Dean threw the shotgun away. "Rock salt's not working!" he yelled as he drew his pistol and fired. The bullets just went straight through the strange ghost in front of him. "Damn it," he cursed under his breath as he lowered his gun. The ghost cackled loudly, its green tentacles stretching out towards him, it's comically large red eyes bulging in delight. Dean tried to retreat but only ended up with his back against a wall. "Sam!"
A gout of flame came bursting out of a doorway to the right and Dean huddled against the decaying sheetrock, shielding his head with his arms. The ghost gave a cartoonish squeal and fled to the other side of the room, it's green tentacles streaming behind it like banners. Sam darted into the room, still brandishing the can of hairspray and lighter he had used as a makeshift flamethrower.
"Dean? You alright?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the cowering ghost.
Dean stood, brushing himself off. "A little toasty."
Sam chuckled, "Heh, sorry." His eyes narrowed. "The fire seemed to scare it, but it doesn't look hurt." Dean opened his mouth to reply that if they hit it with everything, something was bound to work eventually, but before he could say a word, a small, swirling green vortex bloomed on the wall near the ghost. Before their eyes it expanded into a rough sphere, still swirling and changing unpredictably. In what could only be described as a mad dash for freedom, the ghost made a break for the strange whirling thing with Sam dashing after it, makeshift flamethrower belching a hot jet of flame. The ghost touched the floating phenomenon and seemed to be sucked towards its center, growing smaller and smaller as it went. Just as Dean reckoned the ghost had shrunk to nothing, the whirling green thing pulsed and vanished, taking the ghost along with it. Sam lowered his arms, letting his thumb off the lighter's switch, and approached the place where the ghost had vanished. He trailed his fingertips along the wall behind it.
"There's no burn marks," he mused. Dean approached the wall warily, trying to keep watching the rest of the room and examine the unmarked wall at the same time. "I've never seen a ghost like that," Sam said, putting the lighter into his pocket, "Does dad's journal say anything about a monster matching that thing's description?"
"Let's confine any bookworming to places far away from here," Dean said, holstering his gun, "I don't wanna be here if that thing decides to come back."
"Sounds good to me."
In the car a few minutes later, Sam's curiosity won over his patience and he pulled John's journal out of the glove compartment and started flipping through it. Dean, absorbed with his own thoughts, let him be during the fifteen minute ride back to the motel. As soon as they had locked the door to their room behind them, however, he was all over Sam, wanting to know if he had found anything.
Holding the journal high above his head, significantly out of Dean's reach, Sam pushed him back to arm's length and said, rather annoyed, "I haven't finished looking yet!" Dean deflated and wandered off to take a shower.
"Let me know if you find anything," he said morosely, shutting the bathroom door.
Sam huffed and sat, poring over his father's writing, drawings, and collected newspaper clippings. Over the half hour that Dean took in the shower he found exactly nothing that even resembled the strange creature they had fought in the abandoned house earlier that day.
Dean stepped out of the steamy bathroom and finished toweling off his hair. Sam was still sitting at the table, but now he was typing away on his laptop.
Dean threw his towel back into the bathroom. "Find anything?"
"Dad's journal doesn't say anything about something like that thing, and when I search 'green ghost' online, all that comes up are screencaps from the Ghostbusters movies," Sam pouted, slamming his laptop shut and rubbing his eyes. Dean sighed and started packing his duffel bag.
"What are you doing?" asked Sam, sitting up.
"There's only one person I can think of that might have the information we need," Dean said, haphazardly shoving clothes into his bag, "Bobby."
Only fifteen minutes later, the brothers were on the road again.
"Hey, Bobby!" Dean got out before Sam snatched the phone away from him.
"You're driving!" he hissed. Then, putting the phone up to his ear he said, cheerily, "Hey, Bobby! I'm gonna put you on speaker."
"We're not in Texas, asshole," muttered Dean under his breath.
"Would you idjits quit arguin' and tell me what the hell you want?" Bobby's voice sounded from the phone's tiny speakers.
Sam spoke up first. "We recently had a run in with a type of ghost we've never seen before. The only thing it reacted to was fire, and even that didn't hurt it."
Bobby paused, 'hmmm'-ing quietly to himself over the line.
"I can't believe it!" Dean said quietly to Sam, "We found something Bobby's never seen before!"
"I can hear you," deadpanned the older hunter, "and no, you haven't found something I ain't never seen before. I take it you're on your way up here?"
"Sure are," said Dean.
"Ok, well I'll tell y'all about it when you get here," Bobby said, "It's a mite complicated."
"Sounds good." Sam hung up the phone.
"I'm actually curious what it is," Dean said, musingly.
"Yeah, well, whatever it is, we need to hurry and get back to finding the yellow-eyed demon," Sam said, "We've been spending too much time hunting other things."
Dean bit back a retort and drove on silently. Sam glanced at him but remained silent as well. After a few seconds, Dean punched the power button on the radio and Van Halen's Runnin' with the Devil cut in from a local radio station.
A few hours later, in Bobby's cluttered living room, Dean was penciling a rough sketch of the ghost they had seen on a notepad.
"And it could change shape a little bit," he said, drawing the eyes, "At one point this little tail-thing back here turned into a bunch of tentacles." He tossed the notepad onto Bobby's desk and crossed his arms.
Bobby picked up the notepad. "This looks like something out of a cartoon," he muttered to himself. Sam leaned over Bobby's shoulder to look at the drawing.
"Nope, that's actually pretty close to what it looked like," he said, eyebrows raised at Dean's drawing skills. Bobby was still staring at the picture.
"Well, there can't be any doubt now," Bobby said, sighing. He got up and hurried into the kitchen, sitting down at his computer. Dean and Sam followed quickly, although Dean stopped by the fridge to grab some beers. Passing one of the beers to Sam, Dean placed another on the desk for Bobby and popped open the last one, taking a swig as Bobby switched the computer on and unlocked it.
Bobby typed "Amity Park, Illinois" into the search engine. A bunch of realtor websites popped up, but Bobby scrolled down the page until he found what he was looking for. He clicked on the link and an article popped up on the Amity Park News website titled "Local Experts Identify Flying Green Blob as 'Ectoplasmic Being'". The picture at the top of the article looked very similar to the ghost the brothers had run into except that this one had no tentacles. The ghost was inside a large, sophisticated looking glass tube that had the word "Fenton Ghost Chamber" plastered in bright letters across the top. Next to the tube stood a large man and a rather petite woman, both wearing absurdly-colored Hazmat jumpsuits. Dean scoffed and took another swig of beer.
"'Long regarded as crackpots by the scientific community, Drs. Jack and Madeline Fenton have recently had their chance at redemption when they captured a glowing green blob that was terrorizing shoppers at the downtown mall last week,'" Bobby read aloud, "'The couple used what they termed 'Fenton Ghost Nets' to nab the blob as it flew past. When interviewed later by reporters, the Fentons revealed that the blob was in fact an 'ectoplasmic being intent on causing mischief in our world'. The Fenton's went on to say that they have spent the majority of their lives studying an alternate dimension they call 'the Ghost Zone' where these and other more dangerous ectoplasmic entities live. 'We're closer than ever to a major breakthrough regarding these beings and their habitat, the Ghost Zone,' Dr. Madeline Fenton commented, laughing. Her husband, Jack, joked that Amity Park News would 'probably be back over in a few weeks.'" Bobby scrolled back to the top of the article. "This was written a month ago, but nothing else has been posted about the Fenton's since then," he said, turning to Sam and Dean.
Dean took another swig of beer. "Looks like we're heading to Amity Park." He headed off into the living room as Sam and Bobby worked on tracking down where the Drs. Fenton lived. Dean wandered out into the scrap yard and leaned against the hood of the Impala, staring into the distance as the sun set.
His thoughts were not on the green blob they had failed to kill. Nor were they on the Drs. Fenton, as strangely captivating as they were. His beer hung forgotten from his fingers.
You have to save your brother, Dean... and if you can't...
If you can't save him...
Dean shook his head, driving the memory from his mind. Why did it have to be this way? He was the older brother, the responsible one. Why did it have to be Sammy? His years of hunter experience made him flip through all the knowledge he had collected over the years, searching desperately for a solution.
If you can't save him...
You have to kill him, Dean. Sam has to die.
Dean chuckled cynically. It was always about killing with hunters. Cut it, shoot it, burn it, purge it, destroy it. Except this time the "it" was his little brother. He tried to picture himself holding a gun to Sam's head. Looking down the barrel into his eyes as... what flickered there? Denial? Betrayal? Disbelief? Realization? No, no. He'd have gone dark side at that point. Something evil would be staring back through Sam's eyes, curling his lips into a cruel smile. The lips moved in his mind: What? You gonna shoot your baby brother? You can't do it. And it was true. Even in his mind, Dean couldn't pull the trigger.
He sighed deeply and sipped his beer. It tasted more bitter than usual.