"Scully!" Mulder shouted, his voice booming in the sparely filled space.

"Not now, Mulder," she replied, her voice equally clear if not as loud. She was much more focused on the delicate task at hand than whatever insanity he had come up with.

"Yes, now!"

"I'm a little bit busy now, Mulder."

There was a slight delay, a moment's hesitation as that idea was thought over. "So?"

Scully carefully set down the surgical tools in her hands. "Mulder," she said very calmly. "What exactly do you think I'm doing?"

Her tone must have been clear because Mulder's restless, impatient, constant movement stopped and he stared at her. "Work," he agreed, without looking at it or the rest of the lab that he had so loudly invaded. "But this is also work!" he rallied, holding up the thin unmarked file in his hand. "More important work!"

Scully took a deep breath without thinking and the burn of chemical smell just barely blocked out the general stench of decay in the room. "Correct me if I am wrong, Mulder, but is there the remains of a bloody, filleted, dismembered body physically hidden in that file? Because I have a bloody, skinned forearm sitting on my table and it is only one piece of the mess Jack pulled out of the Occoquan yesterday. The entire department, including me, is literally up to their elbows in body parts." And thankfully, the rest of them in the lab were still busy enough to go back to their work and ignore the latest little outburst by their residential spook.

"But that's not your work."

"Mulder, this is possibly the biggest serial murder case of our generation. Of course they're going to call in every qualified specialist available."

"But you're not available! You're my expert!"

She raised one eyebrow, staring out at him through her protective gear. She held her tongue and gave him a chance to consider his next words carefully. Very carefully.

"Not that whatever it is you are doing with people's forearms isn't very important," he said quickly. But then he grinned boyishly and leaned in to continue in that faux-whisper he used when he was about to start trouble. "But come on, Scully. Are you telling me that there's one other person in this whole building that could handle the kind of crazy we deal with? They'd go running at the first alien spore or dog-boy."

She was smiling. "Mulder, hypertichosis is a chronic condition that can be controlled."

He held up his file again, careful not to let it accidently brush up against anything on her table. "This is far more interesting," he promised.

They stared at each other, Mulder grinning and Scully trying to look stern. "You've got 10 minutes to convince me, Mulder, that your case is more interesting than the Ripper."

"Missing person, found dead this morning," he announced proudly.

"Unfortunate, but not exactly unique," she replied, playing along.

"He went missing three days ago. Left for a lunch break one day and didn't come back. Police found him at a gas station three blocks from his house, over 24 hours after the last time anyone saw him. He had no memories of where he had been or what he had been doing. This morning he never made it into work. A couple of school kids found him near their house within an hour."

It wasn't lunch yet, and Mulder already had the print-outs for her. "You were tracking the case that closely?"

Mulder grinned broadly. "Nope. But I do pay attention when a body shows up looking like this," he announced before whipping out a photo and holding it up for her to see in the harsh light of the lab.

"Oh," she replied.

"Oh," he repeated. "So. How quickly can you be ready to go?"

She tore her eyes away from the picture to look at her old work. "Give me an hour."

"Wow, Dean announced. "I mean, that's impressive."

"Not appropriate," Sam muttered. He was crouched down examining the body. Cas had given them specific coordinates for what was apparently an angel blind spot, but beyond that he had given them very little to work with.

Owls Head was barely a town, and even then much of it was broken up by the ebbs and follows of the mountain it was perched on. Dean had not enjoyed the drive up. Tire chains had barely made a difference getting through the early spring snow. There was a reason they tended to avoid the north in the winter, and this far up, it was still dangerously icy despite being March already. The Impala was not designed for these kinds of conditions and Dean bitched the entire time about what the salt was doing to his paint job.

They'd found a place to stay and had gotten to work on figuring out what was so important Cas would come to them and not the other way around. There hadn't been much. A few local legends, the kind of stuff typical of small mountain towns, possibly a case back in the 1930s, but no sign of it starting up again. The only oddity they had been able to find was a missing person's case that had been resolved a couple of days before. Nothing to suggest the kind of demonic activity strong enough to block the entire angel radar. When Dean hadn't been griping about the effects of the weather conditions on his car, he'd been whining about how in the hell they were supposed to fix things if they didn't even know what the problem was.

Sam guessed this was another case of being careful what you wished for.

Bill Haymond had been found dead in a field twenty minutes from his house, and good hour's drive from his workplace. He was completely naked and covered in slash marks.

The kids who had found him had been on their way to school at the time. Sam doubted they'd ever recover from it.

Even Sam felt a little shaky. It was only a couple of hours ago that he and Dean had stopped by the man's house. Bill and Liz Haymond lived in a new build just outside of town. Nice house, good reliable midrange car, no kids but just about everything else middle America. The wife worked part-time at a real estate firm and Mr. Haymond was one of the local reps selling parts and hardware to farms in the area.

He had gone missing sometime during lunch three days ago. A friend called the wife when he didn't make it back in, the wife called the police. Just as they were finally beginning to move on it, Mr. Haymond was found in daze at the gas station by his house. He had no memories of the last 24 hours. There wasn't much in the official report to explain why the matter wasn't followed up on. He was reported as being in good health, with no sign of foul play, and the issue was officially closed even if the gossips still had a field day discussing a missing married man.

It certainly hadn't been a lot to go on, but as the only lead Dean and Sam had of anything odd happening in the entire town, they had stopped by his house this morning to ask some questions. Apparently they hadn't been the first. The report may have been brief, but apparently the police had done a much more thorough interview and not an entirely friendly one. Mr. Haymond hadn't been real eager to talk to anyone else about the issue. They certainly hadn't been invited in for coffee. They managed to confirm that he was adamant that he didn't remember anything and that he hadn't noticed anything odd beforehand and that he didn't like being asked strange questions about his personal life.

There'd been something off about him, but at the time it was nothing Sam could put into words. Dean shrugged it off. He wasn't surprised the guy was twitchy. The supernatural had that effect on normal people. Sam understood that but he also couldn't explain why it felt like he was missing something.

But there hadn't been time to dig deeper. They had watched him drive away, supposedly in a hurry to get into work early since his boss was already considering firing him. They hadn't tried to stop him. They had both assumed there'd be more time to find out more. They hadn't expected to hear that the man's body had been found mere hours from the last time they had seen him.

Bill Haymond had left home at about seven in the morning. Sometime after that, Mr. Haymond had traveled at least twenty minutes from his house to this field, lost his clothes, been carved up from head to toe and killed – all of this before Hayden and Jacob Allen took their shortcut through the field next to their house to catch the 8:10 school bus.

It was fast work. And Dean was right. It was impressive.

They were looking for signs of demonic activity and it seems they found it. The local Sheriff was more than happy that FBI Agents Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler where already in the area and willing to assist.

Dean tilted his head to the side, examining the corpse sprawled face up in the weeds. Two of the county officials had already lost their breakfasts at the sight of the body. "You have to admire the penmanship," Dean continued.

Sam sighed but his brother was right. The body wasn't slashed so much as carefully carved with a slew of ruins, symbols and archaic handwriting. He recognized at least three different forms of writing and each of them was sliced into the skin with excellent precision. "I'm going to need pictures. There's a lot here I don't recognize and I don't think it's a reproduction error."

"Already on it, Sammy boy," Dean replied. He had his phone out and was snapping away. The quality would be shitty, but it was the best they had with their limited resources.

"I think we can rule out anything animalistic," Sam added. That had been the first thing they had both thought of hearing the description 'slash marks'. But he supposed 'ruins carved into human skin' was not a phrase that came readily to small town cops. Sam stood up and started examining the surroundings. There wasn't anything to indicate any kind of struggle. The ground was relatively undisturbed, a small path worked into the underbrush, probably by the same boys who found the body. A pile of clothes, presumably Mr. Haymond's, was a few feet away. Sam poked around a bit. Nothing looked torn or bloody, so they must have come off before somebody got to work.

"Ya think?" Dean replied absently. He was crouched down by the body, contorting himself to get a better shot of the side of the guys' arm without having to touch anything.

"Some form of demonic ritual?"

"What else would it be," Dean muttered. Lately it did seem like that was all they ever dealt with. And if Dean had hated demons before he went to hell, that was nothing compared to how he was now.

"Think they got what they wanted?"

"Don't know. Either option sucks." When Sam glanced over at him, he shrugged. "Either we're too fucking late, and that sucks. Or we're not and this is only going to get worse."

They looked at each other over what remained of Mr. Haymond.

Sam sighed. "I think we're done here. I'll see what I can find based on the pictures."

Dean huffed out his own sigh. "Guess I'm stuck talking to the family. Nothing but good times, this job."