire. Dean and John had both brought their separate vehicles and I really wanted to go back to the motel and sleep.
I turned to Dean. "Can we get out of here?"
"Yeah," he said, glancing at me. We had sat a bit apart from his dad and Rick so he went over to tell John that we'd see him at the motel. John nodded and Dean shook hands with Rick before he came back over to me. He helped me up from the log we had been sitting on and led me back to the Impala and we drove back to the motel. We fell asleep quickly after changing into pajamas and a quick shower.
When we woke up John's bed was still made and there was a note on the nightstand telling us that he was off somewhere else on his own. He wrote that he would call us and we'd meet up soon.
We didn't know it then, but that would be the last time we'd see or hear from him in a very long time. We wouldn't even know if he was still alive…
...
September 5, 2005
New Orleans, Louisiana
"All right," Dean said, grabbing our bags out of the trunk. He used his elbow to slam it closed and I held the motel door open for him. "Tell me what's going on here."
"A woman turned up last week in the middle of a parking lot, drowned to death." I said, shutting the door. "Then, two days ago, another woman showed up floating in the public pool having burned to death. There were witnesses who said she was swimming when it happened."
"Seriously?" He asked. I nodded and showed him the two separate newspaper articles. He read them over. "The women were both strippers."
"I think they prefer the term exotic dancers, but yes. They both belonged to the same club, so eloquently named 'Girls!Girls!Girls!'." Dean smirked.
"I think I'm gonna like this case," he said. I glared at him.
"Who said you're going anywhere near there?" I asked him. He wiped the smirk off his face and replaced it with an apologetic look. I shook my head. "No way, freak."
Now he looked hurt. "That was uncalled for, Rosie."
I rolled my eyes, not buying his act for one minute.
"Nope, too bad. I'm going to the club to ask about the two women. You will be going to the morgue to examine the latest body." He cringed his face in disgust and I was glad to see that this wasn't a fake look. "You need to learn how to do that part by yourself for when I won't be here to do it for you."
"What?" He asked quickly, grabbing my arm.
"Relax, Dean," I told him, reaching up on my toes to peck his lips. "I'm not going anywhere. You're stuck with me until you die."
He sighed but hugged me close to him, wrapping his arms around me. "Good, 'cus I'm dragging you to hell with me if I have to."
I pulled away. "Psh, please. Like this ass would be seen anywhere near hell." I said, pointing behind me. I turned around and grabbed my skirt suit from one of the duffels and went to the bathroom to change.
"Yeah, whatever." He called when I shut the door. "Your ass will be in hell years before mine!"
...
"I'm Agent Wilson of the FBI," I said to one of the bartenders, flashing my badge. "Do you know this girl?"
I showed him the picture of the girl who had been found in the forest. He glanced at the photo while he scrubbed down the bar and nodded.
"That's Peppermint." He grunted. I raised an eyebrow in question but showed him the picture of the second girl. "That's Honey Milk."
"Right, and what are their real names?" I asked. The bartender shrugged.
"I don't ever meet the real them, lady. The only persona I ever see in this girls are the ones that they have to be." He said, finally giving me more than a few syllables. I sighed.
"When was the last time you saw either of them?" I asked him.
"I saw Pepper around nine days ago. She left without her tips." He said. "And Honey was here three days ago. She didn't even work for long that night before she left."
"Did anything weird happen to them recently?" I asked him. "Did they go through something traumatic or do you know anybody who'd want to hurt them?"
He shook his head. "No, nothing really comes to mind. You might have to talk to some of the other girls backstage or to the other bartender. I'm not here every night."
I nodded and picked up the photos of the girls.
"How do I get backstage?" He pointed to a doorway with bead curtains beside the bar. Five minutes later I found myself in a group of scantily clad women in 4 inch platforms and messy wigs.
"Do any of you know about anything out of ordinary that happened to Honey or Peppermint?" I asked them. They all seemed to take a moment to think. A few of them shook their heads and went back to their make-up. I sighed and pulled out a ten dollar bill and held it out. "Now does anyone know?"
"Actually," a really skinny girl spoke up, "they both had an encounter with a weirdo."
"Oh, yeah." Another girl with a black wig said. "It might have been the same one, too."
"What happened?" I asked them. The girl with the black wig raised an eyebrow and stared at the ten dollar bill. I sighed and pulled out another one.
"This guy ripped a huge chunk of their hair out," the black wigged girl said.
"Yeah, I watched it from my pole. It reminded me of the creepy guy from Charlie's Angels." The skinny girl said.
"But he didn't smell the hair." Black wig told her. Skinny girl shrugged.
"So?"
"So, how did it remind you of the creepy guy from Charlie's Angels?" Black wig asked. I watched the two bicker back and forth. "This guy didn't look like he was enjoying any part of his night, except for ripping their hair out."
"So," I said a little more loudly to get their attention back. "He didn't seem actually interested in watching the other girls?"
"No," Skinny girl said, "and he was stone cold sober, too."
"How could you tell?" I asked.
"Sweetheart, please, you don't come to a strip club to drink water with your arms crossed the whole night." Black wig told me. "The bartenders only serve water in brown plastic cups. That's the only thing those cups are used for."
"Why?" I asked.
"So we know who's drunk." Skinny girl explained. "They give them a white napkin if it's the first drink, a cup of pretzels after the third, and a pink umbrella if they're past seven drinks."
"And just the brown plastic cup if its water." I said just to clarify. They nodded. "So this wasn't a drunken mishap? He actually wanted to rip out her hair."
They shrugged. "Can we have our money?"
I rolled my eyes and handed each of them ten dollars before leaving and making my way back to the bartender. I might as well look at the security footage now since I had to wait for Dean to come pick me up.
...
"So did you find anything interesting?" I asked as I shut the car door and Dean drove off to the motel.
"From what I understood, besides the anomalies of burning to death in a pool and drowning on dry land, there wasn't anything weird about the girls." He said. "Oh, except for the fact that they both had,"
"Huge chunks of hair ripped out?" I asked, finishing his sentence. He glanced and me and nodded. "Yeah, that corroborates the story I heard from some of the other girls at the club. And according to the security footage, it was the same guy."
"Anything else?" He asked. I shrugged.
"Well, he did it on purpose. He had been drinking water all night and was completely sober when each girl propositioned him for a lap dance." I told him. "There wasn't anything super weird about the encounter except that each night they were the first girl to go up to him."
"So the way he's choosing girls is completely random." I nodded.
"This is starting to sound like witchcraft," I told Dean. He nodded as he pulled into a parking space in front of our motel room.
"Except in these necks of the woods, it sounds more like good ol' Louisiana Voodoo."
...
"Voodoo was brought over with the slave trade." I read out loud from my computer. "From what I could tell it started with just the practice of making and wearing charms for protection or healing or the harm of others."
"You've got nothing about voodoo in your journal," Dean said, "but I think I remember Dad talking about Voodoo Queens."
"What do you remember?" I asked, trying to find something about Voodoo Queens online.
"Not much, I think I was paying more attention to you and Sammy trying to stick your fingers in electrical sockets." He said, flipping through some pages in one of our books. I rolled my eyes.
"Please, I was five when you picked me up and I was a child genius." I said defensively. "I was way too smart to go sticking my appendages in electrical sockets; your brother maybe, but not me."
"You probably told him it was a good idea," Dean said, laughing. I chuckled and nodded with a grin.
"Yeah, that sounds a bit more like me." I clinked on a link. "Here's a bunch of Voodoo superstitions. I wonder if any of them are real."
"Like what?" He asked.
"Here's a creepy one – if a woman wants her husband to stay away from other women, she can do so by putting a little of her blood in his coffee."
He paused and looked up at me with a small glare.
"Don't you dare bleed in my coffee, woman." He said, pointing at me sternly. I rolled my eyes.
"Please, like you're worth pricking my finger over." I said. He gasped.
"I'm so worth it." He said, glaring at me. "Take that back."
"Did I bruise your ego?" I asked him, pretending to pout. He crossed his arms.
"Like you could damage my ego, please." He said. "I just want you to apologize for insinuating that I'm not worth a little of your blood in my coffee. What if I cheated on you?"
I stared at him blankly to see how serious he was being but I couldn't tell.
"Nobody is worth my blood in their coffee. Besides, it would kinda ruin the coffee, don't you think?" I said and then I glared at him. "And if you cheat on me I'll castrate you with a rusty machete and leave you to die where nobody could find you."
Now it was his turn to see if I was joking. I raised an eyebrow and silently dared him to call me a liar.
"Is there a list of any Voodoo practitioners in the area?" He asked, smartly changing the subject. I smirked and looked back down at the computer in my lap.
"Yeah, there's a lady not far from here. Her name is Madam Caraby." I said, writing down her address and using GoogleMaps to find the general area. I closed my laptop and picked up my backpack. I looked over at Dean to see him still sitting on the bed, watching me. "Ready?"
...
I couldn't help but watch Dean as he drove his beloved Impala. Sometimes I couldn't help but get jealous of the way he looked at his car. If you could see what I'm talking about I think you'd understand. Sometimes I think he loves the car more than me.
"You okay?" Dean asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. I smiled softly and nodded.
"Why?" I asked.
"You've been watching me since I pulled outta the motel." He hesitated and glanced at me. "You know I'd never cheat on you, right?"
"Yeah," I said, trailing off a little at the end. I know it sounded like I didn't believe him, but I did. Mainly because he knows I wasn't lying about that rusty machete; it's waiting for him in the trunk.
"Because I won't," he said, glancing at me again.
"I know," I told him.
"Good." He said, staring back out at the road in front of him.
"Are you afraid that I'll cheat on you?" I asked him. He shook his head, tensing a little, as he kept his eyes on the road.
"No," he said. He smirked and glanced at me, his shoulders relaxing a little. "Besides, I know I'm the best you've ever had."
I rolled my eyes at his ego, but I was secretly glad that he acting more himself. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."
He parked on the street in front of a colorful one-story home and we both regarded it with discomfort in our eyes. We didn't really know what we'd learn in there. Most of the time when that was the case, things always turned out for the worst.
Dean met me up on the sidewalk and guided me up to the front door with his hand on the small of my back. He reached forward and knocked on the door with determination. I noticed the curtains in the window next to the door shifted slightly before the door opened partially.
"Can I help you?" A bodiless, deep-southern voice asked us. I glanced up at Dean.
"I'm James and this is Lily," Dean said, "and we're students at the university. We were wondering if we could speak to Madam Caraby for a paper we're writing."
"You can talk to Madam Caraby when you stop lying to me, boy." The voice said. I raised and eyebrow and tried not to smirk up at Dean. It wasn't very often when he got called out on his lies, but when it did happen I liked to remember the moment.
"I don't know what you mean," Dean said, trying to act innocent. I reached up and rubbed his back, trying to let him know it was okay to tell the truth sometimes.
"My name is Rose," I said, over Dean, "and this is my boyfriend Dean."
The door opened a little wider and we saw the body that the voice belonged to. A very big, beefy woman in a purple dress and green head scarf was staring down at the two of us.
"We had some questions about Voodoo and were hoping that Madam Caraby could answer them for us." I said. The lady raised an eyebrow before opening the door even wider and beckoned for us to come inside.
I jumped when the door closed on it's own accord behind us but Dean continued to guide me after the Creole woman. I couldn't help but smell the amazing aroma of food that was coming from the kitchen.
"Mama's making crayfish and potatoes," the woman said when we stopped in the living room. "You're welcome to have some when it's ready."
I smiled and nodded, listening to my stomach growling. "That would be amazing."
She nodded and left us alone in the room. I glanced at Dean and shrugged before moving to sit at the couch.
"Don't sit there, girl." An older woman said out of nowhere. I jumped back up and turned to see a smaller, more frail woman in an orange dress and hair wrap. "I don't want crayfish on my couch. Sit here."
She sat down at a small circular wooden table and pointed to the seat in front of her. I hesitantly took a seat and waited. She looked up at Dean, still standing in the corner, and glared at him.
"You," she snapped. "Sit on the couch."
He nodded silently and sat down, still turned so he could see us.
"I am Madam Caraby." She said, pushing her big sleeves up on her arms. "What can I do for you today?"
"What do," Dean started.
"Not you!" She snapped. Dean shut his mouth quickly. I glanced quickly at him, wondering if this had been such a good idea after all. She looked back at me and nodded. "You don't lie. I want to hear from you, dear."
"Uh," I hesitated, "Okay. We've been working on this case and were wondering if you could answer some questions we have. We suspect that Voodoo is the reason for two women's deaths but we can't prove it."
"Tell me about the women," she said.
"They were both exotic dancers,"
"Strippers," She interjected. I gulped and nodded. This woman kinda freaked me out a little. She was really intimidating.
"Right, strippers." I agreed. Hell, if she wanted me to swallow a bucket of rotten fish I'd do it. "And this guy ripped a chunk of the first girl's hair and the next day she was found dead on dry land from drowning. He went back to the club and ripped out hair from the second girl and the next day she died from horrible fire burns while she was in a public pool."
"Yes," she murmured. "This is definitely the cause of Louisiana Voodoo."
"How do we stop it?" Dean asked. The woman didn't say anything and picked at her long nails instead. I glanced unsurely at Dean. He nodded at me.
"How do we stop it?" I asked. She looked up at me.
"You must find the man and get rid of him." She said. She stood up and went over to her giant bookcase and started rummaging around. I looked helplessly at Dean. I had all ready kind of figured that was what we'd need to do, but there must have been something else. She came back and put down a stack of newspapers on the table, spreading them out. I glanced at the newspapers.
"Wait," I pulled one of them out and looked more closely at the picture. "That's the guy."
Madam Caraby pulled the picture out of my hand and nodded, looking at it.
"That's Reverend Carter." She said, putting the newspaper back on the table. I looked at the other newspapers and saw more photos of him. Why was she showing me these? I pulled another one out and scanned the article.
"He wants to close down all the clubs." I said, looking up at Dean.
"So it's obviously him." Dean said as Madam Caraby pulled the newspaper out of my hand again and set it back on the table. "Where can we find him?"
"Where can we find him?" I reiterated, since I figured she wasn't going to answer him again.
"Probably his church down the street." She said. The big lady from before came into the room with a giant steaming pot and poured the contents over the newspaper covered table. I raised an eyebrow and wondered if Madam Caraby had been trying to show me the newspapers at all. "Are you staying for crayfish?"
I glanced at Dean and he motioned his head for us to leave.
"No, but thank you," I said politely. "We'll show ourselves out."
...
...
I was going to try and finish the hunt, but I needed some more for the next (and last!) chapter. Plus I got a little roadblocked. Reviews please?
I have some uh-oh news. :( My computer is like a ticking time bomb right now and it's about ready to die. I have no clue when it'll die, just that it will probably happen soon. And my father is being kind of an asshole about the whole thing so I don't know when I'm going to be able to get a new computer. If all of a sudden I stop updating for a while, check my author page since I'll try to post the dilemma there.
I wanna know what kinds of supernatural creatures you want to see in the sequel, besides the stuff from the episodes, so tell me when you leave a review! You guys are awesome!
-Erin