AN: I can't believe it's November! I hope everyone is safe and warm. There is snow here, which everyone probably knows is not a favorite thing of mine. But the house smells like apples and I don't have to go anywhere tonight, so all will be well. Heck, I *might* getachance to write some more...we will see.
Janice did her beta work for this, as usual, and is great, as always.
* * *
Sam stared at the flames in dismay. On the far side of the building, firefighters were working diligently, but the building was old and made of wood and a great deal of damage had already been done. The building and its contents were more than likely going to be a total loss.
"Dammit," Dean hissed. "We should have come before." It didn't matter that they'd had no possible way of knowing the place would go up in flames – Sam knew Dean was blaming himself for not being perfect.
Looking around the scene, Sam saw a human figure not far from them illuminated intermittently by the strobing lights. It was completely out of place – standing still just inside the tree line well away from the organized chaos. "Dean!" Sam warned. "There's someone over there."
Dean's eyebrows went up. He followed Sam's pointing and patted his gun significantly. "Let's go see what kind of person hides to watch a fire burn."
Despite their shared hatred for fire, the brothers got out of the car and walked in sync toward the mystery person, who didn't outwardly react to their approach at all. "Is that…?" Dean asked softly, sounding confused.
"Evan's grandma? Yeah, looks like," Sam answered. Suddenly, he wasn't quite as certain that they were about to talk to an arsonist. For one thing, she had been a volunteer when the museum had been open. For another, there were tears streaming down her face. Maybe she'd caught wind of the fire and was watching in hope that some things could be saved? That didn't feel quite right, though. Why would she be hiding for that?
Sam put his gun out of sight behind his leg but didn't holster it. Knowing the monster they were hunting looked like a shadow, he was uneasy among the trees with the fire trucks' lights making the shadows dance crazily around them.
"Er, Mrs. Hollingway?" Sam started, not quite certain she shared a last name with Evan. "Are you alright?"
"What are you doing out here?" Dean asked, not quite belligerent, but not as gently as Sam had spoken either.
"I had to burn it," the woman said, her eyes never leaving the dying flames as she twisted something in her hands. "It's my fault it's out, you know? But maybe if I burn it, it can't take any more people like dear Evan." The tears flowed harder. "I j-just wanted the museum to be s-saved." She held out her empty hand and Sam could just make out that it was black, as if with soot. "Look what I've done!"
Sam sighed and put the gun away. He glanced toward the firefighters and thought. They weren't exactly doing anything illegal by being there, but it would probably be better if nobody discovered their presence. "Why don't you come sit in our car and tell us about it?" he suggested. He was guessing that the car that had been at the museum all day was hers, and if it was still in the parking lot, it was most likely completely blocked in by fire trucks. "Maybe we can help."
"You can't," the woman said disconsolately, her shoulders slumping, but she turned to follow them anyway.
Dean stomped along, grumbled something like old enough to know better than to mess with occult shit but otherwise kept his peace.
Sam would be lying if he said he didn't feel safer and more secure once they were inside the car. He sat in the back with the woman, and Dean didn't argue. Sam was 99% sure Dean still had his gun out, not one to trust even a crying grandma when Sam was involved.
"What did you do? What happened?" Sam asked when the tears showed no signs of abating. He might feel (a little) bad for her, but it seemed she was the reason a lot of people were missing or dead.
"There was a box among the artifacts from local native peoples," Mrs. Hollingway started. "It was pretty but nothing special, at least that's what we thought. I have a friend who is a professor who translates these things, and she told me it said something like, 'open in times of great need.' And I thought, what harm can it do? I just wanted to save the museum. I never expected anything to actually happen."
"Good job on that, Pandora," Dean muttered. Louder, he asked, "So, you opened it, then what?"
Mrs. Hollingway sniffed, staring at her hands in her lap and the crumpled paper she held. "I didn't open it. I unlatched the box, then had the feeling that it was a terrible idea. It was like I could feel something off about it. I lost my nerve and just...left. Without opening it. I knew I should latch it again, but it made me so unsettled I didn't want to touch it. I figured I'd go back and take care of it the next day when I'd calmed down. But then Evan and Mikey snuck into the museum and people started disappearing, and I just knew it was the nalusa falaya box."
Sam closed his eyes and tipped his head back. "Times of great need" probably meant more literally "snakes are everywhere." And her words confirmed the monster he'd found in his research was their culprit. "Do you know anything else about the box or the nalusa falaya?" he asked.
"This, only this," she answered, shoving the paper into Sam's hands. It was wet and crumbled, but he could make out a poem written in a spidery hand.
When all is lost
When ills run wild
The king of snakes
Will send his child
Within the cedar box
It bides
Until called forth
In darkness hides
As one with shadows
Food it stores
Down in the depths
Of dried up shores
Look not upon it
Nor raise up arms
And it will pass
Without any harm
For neither sword
Nor man's might it fears
Yields for naught
But mother's tears
Mrs. Holloway began to cry again. "I'm a mother and grandmother, but no matter how many tears I shed, the people keep disappearing!"
"Where's the box?" Dean asked. He sounded pissed, and Sam understood why. The woman might not have wanted this all to happen, but she was directly responsible for making it possible. And she'd known all along what they were dealing with. Though it was hardly surprising she hadn't told anyone, it could've made their investigation move a lot faster if she had only talked to them.
"Gone!" The woman all but wailed the word. "I went back to latch it again, and it wasn't there. It isn't in Evan's things either. I've been searching the museum for it for days. Finally I…decided to burn the nalusa falaya – whatever it is – out."
With a flash of insight, Sam wondered if she was subconsciously punishing herself for unleashing the monster by burning the place she loved.
The firefighters were starting to leave, the building a half-burned, soggy mess.
"Do you have those books or writings or pictures of the box or anything?" Dean asked.
Naturally, Mrs. Hollingway waved her hand toward the lazily smoking ruins. Her eyes were hollow. "In there. Everything is packed up in the basement. We'd always talked about moving all our records to computers, but we never had the people or the funds. The only thing I copied was that poem."
Dean groaned. "Keep an eye on her, see if you can find out anything else," he said to Sam.
Sam was already shaking his head. "You can't go in there, Dean. It's still going to be hot and everything's gonna be really unstable." It had been a full three days before he'd been allowed anywhere near the apartment he'd shared with Jessica for all those reasons. And for reasons he wasn't about to explore, he didn't want Dean anywhere near a building fire or even a building that had been on fire. Fire might be one of a Hunter's tools, but that didn't mean Sam liked it.
"I won't go in," Dean answered. "At least not where the fire was. It's not gonna flare up again or the firefighters wouldn't have left. It didn't burn all that long, and the back part of the building isn't touched. And, dude, it's raining." He smiled cockily at Sam as if fire didn't bother him in the slightest. "Be right back." With that, he was out of the car.
"Oh, no you don't," Sam said aloud. He dropped the paper on the front seat to think more about later. To Mrs. Hollingway, he said, "Stay in the car where it's safe and try to think if there's anything else you can tell us. We'll bring you home later." He figured she was too upset to be very worried about her own safety, but he also doubted she'd bother to try to leave. She'd told them what happened and was clearly guilt-ridden.
"Sam," Dean growled as Sam caught up to him near the back door of the building.
"Dean," Sam growled right back, trying to ignore how the smell of the smoke affected him. "There's a monster out here, remember?"
Dean threw his hands in the air. "A monster that's after you," he answered, almost shouting.
"Right. Because you going alone after something that could trap it wouldn't put a target on your back or anything. And for all we know, it's already pissed at you."
"We can't get in anyway. It's burned a lot worse than it looks from the car." Dean responded, clearly irritated. He was right. While it had appeared the back section was intact, it wasn't really much more than a single wall standing precariously alone. Dean shoved at the door jamb and was caught by surprise when the entire thing started to tip. He stepped back hastily but slipped on the wet ash that covered the ground and went down flat on his face as the whole wall fell, starting almost in slow motion, then speeding up until it crashed down, sending a blast of ash over both brothers.
Sam had moved toward Dean as soon as he started slipping but was way too far away to do anything to help other than get a faceful of the ashy bits. Dean moved right away to get back up, slipping back down again once before managing it. He gained his feet, spitting out ash and dirt and swearing a blue streak.
Sam didn't mean to laugh, he really didn't. But where he could only assume that his own face was dotted with black spots like he could see the front of his shirt and pants were, Dean was nearly unrecognizable under all the soot that covered him. Even his hair was liberally streaked with black. It reminded him of the time Dean had jumped off the bridge when Constance Welch – the woman in white – had taken over the car. "At least you don't smell like a toilet this time," Sam snorted.
He took the punch to his bicep with good grace, then used the by-now-sopping sleeve of his flannel to wipe his face off a little. He knew Dean had pulled the punch in deference to Sam's injury, but he didn't bother to call him on it. He'd deserved the smack.
"Shut it, jackhole," Dean growled, stomping back toward the car. Sam almost laughed again when the ground made squishing sounds with every step he took. "This means you can sit there cold and wet while I get the first shower."
Sam figured that was fair. When they climbed back into the car, he tuned out Dean's complaining about the abuse of the upholstery as something occurred to him. He started to twist in the seat and was quickly reminded of why that was a bad idea. "Mrs. Hollingway?" he asked right over Dean's grumbling. "What's the name of your friend – the professor who does the translations for you?" He thought he might be able to look her up and maybe even find copies of the translations, maybe even pictures of the box and documents. He respected college professors a great deal, but he didn't know a single one who didn't like to show off their expertise.
"Alice Harris," came the answer. The woman didn't say a single other word while they drove her home, even when Dean commented that she probably shouldn't tell anyone what was going on. She just nodded and got out, still looking utterly dejected and broken.
Sam felt sorry for her despite everything. He knew Dean did, too. Otherwise he'd have castigated her up one side and down the other and threatened her until he extracted a promise never to mess in anything arcane again. Sam opened his car door as Mrs. Hollingway shuffled toward the house. "Ma'am?" he called. "We'll take care of it."
Dean rolled his eyes a little as they drove away but didn't remind Sam we don't make promises.
Back at the motel, they pulled a few branches from something that might or might not be a cedar tree. (It smelled right, but beyond that, neither brother had any idea what to look for to identify one.) They double-checked the salt lines and added a few warding symbols from the back of Dad's journal, then ran out of ideas for protection. Sam knew he wouldn't be sleeping until he found something, so he didn't complain when Dean, as promised, headed for the shower.
Sam only took off his flannel and boots before diving into an internet search for one Professor Alice Harris. He could stand the rest of his wet clothes for a little longer. He really hoped there would be hot water left for him.
He found the professor easily enough and was a little dismayed to discover that she wasn't actually a linguist or archaeologist or even an anthropologist but a historian. Yeah, no wonder her interpretation of what the box said had been vague and led Mrs. Hollingway to the wrong conclusions. He supposed that a tiny museum wouldn't have the funds to hire a lot of academians, but it was a shame they hadn't found someone more qualified willing to look at the items and documents gratis.
The good news was that Alice did have a publicly available website with pictures of the things she'd translated. Sam skimmed it for anything new. He wasn't convinced that some of her interpretations were right – though there was no way to be certain. Native American lore was as rich and varied as you would expect from so many different tribes and nations spread across an entire continent. Nobody could possibly have a grasp on all of it. Still, Sam didn't have a lot of faith that the nalusa falaya appears to have been a kind of guardian spirit or the king of snakes is an allegory for the immortality of the human soul were correct.
He found the same poem that Mrs. Hollingway had copied down. He groaned when he read that it was not a translation, just Alice's "creative extrapolation of some of the information" taken from the actual historical documents. Still, that didn't mean it was completely specious. The cedar box matched other information they had and "one with shadows" was certainly apt. Sam just couldn't be sure how much of the rest was artistic license. It was possible he wouldn't find any of it useful.
However, one thing did grab his attention. It seemed like mother's tears were mentioned as anathema to the nalusa falaya in quite a few places, and Sam knew he'd heard the phrase before. In any effort to remember its significance, Sam wrote it down on the bottom of the paper the poem was written on. For some reason, he kept thinking of Narcissus of Greek mythology falling in love with his own reflection. But what did that have to do with tears?
Sam sat bolt upright and swore as his side protested. He'd doodled a flower on the page, his subconscious catching on to something. Narcissus had wasted away and turned into a flower. Though he was looking for a tale from halfway across the world from Greece, his mind had been giving him a clue. The Choctaw Indians had believed a certain flower grew wherever a mother's tears fell. What was it again?
He wrote an "n," convinced that was right even though he still had Narcissus in his head.
As he finally remembered the word he wanted, the hairs on the back of Sam's neck stood up. He heard nothing but the sound of the shower and a distant engine, but he knew he wasn't alone. He turned his head too late. The monster was right behind him, and a row of needles sank easily through his shirt and into his side. "Dean!" he tried to bellow, his body folding slowly toward the table like a melting snowman as numbness spread through him. His voice was weak and pathetic, his vocal cords submitting to the growing lethargy even faster than the rest of him. "Shit!" How stupid could he be, keeping an eye on the door and ignoring the window? Or thinking that maybe the salt would stop the monster?
The nalusa falaya was already starting to engulf Sam's feet, unimpressed with his self-recrimination.
With his left hand, Sam grabbed one of the (hopefully) cedar sticks and poked awkwardly at the inky blackness around his feet. With his right, he tried to scribble the rest of the word that he'd finally remembered. The stick dropped from Sam's hand as more of his body went numb and he found himself sliding off the table in slow motion. With a great effort, he threw the pencil at the bathroom door. There was a whooshing sound in his ears and he didn't feel anything, even where he'd been shot, as the upper half of his body finally sprawled on the floor. He took the chair down with him but couldn't hear the sound of it landing. The world was getting narrower and narrower. He watched his torso disappear into the shadow until he couldn't keep his eyes open.
His mind sluggishly gave him one more thought: You better not eat me, you stupid monster, or Dean will rip out your...do you have lungs?
* * *
AN: Oh, dear. They did so well sticking together. Who knew a shower could be so hazardous? (Besides the trickster later, lol.)
Visionary: Thank you! Sorry about the museum. The monster found a way to get at Sam after all...as you knew it would. I hope you enjoy this chapter and didn't mind the wait too much.
muffinroo: Probably too many clues and twists in this one, but oh well. I love love love that you quote Shakespeare in your comment.And I have a feeling that you don't mind that Sam was taken at all. I mean, that means stressed out and pissed off and protective Dean is coming!
ncsupnatfan: Thank you! I adore Dean's protectiveness even when Sam doesn't always. And they didn't even get to the sleeping part...all it took for Sam to be kidnapped was a shower! Keep the plants in mind. Sam figured something out and now Dean will have to follow it.
scootersmom: I'm so glad! The tomatoes are done (well, except for one little bowl I'm saving for tacos tonight). And the winterizing has to wait since it rudely snowed on top of the leaves! LOL. So that means more should be coming soon.
Kathy: I am always wracking my brain for new weaknesses for new monsters (other than salt, silver, etc.) and have no idea where I came up with cedar, but Brian had to have a cedar chest in his house! "Fog with teeth" might be my very favorite phrase of the day! I love words so much I treasure new and fun words or phrases, and you win today. Yes, I adore finding new monsters. By now, my phone suggests articles and things about weird monsters and myths because I look them up so often. You are the second person to suggest that the building of the gazebo disturbed something, but this time, it was an artifact in a museum. A different trope! Unexpected in my middle name. Actually, my middle name is Joy, but Unexpected would probably be more appropriate. Thanks for your kind comments. They make me smile.
stedan: I felt bad for making the cops so hapless and figured that maybe one (besides the chief) could be a little smarter. Also, I like Brian and decided to keep him safe. Too bad I didn't keep Sam safe. Hehe.
Shazza19: Poor snakes. I don't mind snakes, but maybe that's because there aren't any poisonous snakes here in Michigan – very different from Australia! Right when the guys figured some stuff out, I had to go and have Sam kidnapped. Surprise! (Not.)
Colby's girl: Oh, thank you! I don't have any other new stories out there. I've heard from quite a few people that they aren't getting notifications, even after trying to fix their settings. That stinks! Dean is very complex because he feels so strongly but hides it a lot. I'm so glad you find his characterization authentic in this story – that means a lot.