Disclaimer- I do not own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Ah, how I love Yellow Fever!
Thanks to everyone who reviewed!
Chapter name borrowed from Iron Maiden.
On with it, shall we?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN- FEAR IS THE KEY
I stare at the broken clock on the floor.
Dean is on the sofa, drinking beer.
I decide to go ahead and join him, pouring it out into a glass.
Dean looks at me pointedly, but doesn't say anything.
Yet.
"Everything all right?" Sam asks cautiously.
"Oh, yeah," Dean sarcastically responds. "Just peachy. Find anything?"
"Yeah," Sam sits down next to us, frowning at the glass in my hand.
I ignore him-it's the only way I hold on to my sanity.
I'm not about to let it go.
"Jessie O'Brien's body was cremated," Sam continues.
"So I'm pretty sure she's not our ghost."
I bat at Dean's arm.
It's redder than ever, and he won't leave it alone.
"Hey, quit picking at that!"
Dean grunts in reply.
"How are you feeling?" Sam looks at Dean, waiting.
Dean eyes us crabbily.
"Awesome. It's nice to have my head on the chopping block again. I almost forgot what that feels like."
"Yeah."
"It's freaking delightful," Dean says acerbically.
"We'll keep looking, Dean," I say softly.
I'm not about to lose him again.
Dean starts to cough.
"You okay?"
"Hey!"
Dean rushes to the sink, gagging as something comes up.
He spits out a wood chip.
Sam stares fixedly at it.
"We've been ignoring the biggest clue we have-you."
"I don't want to be a clue," Dean grumbles.
"The abrasions," I say slowly. "This, the disease, it's trying to tell us something."
"Tell us what?" Dean demanded. "Wood chips?"
"Exactly."
~Supernatural~
Dean looks at the lumber mill apprehensively.
"I'm not going in there."
I sigh.
"We need backup, and you're all we've got. You're going in, Dean."
Dean swigs down whiskey.
"Let's do this. It's a little spooky, isn't it?"
In answer, Sam hands him a gun.
Dean shifts away.
"Oh, I'm not carrying that. It could go off. I'll man the flashlight."
I look at him, snatching away the gun.
"You do that."
...
The EMF went off in my bag.
"EMF's not gonna work with me around, is it?" Dean glances at it.
"You don't say," Sam loads his gun. "Come on."
"Wait..."
I startle Dean.
I pick up the glinting circle on the ground, reading the letters.
"'To Frank. Love, Jessie.'"
I hold it up.
"Frank O'Brien's ring."
"What the hell was Frank doing here?" Dean twitches uneasily.
"No idea."
We walk into a room full of lockers.
Something rustles.
I gather myself and fling open the locker door.
Dean lets out a high-pitched scream after a cat jumps out at him.
Sam and I are at a loss for words.
"Whew," Dean breathes out. "That was scary."
I blink.
Sam finds an ID card.
"Luther Garland," He reads.
I pick up the drawing on the table.
"Hey, this is uh... this is Frank's wife."
"Plot thickens," Sam remarks.
"Yeah, but into what?"
Dean tears off the drawing, and suddenly the machines turn on.
He sees something in the corner, and we turn around in his direction.
"Hey!"
I act on instinct, shooting the apparition.
I look around just in time to see Dean running out the mill.
Sam and I find him hiding behind the Impala, gulping whiskey.
"Guess we got the right place."
~Supernatural~
I've never liked old age homes.
The Peaceful Pines Assisted Living is no exception.
Luther's brother is ambivalent to our questioning.
"Everybody was scared of Luther," He says.
"They called him a monster. He was too big, too mean-looking. Just too different. Didn't matter he was the kindest man I ever knew. Didn't matter he'd never hurt no one. A lot of people failed Luther. I was one of them. I was a widower with three young 'uns. And I told myself that there was nothing I could do."
I hold up the picture.
"Mr. Garland, um, do you recognize this woman?"
"It's Jessie O'Brien. Her man, Frank, killed Luther."
"How do you know that?" Sam asks sharply.
"Everybody knows," Mr. Garland shrugs. "They just don't talk about it."
"Jessie was a receptionist at the mill, real nice to Luther. He had a crush on her. But Frank didn't like it. And when Jessie went missing, Frank was sure that Luther had done something to her. Turns out the old gal killed herself. but Frank didn't know that. They found Luther with a chain wrapped around his neck. He was dragged up and down the stretch outside that plant till he was past dead."
"And O'Brien was never arrested?" Dean raises an eyebrow.
"I screamed to every cop in town. They didn't want to look into Frank. He was a pillar of the community. My brother was just the town freak."
"You must have hated Frank O'Brien," I say quietly.
"I did for a long time, but life's too short for hate, miss. And Frank wasn't thinking straight. His wife had vanished, he was terrified. Damn shame he had to put Luther through the same, but...that's fear. It spreads and spreads."
~Supernatural~
Dean was worrying me.
He hadn't even come with us to meet Bobby.
I wait, sitting on the Impala with Sam as Bobby pulls up in his beaten-up old car.
"Howdy, Sam."
"Kid," He glares at me. "Where've you been?"
"Oh, just the usual," I say. "Burning in hell."
The words taste bitter in my mouth.
Bobby's mouth pops open, but Sam cuts him off.
"We can catch up later. We have just under two hours to save Dean. What you got?"
Bobby huffs.
"This, uh, encyclopaedia of spirits dates to the Edo period."
He tosses a book at Sam.
It's in Japanese.
"You can read Japanese?"
"君なんか生まれる前から、ずっとだよ," Bobby answers.
I snicker.
"確かに、あなたが、老人," I reply.
"Hey," Bobby glares at me. "Don't get cheeky."
Sam eyes us oddly.
"Anyway, this book lists a kind of ghost that could be our guy. It infects people with fear. It's called a Buruburu."
"Does it say how to kill it?"
"Same as usual," Bobby says. "Burn the remains."
"Wonderful." Sam sighs. "Is there a plan B?"
"Well, the buruburu is born of fear. Hell, it is fear. And the lore says we can kill it with fear.
"How the hell are we gonna do that?"
~Supernatural~
This is a terrible plan.
But it's the only one we've got, and I'm not losing Dean.
Not again.
Luther isn't showing himself.
I've got to make him angry.
"Hey, Luther!" I call, tearing up his drawings of Jessie.
The machines turn on.
"Come on, Luther! Where the hell are you? What are you waiting for?"
I turn around.
Luther is staring me in the face.
He tackles me to the ground, and I grapple with him, somehow managing to wrap the chain around his neck.
"Sam, punch it!" I scream.
Sam floors the Impala, pulling Luther's spirit across the road.
It disappears.
~Supernatural~
"So you guys road-hauled a ghost with a chain?" Dean cocks an eyebrow.
"Iron chain," Sam corrects. "Etched with spellwork."
"Hmm," Dean chews his lip. "That's a new one."
"It was what he was most afraid of," I say. "It was pretty brutal, though."
"On the upside, I'm still alive, so, uh, go team!"
"Yeah," Sam nods. "How you feeling, by the way?"
"Fine."
"You sure, Dean?" Bobby says teasingly.
"'Cause this line of work can get awful scary."
"I'm fine," Dean insists. "You want to go hunting? I'll hunt. I'll kill anything."
"Awww," I coo, pinching his cheek between my fingers.
"Isn't he adorable?"
Sam sniggers, and Dean scowls heavily, batting my arm away.
We watch as Bobby drives off.
"So, uh...so what did you see?" Sam asks. "Near the end, I mean."
"Besides a cop beating my ass?" Dean retorts.
"Seriously," I stare at him.
"Howler monkeys," Dean replies.
"Whole roomful of them. Those things creep the hell out of me."
He looks at our disbelieving faces.
"Just the usual stuff. Nothing I can't handle."
I don't believe him for one second.
Dean is lying through his teeth.