Sam's feet instantly remember the path from the foyer into the living room. There are no lights on, and a couple of times he hears Dean stumble into a piece of furniture in an unexpected place, but Sam moves through the room easily. He's already familiar with the layout from his nightmares; this is the room where Mary will appear. It's also, he realizes abruptly, the room where the poltergeist will make its attack.
"I'll take this floor," he tells the other two.
He expects Dean to argue, but he just says, "I'll be upstairs." He claps Sam on the shoulder. "Yell if you get in trouble," he adds as he moves away.
"I'll take the basement, then," says Missouri. "Good luck, Sam."
Alone, Sam looks around, getting his bearings in the darkness. Muffled thuds sound from upstairs—Dean must be placing his first hex bag, which means the poltergeist could show itself at any moment. Sam hefts his hammer and goes back out through the foyer and into the kitchen. That will be the hardest room to find a spot to punch through the wall, he suspects.
He's right; the kitchen has been remodeled since he lived in this house, and the eastern wall is entirely taken up with cabinets and counterspace. He'll have to break through the tile backsplash behind the sink.
Sam swings the spikes on the back of his hammer into the tiles, leaving a couple of deep gouges. On the next swing, cracks begin to appear around the point of impact. Another swing, and chips of porcelain go flying everywhere. He winces slightly. Jenny is not likely to be pleased at the mess she'll be coming home to.
A noise from behind him makes Sam duck instinctively. Something whooshes over his head, and he looks up to see a kitchen knife quivering in the door of one of the cabinets. He stares at it uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then a loud crash from upstairs makes the whole house shake.
"Dean?" he calls, but the only response he gets is a faint scream from Missouri, echoing up from the basement.
Clearly the poltergeist has spotted them. And it's pissed.
Jaw clenched, Sam flips the kitchen table over onto its side and hunkers behind it as he turns back to the broken tiles. The quicker he finishes his task here, the quicker he can go upstairs and check on Dean.
The table shudders under the assault of what sounds like every knife in the kitchen. Next second the whole thing is ripped away and flung across the room, but Sam has already forced a hex bag through the small hole he managed to make in the tile and is sprinting across the foyer to the dining room. He's only in there long enough to punch his hammer through the drywall and shove a second hex bag inside, and then he's scrambling back out to the foyer, where he crouches down to open a spot in the wall next to the front door.
A horrible, high-pitched screech rends at his eardrums, and he instinctively slaps his left hand over his ear, still hammering at the drywall with his right. The glass window in the front door shatters inward, and he feels several shards tear viciously at his skin. Ignoring the pain, Sam sticks the third hex bag into the wall. One bag left—the one that goes in the living room.
The living room is eerily still when Sam bursts in. The noise of wood scraping against wood filters in from other parts of the house, meaning the poltergeist is occupied elsewhere. One more hex bag to place, and then Sam can go help the others. But he hesitates, glancing around the room. He's here; the poltergeist is here. Where is Mary?
A thud from upstairs stirs him into action. He dashes to the north wall, and within seconds has knocked a large hole in it. Before he can fumble the last hex bag out of his pocket, though, something long and thin squeezes tight around his neck, yanking him backwards onto the floor.
The hex bag falls from Sam's hand as he reaches up, trying to free himself, but the cord around his neck just pulls tighter. He tries to shout, but the only sound he's capable of making is a faint choking noise. He can't draw breath. There's a loud roaring in his ears. Darkness gathers in his peripheral vision.
Dimly, Sam becomes aware of the floor vibrating under his head. Someone is entering the room at full speed. A light draft of motion next to him, a dark shape near his feet. Then the cord around his neck loosens, and Sam sucks in a deep breath and coughs helplessly.
When Sam opens his eyes, it's to see Dean kneeling by the hole in the wall, with the hex bag inside. The house is silent.
"Thanks," Sam rasps.
Dean reaches out and pulls him up into a sitting position, his grip painfully tight. "I told you you should take that amulet off during a hunt," he says.
Sam's hand flies to the little bronze charm, realizing abruptly that its cord was the one that just nearly strangled him. He lets the amulet fall back onto his chest a little despondently; touching it reminds him that he still hasn't seen his mother, and now that the poltergeist is banished she is unlikely to appear at all. In his dream, she always appeared during the spirit's attack.
Slow footsteps announce Missouri's return from the basement. She looks a little bruised, but is remarkably unruffled for someone who just spent the last ten minutes being attacked by a violent poltergeist.
"Did it work?" Dean asks as soon as she enters the living room. "Is the house clean now?"
Missouri is frowning around the room. "I don't know. I can still sense—"
But her words are cut off as the couch suddenly comes barrelling across the floor, directly towards Sam and Dean. There's not time to do more than yell in surprise before they're both pinned against the wall. Next second, an armchair hurtles towards Missouri, knocking her over and pinning her as well. A floor lamp standing in the corner topples over and shatters. Pictures rattle on the walls.
It's as though a small tornado has formed inside the room; the couch is torn away, but Sam is still pressed tight against the wall, unable to move, his eyes tightly closed against the debris being kicked up in the whirlwind. The wind whips his hair into his face, plucks at his clothes, pulling and tearing at him like hundreds of ghostly fingers. He feels his shirt tear. Then the cord holding his amulet snaps.
Instantly, the whirlwind quiets. Sam cracks his eyes open as he slides down to the floor, suddenly free of the force that was holding him down. Dean and Missouri are both beside him, looking extremely windswept. Dean has a cut across one cheek, no doubt from a piece of flying debris. Missouri's hand is at her throat, and she looks scared. Sam scrabbles at his own collar; the amulet is gone.
"What the hell was that?" says Dean. Then he gives a soft gasp. Sam, who is preoccupied with scanning the floor to see where the amulet might have fallen, looks up sharply at the sound.
She's there. Standing there looking just as she did the last time Sam saw her. Her blond hair flowing over her shoulders, her face soft and smiling.
"Mom?" Dean breathes. His eyes are wide.
"She's the second spirit," Missouri murmurs on Dean's other side, confirming Sam's theory.
"Dean," Mary says, smiling at him. Then she takes a step forward, passing him to stand directly in front of Sam. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam can see Dean watching her, eyes narrowed now, suspicious.
"Sam," Mary says, her smile widening, and it's so good to hear her voice that Sam nearly sobs. He chokes slightly, trying to smile back at her, but her expression changes to one of sorrow as she looks at him.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly.
Sam swallows hard, his throat tight. "I'm the one who should be sorry," he manages to force out.
But Mary has already turned away from him, facing the empty room. The ghostly wind starts up again, rattling through the rubble strewn across the floor.
"I know why you're here," Mary says.
As if in response, the lightbulb in the overhead fixture explodes in a shower of sparks and broken glass.
"I know why you're here," Mary repeats, her voice harsher and angrier than Sam ever heard it in life. "And you can get out of my house. And get away from my son."
She moves forward, further into the room.
"Mom—" Sam calls out desperately, but she doesn't seem to hear him.
"Get. Out," she says, and takes another step.
There's a flash of fire so hot that Sam thinks it might be singeing his hair. He, Dean, and Missouri all throw their arms up over their faces and shrink back against the wall as Mary disappears in the inferno.
*S*P*N*
Dean lowers his arm cautiously as the heat and light fade away. The room is quite dark and still again; the only sign of the spirits' passing is a few loose magazine pages fluttering to the floor, coming to rest atop the wreckage of the furniture. Dean glances over at Sam, who is slowly uncurling from where he was scrunched against the wall. Missouri is on Dean's other side, kneeling a little away from the wall, her hand fluttering nervously at the collar of her shirt.
Sam crawls forward towards the pile of debris, and reaches to pick something up from a bare spot on the floor. The yellow light of the streetlamp outside filters through the window and glints off it—it's the amulet. He must have lost it at some point during the poltergeist's attack.
Sam looks rather disturbed, Dean thinks, as he looks down at the amulet resting on his palm. He's about to ask what's wrong when Sam holds the amulet out to him.
Dean takes it, frowning, and examines the strange little horned face molded into the bronze. He holds it in the light from the streetlamp in order to see better, and when he does, he can't help but shiver. There's now a deep scratch running directly across the eyes of the little face.
"Let me see it," says Missouri, holding out her hand, and Dean passes the amulet to her without a word. She peers at it closely for a moment, and then gives a deep sigh. "I'm sorry, Sam," she says, passing it back to him. "Its power has been broken."
Sam cradles the amulet in his palm, staring down at it for a long moment before he speaks. "What did she mean—she was sorry?" he asks.
Personally, Dean took those words as more evidence that she did make a deal, but he doesn't want to make Sam look any more like a kicked puppy than he already does, so he keeps his mouth shut.
"I don't know," says Missouri gently, but Dean notices that she doesn't quite meet Sam's eyes. "I do know one thing, though," she continues. "This wasn't just a random haunting. That poltergeist was here for a reason."
"To destroy the amulet?" Dean asks, and Missouri nods.
"Whatever protection it gave is gone now," she says, looking directly at him now, and Dean's skin prickles in fear. Just how many monsters are out to get Sam?
And now he's even more vulnerable.
"What happened to our mom?" Sam asks in a small voice, still staring down at the amulet. Dean is forcibly reminded of a terrible night twelve years ago, when Sam asked that same question in this same room, in that same tone of voice, and his heart constricts painfully.
"She destroyed herself to prevent the amulet from being taken from you," says Missouri.
"But it was taken from me," Sam whispers sadly. "She destroyed herself for nothing. It doesn't have any powers anymore."
"I don't know," says Missouri, looking thoughtfully at the amulet. "I think it still has power. Not the original power, maybe...but you value it, and that can be a powerful thing."
It sounds to Dean like she's basically saying the amulet is worthless now, but Sam appears comforted. His hand closes around the amulet, and Dean sees him slip it into his pocket as he stands up.