Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or its characters - these were created by Eric Kripke - I'm just borrowing them. I'm not making any commercial gain from this. No harm or infringement intended.
Thanks to lljn105 for reviewing, and all those who've faved and alerted – you make it worthwhile! (And I'm so sorry I'm such a slow updater) Thanks to FantaPieLand for the fluff, so I can bear to carry on with my MiseryFic…
Please hold onto that "willing suspension of disbelief" – I'm sure psychologists don't lead investigations for the CPS, just go with it…
The Three Faces of Winchester - Chapter Five
The Winchester boys had stopped at the Sleep Easy Motel, just outside of Lawrence, for some well earned rest. There is only so much credit card fraud you can get away with, and motels were a luxury they usually only reserved for hunts, but after the stressful events of the last couple of days they felt they deserved the comfort of a proper bed, rather than yet another uncomfortable night spent sleeping in the Impala.
Dean sat on the bed staring sightlessly at John's journal which lay open on his lap, while Sam phoned his way through all of his contacts in the vain hope of some news of their father's whereabouts.
Sam clicked his cell shut with a heavy sigh.
"So, Caleb hasn't heard from him?" asked Dean.
Sam shook his head despondently.
"What about Pastor Jim, you did call Pastor Jim didn't you?" Dean nagged.
"Yes, I called Pastor Jim! And Bobby, and Jefferson, and a dozen other people - not one of them has heard from Dad in at least the last couple of months," Sam snapped in irritation and frustration.
"So, did you find anything in the journal?" Sam asked with a level of sarcasm so high that it seemed to fly straight over his brother's head. Dean had been insistent that Sam should make all the calls so that he could search the journal for any clues they might have missed, and then he'd just sat there gawping off into space.
"Am I just sitting here talking to myself then?" he asked pointedly. When he realized that an answer wasn't going to be forthcoming, Sam added gently, "You know, he could be dead for all we know."
Dean looked up distractedly, "Don't say that. He's not dead. He's... he's..."
"He's what? He's hiding? He's busy?"
Dean was saved the effort of a witty response by the loud beeping announcing the arrival of a message, "I don't believe it. It's a text – with coordinates," he said excitedly.
Sam peered skeptically at the anonymous message which consisted solely of a couple of numbers, "So, what you think Dad's texting us now? The guy can barely work a toaster, Dean."
Dean pulled a face, "Sam, this is good news. It means he's okay. Or alive, at least," he said as he put the journal to one side and started searching on their laptop.
"Okay, so Rockford, Illinois. Let's see what's in the news… Aha, here's a cop, shoots his wife then offs himself after a call to the Roosevelt Asylum."
"I'm not following. What's this have to do with us?" asked Sam in confusion.
Dean pointed to John's journal on the bed where he had discarded it earlier. It already lay open at an old, yellowed news clipping with the headline "Two Die in Asylum Slaying". It went unnoticed that this was the same page that had lain open on Dean's lap since before the text message had arrived.
"Listen, seven unconfirmed spirit sightings, two deaths - 'til last week, at least. I think this is where he wants us to go."
"This is a job? Dad wants us to work a job?" Sam spat in a mix of anguish and anger as he started to pace the room in agitation.
"Maybe… we'll meet up with him, maybe he's there," added Dean, ever the apologist for his absentee father.
"Maybe he's not. I mean, he could be sending us there by ourselves to hunt this thing."
"Who cares? If he wants us there, that's good enough for me."
"This doesn't strike you as weird? The texting? The coordinates? Why'd the number show up as unknown? How do we know it was even really Dad?" asked Sam crossly.
"Sam, Dad's tellin' us to go somewhere; we're going," stated Dean finally.
Sam sighed heavily as Dean left the room.
A visit to the Roosevelt Asylum had not been particularly enlightening, other than to discover that the Chief of Staff who had disappeared during the riot, which had led to the closure of the hospital, went by the name of Sanford Ellicott. It hadn't taken too long to discover that his son James, who was also a psychiatrist, worked at a private practice nearby.
Dean had been insistent that they should interview James Ellicott, but as he said to Sam, "Guys like me just don't go to shrinks."
So the next day, due to a lucky last minute cancellation, Sam found himself as a new patient in Dr. Ellicott's waiting room.
"Sam Winchester?," asked the doctor giving Sam a strangely intense look, almost as if he were looking for some sign of recognition in his face.
Whatever it was he seemed to find it as, with a cheerful introduction, he motioned Sam into his office and offered him a glass of water. Sam felt slightly disappointed to be ushered to a normal seat instead of a couch.
"Thanks again for seeing me last minute, Dr. Ellicott... Ellicott, that name - wasn't there a Dr. Sanford Ellicott? Yeah, he was Chief Psychiatrist somewhere," Sam said somewhat unconvincingly.
"My father was Chief of Staff at the old Roosevelt Asylum. How did you know?" asked Dr Ellicott blandly. Questions regarding his father's infamous disappearance hadn't even been that common in his youth, let alone now years later. Of all the questions that he thought Sam was going to ask, he hadn't been expecting that, although from what he'd heard perhaps he should have.
"Uh, well, I'm sort of a local history buff. Hey, wasn't there an incident or something in the hospital? In the south wing, right?" Sam answered feebly as he sipped nervously at his drink. The doctor seemed to relax slightly, but didn't look especially convinced, and Sam had a nasty suspicion that he could see right through him.
Dr. Ellicott was experienced enough to know when someone was lying to him or being evasive, not to mention the massive waves of guilty nervousness that Sam was giving off. However, the young man had crossed the line of salt across the doorway hidden under the carpet and had seemed unaffected by the holy water in his drink. Now the doctor had established Sam's identity, he decided it was time to cut to the chase.
"Listen Sam, it's been such a long time, after you called me earlier I needed to be sure it was really you. You do recall that you were a patient of mine - one of my first in fact - when you were five years old?"
"What? I was?" asked Sam in shock.
"You… didn't know? I assumed that's why you were so insistent on seeing me, rather than one of my colleagues," he motioned to his notes, but didn't seem to need to refer to them.
"I had just started working for Child Protective Services at the time, it was before I'd started in private practice. You were found abandoned, severely malnourished, and in a comatose state. You were in my care for almost two months until you were abducted. No one heard of you again… until now."
He handed Sam an old, faded, black and white Polaroid photo – despite the age difference it was clearly a headshot of a very young Sam Winchester. He smiled apologetically, "I'd made a copy of your case file, just as well given what happened to the original records - wouldn't be allowed these days, of course. I've spent most of my professional life wondering what happened to you.
"Do you have any recollection of that period?"
"No," Sam answered, stunned. He could hear his heart hammering in his head, and he felt physically sick. "Tell me," he ordered finally, his voice shaky and hoarse.
"I realize this must be a shock," said Dr. Ellicott soothingly, "As I said, you were found in a motel out on the edge of town. Judging from the state of you and the room, you'd been left with only enough food for a couple of days, but had obviously been there for some considerable time longer on your own.
"It was quite the scandal at the time, as you can imagine. It was reported widely in all the local papers, so you see why I might not believe you when you claim to be a local history buff," he explained pulling a tight sympathetic smile.
Dr. James Ellicott cast his mind back to that memorable day so long ago. He remembered the excitement he'd felt to be on his first call out in the field, fresh from training, and how quickly that had turned into horror…
1987
James dismissed the squirrely motel owner with contempt, the man seemed to be blind, deaf, dumb and numb in all extremities for all the good he was in describing the room's now missing guests. He suspected the cockroach of a man been quite aware of the state of the room's occupant, yet had waited until the payment on the room had run out before calling it in.
One of the officers who had first attended the scene came over after a particularly long and intense conversation over his radio, "Well, that's confirmed it; the name 'Elroy McGillicutty' and credit card given are definitely fake. However, over the last couple of years we've had a couple of reports of a John Winchester - tall, dark-haired Caucasian male, military bearing, with a young child in tow, so we think this is our perp.
"Still no sign of Winchester senior, but the boy's in a bad way. I'm told he's only just arrived at Rockford Memorial, he needed to be resuscitated en route – he's condition's still touch-and-go."
Nodding his thanks to the officer, James made his way over to room 113, ducking under the police tape and entered into the mind of a serial killer made physical.
Crossing the threshold into the room his feet crunched over a thick, broken line of white crystalline powder. He knelt briefly to inspect the find, Salt?
As he got back to his feet, the first thing that hit him was the smell. The stench of rotten food, stale air and unwashed bodies, with just a hint of bad eggs, was so thick you could almost cut it with a knife. Clouds of flies buzzed lazily around an overflowing trashcan that sat in the corner of the room.
The walls were plastered with a myriad of photographs and multicolored scraps of paper. Many of the notes were handwritten, and although each seemed to have been produced by the same pen, the style of handwriting varied enormously and covered the gamut from neat capitalization to wild flowing scrawl. The content itself appeared to be the ravings of a mad-man, with references to everything from weather patterns and electrical interference to crop circles and demonic possession.
A large leather bound journal sat on the table, on inspection it seemed to contain similar content to that found on the walls, albeit apparently produced over a much longer period. The more James looked at the notes, the more he thought they were the writings of two or more individuals. One was very controlled, possibly the dominant one, who seemed to be very tightly wound and whose writing style represented his repressed emotional state. Despite the oddness of the subject matter, the writer seemed to retain a consistently logical underlying world view and the detached scientific observation that James normally associated with scientific journals.
The other seemed to be chaotic, appearing for only short, but intense bursts of time, and almost passionate in his madness. In an odd sort of way they seemed like an old married couple – a very odd married couple, for sure, but the totally companionable disregard of the other's viewpoint seemed strangely familiar from his internship at family therapy sessions.
As he looked up from the journal there in among the morass of foaming insanity pasted on the wall, one particular photograph jumped out at him… of his father.
James had been ten years old the year his father had disappeared, the year the asylum inmates had rioted. As a trained psychologist himself, he was quite aware that he had spent his whole life trying not to think too closely about the likely circumstances of his father's supposed death, or indeed certain aspects of his father's personality that strongly indicated at, shall we say, somewhat psychopathic tendencies.
As a child James had always instinctively known his father was ill, but he'd also known that he was loved, albeit in an intensely fierce way that had made it plain to him that his father hadn't willing disappeared from his life. He'd always thought that it was a little bit like being loved by a raging fire, you felt warm, but you were also aware that you were in danger of being burned alive.
But he couldn't imagine how any parent could leave their child for weeks at a time, or how that child could have managed to survive that length of time without supervision, or at least seeking help.
He wondered what hellish torment the child must have been subjected to that even after weeks of abandonment he was still too terrified to try to escape the captivity of slow starvation in an unlocked motel room?
At the hospital, James stared down at the prone form of the Winchester boy who'd so far been unconscious for two days on an IV drip without waking. He knew it was unprofessional, but he'd felt strangely protective towards the boy and had stayed by his side the entire time, occupying himself by reading and re-reading the Winchester journal.
The young boy's face was sunken, his eyes dark pits smudged with purple, while his emaciated body was a horrifying mass of cuts, bruises and contortions. The medical staff had been quite clear; none of the injuries were more recent than a month ago, in fact they were all well on the way to healing – or as much as was possible given the boy's shocking level of malnutrition.
James vividly remembered the shocking sight of a hardened battleaxe of a senior consultant with freaking tears in his eyes as he'd explained that based on the pattern of burns and scaring, it was considered highly likely that many of the injuries to the five year old had been repeatedly inflicted over a period of many years, and probably his entire life.
As James watched, the young boy stated to move slightly. When James laid a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder to comfort him, the howling started.
It didn't take too much longer to match the name John Winchester to a missing persons report filed by a business partner in Lawrence, Kansas. On closer scrutiny it soon become apparent that there were inconsistencies in the report – the same John Winchester was also reported as missing, presumed dead in a house fire some weeks before that.
The report on the house fire was contradictory, the forensic pathology team claiming that the intense temperatures responsible for destroying all but minute traces of human remains could only have been caused by the use of an accelerant - indicating the potential for foul play - which the forensic chemistry department had then stated categorically had not been present, although they could not account for the temperatures detected.
Ultimately it proved only that someone had died in the fire in circumstances which may, or may not have been suspicious.
Based on the age of the boy, and interviews with neighbors, it was conjectured that they were dealing with Samuel Winchester. Initial fears that he would remain unresponsive were soon disproved by James who discovered that the child would only respond to the name 'Sammy', and never 'Samuel' or 'Sam'.
James had also discovered that Sammy was mentally well below the normal linguistic and cognitive level for his age, totally incapable of speech, but surprisingly affectionate given the level of abuse suffered, and obviously starved of human contact.
However, any sudden or unexpected movement would trigger the most appalling howling which sounded like the boy was been murdered, spooked the medical staff, and was usually only resolved with the injection of strong sedatives.
"It sounds just like he's being tortured in Hell," said one nurse uneasily, which unbeknownst to him was possible the most insightful thing mentioned in Sammy's case so far.
James himself was also beginning to question his own sanity; he had studied the Winchester journal with an almost religious fervor, in many cases following up the details in real life. He had been shocked to discover the kernel of truth hidden in each described event. Some of the people he had talked to had clammed up tighter than a drum, but others had cheerily asked him to pass on their best regards to John.
Then one evening, nearly two months after being found, Sammy suddenly spoke.
"Daddy? Is that you?" he asked, in the tone of developmentally normal five year old.
"Sammy? It's me, James," spoke the doctor in quiet excitement at witnessing the child's sudden recovery.
"Not Sammy, Sam!" frowned the child in annoyance, "Where's Daddy? Bad man's coming, yellow eyes!" he called, kicking his legs in fear.
"It's alright, he's not here, he can't hurt you anymore," James reassured.
"Well, that's not quite true is it?" laughed a deep male voice behind him, as James was thrown violently across the room.
As James climbed groggily to his feet, he looked up at his assailant. He recognized John Winchester from the photographs in the police record, but with one major difference – John's eyes shone with an unnatural, bright, luminescent yellow color.
The tall figure raised his hand in a strange gesture, and James felt himself physically dragged half way up the wall and held immobile by an unseen force.
"What's up, Doc?" quipped John, "Come on Sam, time to go."
The boy jumped out of bed and scooted across the room to his father.
John meanwhile retrieved his journal from where James had dropped it prior to the attack, and flicked through it quickly as if checking that the contents were all in place. Stopping at the page of the Roosevelt Asylum he looked up at the doctor.
"Your father," he smiled, "he was one of mine."
James felt a sudden blow to his head, as darkness claimed him.
When he awoke an hour or so later it was to discover that both father and son, and all official records of their presence both physical and electronic, had disappeared.
Dr. Ellicott looked up at Sam, blinking rapidly as his mind came back to the present, "I'm sorry," he said, "very unprofessional, I feel like I'm laying my baggage at your door."
Sam sat stunned beyond words at everything he had heard.
The doctor took a deep breath, "In my line of work I hear a lot of things and a handful of times they've been… unnatural and I've tried to help," he paused almost nervously.
"I know you're a hunter," he continued, "and I probably don't have the right to ask this, but please, you obviously think there is something at the Asylum. If it's my father, please, I beg you, lay him to rest…"
Sam nodded, reassured to finally be back in familiar territory.
"Tell me what you know," he rasped.
"Look after yourself," Dr. Ellicott said sincerely, "and if you ever need someone to offload to then I'm always here."
He brought both hands up in a double hand shake. He paused, staring at the scars on the back of Sam's right hand.
"Someone's looking out for you? Or are you seeing someone already?" he asked intently.
"My brother Dean, he's a real mother hen," laughed Sam,
Dr. Ellicott blinked twice, "Right, of course. Promise me you'll come back for another session," he urged insistently.
Sam smiled and nodded. He was lying.
With the information from Dr. Ellicott junior the salt and burn at the Asylum had been a successful and relatively straightforward hunt, although the details of Sam's hospitalization and the description of what sounded like their father's demonic possession had been a difficult subject for the brothers to deal with.
"I don't understand this, Sam," complained Dean, "I don't remember any of this happening. And we know Dad's not possessed. I mean, we grew up with the guy, you think we would've noticed?"
"I don't know Dean, you still would've been awful young, and maybe it wasn't possession. Maybe it wasn't Dad? The yellow eyes thing doesn't sound like any demon I've ever heard of. P'rhaps it was something else?" Sam suggested tentatively.
Dean shook his head to clear the confusion, "We need to find Dad, he'll set this straight," he said determinedly. "I'm starving," he continued, needing to change the subject, "I need a bacon cheeseburger, want anything?"
Sam rolled his eyes and huffed in response.
On his way back to the motel room, happy after two bacon cheeseburgers and a large side of curly fries, Dean watched the tall dark figure step out menacingly from the shadows and stop in front of him.
"Oh man, if you're going to try to mug me, you're gonna seriously regret it," groaned Dean, reaching for his gun.
The figure took a step closer into the light, and Dean's eyes widened in astonishment when he realized it was his father.
"You're Dean, aren't you?" asked John, managing to make it sound less like a question and more like a statement.
Dean blushed and nodded in embarrassment, bewildered by his father's strange behavior.
John glared at him, his eyes flashing yellow for just a moment, but just long enough to leave no question of doubt in Dean's mind that he was talking to something that was somehow otherworldly and yet somehow still his father.
"Just you stay out of my way. Our Sam's got a great shining future ahead of him, and I don't want you interfering with it."
Dean looked at him blankly.
"I mean it. Whatever you are, if you know what's good for you, you'll stop Sam looking for me until I'm good and ready - just keep him on with the hunting, do I make myself clear, boy?"
"Yes, yes sir," Dean stuttered in fearful confusion.
"Glad to hear it. I got rid of you once before with all that Voodoo gris-gris nonsense, and all that consorting with lower beings just makes me irritable. The sooner we wipe them off the face of the Earth the better.
"Now you're not going to remember this conversation, but you will remember these instructions," said John, touching Dean on the forehead with his first and second finger. Then with a sound like flapping wings John was gone.
Dean looked around in momentary confusion. This hunt for Dad's a bust, he thought, time to move on to the next hunt – Dad would want us to wipe those evil bastards out.
Sam had bitched and moaned about going to see the nearby Anderson Japanese Gardens once he'd seen the signs for it on the drive out of Rockford, and even though he considered it to be the height of ridiculousness, Dean had finally relented just to shut him up, and because when it came down to it, he could never really deny his brother anything.
Dean walked slowly and silently through the grounds before coming to a sudden halt. As he stood gazing, strangely mesmerized by the bronze angel statues that were suspended in the air over the beautiful garden, Dean had the sudden sense that someone was looking out for him and immediately felt more relaxed and calm than he could ever remember feeling before.
A couple of months later and the cell phone rang early one morning, waking Sam from a deep slumber.
"Dean, get the phone," called Sam grumpily.
When there was no response, Sam sleepily reached across and retrieved the phone himself.
"Hello?" he answered blearily.
He sat up in bed suddenly wide awake.
"Dad?"
A/N: I've implied that James Ellicott suspects that the marks on Sam's hand might be "Russell's Sign" – scarring on the knuckles caused by making oneself sick, a possible symptom of an eating disorder. I'm not likely to take this any further, but two good fanfics dealing with anorexia I've read recently are 'Thin' by Winchesterforlife, and 'Catch me when I fall' by Jensensdarklover.
"When Sammy Howls" was the original title I'd intended for this story. Only took five chapters to get there!
While I was Googling the details of Rockford (see, I suffer from procrastination so badly it's almost life threatening) I discovered the Anderson Japanese Garden – it sounds beautiful and although the statues are mentioned, it was difficult to find a picture of what they look like. I'm not sure the scene works, but since they inspired a sudden plot lurch in the story I really wanted to include them.