Chapter Two
Sam grunted and stretched as he pushed back from the computer. "I've researched that box every which way I can think of. Nobody at the store knows what it is or where it came from. Only that it's been there as long as anybody can remember, sitting on the back of that shelf covered up with other stuff. The best I can do for explanation is a Shirley Jackson story."
"Huh?" His research partner Abigail looked up from her book.
"'The Lottery.' That story features an old wooden box like this one, filled with blank slips of paper like this one."
"How can this box be related to that story?" she asked. "Shirley Jackson never came here. Nobody from here ever met her as far as I know."
"True," Sam replied. "But the lottery she describes may not be entirely a work of fiction. Old tales speak of fertility rituals similar to the one in the story. Some of those rituals called for human sacrifice."
"Nobody ever sacrificed anybody in Hunter," Abby declared. "Even though they've thrown a few football coaches to the wolves over the years."
Sam turned off the computer and signed out with the librarian. Abby picked up her bookbag and they walked back down the street toward home.
"The interesting thing about that box is that it was made from pieces of an old shipping container. There is a scrap of paper stuck to the bottom dated 1818 and addressed to a town called Titus."
Abby laughed. "Titus was the town before Hunter. It was about two miles down the highway off the old Jackson Military road. The stories say that place was hell on wheels."
Sam perked up. "Really? In what way?"
"Saloons, brothels, gunfights and outlaws. To hear the stories it was a real den of iniquity. But when the railroad came in the 1880s, everyone moved from Titus to the new rail depot at Hunter. All of Titus was left to rot where it stood, except for one house."
"Which one?" Sam asked as they walked.
She pointed to a large two-story Victorian. "The Patterson house. They had it moved into town. Now it's a bed and breakfast. Rumor had it that it was the Titus brothel. They also say that a local trainrobber Yancy Phillips was shot to death there by a jealous woman."
"And you said there weren't any spooky stories in this town." Sam teased.
"Trust me, there's nothing spooky about that house unless it's the price of the food. I've been to at least a dozen showers over there and never seen a thing out of the ordinary," she declared.
"Do they serve brunch?" Sam asked.
"Every Saturday morning. The quiche is excellent."
Sam put his arm over her shoulder and grinned.
"I'm not going to each brunch at a bed and breakfast with you," Dean declared. "Brunch is a made up word for a made up meal. It's either bacon and eggs or it's a cheeseburger. I don't want food that can't make up it's mind what meal it's for."
"Abby invited Elizabeth too."
And with that Dean was in.
He ended up being into a number of things. Sam kept digging at the box. Elizabeth discovered the identity of the mystery corpse-turned out the old lady in the nursing home once had a boyfriend that her husband found out about. She was pretty heartbroken to discover that her dearly departed husband had lied about Jimmy taking the bus out of town.
Lights began to come on at night at the old hospital even though the power had been cut to it years ago. When the local teenagers who went to investigate came back traumatized, the Winchester brothers took that mystery on as well, joined by a pair of state investigators that put Mulder and Scully to shame.
Park looked Korean but said his family had been in south Alabama so long they'd turned redneck. His accent was as Southern as cornbread and he was a huge Auburn fan.
His partner Greenough looked for all the world like Kareem Abdul Jabbar but Dean believed he'd give Sammy a real run for his money in a game of Jeopardy, especially if Alex Trebec added Paranormal as a category. Once the pair of SBI agents had interviewed the high schoolers, they'd also asked about the other crazy happenings in town and volunteered to hang around.
It took the pair an hour to realize Dean and Sam weren't really journalists, and only fifteen minutes after that to make them on their true identities.
"Don't worry, we're not going to turn you in," Park assured them. "Maybe you've got some bad press from the federal boys, but we've seen enough crazy over the past six years to let that slide."
"That does not, however, mean we have the power to clear you of any of the various allegations made against you," Greenough warned.
"The quick and dirty is nobody is going to say nothing to nobody about y'all," Park concluded.
Sam shot Dean a questioning look.
"I didn't understand a word either of them said," Dean replied with a shrug.
To make matters more complicated, he and Sam now had a dog.
The little white dog couldn't weigh much over six pounds. He was sweet, well mannered, and clean, but didn't have a collar. The little dog was just sitting outside the door of their building like he was waiting on them to come home. When they opened the door, he just scooted inside and ran ahead of them to their door then sat and waited on them, his little black eyes shining.
The girls fell in love with him immediately and within a matter of minutes, it was official. Dean had to admit that the dog was adorable with its little black button nose and round feet. "Come on then, Scooter," he declared and opened the door. The little dog ran inside and jumped onto the back of the couch, curling up like a cat.
In fact, the dog slept so much, Dean decided he had to be part cat. The dog slept curled up on the couch, on Sam's legs, against Dean's back, on Elizabeth's lap, on Abigail's feet. If any of them sat or lay down anywhere in three apartments, the dog was there asleep on somebody.
Plus, the dog never made a mess and never made much noise. So when he woke Dean in the middle of the night one night standing on the bed and growling, Dean immediately got out of bed and pulled on his jeans. "What is it, Scoot?" he asked. "What do you hear, boy?"
Outside the window the blue light of a police car flashed in the distance. Within moments, his cell phone was ringing. Park told him to get dressed and get downstairs. Something had happened. Dean pulled on his shoes and a t-shirt. Sam was in the kitchen, fully dressed as well.
"Just got off the phone with Greenough. Something's up." Sam shoved his phone in his pocket and grabbed a water out of the fridge.
Dean did the same. "Park just called me. Maybe the other shoe just dropped."
Downstairs, the SBI agents pulled up in their unmarked Ford Taurus. "Come on, guys. It's bad." Park looked worried.
The brothers followed the Taurus to the edge of town. As they approached a large field on the side of the highway, they could see a number of police cars, lights flashing, flashlights waving back and forth across the stubbly ground.
They got out of the car and Greenough led them to the trunk of the Taurus. He pulled out a pair of flashlights and passed them to the brothers. Then he opened another case and pulled out an oversized derringer. He loaded it with a shotgun shell in one barrel and a fat deer slug in the other and passed it to Park.
Park checked the safety then stowed it in his holster. Greenough repeated the process with another one, then closed the trunk.
"What are you packing there?" Dean had to ask.
"Multi-purpose defense," Park replied. "The shell is full of rock salt and the slug is for more material bad guys."
"Rock salt?" Dean couldn't believe it. Cops with rock salt. What was the world coming to?
"We've seen some really crazy shit," Greenough replied. His uncharacteristic use of foul language only underscored the unease the group felt.
Billy the sheriff's deputy met the two agents. "Glad you brought extra hands," Billy told them. "We need all the help we can get."
"What we got?" Park asked.
"Missing kid. Jeremy Nichols, twelve. He was out with some buddies in the woods, started screaming that a monster was chasing him. The other boys he was with swear that a dinosaur carried him off," the sheriff stated.
"Probably just a big practical joke little Jeremy is playing," Dean surmised.
"We thought the same thing three hours ago. Twenty minutes ago, we found this." Billy held out a torn jacket, blood staining the white lining. "His mom ID'd it. It's his."
Dean and Sam looked at each other. "Dinosaur, huh? How about alligator?"
"We're fifteen miles from the river and don't get gators this far north."
"Big dog?" Greenough guessed. "Something odd colored? Like a big brindle pit bull or something?"
"Maybe. But check this out before you start thinking dog. The kids said the monster crossed this field. The irrigation system sprang a leak and a section of the ground is pretty wet. We got a track." The four men followed the officer across the field where the others were standing.
Big floodlights had been set up. A ring of uniformed officers and searchers talked quietly, gesturing and pointing. The mood was somber. As he stepped into the light, Dean could see why. The tracks didn't look like anything anyone around there had ever seen before.
The huge paw bore three toes, two in front and one in back like an eagle's talon-if eagles were eight feet tall. Each toe terminated in a claw that gouged into the damp soil at least seven inches.
The men squatted close to the tracks, measuring and examining. "Four legged, with a stride about like a grizzly bear's," one of the officers stated. "But that's no bear track. We checked with the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to see if there'd been any signs of bears or other large predators. We checked with all the zoos within two hundred miles."
"Sitichula," Greenough and Sam whispered at the same time.
"Siti-what?" Park asked.
Greenough gave Sam a look, then pulled all four of them off to the side out of earshot of the others. "Sitichula. Choctaw legend says its a four-legged serpent or dragon, similar to the unhcegila or ahuizhtotl. It has feet like a giant bird of prey and a body like a lizard."
" And to a group of twelve year old boys, it looks like Jurassic Park." Dean tossed his flashlight in the air and caught it again with a snap of his wrist. "Boys, we're going to need bigger guns."
"Not to mention more salt." Park eyed his pistol's single cartridge with a frown.
"I'm not sure salt's going to get this one," Sam declared. "Those are physical tracks. Unless your slug is silver?"
Greenough shook his head. "The department's budget does not allow for silver. Besides, this is crazy. This is more than a few apparitions hanging around the old hospital. This is a full-on manifestation of a Meso-American mythological beast. The last time I checked we didn't have a shaman to give advice on how to handle it."
Dean watched in amusement as the formerly tight-assed Greenough began to lose it. Park also looked a little loopy in the moonlight. Time for him and Sammy to take over, he decided.
"We've had some experience in this area," Sam interjected. "We'll be right back. See if those hunters over there can get an idea which way this thing went."
Sam grabbed Dean by the elbow and dragged him to the side. "Maybe Dennis and I have this thing ID'd right. Maybe we don't. But if we're dealing with some ancient Meso-American monster, I am not sure any of our usual tools will be able to defeat it."
Dean pulled the SBI out of their pow-wow with the local boys. "We gotta get some stuff from the car."
He opened the trunk of the Impala, shoved aside the junk and opened the arsenal. Park whistled beside him.
"Is all this legal?" Greenough asked in a whisper.
"Sure it is," Dean lied. "But more importantly, it's effective. I've got more salt, holy water, holy fire, yew, yarrow, nightshade, fennel, marigold, coneflower, magnesium, aluminium oxide, and some flares. Some of this has to work."
The guys stood there in thought. "No." Sam declared at last. "Think Native American. What's sacred to Native Americans?"
"Maize?" Greenough suggested. "Corn?"
"So we're going to throw whole kernel at it?" Dean asked.
"How about cornmeal?" Park thought aloud. "That would load."
"Mix it with holy water, cook it with holy fire, and we could launch fritters at it," Dean only half joked.
"It's after midnight. All the stores are closed around here. Are we going to break into the Piggly Wiggly for a bag of Martha White self-rising?" Park asked.
"Nope." Dean shut the trunk decisively. "I know where to go."
Knock. Knock, knock. Knock. Knock, knock.
A muffled voice behind the door told him to hang on. The door opened just enough for her to see through the chain. Dean tried to look as friendly and non-creepy as possible, but couldn't stop grinning at her. She was so adorable, all sleepy with her pj's on.
"Lizzy! Hey, were you asleep? I'm sorry. I'll come back later." He half turned but didn't go anywhere. When she said okay and started to close the door, he had to think fast. "No, wait. Since you're up already can I come in for a second? I need to borrow some cornmeal."
"Cornmeal?" she asked as she opened the door. She peered past him into the hallway where the three stooges tried to look nonchalant. "You guys making hush puppies at midnight?"
"Yeah. We were up playing cards and just got hungry. I remembered how good those corn muffins were that you made the other night and thought we'd try to make some, but the store's closed." He wandered into her kitchen and began to check the canisters. None of them were labelled and he couldn't tell one from the other. "This it?" he held up a glass jar.
"That's brown sugar." She sounded suspicious and a little bit pissed. She reached into the cabinet and pulled down a white paper pack. "This is cornmeal."
He took it, glad to see it was almost full. "I'll bring you some more tomorrow," he promised.
"When you come back, bring the truth too."
He kissed her cheek. "Thank you, Lizzybelle. You are wonderful."
She smiled at him despite herself. "Yeah right. Go play cards. And quit smoking dope. If you've got raw cornmeal munchies, you've got serious problems."
Dean's eyes popped open. "Smoking! Yes! You are brilliant! Thank you, thank you." He kissed her cheek again and ran down the hall into the apartment.
"What are you doing?" Sam asked as he dumped the cornmeal out into the biggest pot he could find.
"You guys get the shells. We need a couple of packs of smokes. Who's got 'em?" The three looked at each other and then at him.
"What? I don't smoke," Dean snapped.
Finally Park reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels.
"I knew it!" Greenough stabbed the air in his partner's face with an outstretched finger. "I knew you hadn't quit."
"So sue me," Park grumbled back at him. "Why do you want my only pack of smokes?"
"Tobacco is sacred in most Native American cultures. Usually it's mixed with other herbs, but all we've got is cornmeal and a box of garlic salt," Dean explained as he began to shred the cigarettes into the pot.
"It'll have to do," Sam sighed as he began to open shotgun shells.
Soon the men had their ammunition prepped.
Park called Billy on the walkie. "Got anything out there?"
"Where did you guys go? We need help out here," Billy responded. "We got some tracks headed into toward the canyon."
"The canyon?" Sam asked.
"Real neat place," Dean explained. "It's got a waterfall and caves. Very cool."
"When did you go to a canyon?"
"While you were at the library. It's called Devil's Canyon. I had to check it out." Dean packed up the remaining cornmeal in ziplock bags and tossed them into his backpack. "No devils though. Just pretty. I might take Elizabeth on a picnic there."
Sam grabbed his own pack and stole several of the bags. "Nope. I'm taking Abigail there. You've already been."
Scooter sat at the front door of the apartment as if waiting for them. "You can't go with us, Scoots. That siti-chewy monster would eat you." Dean gave the little dog a rub on the head and was rewarded with a lick on the hand. As they others left, Scooter demanded a pat on the head from each of them.
They pulled into the entrance of the canyon to see the sheriff's department and the town police force standing around a car hood with a map spread over it.
Sam and Greenough moved in close enough to see and after a moment of deliberation, picked their search quadrant. "Caves?" Sam asked. Greenough nodded.
"We're heading deep," Greenough stated as they four men moved away from the rest of the searchers. Dean led the way down the trail, having been there only a couple of days earlier in the daylight. It was well marked and easy walking, the path having been used by all the groups of people who'd lived in the area over the centuries.
Some kind of sixth sense guided them down the path. The moon glimmered through the branches of the evergreens that arched overhead. To Dean's surprise he could hear the sound of a kid crying in the distance.
Surprised that the boy was still alive, he moved closer, his double barrelled shot-pistol in hand. The boy cowered in a shallow cave that angled into the side of a tall bluff. He was bloody but didn't seem too badly injured. Lying nearby, however, was a giant sleeping beast the likes of which none of them had ever seen.
"I'm not sure about going in shooting," Dean whispered. "We might just piss it off."
"How about working a banishment?" Sam suggested.
"You guys know how to work Choctaw magic?" Greenough asked.
"Tell you what," Dean began, "I'm going to see if I can get close enough to ring it with cornmeal. "
"Are you crazy?" Park's voice grew louder than any of them wanted and the rest shushed him. "Are you crazy?" he repeated more quietly. "That thing will tear you apart if you get anywhere near it."
"I don't know about that." Dean tried to sound more confident than he felt. "If I can at least box it in on a couple of sides we might limit its options enough to take it out with the guns."
"That's provided the cornmeal holds it in the first place," Sam added. His brother shook his head. "I don't know about any of this, Dean. I agree with Park. I think you're crazy."
"Hey, crazy like a spirit fox." Dean took out several packs of cornmeal and his knife. Carefully he cut a corner off the bottom of each to make a spout. "If Chewy over there starts to get out of hand, start shooting."
He edged his way closer to the entrance of the cave, intending to get the first line between the beast and the boy. He motioned for the boy to be quiet and very still. Working quickly but carefully, he dropped a trail of the powdery mixture on the ground.
The beast's tail twitched toward him and appeared as if it were going to fall out across the cornmeal without hesitation. To Dean's relief, however, the tip curled back in the air onto itself and settled again in a curl on the ground. He flashed a big grin to the rest of the team and gave the boy a thumbs up.
That was all it took for the kid to lose it. He leaped to his feet and ran tearing through the woods screaming at the top of his lungs.
The sitichula sprang up and lunged, but Sam, Park, and Greenough met it with a hail of shells. The beast jumped and snarled, leaping against the agony of the mixture. With each hit, it also seemed to fade in and out, like a TV station losing signal.
Scrambling to avoid its claws and teeth, Dean poured more of the mixture on the ground, hoping a full containment circle would complete the banishment. The beast spun at him, snapping his teeth. Sam ran ahead to the other side, avoiding fire from the SBI boys while trying to join the opposite side of the circle.
After a few tense moments, only a few feet on the far inside wall of the cave remained to be closed. The creature couldn't leave the cave but until the circle was finished, it couldn't be sent back to wherever it came from.
Dean crept closer, pinning himself to the stone wall and reaching as far as he could. Without warning, the tip of the creature's tail whipped high against the wall, searching for a path out of the circle. The snaky tip darted toward him and wrapped itself around his face. He jerked his head downward as fast as he could to keep the beast from looping around his neck, practically giving himself whiplash in the process but managing to slip free.
His cheek burned like his face been dragged over astroturf, and his eye watered so heavily he wondered if maybe it was bleeding. He staggered backward, shaking away the pain, as the beast thrashed and beat against the wall of the bluff, sending down showers of dirt and rock.
"You okay?" Sam called.
"No. It's going to send the ceiling down on me." Clods of dirt pelted him about the shoulders. "Bomb the wall!"
He and Sam threw their remaining bags of cornmeal against the wall, hoping enough would fall to the ground to complete the circle. To his deep relief, the beast stopped thrashing and stood there inside the finally enclosed binding field, its sides heaving and its eyes rolling in anger.
"What do we do now?" Park asked. "We're out of shells and out of bags."
"We've got to banish it." Sam declared and offered Dean a helping hand as he crawled out of the back of the cave.
"How?" Greenough threw up his hands.
Dean shrugged then winced as the muscles of his neck protested. Sam pulled out his journal and began thumbing through it for anything that might help. Greenough turned to his partner.
"Don't look at me," Park declared. "I'm Baptist."
"Well, I'm Church of God, but there's no way I'm laying hands in prayer on that thing." Greenough began to pace.
Dean sat against a tree, trying not to touch his face. "Is my eye still there? I can't see a damned thing," he asked at last.
Park knelt beside him and peered into his face. "It's there. Just swollen. You look like you got a chemical burn on your cheek though. We need to get you to the ER."
"Not while Chewy here is still stomping around," Dean replied firmly. "He's got to go."
Park sat back on his heels, frowning in thought. "The Choctaw believed in good and evil. Maybe that's all we need to do-call on good."
He walked over to the beast, bowed his head and began to pray. "Father God, we need your help. This thing doesn't belong here. It's evil and dangerous and has already hurt somebody. It's got to go, but we can't get rid of it. We come to you and ask that you send it back where it belongs."
He paused and opened his eyes a crack to see if it had helped any. The sitichula was still there. He sighed and continued, "We ask you to bless this cornmeal and tobacco, even though tobacco isn't good for you. Oh, and I'm sorry I'm still smoking when I told Dennis and Teresa I quit. I shouldn't have lied to them. But bless the corn at least, even though it's probably GMO and not really good for you either."
"John Ross, you are making this worse," Greenough declared, jumping to his feet.
Dean looked over at Sam, who was still searching the book.
"Let me take over." Greenough moved closer and put a hand on Park's shoulder. "Lord, bless these plants of the earth, no matter what else we think about them. Let your light shine down on us and cast the evil back where it goes. We trust in you and in your power to do this, in the holy name of Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen."
The beast began to circle in his tight little prison, growling softly. Overhead a ray of the dawn sunshine sent a soft glow through the trees, a warm reddish orange that crept down the side of the bluff. When it touched the top of the beast's back, the creature howled once then vanished in a swirl.
"Hey, you guys did it!" Sam exclaimed.
"Is it gone? Really gone?" Park gasped. He and Greenough embraced then high-fived each other.
"Thank you, Lord." Greenough looked up at the sky.
"Amen to that." Dean took Sam's outstretched hand and pulled himself up from the ground.