Chapter 6: The Case of Harold Wayland

"Ask away," Sherlock smiled. I could tell that Sherlock's behavior was not normal towards these two agents. I looked at the two "agents" in suspicion and tried to see what Sherlock was seeing.

"Did Moriarty ever act strangely?" The shorter agent asked.

"He was a psychopath, of course he acted strangely," Sherlock replied.

"But more non-human behavior."

He leaned forward, "Describe non-human."

The shorter agent looked at the taller one for help. But he was staring at Sherlock in shock and confusion. The short one nudged him in the rib cage and jerked him back into reality.

"Uh, like, sudden disappearances where you couldn't find him for a few days then he'd reappear, or he could get groups of people to work for him like nothing," the man said nervously.

"Exactly like him," Sherlock said. I wondered if he was being honest with these questions.

"Great. Moriarty also tried to kill you. Why?"

"How would I know anything that Moriarty was thinking?"

"Could you make a guess?"

Sherlock stood up and he walked towards the door. Before I could figure out what he was doing, he slammed the door closed. Then stood in front of it so that no one could get out.

"What are you doing?" We asked in unison.

"You are not leaving here until you tell me what you really want and who you really are," Sherlock said threateningly. "I know you're not really FBI agents and I know that you're not here to investigate massive genocides. So what are two unemployed Americans doing in my flat, asking about the man who tried to kill me?"

The two men exchanged concerned glances. I walked over to Sherlock and stood by his side.

"I'd like to know too," I said, "and Sherlock isn't lying. I've known him for a very long time and I know that when he wants something, you're not leaving until he gets it. So the sooner the better, boys."

I looked up at Sherlock for approval to see that he was staring down at me, fighting off a smile. When he saw me look, he jerked his head away. I looked back over to the agents who were silently discussing.

"Alright," the short one said as he turned to face us, "I'm Dean, this is Sam. We aren't with the FBI but we have dealt with Moriarty before and we're trying to figure out how he came back. Same as you."

I looked up at Sherlock for approval. Their story seemed good enough for me, but the FBI story had been enough for me too. Maybe that wasn't the truth. They could easily have been two of Moriarty's men coming to us to find out what we knew.

"There's more than that isn't there?" Sherlock told them, "If there isn't, then why do you want to know so much about a man that you've dealt with, if something big didn't happen."

"Well you really are as good as they say aren't you," Dean commented.

"You're right," Sam said hesitantly, "We ran into Moriarty, maybe 4 years ago. He tried to kill us. But he did these things. These unnatural things that we've never seen before, and trust me when I say we've seen unnatural. We killed him, and we thought he was dead up until yesterday."

I looked up to Sherlock for approval again. I really needed to stop doing that. It got some funny stares in the street. I slowly lowered my gaze so that I was staring at Sam and Dean again.

"How did you kill him?" Sherlock asked. Dean looked uncomfortable under his gaze but Sam opened up right away.

"Call me crazy but, Dean and I, we're demon hunters and we thought that Moriarty was… a trickster," he said. I didn't need to look to Sherlock for the answer to that one. Demon hunters? That was ridiculous.

"Define a 'trickster'" he said, now sounding interested.

"Oh, come on, Sherlock, you can't seriously be believing this!" I whined.

"Quiet, John," Sherlock silenced me, crossed the room and sat back down in his chair. "Tell me."

"Um, well," Sam started, and he sat down in my chair, across from Sherlock's, "We've only met, like, 3 so we aren't experts, but from what I've seen and read, they can create false scenarios and put people in them and in those worlds they can control whatever they want. Once, it put Dean and I in one, well I'm not sure if Dean was actually in it but, every day I would wake up and it would be Tuesday and Dean would die a different way every single day and right after he'd die, I'd wake up and it was Tuesday again. This went on for hundreds of days. I could have been in there forever and it never would have ended. But I caught the trickster and I made a deal that got me out. But the first time we'd met that same trickster, we thought we'd killed him but it turns out he'd used a fake body."

"Well what makes Moriarty any different than him?" Sherlock asked.

"Because he was the third trickster we'd met and by that time we'd done some research and we knew a spell to get rid of it. All we needed was something from one of their scenarios, a fake body, someone else's body, anything."

"Why should I believe you?" Sherlock asked.

"You don't have to. We just needed some information, you were never supposed to find out," Sam replied.

Sherlock closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. We were all staring at him, waiting for him to reply, but he looked like he was about to go to his mind palace and wasn't going to come out for quite a while.

"Can you prove it?" I asked.

"Yes," Sam replied. "But it would involve hunting something down and killing it."

I rubbed my hands on my face. It couldn't hurt to go with them and watch them do what they do. If they were crazy I would find out, and if they were right, well… I'd find out.

"OK so how do we hunt one down?" I asked. Dean sighed in annoyance, "It's this or I call the cops for impersonation."

"Alright, alright," Sam said, "first we need to find a case."

"How do you do that?"

"Any mysterious deaths lately? Anything Sherlock couldn't solve?" Dean asked.

"We haven't really been paying attention, with Christmas and the whole Moriarty thing, we've been kind of occupied," I explained.

"Do you get the paper?" Sam asked.

"Yes," I said, remembering that I grabbed Sherlock's paper when I came in this morning. I went over to the kitchen table where it sat and brought it over to Sam.

Sam scanned the paper in less than 5 minutes. When he was finished, he pulled out a couple pages and set the paper aside.

"I found two that could be something," He told me, "first is this one about a man who died, like really died, someone who was trying to kill him and they put a bomb in this important package of his and he blew up on his front lawn. Now his family keep saying that they see him around town and in their house. That could be a ghost. Second is a man who disappeared for 10 years just came back and has no memories of his life before or during disappearance and he's acting strange, like, non-human strange. That could be possession."

I wasn't sure what to say. But Dean spoke up, "If we wanted to go less dangerous then we should go for Mr. Disappearance."

"Alright," I said, "Where do we start?"

"We should probably start by questioning his family," Sam told me.

"Alright. Everyone knows that I'm John Watson, the one who works with Sherlock Holmes. If you come in with me you could easily be my assistants," I explained.

"Great! So we won't have to be FBI," Sam said, looking over at Dean.

"Sherlock, are you coming with us?" I asked, but he didn't reply.

"Is this normal?" Dean asked.

"Quite. He calls it his mind palace. I don't understand it."

Dean reached out to Sherlock like he was going to poke him in the face. Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled it away from Sherlock saying, "Dean!" then looking over at me in apology. I nodded like it was no big deal. Sometimes I wanted to do that too, I couldn't blame Dean.

I reached out and knocked on the Wayland family's front door. Sam and Dean stood at my sides. Just before, they had been telling me how to ask questions when we were investigating something like this. "Get the information you need without making it obvious," Sam had told me. Apparently Sam was much better at the question-asking than Dean was, even though Dean had been doing it much longer.

I also learned that him and Sam were brothers and they were staying with Kevin Baker, whom Sherlock hated for having so much money from the government. Mycroft would never tell him why. And apparently they hadn't flown here like normal people but had used Angel transport. At that point I was pretty sure that they were just making fun of me.

A tall blonde woman answered the door. She looked at me in recognition but when she saw Sam and Dean she looked a bit confused.

"Hello, I'm John Watson. You might know me from the papers, I work with Sherlock Holmes."

"Right. But who are these two?" She asked in a thick Scottish accent.

"This is Sam and Dean Winchester, they're working with me on this one," I told her.

"Isn't Sherlock investigating that Moriarty?" She asked.

"Yes, but he wanted us to work on other cases to see if there was any connections," I improvised.

"Come in," she opened the door and let us step inside. She guided us to a small room with a sofa, chair and a fireplace.

"You must be Mrs. Wayland," I asked.

"Yes. What's wrong with my husband?" She asked, on the verge of tears.

"We're not sure yet, but we're going to investigate. We wanted to start off with your view on what happened," I comforted.

"He disappeared 10 years ago. It was just a normal day, he went off to work in the morning and he never came home. The police stopped looking after the first month. We had a funeral for him on year 3. Then out of nowhere the other day, I saw him. He was nicely dressed and fitter than he used to be, not like you would think someone who had been gone for 10 years would look like. I went up to him and he didn't recognize me. But it was him, I know it was. Then I got the police involved and they did a DNA test and it was him! But he didn't remember me, he didn't remember his kids or even that he had been gone. He said he was a traveller!" She cried.

"We're really sorry about your husband, Mrs. Wayland," Sam said, "But we will try to get to the bottom of this."

"Uh, how old are your kids now?" Dean asked.

"My oldest is 23, middle is 20 and youngest is 15," She told us.

"Where are they now?" Sam asked.

"My oldest is probably the only one who would remember clearly, but she's in America for school," she explained, "but Diane might remember. Diane!"

"Coming, mum," a soft voice called from the second floor. Seconds later a small, skinny girl came into the room. She had long, mousey-brown hair and a pointed face.

"Hello, Diane. I'm Dr. John Watson, I'm investigating your father's disappearance," I extended my hand in greeting.

"Hello. I don't remember my father very much, but I know that he was a happy man," Diane told us.

"How did he treat you and your siblings?" Sam asked.

"He was very kind. I mean, he loved us and he spoiled us."

"Thank you both," I finished, "We will get back to you as soon as possible.

"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness. Nothing more."

-JK Rowling, Harry Potter