A/N: The rating is at "T" right now, and I'll try to keep it that way for the whole story. We'll see how it goes. Thank you to the people who read the first chapter, those who subscribed, and to the single reviewer. Hope you enjoy this second chapter!
DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended - all characters and concepts recognizable from intellectual work (mainly "Supernatural") belong to their owners. No profit is made from this.
The next morning, they discussed their findings and theories about the case. It was definitely something, because there where all kinds of weird vibes in that house.
("They could all just be going crazy, you know. I'd go crazy, too, if I had to spend all of my time in the same house as that crazy old lady," Dean pointed out. "Dean, you and I both realize that what's been happening is a bit more extreme than getting annoyed to death by the caretaker.")
And so they researched, and went through their father's journal, and even called Bobby a few times.
And found nothing. There was clearly something unnatural going on in that residence, but what caused that escaped them. They evoked so many possibilities, the one Dean liked the best being a trickster gone dark, but none of them seemed to stick. A demon or a ghost were viable options, but they couldn't be certain until they confronted it.
That's how they found themselves on the doorstep of the place at three in the afternoon with any weapon they could imagine themselves needing concealed on them and in the trunk of the car.
Mrs Whilthshire opened the door, immediately smiling widely in Sam's direction.
"Hello, Mrs Whilthshire. Are you and the ladies ready to talk about your feelings?" Sam asked the old crone pleasantly.
"Oh, Dr Darneck, of course, of course," the woman replied. "Come in," she beckoned. "I think there is the most space in the dining room."
-:-:-:-:-:-
Dean hated this. There was a bunch of women staring expectantly at him. Usually, that would have made him happy. This time, they were staring at him for a reason he hated.
"I hate this," he whispered to Sam, turning his back on the twenty-three pairs of eyes.
"Shut up," Sam whispered back, turning around too. "We're here now, and you'll blow our cover if you don't talk to at least some of them."
"But I'm not fluent in psycho-shit like you are," Dean muttered, becoming more and more desperate every second. "Why don't you do it on your own, and I'll stand back and watch them for anything unusual, huh?"
"Dean," Sam sighed. "It's too late now. Come on.
"Very well. Now, I think we can start," Sam said, turning back towards the group of women. "We'll start with short introductions, and then we can start a group discussion. After that, we can hold private sessions with anyone who'd like to talk more privately."
Dean sighed and got ready for all hell to break lose.
-:-:-:-:-:-
"That wasn't all that bad, now was it, Dean?" Sam teased.
"Shut up," Dean muttered back. "That was not fun." He'd hated the afternoon. It had been worse than he'd thought. Women were only fun when they weren't crying all over him.
"It wasn't supposed to be, Dean" Sam answered reproachfully. "Maybe we even helped some of them."
"Don't care," he mumbled. "We didn't even get a chance to look around the building in more detail. What was the point of all that crying?"
"Dean," his brother sighed, but let go of the matter. "All right, let's go back to the hotel," he said, ignoring Dean's muttered "it's not even a proper hotel," "we'll figure something out in the morning."
-:-:-:-:-:-
The next morning saw them going to the dinner adjacent to the hotel for their breakfast. They'd already tried the food from there, but they'd never taken the time to properly sit in the tables in front of the building for a morning meal. The place was certainly a cozy one: Sam was having trouble getting his long legs tucked under the table they sat at.
As soon as the waitress-slash-cashier got their order, an old man sitting behind them, closer to the entrance of the dinner, moved his chair towards them.
"You're the shrinks that've been going to the haunted house, aren't ya?" he asked in a gravelly voice.
"We are," Sam replied, shooting a glance at Dean.
"Well then, boys," the man replied, "I've things to tell you!"
-:-:-:-:-:-
"So, what do you think about that guy?" he asked Sam after they'd left the dinner and started on their way up to their room.
"I don't know, Dean," his brother replied. "What he said could've been true, but without any proof..."
"Yeah, seems unlikely to me too," Dean said, looking in his pocket for the keys. "After all, how often do murders not get discovered? It's a small town, I'm pretty sure people would've noticed if someone went missing."
"They might not have," Sam said. "Remember, it's a place women go to when they have nowhere else to go. I don't think all twenty three of the current ones are from here."
"So, what," Dean said as they entered their room, "some woman got killed a few years back and she's haunting the place, scaring those that are there?"
"I don't know, I'm just as unsure as you are," Sam sighed. "I guess we'll find out."
And that was that.
-:-:-:-:-:-
Their plan was simple: get in during a time when there were the least people possible. With a house this big and so many occupants, that was a tough thing to ask for. The two brothers figured, however, that they could sneak in and do some reconnaissance on the coming Sunday, when most of the women, including that insufferable bad actress of a caretaker, - "I don't get how you could sweet-talk her and not pick up chicks much better-looking than her, Sammy" - would be away.
In the meantime, they called Bobby a few more times and tried to run different scenarios by him. They were still unsure whether it was a ghost haunting the place. Dean hadn't ever heard of a ghost being able to torture people in their sleep before.
Sam was becoming more and more insufferable with every hour that passed. He mostly kept his thoughts to himself, but Dean could feel his brother's gaze boring into the side of his head from the opposite side of the hotel room when they stayed there, researching, or sitting across from each other in that stupid dinner. At least he didn't say anything. Dean didn't want to talk about it. He'd done the right thing, the only thing he could, everything else be damned.
Finally, Sunday came around, and it was time to put their (nonexistent) plan into motion.
If he was being honest with himself, - for once, a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Sam said - getting in unnoticed and finding the source of the problem was easier than Dean had thought it would be. As soon as they broke in, they heard screams and cries coming from one of the rooms on the second floor. They lost no time and rushed to the source of the disturbance. They found what felt like the whole house packed in one of the rooms. They literally had to push some of the women out to be able to squeeze themselves in.
Thought the room felt full, everyone was keeping as close to the walls as possible, avoiding the center of the room. There was one of the women; on the ground and contorted into an almost humanly-impossible shape by something invisible. Dean and Sam sent each other a knowing look before yelling at everyone to get out of the room.
"C'mon, get out, we're shrinks, we'll deal with it!" Dean had to repeat a few times. Many of the women resisted, either yelling about the police or an exorcist or throwing themselves at "Dr. Darneck and Dr. Grey" in hysterical tears, but the two brothers finally managed to push them all out. Sam closed the door behind them and they were at last alone with the vaguely familiar young woman contorted on the floor and whatever was making her do it.
"Okay," said Dean after shooting a resolute glance to Sammy. "We know you're here, we know what you are, and we know how to stop you, forcefully if we have to. So don't make it harder on yourself, will ya'?" After a few seconds fo silence, the woman on the floor started laughing, still upside down and with her head between her thighs. Her eyes, trained on the two brothers, were demented.
"Don't lie to me, hunters. You know nothing!" The voice coming out of the woman's mouth was indubitably hers, just stretched and distorted, as if she was in immense pain. "I've seen you come and go, you are just as clueless as everyone in this damn place!"
"Okay, fine," said Sam. "But leave her body, leave this place, and we won't have to hurt you."
"Leave this place?" asked the creature through the woman's mouth. "Oh, oh no. If I could I would, but I can't, so I sssshan't!" Another laugh was heard. The woman shifted slightly, trembling. Her head was now lying sideways on the floor and turned towards Sam.
They decided to shift tactics: "Okay, okay. Tell me, why are you possessing her? What has she done to you?" Sam asked. "Why are you torturing her?"
"B-because I-I... want t-to!"
Sam shot Dean a worried glance. Whatever was happening was getting worse. They had to do something and it was obviously Dean's job: the creature, watching them through the woman's eyes, could not see Dean right now. He had to act, and act fast.
He moved, inch by inch, around the woman, drawing a protective circle around her body and drawing the appropriate symbols in one go. Whatever was possessing her had to be expelled out of her before it made her break something. Once again, Dean wondered whether it was a demon or a ghost. It had been terrorizing the residents of the house for the past three months and wasn't limited to a particular room nor to a particular person. Was it powerful or simply unlimited in its range in the building?
He was almost done when the woman suddenly turned her head in Dean's direction. The position was even more dire for her prolonged health: she was slowly turning red.
"Wha-at do y-ou t-think you're d-doing?" the creature asked.
While her attention was elsewhere, Sam promptly took over the drawing of the circle. He tried to keep the interest of the thing on him while Sam worked.
"I'm making sure you stop what you're doing. You have no right to this woman. Leave her alone," he said.
"Yo-u're ri-ght," the creature simply said. Her gaze bore unwaveringly into Dean's, who was having trouble looking away. It was good, he told himself, as long as it looks at me, it doesn't notice Sam. Isn't any less creepy, though, he thought.
The staring contest lasted for a good minute. Dean felt hypnotized by the stare of those eyes. The woman's eyes were of an uninteresting black, but the presence of the creature in her body seemed to add a certain depth to that gaze. Dean felt as if he could see the creature's soul and that it could see his.
"Done!" suddenly yelled Sam, and Dean snapped out of his trance. When he looked back to Sam, his brother was sending him a concerned glance. A look back at the woman revealed that she was no longer contorted and was laying in a pile on the floor.
Dean felt dazed and confused. Was it really that simple? They'd just had to draw a few symbols on the floor and the creature would leave? He stumbled.
"Dean, are you okay?" he heard as if through a wall.
He fainted.
-:-:-:-:-:-
He must've been out only for a few seconds, because when he came to, the first thing he saw was a dark figure standing in the corner of the room and Sam's concerned face above him. He focused on him for a few seconds and when he looked back at the corner, there was nothing there.
"Dean, are you okay?" Sam said again.
"Yeah, Sammy, m'good. Gerroff!" he slurred. He was still dizzy and light headed and he'd probably banged his elbow against the floor when he fell, but otherwise he felt fine.
"Dean, what happened?" Sam asked, concern evident in his voice. Dean brushed him off and stood up shakily.
"I'm... not sure," he replied, still watching that corner. Had he seen the entity that had been possessing the woman in the middle of the room? Talking about that...
"Sam, is she-" he started saying before he was cut off.
"She's fine, Dean," Sam said. "Nothing seems broken and she's breathing, so she should be fine. We'll have to tell Mrs. Whilthshire to call the ambulance, just in case."
"You think it was that easy?"he asked Sam. "We don't even known what it was!"
"I know," said Sam with a pinched look. "That'll have to do for now. I can hear the police and ambulances coming."
When he concentrated, Dean could hear them too, coming closer. They had to get out of here, fast, or be ready to provide ID.
"C'mon," said Dean, and they started to erase the circle on the floor.
-:-:-:-:-:-
It didn't take them long to erase the evidence of their improvised exorcism, but it took hours before the police, which they hadn't been able to circumvent, let them go. They finally got back to their hotel room at around eight pm.
Dean felt exhausted, and Sam wasn't laying off his back with his concerned looks and speeches about the dangers of an undiagnosed concussion. Dean was fine. He wouldn't have to bother with the consequences of a possible concussion for long, anyways. They got to sleep without talking, though Sam kept sending him a concerned looks. They were different from the ones of the last few days. This time, Sam was more concerned than angry.
Dean wasn't sure he liked the change.