AN: Here we go! I fell down a lot of rabbit holes looking around for information for this story, especially regarding numbers. I learned about Mersenne primes and Euler totients and aliquot sums and it all reminded me of why I prefer words to numbers. I also fell into other recondite subjects. All of that is to say: I apologize if there is too much weirdo information in this chapter. I found it fascinating and couldn't stop reading or writing about some of it!

Janice had to help with this chapter twice because I was worried about the pacing of it. Good thing she's awesome!

I did make changes after she sent it back, so as always, all errors are mine.

* * *

Dean left, feeling guilty (again) for benching Sam. He went to the restaurant first. It was a "seat yourself" kind of place, where the tables had worn spots and there weren't enough waitresses, but everything was spotless, the coffee was great, and there were one or two items on the menu that were good enough to be locally famous. Yes, he could tell all of that within a minute of entering. He'd eaten in more restaurants in his life than he cared to think about.

He flipped his coffee cup upright in a universal request and smiled at the waitress who filled it and promised to be back as soon as she could. When the fifty-ish woman popped back, Dean asked her what she'd recommend and accordingly got the mushroom Swiss burger and steak fries. "And right before I leave, could you bring me a to-go order of something my health nut brother will eat?" he asked. "I trust you to pick." He knew waitresses like this. They almost never forgot anything, never stopped moving, and had the best possible recommendations. He doubted she'd have more than a minute to talk, though, so he ate his (fantastic) burger quickly and left a big tip.

There was a lull when he went up to check out, so he took a second to ask the young woman tending the till, "There's a little crime scene tape stuck to the corner of the building outside. Did you have a robbery here or something?"

Her face crumpled. "Oh, no, nothing like that." She sniffed and blinked a few times. "One of our cooks...died. He was so nice, too! Worked his way up from busboy."

"I'm really sorry to hear that," Dean murmured. "Wasn't there any, uh, warning or anything?"

The girl grabbed a tissue from under the counter and dabbed under her eyes. "No, no. Jackson closed that night and all night couldn't stop talking about how excited he was about the car he just bought." She sniffed once more. "I'm – sorry. Here's your change."

Dean took it and left, feeling like a jerk for upsetting the girl. He was glad she hadn't called him on the lie about the crime scene tape, since the dude who died there had been the one way back in January.

The bar was right down the road, so Dean went there next. He ordered a beer at the bar and looked around. It wasn't a bad place. Fairly cheap but not skeevy. It wasn't loud, either. People were there to drink or hook up, no more, no less. And at least three out of every four people there had something about them that implied they were in town to take advantage of the famous skiing in the area rather than locals.

Dean had glanced at his cheat sheet before coming inside and knew what table had been Thomas Wood's favorite – the same one he'd stepped on to climb up and hang himself. Nobody was sitting at the table, so Dean took it, hoping it would spark a conversation with somebody who knew what had happened.

Sure enough, he was barely seated before a girl in her early twenties chirped, "Did you know your table's cursed?" The guy at her side nodded.

"It really is, dude," he chimed in. The bartender gave them a dirty look and went to the far end of the bar.

"If you wanted my table, you guys could've just asked. Or joined me," Dean offered with a smirk, extending the invite to both. He wasn't looking for company, just information.

With a grin, the girl pulled the guy over and they slid in across from Dean.

"Okay," Dean said. "Clearly, you aren't really scared of a curse. Is that just something you say to mess with tourists?"

"Nah, the guy who always sat here killed himself," the guy explained.

"Yeah, in front of everyone who was here," added the third member of their little group, who was still seated at the bar. He looked glum. "Including me."

"Seriously? What happened?"

The enthusiastic girl and her boyfriend wove their story with occasional input from glum guy and a few others who were listening in.

It seems Wood wasn't exactly a pillar of humanity. He'd gotten bored with domesticity and dumped his family a few years prior. Since then, he'd become a regular here, looking for out-of-towners for a hookup. He never took the same woman home twice, they said.

Until September 22nd. He'd been chatting up a woman at this very table when suddenly he'd gone silent. After a few moments, she wandered away and Tom walked outside. He came back carrying a small tow strap, "the kind you keep in your car for emergencies," the dude at the table with Dean explained. Wood didn't respond to anyone who talked to him, but walked to the table and climbed on top of it.

"He climbed up on that beam," said the girl, pointing to the exposed beam about five feet above them. The entire place was crisscrossed with them all the way up to the high peaked roof. "He pulled himself up and just walked over to one that goes the opposite direction and did the same thing."

Apparently, Wood had continued climbing, ignoring the increasing calls from those below to get down. Finally, nearly at the top, he'd stopped climbing and had knelt on the beam. Those below hadn't been able to make out what he was doing until he jumped off it with a noose around his neck made from the tow strap and affixed to the beam he'd just been crouching on.

"He went nuts then," said the eyewitness, shivering. "But he couldn't reach any of the other boards with his feet and we didn't know how to get up to him. We tried stacking tables and stuff, but his hands dropped to his sides and I knew he was dead. He was still swinging when the cops got here." He finished his beer in a single gulp.

"Whoa," Dean breathed because that was how a normal person would have responded to such a macabre story. He excused himself not long afterward, and was pretty sure his companions figured they'd scared him off from their regretful expressions. He determined he needed to look at this police report because he didn't remember hearing about anything so dramatic – he'd been under the impression that nobody actually saw any of the so-called suicides. Of course, Wood had offed himself shortly before midnight, and the bar was still busy then.

Dean found another witness at his next stop, too. This time it was a night manager of the movie theater who would have preferred flirting to telling her story. She was just starting to crack when Dean's phone went off. He saw it was Sam and canceled the call, sending a "W" text to let Sam know he was interviewing a witness and to call back right away if it was an emergency.

"Girlfriend?" asked Nina, the woman who'd found Cora Ward hanging.

"Nah. Brother. I'll catch him later," Dean said, leaning on the counter. The late showing was going on and there was almost nobody in the lobby.

While they were talking, Dean's phone buzzed a few times with texts, but he ignored them, knowing Sam would call if something was urgent.

Nina needed a lot of encouragement, but finally Dean had gotten the whole story out of her with a lot of sympathetic comments. (Yes, he'd learned some things from his brother, though he wouldn't ever tell Sam that.)

He extricated himself, thinking about how many details the police had glossed over in their reports. He supposed they didn't want panic, but what the hell? No wonder the ME was so unimpressed with their efforts.

Dean looked at his phone as he unlocked Baby and cursed loudly. Sam was going to Hayes' house alone, and based on the time of the texts, he was certainly already there. So much for leaving him safe in the motel room.

As soon as Dean turned onto the road he needed, he caught sight of a familiar figure walking along the shoulder. He pulled over and jumped out without shutting the car off even though he should have tried to avoid being seen.

"Hey, S – oh." Dean broke off when he saw the brilliant blue in Sam's eyes that indicated that his brother wasn't at the wheel. He should have realized it instantly from Sam's posture, but he was too incensed by his worry. He detested the flat, almost blank look on Sam's face when Ezekiel took over, finding it all too reminiscent of the dead stare of Lucifer looking through Sam's eyes. Through gritted teeth, he asked, "Zeke. What's up?"

"You must leave this place. There are traces of one of the 72 in that house. Even at full strength, I could not match its power, and it is likely that it could recognize my nature on sight."

As usual, the angel spoke with little to no emotion. But there was an urgency to the way he said this. Maybe even…fear.

Dean shook his head. "We can't leave. You have to know that. People are dying, and there is nothing I could say to convince Sam to just go without figuring out what's going on. What the hell are the 72? 72 what? And are you actually sure one of 'em's around? Oh, and any idea why they're killing people while you're at it?" He scrubbed a hand down his face and reminded himself to keep his voice low. "And explain fast, dude. Sam notices he's missing time."

Zeke tipped his head to the side. "Before there were men as you know them, there were several...test races, including one of giants. They were very powerful and difficult to kill, and always seeking a challenge. When they'd proved themselves against even the largest and most fearsome animals, they decided to challenge the angels. As punishment, we threw 72 of them bodily into a great pit – the depths beneath the Earth – and slaughtered the rest. The 72 tunneled and dug with their bare hands and formed what is now Hell. They've remained ever since, not really demons, but so powerful that even the demons avoid them. And after so much time in Hell, it is known they have some demonic powers, though which ones, I do not know.

"This is not something you can defeat."

Dean swore. "It's not like we can let it stay loose up here. We have to figure out a way to get it back to Hell or kill it or something. We are not running away, you understand? I'll keep Sam and you out of the line of fire, but we can't leave. Remember, we've beat the so-called unbeatable before."

After a pause, Ezekiel inclined his head slightly in what was clearly a grudging gesture of agreement. He was all but glaring.

"So, are there any books about these demon giants or something so I can figure out a way to tell Sam all this?" Dean managed to keep from adding something snarky about Zeke being awfully scared of a bunch of stuff for a supposedly bad-ass angel, but only just barely. Don't piss off the guy fixing your brother, he reminded himself, mentally grimacing at the memory of Zeke using Sam's mouth to threaten to leave if Cas stuck around.

"Very well. Just remember to use extreme caution," Ezekiel conceded reluctantly. "And there are no books I know of as the 72 predate humanity."

"Okay –"

"Dean?" The confusion in Sam's voice let Dean know that Zeke had bailed abruptly again.

Sam was worried, confused, and upset. He told Dean about entering Hayes' house and finding himself outside...then blinking and being here. He seemed almost like he expected Dean to disbelieve him or treat him like a headcase.

Even as he did his best to reassure Sam, Dean's mind raced with all Ezekiel had had to say. It kept spinning while they got back to the house.

"Let's try a different door," Dean suggested. Sam just made a broad, frustrated go-for-it gesture, clearly sure it wouldn't work.

His face went carefully emotionless when they got inside and nothing happened. Dean didn't know how to make him feel better, so he just started talking about how his investigating had gone.

Dean's mind didn't stop whirling as he told Sam about what he'd learned at the movie theater or while they packed up anything of Hayes' that looked even remotely hinky. (Even if most of it was total crap, they didn't want to risk leaving behind any metaphorical hand grenades. In that same vein, Dean took a moment to use an iron knife to scratch a line through each symbol on the dining room floor, as well as through the circle itself.)

His mind was still on Zeke as they left the house.

How the hell was he supposed to point Sam in the direction of some prehistoric giant demon-adjacent monsters? And how could he get Sam to lose the concerned/lost/insecure look he wore so often now? It wasn't fair to him, and Dean hated himself for putting him in that position.

As long as Sam's life was at stake, though, Dean would have to keep up the charade and prepare to deal with the fallout – and make it up to Sam later. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, he reminded himself. Unbidden, he had a vision of his kindergarten teacher showing them a picture of a lawn with two bright dandelions in it.

"Lies are like weeds," she'd told the class. "They spread and multiply." She showed a second picture of the same lawn, this time covered with fluffy white dandelions.

Dean shook his head, hard. If he was reminiscing about being five years old, it was past time to get some sleep.

"You okay?" Sam asked, looking at him strangely.

"Just thinking about kindergarten," Dean admitted honestly.

If anything, Sam looked even more weirded out by the admission. "Well, could you start the C-A-R so we can get this stuff back to the room before nap time?"

Dean leveled a glare at him but started the car.

As they drove and later unloaded all the crap to look through, they filled each other in on everything they hadn't covered yet.

"You ditched a sure thing to go check out an abandoned house?" Dean asked, incredulous, when Sam mentioned meeting cop Danielle.

"Dean!"

"Guess you don't need this." Dean dumped the bag with the ice-cold chicken and spinach wrap-whatever on the table on top of a stack of police reports. "Since you already had your snack."

"You belong back in kindergarten," Sam grumbled. "And, no, I'll eat it tomorrow."

So naturally, Dean started to sing, "Sam and Danielle/sitting in a tree/K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" at the top of his lungs. He laughed when Sam smacked on the arm. "C'mon, loverboy. Bedtime. We need to be fresh to solve the case in the morning so you can have more time for Daniellllllllllllllle."

"You go ahead. I want to look a few things up," Sam demurred, ignoring him with long-practised skill.

Dean didn't like it, but he didn't argue. Sam wouldn't sleep anyway if he had something he wanted to pursue, and Dean still had no idea how to steer the investigation toward "the 72."

Once he was finished with his evening ablutions, Dean tried, "Hey, Sam, do you get the feeling there's something...big...behind this?"

"Huh?" Sam looked up from the laptop, having been engrossed in his reading. "Why do you say that?"

"Gut feeling. Like, I dunno, demons or something?"

Sam squinted. "Anyone talk about sulfur smell or anything?

"No," Dean admitted. "Like I said, just a feeling." An idea occurred to him. "I mean, Hayes would be a new ghost. They aren't usually strong enough for stuff like this for a long time. How could he be so powerful so fast?"

Sam waved at the items they'd liberated from Hayes' freakville library. "Maybe something here is behind it. Or maybe the symbol he carved in himself. Or maybe that was a summoning circle and he did summon a demon." He frowned. "A demon wouldn't do anything this specific without a good reason. They aren't usually this...patient." He shrugged.

There wasn't more Dean could do at the moment without making Sam suspicious, so he just headed to bed with the admonishments, "Don't stay up all night and don't touch anything that's cursed. You know how crabby you get when things get itchy or turn purple."

WINCHESTER * WINCHESTER

Dean was very unimpressed to be woken up by Sam rooting around in a pile of papers.

"Dude, did you sleep at all?!" he demanded grumpily.

"Shit, I didn't mean to wake you," Sam apologized. "And yeah, I just got up again. I found something last night that I want to get back to. Go back to sleep – I'll be quiet."

Dean groaned. It was early given their late night, but not too horribly early. And the state of Sam's hair was proof that he wasn't lying about having gone to bed, though for how long, Dean couldn't know. He sat up and scrubbed at his eyes, figuring he shouldn't sleep the day away when the next killing was scheduled to happen in less than 24 hours. "Nah, I'm up." He made it clear in his tone that he wasn't happy about it.

"Then you want to hear about it?" Sam asked, a thousand times too awake for Dean to deal with just yet. "Hayes was into numerology and –"

"No. Just no. Coffee, food, shower. I need at least two of those before I can handle you in professor mode."

Sam sighed but offered to get coffee and food while Dean took a shower. Dean's shower lasted only fifteen minutes or so, but in that time, Sam had dressed, left, and returned.

"You're like the freaking Energizer bunny," Dean complained. He took a long drink of very strong, very hot coffee and wasn't surprised when Sam took the action as an invitation to start talking.

"So it turns out that Hayes kept track of things that happened that 'proved' he was right about his fears, especially some form of numerology. He was fixated on the number 13 since he was a kid." Sam waved at the handwritten notes in front of him. "He wrote that he used to get sick around the 13th of every month, but his parents never believed it. Then his parents had their car accident and died on a Friday the 13th and he took it as confirmation that he was right about everything."

Dean whistled. "There were a lot of accidents that night," he commented, taking the second of the four coffees Sam had picked up (proving that even if his brother was annoying, he at least was smart). "There was black ice on the roads, and you can't spit without hitting a mountain around here. They slid off the side of a mountain road. Nothing special about any of that."

"Hayes was already pretty deep into paranoia by the time it happened," Sam reported. "Probably had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, and he certainly had some obsessive traits." He tapped his finger on one of the pages I front of him. "And he was so terribly afraid that he would die in 2013 that as he got close to it, he was wearing a dozen apotropaic things at all times – Horus' eye, Auseklis cross, you name it."

Dean squinted one eye shut, thinking. " Did he die in 2013? Or before?"

Sam shrugged. "We know the power went out in a 2-block radius of his house around 11:40pm on New Year's Eve without any obvious cause. So he might have died then. Or if the power blast was from summoning something, whatever it was could have killed him after midnight."

Sam shuffled through more papers and came up with a rough sketch he'd done of the symbols on the floor of Hayes' dining room. "See, there's a scorched spot there. Even though I don't recognize what could possibly be summoned by what he made, that shows that power was expended.

"And this symbol is 13 in Sumerian. There's also 'king' or 'great one,' something like 'call' and this one that I haven't tracked down yet is repeated several times. I need to look at any books on Sumerian deities that Hayes had."

"Deities?" Dean asked. He doubted that the monsters that scared an angel would be called deities, but he'd heard stranger things. Before he could think of a way to push the conversation in the direction of demons, Sam started talking again. It was good to see him excited about something, waving his hands around the same way he'd done since he was pint-sized, but it was a lot to take in. Dean took a bite of the breakfast burrito Sam had tossed his way.

"But, anyway, back to 13. I'm pretty sure that I found out why the deaths didn't fall on the 13th of each month. See, Hayes found the Cotsworth Plan, better known as the International Fixed Calendar. It's a calendar that divides the year into 13 equal months with a single day at the end that's a holiday and not really a day of the week. All the deaths fell on the 13ths according to that. And by that reasoning, tomorrow is December 13, or 13 – 13 – 13."

Dean wasn't awake enough for this. "My head hurts," he complained.

"There's more," Sam said handing over a second burrito. Dean knew he was being managed, but he deserved coffee and burritos and probably some damn fine donuts for having to listen to this geek speak at zero dark thirty.

"Of course there is."

Sam ignored him. "With this calendar system, the day of the month and the day of the week are the same throughout the year, meaning every 13th is a Friday."

"So…"

"So Hayes was so terrified of a year that was '13 and had 13 Friday the 13ths that he spent all his time trying to find a way to protect himself. I think he summoned something he thought could protect him, and I think his ghost is behind all the killings." Sam deflated a little. "But I don't know what he summoned or if it killed him or if it's still around." He gestured at the boxes of books and knickknacks that they'd liberated. "Next, I need to read anything about Sumerian or Akkadian he's got here and track down that repeated symbol."

"Flow yow woll and take a bweff," Dean said, which Sam, through years of practice, easily translated to 'slow your roll and take a breath' but with a mouth full of burrito.

Dean swallowed. "Eat something and take a shower and give your brain a few to organize what you've read already, alright? You're gonna pop a vessel otherwise." He gave a put-upon sigh. "I'll help with the research."

Sam hesitated and Dean rolled his eyes. "I can read, you know. Now get your stinky ass in the shower. Big brother knows best."

Sam snorted and stood, swatting Dean as he went past. "Fine. If you use the computer, don't 'x' out of any of my windows. And looking up porn does not count as researching."

Dean threw a pen at Sam's back and grabbed the laptop. The second he heard the shower start up, he started searching the internet. He needed some way to nudge Sam toward the 72, and this was his best chance to figure out how.

Looking for giants and giant demons and Hell-builders all gave him nothing useful, or at least nothing that matched his insider information from Zeke. Just when he thought he wasn't going to find anything at all, he thought of what Sam had said about the symbols on Hayes' floor. He typed in Sumerian giant with more than a hint of desperation.

His eyes lit up as he read what came up. Maybe they'd get this case solved after all.

Of course, that was when the building started to shake.

* * *

The 72 aren't really a thing, but I did borrow some elements from different classical stories and mythologies and maybe some elements from SPN, too.

The International Fixed Calendar really is a thing that Moses Cotsworth and others tried to get people to adopt.

Now you see why I had to use this season? I needed 2013.

Jenjoremy: I was hoping to leave that up in the air until this chapter! But yes, it was Gadreel not wanting to be anywhere near what he suspects is causing the problems. It's so confusing because it might be a monster nobody's ever heard of before, LOL.

Timelady66: Dean just hadn't gotten the chance to tease Sam about the police officer. I hear you on the inconsistencies of that season. There are definitely things that didn't seem to fit with the characters for me, but that's how it goes sometimes, right? And hey, you're not complaining, you're talking about the show that I love! Go for it! Are you going to post your story as you go, or not until it's finished?

muffinroo: I'm so glad! I moaned to Janice that I was afraid I was getting bogged down in details, something I really struggle with. She patted me on the head and reminded me that readers (like you!) seem to enjoy the detail. Hey, maybe this story should have been called the Ralphing House as a counterpoint to the Hungry House story!

Colby's girl: Thanks! I really feel for Sam at this stage in the show. Good call on Gadreel being the reason Sam kept getting dumped back out of the house, but not because of angel warding (though that's a fascinating question...what would the warding do to Sam? I assume it would affect him like any occupied angel vessel, whether he knew why he was being affected or not).

ncsupnatfan: I think it might have gotten weirder yet in this chapter! Sam's in the dark so far, but it hasn't been easy on Dean to do that. And now they only have one day to figure it out before there's more killing.

stedan: That may be one of the nicest compliments I've ever gotten! Thank you sincerely. I hope you can enjoy the story even if it's set in a time period you didn't like. (Honestly, I may never have set a story here before for many of the same reasons, but I needed it to be 2013!) I'd love to hear (read) your thoughts about the potential giant/demon/monster behind this.

Kathy: This is such a crazy mystery. There's no way to figure out what's going on when the writer makes up something out of thin air! Good call suspecting Gadreel getting Sam out of the house without warning. There is so much angst and doubt and worry in this season that it just saturates everything, but that certainly keeps writing it interesting.