Chapter 7- The What?

Dean slowly opened and then promptly shut his eyes. His eyelids felt like sandpaper. He decided wherever he was, was good enough to continue sleeping; that is until he received a sharp kick in the ribs by a boot. "Damn it! What?!" he yelled out just barely cracking his eyes open.

"Dean! Wake up! What happened?" Sam was standing over him with a worried expression.

"Ugh." Dean groaned as he sat up, still holding his side where Sammy kicked him. "Well we found our little ray of sunshine."

"And?" Sam asked.

"And I don't know what to tell you Sammy. It had wings, feathers, alligator skin, and one large yellow eye in the center of its forehead." He stretched out his back and held up his finger to Sam, "Oh and it sprayed us with some kinda funky gas that knocked us out." Dean tilted his head to the side while holding out his hands waiting on Sams' response.

"Well let's talk about this more outside." Sam turned and almost tripped over Castiels' still unconscious body. "Oh, right, Cas." He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a tiny package of smelling salt, he gave it a crack and held it under the angels' nose, a moment later Cas was blinking his eyes and looking around confused.

"Why the hell did he get the smelly stuff while I got a boot to the ribs?" Dean asked incredulously.

"Because you're a jerk." Sam simply replied, while helping Cas up and heading down the ladder to exit the maintenance stairs.

"Bitch." Dean mumbled as he followed the two.

Once safely back on the ground the boys started walking to the exit of the park to head back to the impala, it was well after one in the morning and with Dean and Cas both off their A game and still no clue what this thing was, it was the safer option to call it a night.

"So the thing didn't try to attack or anything? Just some kind of gas and boom you're laid out?" Sam asked looking over at Dean as they pulled into the Dollywood Resort.

"Yep, looked up, saw the fumes, lights out." Dean said as he stepped out of the car and retrieved their bags.

Sam knitted his eyebrows together in thought as they walked up to the suite Dolly had assigned them. As soon as the three men entered the room Sam immediately set up his laptop and began typing furiously on it. "So no one that we know could tell me what this thing is." Sam said to no one in particular.

"Well maybe I can tell ya a little somethin'." A singsong voice that was way to chipper for going on 2 a.m. said from the door.

"Mrs. Parton? What are you doing here at this hour?" Dean asked as politely as he could, a small blush creeping up on his cheeks.

"Well, I've been waiting up for you boys just next door. Figured you'd either kill the thing tonight or come back eventually." She smiled at them, "And judging by the long faces you didn't kill it. So tell me what happened and we'll get this figured right up I bet! Enough good minds in one room, we should be able to put a finger on this thing." She looked at Cas sitting in a chair next to the door and gave him a smile and a pat on the shoulder before walking over to Sam and Dean. Dean was trying to stifle a laugh for the way Dolly was treating Cas. Dolly put her hands on her hips and looked between the two "So…What happened?"

Sam explained to her all of the events leading up to the mystery mine part where Dean chimed in, making sure to stress to Dolly how he climbed the rollercoaster with no fear. Sam rolled his eyes. Dolly just looked between the two boys, "Well it's obvious then what it is, right?" she asked.

Sam and Dean just exchanged looks before returning their gaze back to Dolly. "No actually, in fact no hunter we know has any idea what this thing is." Sam replied.

Dolly's face dropped to disappointment as if she just asked the boys to recite their ABCs and got lost after C. "How do you not know that it's a Snallygaster?" she asked with more than a little disappointment in her voice.

"Excuse me," Dean said holding his hand up, "A snally what?"

"A Snallygaster. It only wreaked havoc on the Appalachians so much that the aftermath of that fear is rooted into our very culture." The boys still had confused looks on their faces; Cas was still sitting in his chair with his eyebrows furrowed but not giving any input. Dolly let out a sigh as she went into her history lesson on the creature. Back in the 1700's there was tales of a fearsome creature and these tales didn't stop until the 1900s. He had wings that could span the length of a corn field, hide that no gun could penetrate a razor sharp beak, and a yellow eye that could see into your very soul. He terrorized people all along Appalachia, mostly up north but we'd get a sighting or two every now and again here in our neck of the woods. Somehow people came to find out that a seven pointed star would keep the beast from coming near your property, so farmers started painting them on their barns, heck there's barns around here to this day with those stars painted on it. The Snallygaster mostly took livestock, but if you were caught outside at night by it, well it wouldn't mind that you weren't a cow and take ya on anyways. Slave owners would play up the beast big time so their field hands would think twice about running away. My Pappy used to tell me stories that his Pappy told him about it, I used to get nightmares about the thing all the time as a child." Dolly gave a little shiver before walking over and sitting down at the table.

"So…" Sam trailed off not really knowing what to say in response to all of this new information. He instead just turned back to his laptop to confirm what Dolly was saying. "It says here that it does indeed spray its victims in some sort of knockout gas before carrying them away. President Roosevelt was even going to cancel a hunting trip to Africa to hunt the Snallygaster? Wow, this thing must have really put the fear into people."

Dolly nodded her head, "At one point the Smithsonian Museum even put up a cash reward for the thing. Got everyone in a tizzy hunting the thing. Some paper reported that the creature was shot down into a vat of moonshine and drowned in it before the stills owner happened upon it a few days later. No body was found though; the moonshine just ate it away, although I heard they got a pretty good batch of shine from it." She smiled.

"Wait they drank it?" Dean asked disgusted.

"Dean, that's not the point." Sam shook his head. "So what then, a bullet will take the thing down?"

"No, people never thought that it could be killed with a bullet. They was just hoping to maybe surprise it, capture it. It was just serendipity that landed him in that white lightning." The brothers looked at her confused. "My goodness y'all need to leave the Midwest more often! White lightning is the highest proof moonshine there is!" She shook her head.

"So we gotta get the thing drunk, then." Dean said while clapping his hands together, "I'm down for some white lightning!" he said excited.

Sam just rolled his eyes, "Yes Dean we'll be able to shoot it down and guess it falling projectory just right to get it into another vat of moonshine." He gave his brother a hard stare for a moment, "I think we need to lean more towards the seven pointed star theory." I wonder what a bullet from a modern gun with one of those carved into it would do to the Snallygaster?"

"Well ain't nothing to it but to do it Sammy." Dean said while grabbing up a duffle bag stuffed with shells for various guns. "So let's do it." He said while dumping it all out on the table.

"And that's my queue to take my leave. A whole park doesn't run itself you know, and there is another missing employee I have to deal with. Poor cousin Fred." She said shaking her head as she walked out of the room closing the door behind her.

***A/N – And that's my queue to end this chapter! Hope you all enjoy! Any feedback is more than welcome! Thanks for reading! Oh and the Snallygaster is an actual legend in the Appalachians, I really loved researching the thing. There are many articles and a few books written about this fearsome monster. And it even has its own beer named after it!