Happy Sunday! In this chapter, I get to satisfy my inner nerd, who absolutely enjoyed researching ghost towns extensively.

Thanks to everyone keeping up with this story. It's always fun to see what you guys make of it.

Chapter 4

Beatrice kept casting concerned glances at Peter. Her son was moving slowly and a little clumsily, his eyes glazed. It could have been only the heat, of course, but Beatrice still could not help being worried.

"We'll be somewhere you can lie down, soon," she assured him.

Peter shrugged.

"I'd rather we just fixed the car and got out of here, Mom," he admitted.

Beatrice wanted to spend the night in town – they had money for a decent enough hotel if there was one over there.

"It might be dangerous, driving through the desert at night," she pointed out.

"Not more dangerous than what's out there," Peter mumbled darkly.

Beatrice felt a twinge of irritation.

"There's nothing 'out there', Peter. It's just desert. Really, now is not the time to develop an overactive imagination."

Peter kept silent. Beatrice regretted rebuffing him like this, but she needed to keep her head together. And that was a difficult thing to do when her son was muttering vague hints of them supposedly being in danger.

They finally walked into the town. Dust lay heavy on the streets. The place was silent, so silent, if it were not for the buildings, Beatrice would have thought they were still in the middle of the desert.

"Didn't you say you heard church bells?" Peter asked.

Beatrice did not answer. The surreal quality of the empty town unnerved her. Everything looked untouched – the stores, the houses, the yards. It was clear to her, though, that no one was living there. No one had lived there for years. As if to prove herself wrong, she approached one of the houses and rang the doorbell. The sound that should have been homely and welcoming was eerie and intrusive in the oppressive silence. No one answered.

Peter suddenly grabbed Beatrice's arm.

"Mom, there's something here. I know I saw something here."

Beatrice looked up and down the empty street. She could see nothing, but she still felt they were too exposed, out in the open. Without thinking, she tried the door, relieved to discover it wasn't locked. She pushed Peter ahead of her.

"Get inside," she said. "We're staying the night."

"What about tomorrow?"

Beatrice had no idea. But if the car did not start, they would have to find some way to get help.

"We're getting out of here tomorrow," she promised.

It was this place, she sensed. Whatever dangers were there, they all came from this place.

xxxXXXXxxxx

The last town Benny and Elizabeth stayed in before getting lost in the desert was one of those touristy-spots Dean hated. It was small and quaint, designed to be the perfect rest spot for those wanting to "get away from it all" but were not willing to give up the perks of modern society. The town had several coffee shops – Sam seemed to think he was in heaven, as he was already developing a taste for what Dean considered "girly" coffees – quite a few massage parlors and spa shops, and every hotel had a front garden and a terrace.

As soon as he saw the place, Dean could tell it was not Benny's type. Quite probably, Elizabeth had suggested they stopped there.

Dean dropped off Sam at the local library, and then headed for the hotel where Benny and Elizabeth had stayed. Under the pretext that Elizabeth claimed she had lost her engagement ring in the room, Dean got to talking with the receptionist.

"This is a clean place," said the receptionist – Paula, a young girl with red curly hair Dean would have found attractive at other times, if she had not been making a point of looking down on him. "Anything that is found in the room when they're cleaned is taken to the manager, who then contacts the guests. Especially if it's something as valuable as an engagement ring." She paused and looked Dean up and down, her mouth thinning. "It was valuable, right?"

Dean plastered on his most pleasant smile.

"Come on," he said. "You saw her, right? Only the best for her."

Paula shrugged.

"Well, wherever she lost her ring, it wasn't here."

Dean nodded thoughtfully.

"To be honest, I'm thinking the lost ring bit might be an excuse," he confessed.

Paula raised a disapproving eyebrow.

"Oh?"

She made a point to act as if she did not invite gossip. Dean knew, though, that those were the kind of people who enjoyed spilling all the juicy, gory details just for the sake of spreading drama.

"Look," he began, trying to sound reluctant to say anything. "Between you and me, Lizzie and Benny were a bit…not exactly in harmony with each other, if you get my drift."

Paula snorted.

"You can say that again."

Dean straightened up.

"Why?"

"Because they had a huge fight, that's why. Then she takes a call when he's not looking."

Dean nodded.

"Go on. Who was she talking to? Her dad?"

Paula looked disgusted.

"If that's the kind of conversation she had with her dad, then someone really needed to call the creep out for illegal behavior."

"Huh."

So Elizabeth was having an affair. It could have been why she was targeted. Or it could have been random. Maybe Dean had no reason to pry into her life after all.

"Hey," he said as an afterthought. "Benny was saying all those weird things about an abandoned town. Is there a ghost town nearby?"

Paula rolled her eyes.

"Not you, too," she said. "I have tourists like every week asking this question. That's if they've been talking to the old folks, at least."

Dean tried not to show how interested he was.

"Should I be talking to the old folks?"

"They say there's a town that was cursed nearby," Paula said. "That something happened, and the residents just vanished. Can you believe this?"

Dean shrugged.

"I suppose it takes all sorts. When was this, by the way?"

Paula waved her hand, disinterested.

"Sometimes in the seventies," she said. "Or maybe eighties, I don't really know."

It fit, Dean thought.

"You don't happen to know why it became abandoned?"

Paula smiled tightly.

"If you ask me, it became abandoned because everyone got tired and decided to get the hell out of dodge before the boredom sucked up their souls."

Dean wondered if Paula herself did not want to do this. After all, she did not live in the big city, but maybe she wanted to.

"And is this the version I'd hear from the old folk?" he asked slyly.

Someone called Paula then. She made to leave but turned to look at Dean.

"No," she said. "No, you'd hear that there was some kind of plague – a disease of sorts and the town was isolated. That's when they disappeared. I'd say it's a load of horsecrap spread by those who love a good story about the evil government and their conspiracies and cover-ups, don't you think?"

She left. Dean had a lot to think about. If the townspeople had fallen ill, and Elizabeth herself had been ill – well, that wasn't a coincidence, was it? Once again, he wondered if they weren't in over their heads. This did not seem like a job teenagers were supposed to take up. But then again, he reminded himself, teenagers weren't supposed to spend their lives traveling from one motel to the other and hunting demons. They weren't the normal sort of teenagers, were they?

xxxXXXxxx

Sam once again tried to avoid the suspicious look the librarian was giving him. He usually got on well with librarians – Dean teased him to no end because of it – but this one seemed to think Sam was either there to steal something or to cause some other kind of havoc. She did not believe for one moment that Sam only wanted to research the area for a school project.

"Why would you pick this place in particular?" she had asked. "You're not local."

Sam shrugged. He had his own ways of putting people at ease.

"My grandparents lived in the area," he had claimed.

This had not really flown with the librarian, he suspected, but she had provided him with the materials and seemingly let him be. She still kept looking at him furtively, as if she thought Sam was a loose cannon waiting for the right moment to explode. Sam shrugged. He could handle it.

As he was pouring over maps and newspapers and making notes so he could put his thoughts in order for when the time came to report to Dean, someone approached the librarian's desk. He was an old man of about sixty, elegantly-dressed.

"Any news, Mrs. Brisbane?"

The librarian shook her head.

"Strange, you know," she said. "Beatrice was supposed to be here. I know my niece. This isn't like her. Especially since she was bringing her son along."

Sam sat up straight.

"Maybe she got lost," the man suggested. "Or decided to stop and see the sights somewhere. If she had the boy with her… You said he was upset about the divorce."

Mrs. Brisbane shook her head.

"She would have called me. Besides, apparently, Peter hasn't been feeling well. Could be nerves from the divorce, but Beatrice never takes chances with Peter. She'd have been here."

"Well, you can't think the cursed town got them."

Sam lowered his eyes quickly, sensing the librarian glancing in his direction. He pretended to be engrossed in his notes.

"Don't be absurd," she snapped. "There's no curse and no town. I only hope that maniac husband of hers didn't catch up to them. He's not all there, you know."

The librarian led her friend away. Sam fiddled with his pen, nervously. Dean was going to meet him soon, and they would have to leave immediately. He was sure the town had claimed another victim, and maybe there was still time for them to stop what was about to happen.

xxxxxXXXXxxxx

Dean finally picked Sam up. They had a rough idea where they were supposed to go, and they were both armed with new knowledge.

"So," Dean said. "Ghost towns. Quite a lot of them around the world, right?"

Sam nodded.

"Abandoned towns and villages aren't that unusual, now that you think better of it. A lot of them are abandoned for normal reasons. The population migrates to bigger cities, or the activity that keeps the town going stops. Mining towns go through this when the resources are depleted. We have quite a few of those in the States."

Dean nodded.

"Aren't some tourist attractions now?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "They're preserved as they were during the time they were populated and visitors can experience how life was then."

Dean frowned. Sam sounded fascinated. Dean did not know what to say.

"Sounds like you're tempting ghosts and spirits to thrive there," he muttered.

Sam snorted.

"So, what's your solution? Burn everything to the ground?"

Actually, that was not a bad solution, Dean mused.

"Or build something else. Start fresh and all that."

He could feel Sam watching him with suspicion.

"We didn't," he pointed out. "When Mom…when it happened…we didn't start fresh."

Dean's hands clenched on the steering wheel.

"Sam," he began warningly.

Sam turned to look out the window.

"Of course," he said tightly. "Sorry. I won't mention it again. Really, I'm sorry."

Dean grunted. Maybe he should have acknowledged Sam's apology, but he could not bring himself to do it. Sam knew better, after all. They did not talk about Mom. They never talked about Mom.

'So," Dean said, steering the conversation back to the present hunt. "Other reasons why towns are abandoned?"

Sam was silent for a moment. Dean was about to ask him if he was alright, but when Sam started speaking again, he sounded good.

"Yeah, you can have other reasons. Natural disasters – think of Pompeii in Italy. That's one of the oldest abandoned towns we know of."

"And that one too must be a paradise for ghosts," Dean said. "Good thing we're not in Europe. We'd have to do a clean-up in there once a year, I bet."

So many people dead by suffocation, Dean thought. Or buried under lava. He was sure a lot of them were not resting peacefully after all that.

"Then you can have man-made catastrophes as well," Sam went on, distracting Dean from his gloomy thoughts.

"What, like the Chernobyl exclusion zone?" he asked.

Sam nodded quickly.

"Yeah, there's a town there that's still out of bounds, everything is left untouched, including an abandoned fair ground. Tourists go there, too. Apparently, disaster tourism is a big thing."

Dean rolled his eyes.

"That sounds dangerous. I mean, they're in a radioactive zone, who wants to risk getting a few extra limbs? Although," he added with a leer, "That depends on the limb."

He glanced at Sam in time to spot the look of horror on his face.

"Trust your mind to find the gutter even when you talk about radiation poisoning," Sam said.

Dean chuckled.

"My philosophy, Sammy, is that every mushroom cloud has a silver lining."

Sam made a noise of disgust.

"I don't even want to know you right now."

Dean laughed outright.

"So, what about our town?" Dean asked. "Some say it's a curse, others say it's a plague."

Sam hummed.

"Some villages in England were completely wiped out by the Black Death. But that was in the Middle Ages. A disease wiping out a sizeable town in the eighties seems a bit far-fetched."

"Well, something apparently happened."

"And the townsmen cursed the area," Sam mused. "At least, that seems to be the working theory."

And then what? Took revenge on anyone who came into town sick? Dean did not buy that.

"We're missing something," he said.

Sam sighed.

"Probably," he agreed. "All I could find in the newspapers was that there really was a town and that, at one point, all contact ceased with it after a violent storm. Some believed something happened to the residents, others are certain the residents just evacuated on their own."

"No mention of a plague," Dean said. "Weird."

Sam shrugged.

"Records weren't that reliable back in the eighties."

Dean tapped his hands against the steering wheel.

"I wonder if we're not looking at this all wrong."

Sam turned to face him.

"What do you mean?"

"What if what happened in the eighties was a consequence of an earlier curse?"

Sam straightened up.

"The plague happened earlier?"

Dean nodded.

"Then the town was resettled. Then…I don't know…they must have triggered something or…"

"If it was a curse or a creature, they sometimes go dormant for a period of time," Sam added. "Maybe it's a cycle, and that explains why the disappearances would be more spaced out."

Dean frowned. It meant that whatever was in the town had just gone active.

"If you're right about that missing mother and her kid, then we've already got several attacks."

Sam looked worried.

"And we still don't know what it wants."

Dean grimaced.

"It might not want anything, Sam. It might just be an evil bastard."

Sam did not look convinced.

"All the same…how are you feeling?"

Dean blinked at the unexpected change of subject.

"How am I feeling?" he frowned. "What, are you trying to psychoanalyze me, Sammy?"

Sam rolled his eyes.

"I meant physically. Are you alright?"

Dean could not hide his confusion.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Sam took a deep breath.

"Because, if one of us feels sick, we need to tell the other. There's no toughing it out this time. Dad isn't here to tell us not to be soft, anyway."

The annoyance that crept over him was quite familiar. Sam always found ways to diss dad whenever he wasn't around.

"Sam, if you're trying to get me to complain about dad…"

Sam shook his head quickly.

"No, Dean. Not this time. But – if one of us feels ill – we need to know. Because maybe this is how those things in the town pick their victims."

Dean felt cold.

"We don't know that for sure," he said quickly.

Sam was looking out the window.

"I think there's too many mentions of sickness for us not to take this seriously, Dean."

Dean bit his lips.

"OK," he finally agreed. "I promise to tell you if I get the sniffles or something."

Sam glanced at him briefly.

"Thank you," he said gravely.

The level tone with which he spoke, far beyond that of a fourteen-year-old, unnerved Dean. He wondered what was on Sam's mind and why he was so worried all of a sudden. He also thought if he should consider mentioning the headache that had been plaguing him since this morning. But no – it had to be just him being tired, that was all. It was nothing that important – it couldn't have anything to do with their ghost town.

xxxXXXXxxxx

John received the first report from the boys after they left the town Benny and Elzabeth were last spotted. He nodded, approvingly. He had been right to allow Sam and Dean this hunt on their own. They were showing a lot of potential as a two-men team. John often tried to pretend that did not make him feel left out. Sometimes, he could even make himself believe it.

At Dean's request, he phoned Bobby and asked for more information on ghost towns, as well as the possibility of a plague in the area. Bobby had sounded gruff.

"And you let your boys tackle that?" he asked.

John rolled his eyes.

"Need I remind you they're my boys, Singer?"

"Maybe you need reminding," Bobby said. "I'll call Dean if I get anything."

John grimaced. Singer had a way of making him feel guilty, even when John was sure he had done nothing wrong. He thought of Godfrey and of their upcoming meeting. He wondered again if he should give up, tell Godfrey he was not interested anymore, give Sam the benefit of the doubt. But always, whenever he thought like this, Mary's face appeared in front of his eyes. He could not leave any stone unturned when it came to her.

"Any progress?"

John turned to see Croydon enter the room. He was hovering at a safe distance, an out of character hesitation on his features. He had been wary around John ever since their confrontation about Sam.

"They're on their way to the town," John said. "They might have found some connections."

Croydon sat down heavily.

"Just tell me this, Johnny," he began. "Don't spare me, you know I hate being spared. Was it my fault? That Elizabeth was chosen by that thing? Was it because of me?"

John looked away.

"Sometimes, no one is to blame," he said. "These things, they're dark and twisted, Arthur. They don't think like us. They think they have the right to use us, but they don't. no one is to blame in cases such as this – no one but the monsters."

Then why are you looking into Sam and whatever was in his bedroom that night? John grimaced. His conscience could be annoying at times. Even more so when the voice used sounded like a mix between Dean and Bobby. He supposed Freud would have loved a peek inside his head.

"I blamed Benny, you know," Croydon said. "It was easier."

John hummed distractedly.

"It's always easier to blame someone," he agreed.

After all, wasn't he doing the same thing himself? Revenge and obsession were much easier than mourning Mary and focusing on raising their boys. But no, John told himself, this was different. Something had targeted their family and he knew there had been a reason behind this.

Croydon cleared his throat.

"Listen, John, about last night…"

John scowled. Whatever suspicions he might have had about Sam, he was still his son. And John would kill for him in a heartbeat. In fact, he had. Plenty of times.

"I understand," he allowed. "You're grieving. Just make sure it doesn't happen again."

He got up and walked out of the room. He had several hours until the meeting with Godfrey. Several hours to change his mind about it – although he knew very well that he never would.

xxxXXXXxxxx

It was getting dark. So far, there had been no sign of a town – or of anything out of the ordinary. Just endless miles of empty desert.

Dean glanced at Sam. He was dozing, his head hanging low. His face was red.

"You're not getting feverish on me, are you, Sammy?" he asked.

Sam started from his near sleep. He rubbed his face.

"Huh? Oh no. Just the sun. Promise."

Dean's eyes narrowed in suspicion. He wanted to say something, but he was caught off guard by a coughing fit. It got so bad, he needed to stop the car and get his breath back. He felt Sam's hand bracing his back.

"Dean?" Sam asked shakily. "Dean, are you OK?"

Dean looked up. He gulped in air greedily. He reached out and patted Sam clumsily on the arm, making a vague thumbs up gesture. Sam looked at him unsmilingly.

"It's starting, isn't it?" he asked.

Dean shook his head. He cleared his throat, but it took him some tries to get his voice back.

"Nothing's started, Sam," he said sharply. "I just swallowed some sand, that's all. I shouldn't have been driving with the window down."

Sam's eyes bore into his in a way that irritated Dean.

"Seriously, Sam, I'm not sick."

Sam chewed his lips.

"Maybe we should…" he began, then shrugged helplessly.

Dean wondered what he wanted to suggest. They should what? Go back? Call Dad? Get reinforcements? None of these alternatives worked for them.

"We should keep going," Dean finally said. "Got it?"

Sam shrugged and nodded. Dean ignored the pang of guilt at his brother's lost, resigned look.

"Hey," he said. "When all this is over, I'll take you to Bobby's. He said he had some really neat books for you to check out."

Sam's eyes widened slightly, and he sat up straighter.

"And you'll come too?"

Dean was about to make a quip, to insist that he actually enjoyed being on the road. But he knew how much of Sam's peace of mind depended on knowing Dean was safe and not putting himself in danger. He nodded. Perhaps he could square it with their dad.

"We'll see," he said. "It will be fun. Well, not the books, but that's fun only for nerds."

He considered his mission accomplished when Sam cracked a smile.

They drove on for a while until sunset. Then, their car broke down unexpectedly. From far away, Dean could hear the sound of church bells.

Right…I'm finally getting them to the town. And things do not look good.

Ghost towns and villages exist all over the world. There are various reasons why such places would be abandoned, and sometimes the explanations are simple, but no less sinister, as is the case of Pompeii in Italy, which you can visit. The closest I came to one was a village that had very few inhabitants and all of them over 50 (the younger population had moved to towns and cities). It wasn't that weird of a place, they had a store and a pub and all that, but it was still lonely and unsettling.

See you next Sunday.