Don't Dream It's Over, Chapter 6 - Reversal of Fortune
Sam rose the morning after his boy date, packed up his duffle and booked out of the Ponderosa Lodge. A brief phone conversation with Bobby late last night confirmed what Sam had already suspected. The disparate crop of demon signs that had bloomed over the past week in and around a little coastal town in Oregon called Rockaway Beach – population 9,987 – had mushroomed almost overnight into a full-on happening – numerous unexplained violent deaths, unnatural natural phenomena like ball lightning over the cemeteries, and a passel of missing persons - enough to send Sam on his way – hopeful that at last he might pick up a good lead on Lilith's whereabouts.
The drive from Eugene to Rockaway Beach on the western edge of the Oregon coast is a short 75 miles or so along Interstate 5. It is a quiet, upscale vacation town with miles of gorgeous shoreline, picture-postcard dunes and rental bungalows, and a small commercial center boasting quaint boutiques, galleries featuring local artists, a few nice restaurants, and shops. Sam drives around unobtrusively, just another potential vacationer.
Soon after his arrival, though, Sam's internal "demon meter" confirms his suspicion that there is more to Rockaway Beach. He senses a massive confluence of demon energy somewhere near the water. After checking in at a modest motel just off the highway Sam powers up his new laptop. As he scrolls through topographical maps of the area he focuses in on the swarm of demon energy flowing through his senses, trying to get a precise reading on its location.
This is interesting. There is a series of rocky hills that jut up in a chain along the bathing beach area. A number of tidal caves snake through those hills; some of them look to extend quite deep into the rock.
Sam senses that the caves are significant, and he needs to get closer to the demon gathering to obtain a captive to interrogate. Easing the Impala out on to the road, he heads toward the beach.
Sam pulls off the road into a small, piney wooded area abutting the long expanse of beach that stretches away into the hazy midday. From here he can see the outline of the rocky hills that hide their honeycomb of caves. There are no people around anywhere. No noises of seabirds, cicadas, or any other natural creature break the muffled silence. That absence alone alerts Sam to the presence of evil even without the noxious essence-of-demon that floods his senses like a bad smell.
Sam shuts his eyes and draws into himself, probing the ether for one entity whose location he can pinpoint. There are several demons in the area it seems, although the energy Sam reads is not constant but rather fluctuates erratically as if the size of the demon presence is constantly shifting. Suddenly, Sam's eyes flick open in surprise, reflexively flashing brilliant green.
He flings his power outward like a fierce, barbed net searching for a particular entity that he sensed a moment ago. It had been just a brush, a whisper, but in that momentary contact Sam had sensed enormous power and the miasma of monstrous evil. An arch-demon.
He has never manipulated a single being of such power before, but he is confident that he will dominate this entity as he has every other he has targeted. Before he confronts this arch-demon he will learn all he can about it. His eyes close to slits, glinting greenish gold as he again casts his energy outward, seeking a single demonic creature of middling power that he can draw to him.
He locates an isolated, sentient bundle of bad vibes and pulls it to him with ruthless efficiency. The still, cool air of the little glade suddenly shimmers, heats, and pulses with the odor of sulfur. A snarling male form materializes in the center of the shimmer, its torso wrapped and lashed in scintillant bonds of pure energy that bind it as a lariat binds a calf. Sam eyes the creature in silence, waiting for it to orient itself, finish its struggling, and acknowledge his complete mastery over it.
Within a few seconds the demon is scowling at Sam, its resignation a sour stench in the humid air. Although Sam can read the creature's mind, he prefers not to unless it becomes necessary (the minds of demons being depressingly predictable and repulsive, as they generally focus on hurting, destroying, and creating sadness, despair and hatred.) Even though it will take a little longer, Sam will simply force the demon to answer his questions rather than sift through the filthy detritus of its thoughts.
"What is your name?"
Snarls "Eshiam."
"Why have you come here?"
"Arrgh. What – what are you? You are not one of us, yet you have power over us. You're not angel – no. Unnggh…"
"I ask the questions here."
The demon – Eshiam – drew into itself, instinctively cringing away from the flare of Sam's annoyance.
"Who is your master?"
The wretched creature's eyes rolled in its head like thrown dice as it strove to resist Sam's power.
"Ahhhhalastair. His name is Alastair-rrr– uggh…"
"Why have you come here?"
"To secure the Hell Gate."
"What? – a Hell Gate here? Where? Where is it?" Sam growled.
"A cave – deep in the mountain - uugh. Forgotten for millennia, but Alastair found it."
Although Sam had little hope that this trembling idiot could provide much in the way of detail, he persisted. "Why? What does this Alastair plan to do? Is he gonna open the gate?"
Eshiam gnashed its teeth in an awful parody of a smile.
"Too late! Too late, Son of Darkness! He has opened the Gate!
"When?" Sam snarled.
"Last night at the Hour of the Wolf, by the blood of one hundred souls!"
A hundred souls! Sam reeled with the thought. One hundred lives gone – and not only gone - snuffed out horribly and cruelly – sliced and bled like livestock in an abattoir, no doubt. And last night! He reddens with shame, remembering exactly what he was doing last night around the time a hundred innocents were being slaughtered. Had he left Eugene yesterday he might have prevented this awful evil. Sam brutally squashed down the sorrow and despair that threatened to paralyze him.
"What is his plan?" he ground out with savage composure.
Blood started from between Eshiam's grinding teeth as he struggled in the throes of Sam's relentless will.
"Alastair seeks souls!" he spat. "Not just the souls of the already damned, but fresh human souls. Soon he will send us out - thousands of us - to acquire souls, to make deals. To swell the ranks of Hell! I do not know his plan. But to take so many souls will grant Alastair great power. Greater than almost any hellborn save Lucifer himself!
"But why now?"
"I know no more! Nothing, nothing, nothing nothing…" the demon trailed off, half-gibbering.
After willing Eshiam unconscious Sam paid it no more thought. It slumped inside the still-glowing bands of power that held it in thrall.
Another Hell Gate – like Wyoming! Perhaps inspired by Azazel's success there, this Alastair had a like plan in mind – open the gate – unleash a thousand demons – more – on to the unsuspecting world. Whatever. Sam's immediate interest, if the truth be told, was less in the arch-demon's eventual plan for this Hell Gate than in the unexpected opportunity it presented for him. He had tried to open the Devil's Gate in Wyoming to go after Dean but the Colt had failed to unlock the vault a second time. The discovery of a second, accessible Hell Gate presented a chance to retrieve Dean and negated the need to find Lilith to do so. He would locate this Hell Gate and gain access to Hell. He would find his brother and carry him back to the world of the living. He would deal with the Hell Gate and Lilith after he had Dean back and safe.
Sam turned back to the somnolent Eshiam, considering his next move. It was crucial from here on to remain unemotional and detached, to maintain focus and control. He wouldn't allow himself even a moment of hope or elation even though he felt himself closer now than he had ever been to finding Dean. Despite his burgeoning power Sam had never been able to breach Hell, even using a possessed demon as a ride. Perhaps it was because he was still human, not dead - and not damned, for all his demon blood. Whatever the reason, Sam had early on given up on the idea of getting into Hell and bodily bearing Dean's soul away. Now though, it appeared to be less of an impossibility given the verified presence of an open Hell Gate.
A plan began to take shape. He would locate the arch-demon Alastair, wrest every bit of knowledge from him about Hell and the Gate, and mount a siege of Hell – because Sam understood now that that's what it would take to bring his brother home.
Now that the possibility actually existed for Dean to live again, Sam considered the one knotty obstacle that remained: Dean would need a body – more precisely – his body – when he returned topside. But his torn and gutted corpse was still rotting in a box back in Pontiac with no way to retrieve it. Sam didn't know how he would manage to reunite Dean with his meatsuit, but he decided on the moment that he would carry Dean's soul out of hell and back to Pontiac, and make up the rest as he went. Now that he was here in the midst of Demon Central, Sam could almost taste the demon blood he was about to spill. An implacable calm settled in him born of his complete willingness to do whatever was necessary to accomplish his mission.
Sam quickly skims through the mind of the quiescent Eshiam, retrieving the precise location of the Hell Gate. Having no further use for the demon, he directs a bolt of searing energy through it, leaving naught but a sizzling blotch on the soft loam to show it was ever there. In the next moment, Sam teleports to the mouth of the now-exposed tidal cave that masks the Gate. The cave is dark and humid, the odor of sulfur stifling. Unlike the frenzied legions of demons and damned souls that belched from the riven gates of the vault in Wyoming, only a few of the roiling cones of black smoke are drifting from the cave mouth when Sam arrives. Cloaked in his power, Sam passes invisibly by them and slips soundlessly inside the entrance.
The cave, rather shallow-appearing at first glance, gradually narrows to a cul-de-sac from which a narrow tunnel branches back and downward. Sam follows the winding course of the tunnel into the depths of the mountain, his eyes, ears, sense of smell and even touch spiked to their utmost limits. The cave twists and turns with many switchbacks and small alcoves along the way. He estimates that he is more than a mile in from the cave's entrance. As he draws nearer to the Gate itself, Sam is assaulted by a cornucopia of godawful smells - the ubiquitous sulfur, blood - both fresh and ancient, putrefying flesh, bodily gasses, and fear.
As he turns a final corner, the walls of the tunnel reflect a molten glow. Sam can sense the Hell Gate itself now - can feel the relentless crushing presence of millions of damned and tortured souls just beyond its boundaries.
A few steps further and the tunnel suddenly widens out into a cathedral-like chamber. At its center the sickening odors of damnation percolate from a great seething, churning pit.
Human language, expressive and varied as it is, contains no words adequate to truly describe the phenomenon that is Hell. Its vastness is immeasurable, its borders and features constantly in flux. It is many places and yet not a place. It is the repository of everything rotten and noxious - every odor is poisonous and rank, every surface fouled with slime and scum. In Hell, every sound is cacophonous and painful to the ear. The landscape, rendered in a nauseous palate of reds, blacks, and the shades of putrefaction and rot for which there are no names, appears to warp and morph so that shapes and contours shift queasily, like something half-liquid, half solid. Over all, an acrid, searing wind moans ceaselessly, carrying the groans, shrieks, whimpers and screams of the wretched souls imprisoned here.
The arch-demon called Alastair, having reassumed his true form, stands before a translucent globe within whose milky depths strange shapes writhe and curl. Alastair is old, older than most humans could even reckon, and Hell holds no terror for him. It is his home.
Alastair's true form is quite unlovely, even for a demon. The bodies of demons are, generally speaking, a physical reflection of their psyches, and Alastair's psyche is seriously twisted – even for a demon. Thus, his appearance is correspondingly horrific. From his massive, hairless, elongated skull to his colorless, scaly skin, spidery, scabrous limbs, and eyes as flat and black as those of a great white shark, Alastair is spectacularly fugly.
As he gazes, rapt, into the globe, a pair of great, leathery wings unfurl at his back as if animated by some will of their own. They rustle dryly in the crackling air as he picks up a goblet made of a human skull that is brimming with fresh human blood. His scaly lips move soundlessly, forming vowels that would confound a human mouth as he pours the contents of the goblet over the surface of the milky sphere. His jet-black eyes cut its coruscating surface. He is scrying out the location of the angelic force. Specifically, he is searching out their point of entry into Hell. It is vital that Alastair intercept the angels as soon as they appear before they can get a bead on Dean.
Alastair allows himself a moment to reflect fondly on his favorite soul, Dean Winchester - on all the days, months and years of blessed torture, deprivation, humiliation and pain they have shared. Dean's suffering has a particular cache to Alastair, tinged as it always is with the self-inflicted lashes born of the hunter's own scarred psyche – his guilt, loneliness, and self-hatred. Most of the souls that have enjoyed Alastair's attention deserved every moment of their torture, and more. But Dean is that rare subject whose heart is untainted by evil, whose only crime was in the deal that was struck – and that for the most loathsome of reasons – self-sacrifice out of love for another. How much sweeter it is then, to wring the screams, moans, cries and tears from him. And Alastair is far from done. Hell has plans for Dean Winchester and they will not be deferred.
The milky interior of the globe slowly clears like fog dissolving under the rays of a morning sun. The view Alastair sees ripples and wavers as if submerged in clear water, but he recognizes it as a remote corner of Hell where the oldest damned souls reside. Something is happening even now, as he looks on. There is a rustling, soft as a whisper at first that builds in both intensity and volume until it is a pervasive, thunderous whooshing that eclipses every other sound and sensation. The firmament of Hell is an ever-mutable, dark, gloomy expanse – not a true ceiling but more a layer of purposed energy that keeps Hell from slopping out all over the rest of the universe.
In the shadowy upper reaches of this vault the whooshing intensifies, accompanied by a pearlescent glow that begins as a pinprick and grows quickly into a blinding, coruscating mass of brilliant white light. The mere presence of this energy in the bowels of Hell is sufficient to jar the delicate balance of the universal yin/yang. Hell was never meant to be illuminated and laid bare in this fashion. The wrongness of it, the displacement of sanity it prompts shears across Alastair's consciousness. A grimace of fear and hatred flickers across his scarred features as he stares at the blossoming glow that marks the arrival of the fearsome Pantangeli - a kind of divine fighting squadron composed of five angels who have now breached the arch-demon's demesne. The foul blood in Alastair's veins boils with equal parts rage and anticipation. He has planned well, he thinks with satisfaction. It will take the interlopers precious time to locate the Winchester and Alastair has had plenty of time, as Hell reckons it, to ready his legion and lay a few particularly nasty traps.
As the cluster of angels begins to drift downward toward the roiling "surface" of Hell, a roaring, snarling, screeching clamor precedes the arrival of a monstrous horde of demons and hellhounds. By the hundreds they come, scrabbling and clawing in their frenzy to reach the angels, their eyes incandescent with balefire, and their claws clacking and scraping along the erupting, smoking ground. The angels, floating in the stagnant air with their heads close together like some alien bouquet, spring apart at the sounds and regard the demon multitude calmly, their eyes blazing with God's grace.
Their "leader" in this mission, one Castiel, gestures to one of his brothers to follow him. The three remaining angels turn as one toward the oncoming mob, the edges of their gigantic wings limned in silver radiance, their true faces shining forth, glorious and terrifying. Short, gleaming swords appear in their hands as they dive down to engage the forces of chaos and evil.
Castiel, meanwhile, speeds towards the object of this rescue. After eons of simply watching mankind while waiting for bits of Revelation to be granted, he is aflame with righteous purpose. This man, this Dean Winchester, is one of those rare and special humans who is both blessed and cursed by Destiny, Fate, and Chance. Castiel has watched this Dean as he navigates through a life burdened more than most with sorrow, madness, evil and pain. He has looked deeply into Dean's heart and mind and has found much to admire. When he was told he would lead the rescue of Dean from Hell, he was – elated - even as he squashed down his guilt at feeling this – or any- feeling. Now that he is in Hell Castiel's psychic connection to Dean guides him unerringly toward the human whose suffering burns in Castiel's mind like a flaming brand.
Distance, like all measures and dimensions in Hell, is different. Here, space and time bend in disturbing and unnatural ways. As Castiel and his brother wing their way through the vaulted caverns of Hell, Alastair rushes to intercept them, his own immense, scabrous wings bearing him effortlessly through the steamy murk.
To be continued…