Catching Up
Chapter 20 – Hell House
"Alright," Cas skimmed through the episode list to find their place. "Episode 17, Hell House. Sam and Dean investigate a house haunted by the ghost of a man who killed his six daughters during the 1930's."
"Oh I remember this one," Dean grinned. "Do you Sam?"
"Who can forget the debut of the Ghostfacers Dean?" Sam chuckled. "They're legends, celebrities."
"The – who?" Mary asked.
"You'll see," her sons chorused.
Cas pressed play and the show began with four teens wandering through the woods at night. "So we got the 'let's go look' guy, the 'l don't believe so I'll be the first one to get scared' guy, the dumb one, and the 'I don't want to be here' chick." Dean bobbed his head. "Horror movie perfection."
"Seems like a pretty cut and dry haunting though," Mary commented. "Shouldn't give you boys too much trouble."
"You would hope so wouldn't you?" Sam asked rhetorically.
In the show, TV!Dean messes with his brother and they decide to call another prank war. "Still got that picture," Dean beamed. "Best thing ever."
"How even -" Sam began but stopped himself. "Nevermind. It's like that trenchcoat all over again," he mumbled to himself. What? "Long ass story."
"Hey Sammy, ever check those paranormal websites again?" Dean asked as their television counterparts go over the case and how TV!Sam came to find it.
"Now and again, if I'm desperate," Sam admitted. "Anything promising I normally run through a search but its usually a dead end."
TV!Sam and TV!Dean try to talk to the teens that found the dead body and all of them have different accounts of the events. However all of them point to Craig who gives them the legend about Mordecai Murdoch. The TV!Winchesters then go to the house themselves to look around. "Wait for it," Dean grinned. "Wait..for..it…"
Onscreen, TV!Dean and TV!Sam run into two guys that claim to be professional paranormal investigators who also run the website TV!Sam used. "Meet the Ghostfacers, Harry and Ed."
"Oh boy, here come the wannabes," Mary snorted. "In my time, they screwed around with so-called psychics and mediums. I won't lie to you boys, it was their disappearances that often brought our attention to cases."
"That's grim," Cas said. "At least they did not die in vain."
"We didn't have the internet," Mary reminded them. "It was all newspapers and radio bulletins in those days. Television helped a bit when it came along but major news stations weren't about to report about haunted buildings or strange creatures unless it was a slow day or there was some evidence to back it up. Lots of room for the idiots to pop in."
"So these men are imbeciles," Cas said referring to the ghost hunters.
"Well meaning imbeciles," Dean amended. "but yes."
"This case doesn't make sense," Mary was half-listening to them and half to the show where TV!Sam says that there isn't any history to back up the lore and TV!Dean said there were no missing persons matching the victim. "What could it be?"
"Yep, definitely not cut and dry," Sam clicked his mouth.
"I never kicked the crap out of you for messing with baby." Dean shot Sam a look as TV!Sam had turned up the volume to scare his brother.
"Should we be keeping score at this point?" Cas asked.
"Nah, the amount kickings we probably owe each other is off the charts," Sam laughed.
"Ain't that the truth," Dean agreed. Onscreen, another group teens dare their friend to go into the house where she meets Mordecai and he hangs her from the rafters as per the legend. This convinces the TV!Winchesters to stay but now the police are guarding the house. Thankfully the Ghostfacers showed up and TV!Dean uses them as the distraction they need to get inside. Once there, they look around and thought something was hiding in a cabinet but it only had rats inside.
"Should have been a cat."
"Shut up."
Unfortunately for the TV!Winchesters Mordecai showed up immediately after that and was immune to all their usual methods of defence. Outside, the Ghostfacers were about to come in but TV!Sam and TV!Dean burst out giving them a glimpse of the spirit.
"That is not a spirit," Cas squinted.
"How can you tell?" Dean asked.
"Too solid for a spectre of any kind," Cas explained. "It can dissipate yes but when it reforms, it doesn't have the same matter, substance, of ghosts."
"Christ Cas, where have you been our whole lives?" Dean grumbled.
AAAAAAT LAAAAAAAASSSSSTTT MY LOOOOVVEE Sam literally had to stuff a hand in his mouth to kept from laughing.
Back at their motel, TV!Sam and TV!Dean are puzzled by the inconsistencies and strange behaviour of their ghost. TV!Sam pulls up the website and sees that someone had amended the legend and it fit what they saw at the house. TV!Dean had a breakthrough of his own; he'd been certain that he recognized one of the symbols inside the house and suddenly remembered where he had seen it. It was a band logo so they went back to see Craig at the record store where he worked and confronted him about what really happened at the house. Craig revealed that he and his cousin concocted the story and covered the house in symbols as a prank only the legend grew especially since it went up on the website.
"That doesn't explain Mordecai," Mary frowned.
"It will," Sam promised, slightly hoarse from the strain of not laughing.
Onscreen, TV!Dean sprinkles something into his brother's clothes while he's in the shower while considering the idea it might be a tolpa, a Tibetan thought form. TV!Sam comes out of the bathroom but doesn't see what TV!Dean had done and goes to put on his clothes. Woo a girl can get used to that view "Well you're not a girl so eyes front soldier." Believe me, they are.
In the show, TV!Sam goes into further detail about his Tolpa theory and the sigil that was used out of Craig's cousin's theology textbook that could explain how it was created courtesy of all the people who were thinking about Mordecai especially since the Ghostfacers now had footage of the spirit.
"Interesting," Mary leaned forward. "I've never faced a Tolpa before. Hunting in my time was pretty standard, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, every once in a while you'd get something new."
"Sam appears to be in distress," Cas noted. "Is he being attacked?"
"No, my dear brother put itching powder in my pants and underwear of all place," Sam glowered at the elder Winchester who smirked unrepentantly. "You really are a jerk."
"Oh yeah," Dean winked.
Onscreen, the TV!Winchesters pay a visit to Harry and Ed and con them into believing that Mordecai could be a specific type of bullet so that they would add it to their website and hopefully change the myth. The first part of their plan and the Ghostfacers add the change to their website and now they had to wait for it to take effect, opting for nightfall before trying to go after it. Thankfully TV!Dean had a beer bottle superglued to his hand in the meantime. "Now that is classic," Mary chuckled.
"Thanks mom," Dean griped.
You stole a wall pirate? "Yeah but we knew it was wrong so we gave it to the authorities," Sam quipped. I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed. In the show, thanks to the pilfering of said pirate and using it to lure the cops away, TV!Sam and TV!Dean snuck back into the house only to find Ed and Harry there as well. Mordecai appears but the bullets take no effect since the website crashed before the myth could change. TV!Dean decides to improvise so since Mordecai can't leave the house, he burns it down and hopes the legend doesn't change again.
"The myth didn't change," Dean snorted. "Mordecai died down and people moved on to the next big monster."
"Such is life," Mary shrugged. "And the ghostfacers?"
Dean merely pointed to the television where Ed and Harry were bragging about being called to Hollywood only to find out that TV!Sam had been the one who called them. "That was cruel Sam," Mary laughed against her will.
"I should think Dean placing a fish in their car would be more cruel," Cas added.
"Hey we called a truce…afterwards…for a little while," Dean tried to defend them.
Mary's eyes might have rolled out of her head if they could, "What's the next episode?"
Cas retrieved the case, "Something Wicked This Way Comes."