A/N: Just want to say thanks to everyone who's read, reviewed, followed, or favorited so far! It's really appreciated, and massively encouraging :)
Driving into Lawrence is far worse than walking into his old room at Cheryl and Tommy's, Dean thinks. Cheryl and Tommy's house had hardly changed at all since the last time he stepped foot there, aside from the rock salt and the hex bags; it was all instantly familiar again, the furniture all standing in exactly the same arrangements, the same pictures on the walls, the same books on the shelves. Lawrence, though, is disturbingly unfamiliar. Dean can't tell if most of the storefronts are the same or different; he doesn't know if the houses are different colors, or if trees have grown in or been cut down since they left. It isn't like coming home. It's like crossing over into the Twilight Zone. Dean feels more out of place here than in any unknown town he's ever breezed through while on the job.
Missouri's house is set far back from the road, obscured by several large maple trees. Dean parks on the street, but makes no move to get out of the car.
"You okay?" Sam asks, watching him.
"Let's just get this over with," says Dean. The sooner they get out of Lawrence, the better. It feels dangerous, being here. Any demons looking for Sam would surely have his old hometown covered. Or the hellhound that came after Mary could still be lurking, waiting to pounce as soon as they return to the burrow. Given the fact that Sam's been having nightmares about this place, Dean is certain it's not so much a question of if danger is here as when they will meet it.
"Just control your language and everything will be fine," says Sam.
Dean reaches over to smack him on the arm, and then gets out of the car and starts up the long gravel driveway. Sam follows, grinning. Dean clenches his jaw, feeling bad-tempered. He doesn't get why the kid should be acting so cheerful, what with all the bad memories this place holds.
The front door of the house opens when Sam and Dean are still several yards away, and they pause to watch. A blonde woman steps out, carrying a small boy in her arms. An older girl follows close behind.
"Thank you," says the woman, turning back to talk to someone inside the house. "Really, thanks for the offer. But I just—I'd rather just stay in a hotel. Let me know if you—if it—"
The woman breaks off, nods, and takes the little girl's hand, making for a minivan parked at the side of the house. Sam steps forward before she reaches it, and she stops when she sees him.
"You must be Jenny," he says in a friendly voice. She looks a little taken aback, but Sam smiles at her, showing his dimples, and she seems to relax slightly. "I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother Dean. You recently bought our old house."
"Oh," says Jenny, shifting the child in her arms to shake Sam's hand. "Yeah, we, uh, we just moved in two months ago."
"But now you're going to stay in a hotel?" Dean asks.
"Yeah," says Jenny uncomfortably. "All due respect to your childhood home—I'm sure you had lots of happy memories there."
Dean looks away. Whatever happy memories he has of Lawrence probably do not number nearly as many as Jenny thinks.
"Something wrong with the house?" Sam asks.
"The place certainly has its issues," says Jenny carefully.
"There's a monster in my closet!" the little girl pipes up.
"Shh, Sari," says Jenny. "Here. Take your brother to the van, will you?" She hands the little boy to her daughter, and waits until they're out of earshot before turning back to Sam and Dean.
"There's definitely something in that house," she says. "Missouri thinks it's some kind of...poltergeist. Whatever it is, I'm not going back there until it's gone." With that, she follows her children over to the van.
"A poltergeist?" says Dean, frowning, as Jenny starts her van and pulls out past them. It's almost a relief. If it's not a demon, maybe Sam isn't in any more danger than usual by being here.
"I thought Dad's journal said poltergeists are attracted to places where some great evil occurred," says Sam.
"Right. So why would one be haunting our old house?"
Before Sam can answer, a voice calls out to them from the house.
"Well? Sam and Dean, come on already, I ain't got all day!"
The rest of Lawrence might have changed, but Missouri looks exactly as she did back then, Dean thinks as they obediently hurry up to her. She's rather short and plump, but she manages to look commanding with her arms folded across her chest, staring at them with her dark, piercing eyes. Dean shivers as those eyes meet his own. He's always found her gaze somewhat disconcerting.
She leads them inside to her living room, and then turns to face them. "Well, lemme look at ya," she says, and laughs. "Oh, you boys grew up handsome. It's been a long time."
Dean thinks it feels like forever. Especially when he remembers that the last time they saw her, both of their parents were still alive.
Of course, that was the night Mary left them. And now John, too, is gone.
Suddenly, Missouri steps forward and takes Dean's hand. "Oh honey," she says sadly. "I'm sorry about your father."
Dean knows he shouldn't be surprised—she is a psychic, after all—but he can't help thinking the mind-reading thing is a little creepy. He's abruptly grateful that Sam can't do that. If he could, he'd have learned about the torn-out page of John's journal long ago.
Missouri raises an eyebrow, and Dean realizes with some chagrin that that particular thought has not gone unnoticed.
"Sit, please," Missouri says, and they sit side by side on the couch while she settles herself in an armchair facing them. Dean resists the urge to rest his feet on the coffee table.
"So, Missouri," says Sam. "Do you have any idea what's going on at our old house?"
"It's a poltergeist," says Missouri. "A nasty one."
"But why at our old house?" Sam persists. "Could it have something to do with our mom?"
"I don't know why the house is acting up now," says Missouri. "Nothing's ever happened there that would attract a spirit. And it ain't just the poltergeist. When I went to get Jenny and her babies, I could sense another spirit—but I couldn't quite make it out."
"Is it our mom, maybe?" Sam asks eagerly.
Dean frowns. Mary is gone, and not coming back. Surely Sam's vision of her in his dream is just that—a dream?
Missouri leans forward. "I'm glad you still wear her amulet, Sam," she says, and Dean looks over in time to see Sam glancing down at it in surprise. It's gleaming in plain sight over his t-shirt; he'd again refused Dean's suggestion that he take it off or tuck it away while they're on a hunt, when Dean mentioned it as they drove into Lawrence.
"How did you know she gave this to me?" Sam asks.
"Well, I'm the one who gave it to her," says Missouri softly. "She wanted something that would give you protection."
"Wait, are you talking magic, here?" Dean asks slowly. "Some kind of hoodoo? So she did know about that stuff?" If she did, could she have also known how to sell her soul in a demon deal, he wonders?
But Missouri gives neither confirmation nor denial of this. "It ain't hoodoo," she says instead. "It's a holy relic. Very powerful." She smiles at Sam. "Your mama wanted the best for you, honey."
"But why?" Sam asks. "Protection from what?"
"You still haven't said if you think this poltergeist has something to do with our mom," Dean cuts in quickly. He does not think that now would be a very good time to find out how much of his earlier thoughts Missouri picked up. He also doesn't really want to consider how Mary could have known that the demon who killed her would come after Sam next.
Missouri turns her sharp gaze on him. Dean can't quite suppress another shiver. "I don't know what its purpose here is," she says calmly. "I am glad you boys are here though," she continues, picking up a wicker basket from the floor beside her chair and setting it on the table. "I've been preparing a purification ritual to banish the spirits. It'd be nice to have your help."
Inside the basket are dried roots, herbs, vials of dirt and oils, and a dozen burlap hex bags, presumably containing the ingredients for the ritual. Missouri explains that a bag must be placed inside the walls of the house on the north, south, east, and west corners of each floor. Dean doesn't really like the idea—it's bound to piss off the poltergeist.
He also doesn't like the way Missouri avoided their questions about Mary.
*S*P*N*
To Sam's relief, Dean keeps the radio off when they climb back into the Impala, waiting for Missouri to pull out of her driveway so they can follow her to their old house. Dean offered—rather halfheartedly, in Sam's opinion—to take her along in the Impala, but she refused, and Dean didn't insist. It seems the two of them aren't getting along any better than they had when she used to babysit.
Sam feels a leap of excitement when Missouri's blue sedan finally appears, and they set off after it. Sam is certain that he knows from his nightmares who the second spirit is. He might get to see his mother again very, very soon.
The prospect does not seem to be very appealing to Dean, who is maintaining a stony silence as they drive along. He's been curt and moody the whole trip, and Sam is rapidly getting sick of it. The whole mission is supposed to be about finding Mary's killer, after all, and this must be one of the best leads he's ever had. He could at least pretend to be a little enthusiastic.
"You know," Sam says to him, in a deliberately cheerful tone, "we did have a lot of happy memories in that house."
"Would've been a lot more if Mom hadn't died," Dean remarks.
"You say that like it was her fault," says Sam quietly.
Dean stares out the windshield, and doesn't answer.
"Is that it?" Sam demands, his voice rising. "You still think Mom made a deal, that she chose to be ripped apart by some kind of—of—"
"She knew about the supernatural, Sam," says Dean, talking over him. "Missouri as good as said so. She could have done it."
"Yeah, but you still can't come up with a reason why she would have, can you?" says Sam, even more loudly.
"She gave you that amulet for protection," Dean insists. "Right before she died. Why did she do that, unless she knew she wasn't going to be around?"
"If she knew something was after her, why didn't she keep it for herself, then?"
Dean takes a breath as though preparing to answer, but then lets it out in a whoosh without saying anything. He continues to stare determinedly out the windshield, his lips pressed tightly together, as though preventing whatever reply he was going to make from escaping. His knuckles, Sam notices, are white on the steering wheel.
"You just want to blame her for what happened after she died," Sam accuses, although he suspects there's more to Dean's silence than that. "You know whose fault it really was, though? Dad's. He was the one who left us."
Dean finally looks away from the road to glare at him. "Everyone in this family has left at one point or another," he snaps.
Sam doesn't really know what to make of that. Dean follows Missouri's car around a corner, taking the turn a little too fast in his temper. After a moment, though, he sighs and speaks again, sounding as though he's making an effort to be calm.
"Look. It's just weird, you know? First it turns out that Cheryl and Tommy and Mom all knew about supernatural crap, and now you're psychic, and having premonitions about Mom, and there's something haunting our old house. I don't know, it's just, maybe this whole thing is bigger than we thought."
Up ahead, Missouri's blue sedan pulls onto a quiet suburban street Sam knows instantly, though he hasn't been there since he was nine years old. Dean follows, looking tense.
Sam peers eagerly out the driver's side window, craning around Dean for a glimpse of the house. Like most of the rest of Lawrence, it's changed since they lived there; it's been resided and the trim is a different color. But Sam can see the old house underneath the superficial changes, just as he could for the rest of the town. The same front steps, the same porch, the same decorative shutters on the windows. They're like friendly little waves to him from the past.
Sam is out of the car as soon as Dean parks. Missouri is waiting for them on the porch, holding her wicker basket full of the hex bags they'll need for the purification ritual, as well as three small hammers.
"We'll each take a floor," she says as Dean comes up, and hands each of them four spell packets and a hammer. "We'll have to work fast. Once the spirits realize what we're up to, things are gonna get bad."
Dean taps Sam's arm as he's tucking the hex bags carefully into his pockets, and wordlessly hands him a sawed-off rifle. Sam already has a weapon—he's taken to keeping a silver handgun in his waistband, in imitation of Dean and his Colt—but he takes the rifle without comment, holding it in his left hand and the hammer in his right.
Missouri sets her empty basket down on the porch, nods to both of them, unlocks the front door, and leads the way inside.
A/N: One more chapter to wrap up Lawrence, and then it will be time for another flashback.
As you all probably already know, FFN's view counter is down at the moment, which means I won't be able to see if you guys are reading—so please drop me a line to let me know what you think!