Chapter 8

He sat on the sofa next to Elizabeth, just breathing in her scent and feeling her warmth beside him. His thoughts and emotions raced in his head, but she didn't press him. Instead she leaned against him, her fingers threaded in his. He didn't want to breathe or move for fear he'd break the spell and all that peace and contentment would evaporate, leaving him empty again.

If it was true that you don't know what you've got till it's gone, for Dean it was suddenly, vividly true that you don't know what you're missing until you found it. All the years he'd traveled with his Dad and Sam, he never knew Elizabeth existed. He never knew there would come a day when he would sit beside her and feel whole.

In all those years, he never realized that part of himself was missing-no, that wasn't right, he decided. That part was always there, but until he met her, it was asleep, dormant, waiting for her touch to wake it up.

A deep sense of elation rose inside him, but panic clawed its way up right behind. This girl had a professional degree; he had a GED, barely. How could he ever keep up in a conversation with her? With her friends? He knew shitloads about ghosts and skinwalkers but absolutely nothing about normal life.

More important, Elizabeth was a good person. She was thoughtful and kind. She wasn't a killer or a liar or a con-artist or a hustler. How could he ever expect to be worth her time, not to mention her respect, much less her love?

And the thing that frightened him the most was how badly he needed her time, respect, and love. He'd finally found what had been missing in his life for all those years. If he walked away from her, he'd have to leave that entire future behind him. He'd have to leave behind the person he could be with her.

But maybe to protect her from himself, he'd have to do just that.

He kissed the top of her head, blinking away his fears. He wouldn't deal with any of it now. Right now, he just wanted to be with her, to be the man he could only be with her at his side.

Then his stomach growled. Loud.

She laughed. "I did promise you breakfast," she said as she rose from the sofa and pulled him to his feet. "Let's cook."

Soon they'd produced real food, food significantly healthier and more delicious than he typically managed on his own. It was even healthier than the stuff Sam always ordered, but so good he devoured it anyway.

"I'm not very good at cleaning up, but I know how to run the dishwasher," he offered.

"I will take you up on that while I grab a quick shower," she replied.

She left the room and within a few minutes he could hear the water running in the bathroom. "Yeah, sure, you go take off all your clothes and start rubbing soap all over your naked skin while I'm here in the next room feeding scraps to Scooter," he muttered under his breath. Then he splashed some cold water on his face. "Scooter, she's trying to kill me."

Somehow he got the dishes in the dishwasher and even cleaned up the counters before she emerged from her bedroom. She was dressed in jeans and a soft knit top, and her hair hung in damp curls around her shoulders. "I didn't think you'd have the patience for me to dry my hair," she explained as she slipped on her shoes.

"Why? Where are we going?" he asked.

"We're going to check out whatever you're not telling me about Ranulf's place," she declared. "I know you found something out there. So let's go."

"No. As adorable as you look with your go-shoes on, I am not about to take you exploring the woods." He held his ground as she stared him down. "I don't doubt for a second your spook-hunting abilities, Lizzy. But I don't want you anywhere near that cabin."

"So there is a cabin." She declared triumphantly. "In the woods? Near Ranulf's place? Why did I dream about it?"

"I have no clue. I haven't even seen the place myself. Ranulf just said there was an old house. He called it the Kelly house. Said it had been abandoned for a hundred years," Dean played it off as casually as possible, but just talking about the place made the back of his mind begin to crawl with vague dream memories.

A cold chill ran over him, followed by a strong sense of foreboding. But there was an attraction too. Something about that house called to him. "I guess we could drive out there," he began, but Scooter barked sharply at him, then ran to the window, a low throaty growl vibrating in his throat.

As Dean looked past the curtains, he half glimpsed a movement outside. But as quickly as he spotted it, it disappeared so fast he decided he imagined it.

"No. I take it back," Elizabeth declared firmly. "We leave this one alone."

"What changed your mind so fast?" Dean couldn't help but feel a bit of relief.

"The look on your face just now. It made me remember." She paused and wrapped her arms around herself as she stared out the window. "I dreamed that look. I dreamed us going there and you had that same look on your face. Something out there wants you, Dean. Something really terrible." She turned to look at him, her eyes pleading. "Leave this one alone, okay?"

Up until that moment, Dean hadn't really wanted to go out to the Kelly place. After all, the place had been abandoned a hundred years, and dreaming about it all night hadn't helped. He knew Elizabeth was right. That place wanted him to come. It called to him even as it threatened him.

Normally, that sort of interaction only made him want to tackle it more, to take down whatever evil baddie thought it could screw around with Dean Winchester and survive.

But the truth was, this one frightened him. He could feel its influence working its way into his thoughts, his feelings. He knew that the longer that place waited, the angrier it would get. Sooner or later, he would have to confront it.

But not now. Not today. Not with Elizabeth. When the big showdown happened with old Kelly, he didn't want her anywhere near.

"I won't go out there," he told her. "We'll do something else today. Something fun. Okay?"

She nodded and wiped at her eyes. He pulled her against him and felt her relax into his embrace.

One day wouldn't hurt. He could take one day to enjoy with her, especially since he finally remembered how his dreams ended. Right before he woke up, he'd dreamed he died.

-0-

Sam and Abigail finally showed their faces just before noon, in time to join them for lunch at the downtown burger joint. It was a dark hole in the wall, dominated by a big griddle with the smoke of over a century coating the brick wall behind it. An ancient metal rack held rows of individual sized bags of chips, three flavors only, plain, barbecue, and salt and vinegar. Another rack on top of the scarred Formica counter held stacks of tiny pecan pies.

"I can't believe you haven't eaten here yet. Priddy's Hamburgers is a national treasure," Elizabeth commented as she slipped into a booth.

Sam took one look at the available space and shook his head. "No way. I am not wedging myself into that thing. Instead he pulled out a red vinyl chair and sat at a table, Abigail across from him.

"Well, I like the booth," Dean declared and tucked himself in across from Elizabeth.

"I'm glad you like it. This is my mom and dad's booth," she admitted with a sheepish grin. "See?" She pointed to a pair of initials carved into the wall.

"Your parents lived in Hunter?" Dean asked. He hadn't even considered that she might have family nearby.

"Still do. So do my grandparents on both sides. Well, my dad's parents live about five miles out of town but they have a Hunter mailing address."

Wow. She had two sets of grandparents, both alive. No one missing or killed under mysterious circumstances. And she had parents, a living, breathing mom and dad.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" Dean asked curiously. "How can I not already know this?"

"I have two older brothers, both married and with kids," she replied. "I have two nieces and two nephews. Four under five. It's insane at our house at Christmas."

For a long second he couldn't breathe. All he'd had was his dad and Sammy, mostly Sammy. He'd grown up without family, without a home, without traditions or grandparents. Most of their holidays had been passed in a motel, the two of them wondering if their dad would show.

But sitting there across from Elizabeth, he could suddenly imagine this house full of people and kids and food with a huge Christmas tree. He felt both suffocated and elated at the thoughts of trying to fit in with them. How would her parents feel about him? What could he possibly have to offer their daughter as a future?

Before his imagination could run completely amok, a lanky woman approached them, a green pad in her hand. "What can I get you two?" she asked.

Dean quickly checked out the menu board on the wall beside the grill. "I'll take two burgers, a bag of barbecue chips, and a Dr. Pepper."

"With or without?" the waitress asked.

"Huh?"

"The burgers come either with onions or without them," Elizabeth explained. "It's the best burger in the world, but not overly fancy. I recommend with."

"Okay, then, with." Elizabeth placed her order, choosing with as well. He smiled at her. He liked a woman who enjoyed her food and wasn't afraid to be real with him.

"I promise to brush my teeth as soon as we get back home," she declared.

"I'm not waiting until then," he declared and leaned across the narrow table as she did the same. Their lips met in a gentle kiss.

"So have you two come to an understanding?" Abigail asked with a grin.

Elizabeth looked at him and cocked an eyebrow. He would never get used to how sexy that looked, he decided. "We're taking things one step at a time," Dean stated, his eyes never leaving hers. He wanted to judge how she took his answer. At her nod, he found himself grinning in relief. He could do one step at a time. Since his usual mode was to plow in head first, he considered slow and steady to be a sure sign of maturity. She had to like that.

Their burgers came, delivered on sheets of wax paper with a bag of chips and a canned drink. It was about as plain as you could get, but he had to agree with Elizabeth that it was pure, unadulturated hamburger goodness. He finished his in record time and ordered another. Sam polished off four without thinking and even got a couple of pies. Dean gave him the eye of judgment, but Sam just mumbled, "This is breakfast and lunch," around his mouthful of second pie.

Once they finished eating, Sam and Abigail declared their intention of hitting the library. "I want to hunt for any information on that Kelly place you were telling us about on the way here," Sam declared. "I had some funny dreams last night about an old cabin. I wonder if they're connected."

At Elizabeth's look of surprise, Dean explained, "Sam's a weirdo. He dreams stuff."

"What about us? We dreamed stuff too last night and the last time I checked, I didn't have any psychic ability," Elizabeth replied. "What's going on here?"

"What did you dream?" Sam asked her. As she told him about seeing an old farmhouse in the woods and feeling like a figure was inside watching Dean, the hairs on the back of Dean's neck began to stand up. It sounded just like his own dreams, only his had even more disturbing details.

The place was old, wooden floorboards and a large brick fireplace. A woman stood between him and the door, tall and skinny with sunken cheeks. Her lank black hair hung halfway down her back. She wore a long yellow dress that hung from her skeletal frame. "I been waiting for you to get here," she hissed. Then she reached out for him with long fingers, her eyes rolling back in her head so that only the whites showed. "I been needing what you got inside you. Now I'm gonna let it out." Her fingers dug into his flesh. Her nails sprouted long razor-like claws and she tore at his throat, so that his blood spilled out on the wooden floorboards.

The room spun around him until he collapsed onto his side. He couldn't move, but watched the life pour out of him in a huge pool around the woman. She held out her arms and began to convulse as it ran over her shoes and up her legs, turning her dress red, dripping down her hair. She breathed in a deep, gasping breath and as she did, all that blood began to soak into her like she was a sponge. As it did, her flesh filled out and her skin began to glow, transforming her from a corpse to a living body. His last sight before the dream ended was of her standing before him, her head thrown back in a laugh of triumph.

He sat there in the booth of the hamburger joint and re-lived the entire dream, his hands clenching the wax paper sheet into a tight greasy ball.

"Dude, are you okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Sure." Dean forced himself to drop the paper and wiped his hands on some napkins he pulled from the chrome rack on the table. Sam gave him his own eye of judgment and he knew he'd face a serious grilling from his little brother later on. "Elizabeth and I are going to check out the antique place on the square," he declared.

"We are?" Elizabeth asked, then followed up immediately with, "yes, we're going antiquing for a little while." The group parted company at the front door, Dean taking Elizabeth's hand and tucking it into his arm, old-fashioned style.

"So, are you feeling okay? You don't seem like the antique type."

"We're just walking. I haven't been here yet, so it seemed like a good choice."

They crossed the street and headed down the block past an insurance office and a pharmacy. They'd passed a real estate office and were in front of the town's barber shop when he heard the rapid clopping of hooves. He looked up to see a team of horses and a wagon bearing down on them at top speed.

"What the hell?" he blurted as he pushed Elizabeth toward the doorway of the shop. But it was too late. Everything seemed to run in slow motion as he saw the horses right on top of them, their eyes white with terror. The leading bar of the harness slammed into him, throwing him heavily to the ground right under the pounding hooves of the team of four huge farm horses.

Instinctively, he curled into a tight ball, but the hooves still slammed into him from each side, knocking him painfully back and forth so that when the wagon passed, he only barely rolled out from under the front wheel. The spokes knocked painfully against his head and elbow as it passed him, finally drawing to a halt with him still underneath.

He rolled onto his back. He could feel the uneven brick sidewalk pavers beneath him and could see the dusty, muddy undercarriage of the wagon. One of the boards bore a stamped imprint of the word Birmingham. A fine white powder settled through the cracks in the boards showering onto his face and in his eyes. He sneezed, causing his ribcage to scream in agony. Flour. It tasted like flour. He'd been run down by the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Where was Elizabeth? She'd been right beside him. He looked for her but couldn't see anything in the shadow of the wagon's body but the spokes of the wagon wheels beside him. He started to sneeze again and gripped his ribs tightly in anticipation. He knew he'd cracked at least one. But the sneeze faded away and he breathed a silent thank you.

"Lizzie?" he called, but his voice came out as a whisper instead. His head pounded and he could feel a stickiness running down the back of his neck. As he gained awareness of the rest of his body, he realized that he hurt all over but that nothing seemed to be broken. But where was Elizabeth?

Sunlight suddenly flooded into his face as the wagon evaporated. "Elizabeth?" he called again, blinking away the flour.

"Oh my God! Dean! Are you okay?" Elizabeth's face hovered into view. He'd never seen anything more welcome or more beautiful. He tried to sit up, but his ribs screamed in his chest.

"Where they hell did that come from?" he asked as he rolled to his other side and breathed against the pain.

"It's gone now," she answered. "It ran right through me."

"It ran right over me," Dean moaned as he finally managed to sit up.

"Dean!" He could hear Sam calling his name from across the street. His brother dashed across the road to his side, throwing himself to his knees. "What the hell happened to you?"

"A team of horses?" Dean guessed aloud. "And a wagon full of flour." He wiped at his face and spat the dry powdery flour from his lips.

"Let me see that," Sam gestured at his flour-covered fingers. "This is insane. Did anybody else see the wagon?"

"Elizabeth had to have seen it. It nearly ran her down too," Dean tried to get a foot underneath him, but he could feel a deep bruise beginning in his thigh. "Give me a hand here, Sammy," he held out a hand.

Sam began to pull, but the force pulled at his ribcage, causing him to gasp in pain. Unfortunately the gasp only made it much worse. He felt his face break out in a sudden sweat and he fought back the tide of nausea that swelled in him.

"Man, I think you need a doctor." Sam sounded serious.

-0-

The doctor agreed. "You've got a pretty bad cut here. It's going to need stitches. And I'd like to be sure you don't have a concussion to go with this cracked rib. I think your leg is just bruised really badly, but I'd still like to have an x-ray to make sure." He peered at Dean over the top of his glasses. "Now tell me again how you got these injuries."

"I fell down the stairs." At the man's continued stare, he added, "It was a long way and there were pipes in the way. And flour."

"Mr. Winchester, I'm going to be frank with you. Are you in trouble in some way? Have you been threatened?" The doctor put down his clipboard and leaned against the cabinet. "The young man that brought you in. Did he do this?"

"What? No!" Dean replied. "My brother wouldn't hurt a fly." Then any number of contrary memories flashed through his head. "Sam didn't do this."

"Then who did?" the doctor asked. "You look like you've been beaten pretty badly."

"I swear to you I'm safe at home. In fact, I'm just going to go right now," Dean declared and tried to hop off the examination table. Unfortunately, that bruised thigh didn't hold his weight and his head swam with dizziness. The doctor barely managed to catch him before he hit the floor.

"I'll make you a deal. I'll drop the whole somebody beat the crap out of you thing if you'll stay overnight. Let us keep an eye on you." The doctor helped him back onto the table and pressed another wad of gauze to the back of his head.

"And if I don't?" Dean asked, trying hard not to throw up from the pain in his chest where his near tumble had tugged against that cracked rib.

"I can't force you to stay here. But I'd feel better if you did. Your brother can stay if you like."

"All right. One night."

-0-

Sam couldn't believe he'd agreed to a night in the hospital. "What the hell? We don't do hospitals," he stormed at him. Then he gave him the eye of judgment. "How hurt are you? What aren't you telling me?"

"I just want the good drugs for once, Sammy," Dean tried not to whine from his spot in the hospital bed. "My head hurts and my ribs hurt and my leg hurts. I hurt all over. I got ran down by a team of phantom horses that nobody saw but me. Can't I just have the good drugs and try to feel better?"

"I saw them," Elizabeth spoke up from the chair by his bed. "They looked like outlines of horses, filled with water or something. But I could tell they were horses. They passed right through me."

"Then why did Dean catch the full 3-D version?" Sam asked. "Did you feel anything?"

Elizabeth shivered. "Just cold. And I could see Dean being banged around by their hooves and the wagon wheel because I was right in the middle of it. But it was like being inside a movie. It was only real for Dean. Not for me."

"I was across the street and didn't see a thing other than Dean hitting the ground. I thought maybe he'd been shot or had a seizure or something," Sam sighed.

"Does that happen often?" Elizabeth asked. "Do you guys get shot or have seizures or get run down by teams of ghost horses that leave behind real flour very often?"

Her voice carried an edge to it that made Dean anxious, but the drugs were beginning to kick in. "No, baby, we don't do things like that all time," he began in as calming a voice as he could muster given the thickness of his tongue. "I've never had a seizure and I've only been shot five or ten times. Sam's been stabbed. A few. I've been stabbed, probably more than Sammy. But not like that much."

Elizabeth stared at him. He tried to smile, but his smile went all wobbly.

"Dean, I don't think Elizabeth needs to hear this," Sam tried to stop him from adding to the story.

"Oh, but I do." Elizabeth stood up and moved her chair right next to Dean's bedside. Then she sat down and took his hand in hers. The hospital bracelet on his wrist itched. "Tell me about it, sweetie. Tell me about what's happened to you."

"Well, I've been to hell and back. Literally. Not a fun place, let me tell you. But I'm better," Dean began. "I don't think about it all the time any more. And not with you. Not here. Here is good. Here feels like a fresh start."

He wanted to tell her more, but he was so sleepy. "I wish Scooter was here," he breathed. Then he forced his eyes open. Sam sat at the end of the bed. Elizabeth was still right beside him, her hand holding his so warm, so soft. He squeezed her fingers. He had something to tell her, something that would wipe the worry off her face and the tears out of her eyes.

His eyes drifted shut again. He couldn't make words form. The signal from his brain tried hard to make it to his lips but they wouldn't shape themselves into anything but murmurs and sighs.

"What is it, sweetie?" she asked him, her face leaning close to his. "Do you need something?"

"Tell you," he murmured. "Tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"I love you." That was it. It made it out of his drug-fogged brain and to his lips.

"It's okay, sweetie. Sleep, okay? I'm right here. Just sleep."