Author's note:
We're moving right along. Hang in there!
Caladrius
Chapter 17: "Sweet Amber"
May 2, 2007
Sam - 24
Dean - 28
"Sam! Sam! Wake up! Wake up wake up wake up! Don't die!"
Air fills Sam's lungs and he gives a long, painful gasp. He reaches out weakly but his hands fall to the ground and for several seconds all he can do is force a limited amount of oxygen into himself, see nothing but darkness, and hear whispering voices.
"He's not dead." A boy. Patrick he thinks.
"He's not dead, thank you, God." This voice is new. It's a little girl.
"Why do you think he left?"
"I don't know. He didn't look like he was feeling good. Maybe Sam made him leave."
"Are you kidding? Look at him? He looks almost dead already."
"Don't say that, Patrick. Don't say that."
Sam hears a sniffle as things begin to come together. He coughs. Experiments with moving. His vision shakes off the ice prison of a second earlier and the first thing that emerges are the flames in candles in sconces, and then the scene brightens by degrees.
He says her name before he can even see her.
"Amber?"
"Sam!"
He feels something on his hand. Soft and a little tingly.
And then he sees her.
Fourteen years fall away in the span of a heartbeat.
Pale, but she was always pale. Sandy blondish hair, no longer in a ponytail, but loose. It still manages to cover one blue eye. She is wearing a pink night gown and she looks so much tinier than Sam remembered. So frail. What was he thinking when he left her alone all those years ago? He should have broken down the door and rescued her from this fate. He should have done his job and shot the damn monster!
"Amber, my god." Sam's eyes fill with tears of joy and sorrow at the same time. He doesn't deserve the smile she's giving him with her whole soul. She glows noticeably and when her tiny hand touches his cheek, it tingles. He can feel this because they are, once again, on the same plane together. She was lost for all those years and he found her.
"Don't cry, Sam. Are you hurt? Do you feel hurt?"
Of course she wouldn't understand his tears. To an 8-year-old, you cry when you're either sad or hurt, and she can't visibly see why he'd be either one of those things.
"No," he says, because she won't understand how his heart is slowly shredding into little bloody pieces at seeing her again, at remembering how much he had failed her.
"Wuss." Patrick says under his breath, but he looks relieved. Amber pushes his arm.
"Don't say that boys don't cry. I've seen you cry."
"What? I'm not a grown up."
"That doesn't matter."
"Yeah it does."
"Shut up, Patrick, or I'm going to pick on you for your pajamas again."
"Jeeeeeesus," Patrick breathes. "Get over it already. I told you, my mom picked them out and I didn't have a choice."
The weight on Sam's chest lifts and he has to smile through the tears at the exchange. They're dead. They're trapped, but they're still... kids. And Amber had no one to talk to, once upon a time. She sat by herself, she was timid. No one could understand her psychic condition, not even her mother, but here... here she is surrounded by children just like her, experiencing their hardships. And it had been fourteen years of a strange kind of life for her, even if it was probably horrible in almost every other way.
Innocence held on, impossibly. Even here. It somehow gives Sam hope he never expected.
Amber is distracted from Patrick by Sam's half grin. She looks him over and smiles. "Sam, it's really you, right? You're the biggest person I've ever seen."
He has to actually laugh for real at that.
"Yeah, it's me. I, uh...had a growth spurt somewhere around 11th grade." He tenses his muscles a little and finds that he can sit up. "I'm frankly surprised you can even recognize me."
"I'd always recognize you, Sam. Even if you were old and shriveled. You kept my present, remember? You kept it. It helped me find you."
Sam takes a deep breath and nods. The last time he had "seen" Amber had been when she had come to him a few times in the night as a haunting. He had thought, at the time, he had been dreaming, but Dean had made that situation perfectly clear.
"Yeah, I did. I still have it. I'm sorry I had to...put it away, but there were...circumstances."
"That scared man. That was your big brother, wasn't it?" Her small voice is compassionate.
"Yeah. You...were way too much like monsters we sometimes hunt. He thought you were going to hurt me. It was an understandable reaction, actually, but...I'm sorry."
Amber shakes her head.
"I didn't know. I'm sorry too. It's just that when I found it, the opening, I had to try. I had to get through it."
Sam leans forward, a hunter on the scent for answers to his one predicament. "How? How did you do it? How did you get out?"
Amber purses her lips and drops her voice. "There are holes sometimes. They move. You mostly find them by accident if you find them at all. They boogeyman sometimes makes Unlucky Ones go through them and do bad things, and a few of us can sneak out when he's not looking. But not all of us can go, and we always get pulled back."
"But...not everyone can get out?"
"Like..." Amber glances at Patrick whose face is stony. "For some reason, some of us can squeeze out. Just for a little. But no, not everyone can. We don't know why."
Sam nods and thinks. "I know why. I mean...I might know why."
Amber's face lights up. "Really?" She scowls at Patrick. "I told you he was smart for a 4th grader."
Patrick leans over and puts a hand firmly over her mouth and rolls his eyes. "Shut up, I wanna hear why." He looks at Sam. "Okay, why?"
"Because in order for your souls to cross the barrier, you have to have a body connection point to something there. Like, a piece of hair that your mom cut from you as a baby and maybe kept in a locket, or if someone kept the first tooth you lost. Something like that."
Amber pulls Patrick's hand from her mouth. "My mom kept some of my baby teeth."
Sam nods as it all clicks into place. "That definitely would have increased your connection to our plane-er, our world. But because your actual bodies are stuck here, you can't really be totally free of this place. It's assurance that your souls can't move on."
"Yeah," Amber says, but her smile disappears. Sam can't blame her. When he had seen Amber's mother, the pain was raw. As if fourteen years of being without closure for her daughter had been but the space of 14 hours.
"Amber, your birthday present to me must have a little bit of you on it somehow. Maybe some hair got tangled in it."
Patrick pipes up. "So, because my lame parents didn't keep gross pieces of my body, I'll never be able to see them again?"
Sam takes a deep breath. Saying "yes" to that hurt too much. "I told you, I'm gonna get you out of here. Where you go after that...I think you'll see them again."
"And how are you gonna get out, Sam? Huh?" Patrick is upset. The pain is in his voice. The kid had been here for years, and he has been holding onto a hope that Sam has essentially just crushed.
Sam grimaces and looks away. "I don't know. But I will."
"Someone keep any pieces of you? Huh? Maybe a finger or a toe or something?"
Amber comes to Sam's defense.
"Stop it, Patrick. I told you, Sam's going to figure it out."
"Oh yeah? How? I mean, do we even know where the hole is right now? No! No one has ever found the hole on Vacation Day."
Amber glowers at the boy.
Sam sees maybe a full on ugly argument coming, and he's not so sure he deserves Amber's complete indignance anyway, so he quickly intervenes. "Wait, Vacation Day? What is that?"
"It's whenever the boogeyman goes out to hunt or whatever. We figured out that it's like every seven years or something because the new kids tell us what year it is." Patrick has no problem charging onward in spite of his friend's increasing agitation. To Sam, it means they've clearly been best friends for a long time.
"I'm telling you. For Sam it'll be easy!" Amber balls her fists, and she looks just as ready to sock the kid as he was to ignore her. Best best friends. Almost like siblings. And Sam would know.
Still.
Sam touches her arm gently. "Patrick's right, Amber. I don't...I don't have a plan. The plan was to get you out from the outside, not...get pulled in."
Amber looks back at Sam as if he has just started talking backwards.
"What do you mean? Can't you just follow the string?"
Sam blinks.
"Um..."
But he's not alone. Patrick is raising an eyebrow at Amber.
"What...string?"
"This one," she says matter-of-factly, and touches a finger to his chest, over his heart, and then runs her finger up, standing up as she traces the outline of it. "Duh? Can't you see it? How come you can't see it? It's bright bright red. Look."
Sam is looking. He sees nothing. Patrick catches Sam's eye and swirls his finger by his ear, goes cross-eyed.
Amber notices the gesture. Stomps her foot. Her hair shakes into her face further and as she sweeps it back with an indignant flourish, Sam sees the strong woman she could have become had she lived.
"Patrick Allen Dulin, I am not crazy." She turns to Sam. "You had to have made this, Sam. Somehow, you made the string. No one else comes here with a red string, but you did, so you had to have made it. It's special to you. I don't know why it's there, but it's there. I promise you, I'm not crazy."
She's not crazy. There was one thing Sam had done as a precaution to anchor him to the world.
"Oh my God..." He stands up slowly, carefully. Looks for the string. "I did do something. I made...I made an anchor...uh, a connection with my brother. With Dean."
"A connection?" Patrick asks.
"Wha... ye-yeah!" Sam runs his hand through his hair. He looks in front of him and behind, still searching for Amber's proof that it hadn't failed him. The pencil box, all of those pieces of Dean, not himself, that would lead him out of this. "I did make something, but I thought it would keep me from being pulled in, I didn't think it might be able to..."
He's dumbfounded. He's elated. For some reason, the thought that Dean, unconscious in the Impala could still be saving his ass fills him with flood of emotion.
Dean. Stupid Dean. His dumb jokes. His alcoholism. His smirk and his frown and the touch of his hand on his back when Sam's having bad visions, the tone of voice when he's worried. The hardness in his eyes when he's hurt and not showing it. The ridiculous way he talks to his car and his complete lack of shame when he eats cheeseburgers with porn sound effects-
And there, as Sam lets it all wash over and through him, he feels that tug again. That pull in his chest. And something reddish and thin begins to emerge.
"I can..."
"Can you see it?" Amber is excited. She half bends over, hands between her knees, her expression of joyful anticipation boosting Sam's spirit.
"Kind of... maybe. It's... It's this... this connection with my brother."
"Tell us about your brother," Patrick stands up; Amber's enthusiasm is infectious. "Talk about him or something."
Sam licks his lips, makes a half laugh. "My brother? He's an idiot. He's... reckless. He's impulsive and gets into way too many fights because... because that's how he deals with things. He fights."
It's working. The string is definitely becoming more defined.
"He's been looking out for me practically since I've been born like it's his job. I think he thinks it is his job. I mean, I know he does. It makes him... completely irrational sometimes but I know..." He stops.
"What do you know?" Amber urges.
"I know... that the guy loves me. Probably more than anything else. So. And it doesn't excuse him but. But."
"But you really love him too?"
Sam shakes his head, nods sheepishly. "Yeah, of course. He's my brother. And he's... all I've got."
"This is probably the grossest thing I've ever heard," Patrick makes a gagging face, but Sam's laughing because yeah. Too mushy for an 11-year-old boy.
"Yeah, Dean would be embarrassed if he heard any of it. Probably take a swing."
He touches a finger to the thread that he can now clearly see and then rubs the back of his hand over his eyes. Saved by toenail clippings and drain hair and old bolts. Sam laughs again, but he knows it's more than that.
And he can't wait to see Dean again, even if he's going to be beaten within an inch of his life for this reckless stunt.
"Sam, you can still get out. If you follow the string, you'll find the hole." Amber purses her lips and timidly takes Sam's hand. The body he sees as hers is not solid, but it's a connection as well. A connection to his purpose for being here.
"I don't get it, though," Patrick starts. "How come Amber could see the string and I couldn't?"
Sam squeezes Amber's hand. "I don't really know, but if I had to guess, I'd say that it's because the hair tie you gave me has been pretty much living inside the pencil box my brother gave me the same day you...were taken away. Dean himself put it in there originally, thinking I'd want to keep it, and it stayed there...through elementary school, high school, college...everytime I opened it I'd think of both of you. Maybe that somehow tangled you up with it, since that was the box I used to make my anchor."
"Well, it's a good thing, otherwise maybe you'd never have seen it!" Amber grins.
He looks down through the literal feet of space between his eyes and hers. "Yeah, and I'm gonna use it, but not until I can get you out for good, and not until I can destroy the boogeyman. Amber," he takes a knee so he can look her in the eyes. "How many of you guys are still here? Not faded?"
The little girl holds up a hand and starts to whisper names as she counts them on her fingers.
"Nine," Patrick supplies.
Sam's face falls. "Just nine?"
"Ten!" Amber corrects him. "You can't...you can't forget Emily." Her voice disappears at the end but Sam can clearly hear the hitch in her voice.
"Amber, Emily's not..." Patrick doesn't look happy either. "I hate to say it. You know we were friends first..."
The little girl turns her eyes on Sam. "There's a girl named Emily. She's the last Unlucky one that's still trying to be herself. But... but she is... she's starting to be like Charlie and Franklin and Missy and the others. Sam, we have to save her. We have to. And this is the best time to find her because it's Vacation Day and the boogeyman never keeps anyone during Vacation Day."
"Right. Makes sense that he's otherwise occupied." Unless he was lurking the hallways. Unless he was more preoccupied with Sam than anything else. But. "Okay, we're gonna find Emily too."
"Sam, are you really gonna save us?" she asks reverently.
Sam balks, but not because he isn't 100 percent sure he is going to save these kids or die trying. No. But the boogeyman was out there, somewhere, and for all he knew, it was healing and hearing his every word. How in the hell was he supposed to surprise this thing?
He nods finally. Because these kids might know something, and time was ticking. "Yeah. No question. But the boogeyman is still mostly a mystery-I need more information if I want to put it down for good."
Patrick looks down the corridor and back. "Well, if we find Emily, and she's not all gone, maybe she would know something. She's spent more time with the boogeyman than we have for sure."
Sam nods. "Okay, first step-find Emily as fast as we can. I don't know how much energy I'll have because of the gravity and the oxygen here, but I know that Vacation Day has an end, and we can't still be here when it does."
Time has stopped. Not literally, but Sam gets now how these kids have lost track of time completely-his watch doesn't work. None of the dusty ornamental clocks in this place work either, though they would have run down long ago judging from the coating of dust on almost everything.
And this house...
Staircases that go up just to go down. Trap doors in ceilings that end in rooms too tiny to stand or store anything bigger than a music box. Sliding panels in the walls that lead to rooms that have no windows, no other exits.
Patrick and Amber call Emily's name quietly, in hushed whispers for fear of the more malevolent spirits in the house. Their pleas are desperate, and while Sam chimes in with them when he has the breath to do it, he can't help hearing Dean's voice over and over in his head after breaking down the motel door.
"Sam? Sammy!"
And he wonders if it's happening, if the window is closing and that his pencil case will be the only thing he's left behind for his brother to burn and bury.
Even Dad had, at least, left a corpse for Dean.
Dad-
Small thought that had had no time to really grow in the back of his head: back there, before the boogeyman appeared as his father, he heard his voice. John's voice, Dad's voice, grounding him, waking him up. Telling him to get it together.
He wasn't aware of it then, but he's sure of it now. That wasn't the boogeyman.
But if Sam could actually hear a voice from hell, so far it was just his father's. Emily was in a mental institution as a child because she was supposedly hearing the dead and damned before she even encountered this nightmare.
And, of course, it makes sense now. For whatever reason, the boogeyman is only interested in psychics who can hear things in heaven or hell. Or both. And it's been farming them for their talents.
And it has to be stopped.
Sam halts. They're in a corridor, one he feels like he's been through three times now. This method is getting them nowhere and if Emily is hiding from their foe, she's doing a damn good job of hiding from her friends too. Amber and Patrick have been whispering their calls, walking on eggshells not because they are in any danger from the restless spirits that haunt this place, but because Sam is.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
He takes a deep breath, fills his lungs as full of air as he can swallow-
- and then shouts her name so loudly that Patrick and Amber jump.
"Sam! Shhhhh!" Amber tries to shush him as Patrick slaps a hand to his forehead.
"We don't have time, okay? Trust me."
Sam slams his fist on the corridor wall, and every pound feels like it's taking years off his lifespan. "Emily! It's Sam Winchester. If you can hear me, come to the sound of my voice. I'm not going to hurt you!"
Patrick throws up his hands. "Yup. That'll probably work. Too well."
"Shhhh!" Amber stands frozen in the now totally silent hallway. All three strain to hear the dust settle...
And then.
A knock.
Sam looks at Amber for a clue, but the little girl's lips are pressed together in anticipation.
"Sam Winchester. I know you."
It's a cold voice whispered at Sam's neck, but it's not a girl's voice and it's not the boogeyman, and when Sam turns quickly to see who it is, he has just enough time to see nothing at all, just as he is bodily slammed against the wall with enough force to cause him to slide to the floor in a heap.
This is becoming a bad pattern. Regaining his footing is made ten times more difficult by the fact that his body wants to stay down, his lungs are fighting to expand, and pencil pricks of bright lights are filling his vision.
He hears Amber shouting his name before the world comes back into focus and he's on auto-pilot. Years of training, Dad's, Dean's, and his own adrenaline propel him to his feet.
The candle lights flicker and dim.
"Sam, run!"
Amber's hand on his his feels like a Fourth of July sparkler raining hot, luminescent sparks and he's moving towards it as it pulls away.
"Emily! If you can hear me, find us!"
The corridor goes black, and Sam loses all sense of up and down. He's turning and tumbling in an industrial washing machine, and every time he manages to find his footing and get a few feet, he's rolled onto his side. He loses his connection with Amber over and over. Her voice is underwater, far away.
I know you, Sam Winchester.
"Charlie, I'm not your enemy!"
Something glances Sam's head and then small-fisted blows begin to batter his legs, his stomach.
Charlie is a child, was a child. He's become an angry spirit, and nothing and no one will be able to reason with his pure hatred and it's heart breaking. To be maybe 12 years old and to have lost everything.
These children were innocent once. They had families and dreams and love. Whatever destroyed that deserves a fate worse than death.
But something is pushing at Sam's heart. A revelation. Maybe the only one that matters right now.
Innocence prevails, even here.
Sam stops trying to protect himself. Opens himself up for the abuse. "Charlie! Charlie...do you remember your...your mom and dad?"
Hard to take a breath.
"Your house. Your...your bedroom. Remember your room? Where...where they tucked you in?"
Sam is taking a gamble-Charlie's life might have been absolute shit, in which case, he's screwed.
But it feels like the blows are slowing.
Maybe Charlie is remembering. Maybe there's enough left to recall something as simple as love.
A love that was lost.
It makes Sam angry. Not at Charlie, but what had been done to him. This was bullshit. Bullshit. He had fought demons and monsters and vengeful spirits, but they had all had lives and chances to learn about the world, to grow up. They had choices. Charlie was just a little kid. He was supposed to have had more than just 10 or 12 birthdays...
Sam gasps.
Birthdays...
Of course!
Because today is Charlie's birthday, and Sam's birthday and Amber and Patrick and all the rest. It was one of the things they had in common. And once upon a time Sam had a birthday that was one of the greatest and worst of his life. When Dean gave him a hand-carved box with his name on it, and it was Sam's most cherished possession-
In the pitch dark and quiet, the red thread slowly illuminates, creating a path home off into the distance.
Maybe...maybe.
"It's... your birthday. You should get a present from someone...who cares about you because... because it only comes once a year."
It's silent, but Sam can feel the presence pull around him, listening.
Painfully, slowly, and in pitch-darkness, Sam finds his pocket. He draws out the little toy soldier figure he had swiped from the room he had appeared in hours? Minutes? Years? ago. He places it on the ground.
"Me... me and my brother. We... we used to have a load of these. Well, kinda like them. Green army guys. My Dad used them for... for teaching us strategy but Dean and I we just...just liked to play with them. They were cheap but... but..." Sam is struggling to breathe. One of his floating ribs feels bruised. Maybe broken. He's losing his thread of thought.
Birthday...
How did normal little kids celebrate birthdays? Sam has only seen it on movies and tv shows-cakes with candles, kids dressed with colorful conical hats and mountains of wrapped gifts. Never had a birthday like that in his life, but he remembered aching for one. Just once.
"Yeah, Charlie. It's your birthday. Your special day. I was...was going to keep this but I want to give it to you. It's a present. For you. Take it."
The silence stretches for so long that Sam thinks he might have actually passed out for a few seconds before a grinding sound behind him startles him and he rolls out backwards, unceremoniously, into a large room.
The wall closes up like a venus fly trap.
"Jesus," he whispers, and his eyes drift shut.
1993
Sam - 10
Dean - 14
Dean took a deep breath. Beyond the door to the basement was a monster, a vampire. And it was his fault it was here-that was important. It was his fault that Dad didn't go back to the nest to doublecheck it when he had the chance because Dean had made Sam the priority. And yeah, it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but if it ended with both of them dead or worse...
Well, Dean knew he was all kinds of a fuck up, but this would be the absolute winner.
And vampires had over-developed senses. Might have heard him walk up each and every step and is now waiting for him right beyond this thin piece of wood. If his footsteps haven't given him away, his pounding heart might have.
Dean turned the knob with excruciating slowness. When the door was open a crack, he took a quick peek. And a split second after he determined there was nothing right there, he opened it all the way, exited, closed it quick and dirty, and headed for the stairs to the second floor as fast as he could.
Now he wanted to be heard.
Come on, you sonofabitch. Come find me. Nothing to see in the basement anymore. Come find me you bastard, I got something for ya.
One good thing about a giant farmhouse-tons of real estate inside to exploit.
"I hear you, you know. Of course you know. Your daddy is a big bad hunter."
Dean didn't like how close that voice was already. He took stock of the upstairs. Yeah, one paint can holy water trap was tripped, and the fucker had taken the bait of the blood on the pillow in the first room.
"Come on, kid. I'm not gonna kill you right away. Let's have a little chat."
Dean ducked inside the first bedroom as fast as he could, but the vamp was on him. It grabbed him around the shoulders, pinning his machete arm, but Dean didn't hesitate to stab it in the meat with his sharpened stake. And that must have hurt like a bitch because it howled and let him go.
Dean turned with the machete, aiming high, but the vampire had recovered enough to backhand him so hard that Dean spun several feet on the salt skid and landed on the floor at the foot of the bed, just narrowly missing the glass trap.
By some miracle, he hadn't lost his grip on the weapon. When he recovered he finally got a good look at his attacker.
A guy. Turned probably in his early 20's maybe sometime in the early 1980's because he was rocking ancient punk attire - white t-shirt, ripped black biker jacket now with a bloody hole in one sleeve.
"Listen, kid. I get it. You were raised 'tough.' You think you gotta put up a big struggle. Go down fighting, right? But you know all of this is just for show. Not sure how you knew I was coming, but it doesn't matter. We've got all night to get to know each other. You, me, and the other kid who's probably in the basement too."
Dean had been sliding slowly backwards, next to the bed, getting some distance, trying to breathe, licking the blood at the corner of his mouth.
When the vampire mentioned Sam, Dean stiffened.
Fuck.
"Your little brother, right? Yeah. Yeah I got all your scents. All over that fucking motel room. But he's not going anywhere, am I right? You and me, we can have a little talk." He shrugged his shoulders as he stalked his prey. "Well, I'll talk, and you can bleed. And break. A lot."
Two more inches. Dean scooted. Stopped. "Yeah. I got a better idea. How about you go fuck yourself."
The vampire chuckled. "Oh man, do you kiss your mommy with that mouth? Kids these days." The monster's face dropped from amused to feral in .5 seconds, the same amount of time it took Dean to reach under the bed and pull out the double barrel shotgun he had stashed there.
The first blast, right to the vampire's torso, actually threw the bastard back out the bedroom door, but it was still on its feet. Dean emptied the second barrel and the asshole was blown right over the rail with at least a six foot drop onto the stairs. And then a roll down the rest.
"Fuck!"
Dean had given himself a couple seconds to spare, but he was in a terrible position. If the vampire decided to go after Sam, all of this would have been for nothing.
He had to keep the thing's attention, keep it wanting to hurt him, kill him, first. And Dean couldn't even process the irony of that at the moment.
"Fuck you, and fuck your whole headless family." He shouted, dropping the now-useless shotgun. "You wanna hunt me you're gonna have to do better than that."
Jesus Christ please let this work.
Dean opened the gigantic wardrobe in the room, got in, and shut it. With sweaty fingers He felt around for the latch to the fake back. It made almost no noise when it opened because Dean oiled it earlier and thank god. Just, thank god, because all he had between himself and an increasingly pissed off vampire were his wits and his tricks, and he wasn't sure for how much longer his wits could keep up.
(to be continued...)