Chapter Two: Tricksters Again?
"No, no, no, no!" Dean yelled as he hit the buttons on the TV remote.
"What's wrong now Dean? Do we not get the channel for Doctor Sexy here?" I teased.
"Shut up," he said. I was just sorting through our luggage, looking for our toiletries bag. We had just finished off a case and were heading out in the morning, so our bags were mostly packed.
"So what is the matter?" I asked.
"Look at it!" He said, and I did. The screen was doing that thing it does when there's no signal.
I rolled my eyes, "Come on, Dean, you can survive one night without TV."
"But it was working a minute ago!" He protested.
"Well then give it a minute and it should work again. It's an old TV, Dean, be patient with it."
Dean sighed. Then he stood up, walked over to the TV, and starting hitting the top of it loud enough to wake the entire motel.
"Dean?! What are you doing?"
"What? Don't you remember? We had a TV like this once and this is how we fixed it."
"Not here! It's like 6 o'clock in the morning!" Suddenly Dean's TV flickered to life, "There it's working again, now shut up before people start coming to our door."
"Dude, people will be waking up now, why are we even up?" Dean said then went silent.
"Ugh, what channel is this?" Dean complained. I sighed and continued to search for the toiletries bag. I finally found it when Dean said, "Sam, it's on every channel, what is this?"
I looked over at the TV, where Dean's eyes were glued, to see that he was right. As he flicked through the channels, the same face was on the screen. It was a man with sleek black hair and the words "miss me?" written in bold white letters beside his face.
I recognized this man as one of the tricksters Dean and I had dealt with a while ago in Manhattan. He had tried to kill us and would have probably succeed if it weren't for this stupid couple who got in the way. The trickster had tried to get them out of the way by killing them, so I'd had to get the two if them away from the scene. When I got back, Dean had him caught when the trickster thought we had run off to save the couple. That's when we killed him using a trickster exorcism spell. So I suppose I had a lot to thank that couple for. But that was it. End of story, hadn't seen him since. But it was at least 4 years ago.
"Dean, stop!" I yelled.
"Woah, who needs to be quiet now?" He looked at me like I was some kind of hypocrite.
"No, just look," I said, taking the remote from him. Now that there was no one pressing buttons on the remote, we could hear it properly. It looked like his mouth was glued together and he was trying to squeeze out the words "did you miss me?" in a high pitched voice. Like a chipmunk in the kids' TV shows.
"Is that?" Dean started.
"The trickster we dealt with in Manhattan, yes."
"But… how did he get on every channel?"
"He's a trickster, Dean."
"But we killed him!"
"My point exactly," I said, tossing the remote back at him.
After a moment he replied, "He nearly killed us."
"Yes," I said.
"He did things… no trickster could have done those things," I nodded in agreement. "So what do we do?"
I thought about it for a minute, then explained my theory, "We need to find out where that's coming from and get there, quickly. I think he's talking to us, or, if he can come back from the dead, then every other hunter who's ever dealt with him."
"Right," Dean said, "Let's stay the night and find out in the morning, though OK, Sammy? I'm beat."
I rolled my eyes, "Ya, of course."
Dean took off his shirt as I went into the bathroom. I pulled my toothbrush and toothpaste out of my toiletries bag and began to brush my teeth.
Questions were buzzing around inside my head. I wondered how did the trickster survive what we did to him? It was a trickster-only spell that was supposed to send him out of this world, never to return. Fool proof. Of course there was that one time when Gabriel escaped us using a false body, but since then we'd learned proper spells that could get tricksters even if it was a fake body.
What I do specifically remember about that trickster, is that he had powers that other tricksters didn't. Which Dean mentioned earlier. It was doing things like levitation, and manipulation of the human mind. He had some passing people go all zombie and start taking orders from him. I had the feeling that he didn't do that to us because he was enjoying watching us fight. Usually tricksters could only do that in worlds that they'd created and placed us in, I'd done enough research to know that much.
But of course we'd only ever seen three of them in our hunting career and one of them was actually Gabriel, an angel. So I guess you could say that we have and unrealistic perception of what tricksters truly are.
When I was finished brushing my teeth, I climbed into bed and continued to think.
"Sam," Dean whispered.
"What, Dean?" I replied, not so quietly.
"I can't stop thinking about the trickster."
"Me neither."
"How do you think he did it?"
"Maybe he wasn't a trickster after all."
"Well then what was he?"
I sat up and glared in Dean's direction even though it was too dark for me to actually tell where he was positioned, "Dean, I have no idea. Go. To. Sleep."
"Alright, alright."
I lied back down and turned so I was facing away from Dean. What felt like hours of thought later, I fell asleep.
When I woke up in the morning, Dean was already up. He looked like he'd gotten no sleep for the past month. The circles under his eyes made it look as though he'd been punched right in the eye. Twice.
"Dean, did you sleep at all?" I asked.
"I might have. But I don't remember it," he replied. He was sitting at his laptop doing research on the incident the night before.
"Learn anything new?" I asked.
"It wasn't just us. The whole world had their TVs hacked last night at 6 in the morning."
"It was revolving around Great Britain," Cas appeared out of nowhere.
"Jesus, Cas, learn to knock," Dean commented.
"Dean, have you been brutally beaten?" Cas asked. Dean ignored the comment.
"What makes you say that?" I asked.
"Well, his eyes-"
"No, about Great Britain," I interrupted.
"Oh. Every TV screen, everywhere, at 11 in the morning yesterday in Great Britain, that clip came up on screen. And it was planted for Sherlock Holmes," Castiel explained.
"The book character?" Dean asked.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a prophet," Cas said, "He was a great man, I knew him."
"Right." I said, "So Sherlock Holmes is a real person and it was directed at him. So who does that make the guy on the screen?"
"James Moriarty. Sherlock's arch enemy. Moriarty tricked Sherlock into killing himself, but Sherlock knew that it was going to happen so he planned a way to fake his death. Eventually he came back and John Watson was pretty mad but Moriarty was supposed to have died the day Sherlock did. But now apparently he's not dead," Cas explained.
"Castiel, are you a fan?" Dean asked.
There was a pause, "Is there something wrong with that?" Cas replied harshly.
"No," Dean said sarcastically.
"So that guy was James Moriarty?" I said, trying to stop the arguing.
"Yes."
"James Moriarty is a trickster?" I asked. Cas looked at me in confusion. "We met that guy as a trickster 4 years ago and he tried to kill us, but we killed him first."
"I will look into finding more information. But first, sleep," Cas touched two fingers to Dean's forehead and he was instantly asleep.
"Woah, you can do that?" I had never seen him do that before.
"I'd never needed to until now. I will return in 5 hours."
"Why 5?"
"That is when Dean will awaken. That is when I will take you to London to live with Kevin Baker."
"You mean Bobby's friend, Kevin Baker?"
"Yes."
"You already have this planned out with him?" I asked, wondering when he could have possibly planned that so quickly.
"No but I have 5 hours to convince him," And just like that, Cas disappeared.
I looked down at Dean who was laying, asleep, in his bed with his laptop resting on his stomach. I carefully lifted the laptop off him and placed it on the desk across the room. I knew that with Cas' powers he probably wouldn't wake up for 5 hours no matter what the circumstances but I wasn't ready to take that chance.
I sat down at the desk, in front of the laptop and began to do some research of my own. I typed "Moriarty and Holmes" into Google. It showed me the whole story. How Moriarty told Holmes that if he didn't commit suicide then he would kill his only friends. How Moriarty killed himself just before Holmes jumped. No one actually knew why Moriarty killed himself, Holmes wouldn't say anything about that day. So there was some questioning about whether it was actually Holmes who killed Moriarty and set it up to look like a suicide.
From what I could tell, Sherlock Holmes was one of the most famous people in Europe. But no one in America seemed to know anything about him being a real person instead of just a book character, and vice versa.
I sighed. This was all so confusing, and I was the one that wasn't supposed to be confused. I glanced over at the clock, it read noon. I'd only gotten 5 hours of sleep and I figured a little more wouldn't hurt.
I jumped back into my bed. It took me a moment to get comfortable, but knowing that we were one step closer, made it easier for me to fall asleep.
I was jolted awake by the sound of Cas' voice, "Kevin Baker said yes."
I sat up and looked over at the clock, I had been asleep for not even 10 minutes, "Cas, you really need to learn to knock."'
"Sorry."
"So, what were you saying?"
"Kevin Baker said you could stay."
"That only took you like a half and hour," I said.
"Yes, well Kevin is a good man."
"Must be," I muttered under my breath. Then a thought occurred to me, "Wait, how big is Kevin Baker's house exactly?" I'd never actually met the man, and I'd only heard bits from what Bobby mentioned before he died. But if he was a hunter, how big of a house could he really have? Dean and I sleep in the car, we don't even have a house because of the job.
"Kevin Baker is rich. He retired after he saved London and the government gave him millions, but he still does a job here and there," Cas explained.
"So I'm assuming he has a big mansion type house?"
"Exactly."
"Alright, thanks Cas," I said, "But we shouldn't go until Dean wakes up at least."
"Okay. Then I'll see you in 4 and a half hours," then he was gone.
I laid back down in my bed, shut my eyes, and went straight to sleep. Not to wake up for another 4 and a half hours.
"Dad went on a hunting trip and hasn't been home in a few days."
-Dean Winchester, Supernatural