A/N Managed to get this one knocked out before I enter my next hellweek, so I figured I'd post it while I have the chance. We're starting to get answers, now, but there's more to come.
I would love feedback, comments, reviews, corrections - ANYTHING really - from y'all to know if you are still enjoying this story.
For those who have previously commented, favorited or followed - my eternal thanks.
Also, my formatting is starting to confuse even me, so I'll be trying to do a better job of separating my comments from the story! And, since there are two time periods in this chapter, I've begun to identify time and place to avoid undue confusion for my lovely readers (and myself)
-Aethena
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St. Joseph's Hospital, Biltmore Road, Asheville, NC
Saturday, May 9 1998
1:00 AM
Sam nodded, frowning slightly. He'd been dreading this, but he had promised Dean and he'd never break a promise to his big brother if he could help it.
It's just…this could all go wrong. He trusted Dean, of course he did. Dean had always supported him, encouraged him, taken care of him. Loved him, as more than just a brother. Dean was his mother, best friend and, more often than not, father. He couldn't bear it if Dean were to turn away from him, disgusted — or, worse, frightened — by what Sam had learned to do.
By what Sam had become.
By what Sam was becoming.
When Dean learned the truth — the whole truth, not just what he'd obviously already guessed — it was just possible that he'd react the way their father had, when Dad had learned…well, whatever it was that he learned from that damned phonecall. That Dean, like Dad, would think him evil.
Would want to "put him down".
Sam wasn't afraid to die, he really wasn't. Hadn't been for years. There were days when he almost wanted to.
But to have Dean want to kill him? That would be worse than actually dying.
Still, this was Dean. If anyone would — if anyone could — still want him around after learning the truth….
"Okay," Sam nodded. "Better get comfortable," he warned wryly, and Dean smiled, then settled back into the more-or-less comfy recliner by the bed.
"Hit me," Dean said, when he was settled.
"Okay. Do you remember," Sam began, "that time when Dad went on a hunt for about a week, and we were stuck at that motel — Rooster's Rest or something, I think— and we met Caitlin and Travis, and there was that fugly old woman who was taking kids? Who tried to take Travis? Tried to take me?"
Dean frowned. "Of course I remember! I killed it, Dad came back. Sam, I swear to god…"
"Uh-uh," Sam interrupted Dean's building rant. "You want to know what's going on with me? You have to deal with the way I tell it, okay?"
Dean glared.
"I swear to you, I'm not stalling," Sam said quietly. "Just…listen, okay?"
Dean's glare faded and he nodded, agreeing to Sam's request just as his little brother knew he would. There wasn't much that Dean wouldn't do if Sam asked. Sam felt almost guilty about that.
Almost.
"So, yeah," Sam nodded. "You killed it, Dad came back…" He smiled remembering. "I was so proud of you. My big brother had saved the day, and Dad wasn't even around. You just…did it. Like Batman," he added with a grin and Dean laughed.
"Batman was never that scared," Dean admitted.
"You couldn't tell," Sam told him. "I couldn't tell. Well. Barely," he added with a grin. "But then Dad came to get us, and we told him what happened. Even Dad was proud of you. He wanted to reward you, remember? He wanted to take you with him on a hunt."
Dean nodded. "Yeah, but for the next couple months, there wasn't anything he thought was safe enough to take me out on."
Now Sam nodded. "It was a couple months before he found that salt-and-burn just outside of Pittsburgh."
"Right after he finished that werewolf hunt in—what? Erie, wasn't it?" Dean recalled.
"Yeah. You guys left me in Erie, and drove down to Pittsburgh. It was supposed to be two days, three tops."
"Riiight," Dean remembered. "And then the blizzard hit. How long was it before we could get back to you?"
"Eight days," Sam replied. "And I was just damn lucky that the motel staff felt sorry for me, or they could've thrown me out, because Dad only paid for four."
"Man, I remember that. That Hunt sucked. First, we had to do the salt-and-burn just as the storm was starting to hit. By the time we'd burned the bones, we almost didn't have to fill the grave back in; the snow was coming down so hard, nobody would've noticed the hole, it was too full of snow.
"And then, we get back to our motel in Pittsburgh, and we couldn't get you on the phone. I was freaking out, man, don't mind telling you."
"I was not having a good time, myself," Sam assured him. "The phone lines went down, and then the power. As the storm was hitting, I made a vending machine run. Lived on Pepsi and stale junk food for days. By the end I was literally melting snow to have something to drink."
"Wow. I didn't…Damn, Sammy."
Sam shrugged, wincing only slightly as he jostled his bad left arm and shoulder. "Not the important bit, actually," he admitted. "The important bit wasn't the blizzard itself. It was something that happened just as the snow started."
Dean leaned a little forward a little. He could tell that Sam was starting to get upset, and placed a hand lightly on Sam's knee, offering what comfort he could.
Sam smiled at him in gratitude.
"It was March 13, first day of the storm," he continued. "The sky was getting really dark, and the wind was starting to kick up." He took a deep breath, then forced himself to look into his big brother's eyes. "And something was trying to get into my room."
=============SPN===========
Saturday, March 13, 1993: "The Storm of the Century"
El Patio Hotel, 8th Street & Peninsula Road, Erie, PA
Sam sat on his bed — farthest from the door, because old habits died hard, and Dean would never let Sam sleep someplace where anyone entering the room didn't have to get through Dean first to reach his Sammy — and carefully portioned out the loot he'd grabbed from the vending machine. Most of it he'd even paid for, even though he knew that, had he been there, Dean would have razzed him for not saving the little cash he had, when he could've so easily hacked the machine, the way Dean had taught him by the time Sam was four.
The local weather forecast said that everything would be impassible by nightfall, and would likely remain that way until the 15th or 16th. Maybe longer.
Erie wasn't expected to get the worst of the storm — it was passing south and east of the lakeside city, which meant Dad and Dean would be smack in the middle of it, down in Pittsburgh — and from the comments he'd overheard from the El Patio staff, even if the "storm of the century", as all the weather nerds were calling it, actually did dump on Erie, it didn't seem like it would phase anybody in this town. Something about "blizzards got nothing on a good lake effect but the wind". From the way people were talking, it sounded like getting heavy snow in Erie was like finding monsters for his family. Just another Saturday night.
He didn't get it, but it was nice to not be surrounded by panicked people, even though everyone was pretty sure they'd lose power fairly early in the evening, and probably the phones too.
Which was why he'd hit the vending machines. If the power went out, he wouldn't be able to make anything but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Trouble was, he was nearly out of bread, because Dad hadn't gone shopping before he and Dean left, saying that what they'd had left over from the last run was enough for "little Sammy" to eat on his own for the couple of days the older Winchesters would be gone. That was good in theory, but the bread was both stale and moldy, so he'd had to cut off all the crust and about half the rest of the few slices he'd be able to salvage, if he didn't want to make himself sick.
He couldn't think of anything worse than getting sick when Dean wasn't there to take care of him, so vended junk food it was. Mostly.
If he was careful, he could stretch his stash — 10 cans of Pepsi; 4 individual size bags of Combos; 13 packs of snack crackers in various flavors that, after eating the first one a few minutes ago, he was pretty sure had been put in the vending machine around the time he was born; and an assortment of candy bars that had been in the vending machine so long that the labels looked like they'd been faded by the sun, even though the machine had been in an interior hallway and nowhere near a window.
He should be able to ration it all, plus the peanut butter, jelly and what there was that still resembled bread, to get him through until….Tuesday. Wednesday if he was lucky. Thursday, if he really starved himself.
He just hoped the water pipes didn't freeze or, worse, burst. He's already turned the bathroom sink and tub faucets on to a small trickle hoping to keep the ice at bay.
Sam picked up the junk food he'd divided into small groups, moving each grouping to the table in front of the window, keeping them carefully separated.
Six piles, each pile broken into two smaller sections. Breakfast and Dinner to last until Thursday. Just to be safe.
There wasn't enough Pepsi to last the whole six days, but he should be able to get water from the bathroom sink if he had too, and there were tea bags next to the coffee machine that sat on top of the tiny refrigerator. Cold-brewed tea was better than nothing.
He'd be okay. At least there was only one mouth to feed this time. He'd have been really angry with their Dad if Dean had been there too, and they'd had to stretch the food to feed both of them.
Although, more likely Dean would have insisted that he wasn't hungry and given it all to Sam.
It had been a couple months since Sam had figured out just how much Dean regularly sacrificed for him, to make sure that Sammy always had what he needed.
He loved Dean for that, but was going to have to keep an eye out to be sure that Dean didn't hurt himself for Sam's sake, now that he was old enough to understand what was going on.
He loved Dean so much for taking care of him.
He hated Dad almost that much for making Dean do it.
Sam was putting the last pile of food on the table when he heard a light tapping on the motel room door.
For a second he froze, staring at the door.
He'd already talked to the motel manager, Mr. he Haney, about the upcoming storm, and he had watched from his room's only window while the entire staff had left. The manager was a good man, and only lived a few blocks away from the motel. He promised he'd check in with Sam as soon as he could after the worst of the blizzard was over. But he hadn't wanted his employees to be stuck at the motel and away from their families in the middle of a major storm.
After the warnings about the storm became pretty much the only thing on the TV or radio, the few other guests at the motel had left, trying to do the sensible thing and get out of the storm path, so Sam was the only guest. Mr. Haney had been worried about leaving a ten year old alone, but Sam had assured the kindly manager that his dad and brother had only gone to a lecture at Edinboro University, the State school about half an hour south of the motel, and would absolutely be back before the storm hit.
Sam still wasn't sure if Mr Haney knew that assurance for the bald faced lie that it was or not, but the motel manager had accepted it as a matter of convenience, if not actual truth, while at the same time giving Sam a maid's master key, so the boy could get any extra blankets or whatever from the storage closet if he needed to.
The upshot of which was: Sam was alone at the motel. He knew he was. He'd double-checked when he went on his vending machine raid, checking the motel register for rooms most recently occupied, and visiting each to verify that they were empty.
Sam's room faced the only driveway entrance, and he'd opened the blackout drapes and cracked the blinds when he got back from his vending raid, so he could keep an eye on the snow. (Opening the drapes or blinds in their room was usually forbidden, but Sam figured it was safe enough, since not only was the motel empty, but Dad had taken all his notes with him when he and Dean had left, and the walls therefore did not look like the work of either a conspiracy theorist or a serial killer.)
Even with the little bit the blinds were opened, there was no way he wouldn't have seen a car pull into the parking lot. None had.
He'd also have seen someone walking towards his room from the street or the office.
He'd seen no one.
Mr. Haney himself had phoned just 45 minutes ago, to be sure that Sam was still okay, at which time Sam had lied — again — saying he'd just gotten a call from his brother saying his family was on their way back, and should be in the motel with Sam within the hour, even given how much it was snowing at the time.
As Mr. Haney was the only one who knew Sam was there alone, and he might believe that, by now, the rest of the Winchesters — sorry, Winstons, the alias they were booked into the motel under— had returned to their youngest, there could not, logically, be anyone knocking on the motel room door.
He glanced out the window again, thinking that maybe his overwrought nerves had misinterpreted some sleet or hail blown against the door by the rising wind.
The only thing falling from the colorless sky was a fluffy sort of snow, and although the wind had picked up enough to blow the snow nearly horizontally, it was also blowing parallel to the front of the hotel, and the snow had yet to penetrate deeply enough under the roof formed by the balconies of the floor above to hit the window, wall, or door.
So, he'd imagined it, then. He must've.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
And there was no possible way that was anything other than someone knocking at the door.
Sam leaned over and twisted the hanging wand on the blinds, closing them once again, before jerking the blackout drapes closed behind them.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Slowly, Sam backed away from the window, retreating to his bed to retrieve the .45 Dad had given him before the elder Winchesters had left.
He quickly ejected the magazine, and verified it was full before slotting it back in place and racking one round into the chamber. That done, he flipped off the ambidextrous safety, and sat on the bed, his back against the headboard and his arms firm but relaxed as he fell into the two-handed grip he'd been trained to use, aiming at the door.
Dad would've been so proud.
Knock. Knock.
"Sammy…" a voice hissed, and Sam swallowed reflexively.
No way this was somebody knocking on the wrong door, then.
"Saaaa-mmy…"
The voice gave him shivers. It wasn't like any voice he'd heard before. It was something out of a nightmare, soft and low while still being resonant. It sounded — no, Sam corrected himself, because if there was one thing he'd really taken to heart from the training Dad forced him through, now that he knew the truth about the Family Business, it was accuracy —it felt like more than one voice speaking in perfect unison and it was easily the creepiest thing he'd ever heard. It was even worse than the horror movies Dean made him watch.
A quote from the Bible popped into his head: Marc 5:9 My name is Legion because there are many of us.
And Sam knew — he knew — that whoever was on the other side of the door, there was a demon inside it.
"Saaaaammy. Let me in, Sammy."
Sam slipped off the bed and crossed to the little refrigerator next to the large dresser on the wall next to the bathroom door. He flipped the safety back on, then slid his gun into the back of his waistband like he'd seen Dean and Dad do a hundred times, and wasn't that the coldest, weirdest sensation he'd had in a while?
The gun made him feel safer, but against a demon, he knew it would be useless, so he traded the gun for a couple of bottles of holy water on top of the fridge, retreating to sit on the end of the bed where he unscrewed the caps on both bottles and held them at the ready.
"Sammy! It's time to come home, boy," the voice — voices? — told him. "Let me in."
Sam bit his lip and stared at the door in terror as the knocking gave way to pounding.
He cast a quick look at the threshold, relieved to see the unbroken line of salt there, then glanced at the window to be sure that line was solid as well.
"Sammy." Bang "I'm coming in, Sammy." Bang. "Your locks, your salt and your holy water won't stop me, little man." Bang. Bang. "I'm going to get you, boy. I'm taking you home, Sammy." Bang Bang Bang
Sam thought he might throw up, but that wouldn't help him out of this mess, so he ignored the nausea and started to pay attention to the helpful little voice in his head (which sounded remarkably like Dean, really).
That door won't hold, and once the door is open, the wind will blow away the salt lines.
So, what do I do?
What would Dean do?
Barricade the door!
Sam looked around the room for something large enough to make a difference.
He looked at the long dresser against the wall. It was long enough and tall enough to cover the door completely, and he'd bet it weighed a damn ton. He….
++++SPN++++
St. Joseph's Hospital, Biltmore Road, Asheville NC
Saturday, May 9, 1998
"Wait, wait!" Dean interrupted his little brother.
"Dean…"
"I never heard about any of this," Dean protested. "We got back, and never, not once did you ever say anything tried to get into the room. ANYTHING. And certainly not a demon! Why the hell wouldn't you tell me that?!"
Sam closed his eyes for a moment, sighing in frustration. "I'm trying to explain that, Dean," he said reasonably, and opened his eyes to give his brother a patented Sam Winchester Bitch Face. "If you'd let me continue, you'll understand why."
"Fine. Fine," Dean agreed and threw up his hands in capitulation. "Get on with it, then."
"I was," Sam pointed out, "before I was so rudely interrupted."
"Whatever. Bitch."
"Jerk," Sam grinned and continued his narrative.
+++++SPN++++++
Sam looked around the room for something large enough to make a difference.
He looked at the long dresser against the wall. It was long enough and tall enough to cover the door completely, and he'd bet it weighed a damn ton. He jumped off the bed and moved to the end of the dresser furthest from the door.
"Saaaammy. I'm going to bring you home, Sammy." Bang.
"The hell you are," Sam muttered to himself and began to push the dresser as hard as he could.
"Sammy!" Bang.
It moved not a fraction of an inch. Not a single millimeter.
"Son of a bitch!"
Bang
He should have been able to move it at least a little bit. He might be small for his age, but Dad's endless training made him pretty strong. He tried again, then dropped to his knees, wondering if there was something wedged against the bottom of the dresser that prevented it from moving.
"Shit," he breathed, and bit his lower lip to hold back the tears of frustration.
The fucking thing was bolted to the damn floor.
"Saaam."
Bang
"Saaaammy!"
Bang
He glanced up, and saw that the door was starting to part, ever so slightly, from the jamb.
Desperate, Sam scurried across the floor, checking both beds, the tiny fridge and the dinette table in front of the windows.
All bolted down.
"Sammy! Let me in, Sammy! I won't hurt you."
"Yeah, right," Sam muttered as he investigated the room with new eyes.
The only things that weren't attached to the floor were the four rickety chairs that surrounded the little dinette table, and they would undoubtedly splinter from the shaking before the door even gave way..
"Okay," he said, in a stubbornly determined voice that would be entirely too familiar to his family, "we just need to pull the bolts up."
He knelt beside the dresser once more, and looked at the screws holding it in place.
"Oh, come on!" he hissed between his teeth.
If they'd been flat heads, or Phillips heads, he knew he could use the blade of the butterfly knife in this backpack to unscrew them. But they weren't. They were Allen bolts, and while Sam was absolutely certain that the correct wrench for loosening the bolts was in his Dad's tool box — the tool box itself was, at this moment, 120 miles south, in the trunk of the Impala.
"Sam! You don't know what I can give you, Sammy. I can give you the world."
"Not interested in a magic carpet ride from you, asshole," Sam muttered.
Bang. Bang. BANG.
Sam covered his mouth to keep from screaming and scrambled up onto the bed, plastering himself against the headboard, and armed himself again with the only available weapons he had — two one-liter bottles of designer water that Pastor Jim had filled with holy water the last time the Winchesters had visited.
Bang
Bang
Bang
"You're MINE, Sammy! I'm coming in. Right. Now!"
Whoosh. Ping!
Sam ducked as one of the bolts holding the dresser to the floor suddenly detached and flew across the room to embed itself in the wall.
"What the…"
A second bolt darted past, and Sam dove to the floor between the two beds.
Whoosh. Ping!
Whoosh. Ping!
THUD
The dresser, now free of its restraints, flew against the door, standing up on one end to completely cover the door, followed by the four dinette chairs, the refrigerator, the coffee maker and two small trash cans.
The banging from outside the door stopped and Sammy's gaze flashed to the window, the next likely point of ingress.
Thwap. Thwap.
Sam threw himself flat onto the floor, covering his head with his arms as the mattress and boxsprings from both beds flew across the room to plaster themselves against the window.
Whoosh, ping, whoosh, ping, whoosh, ping, whoosh ping — THUD.
The bed to his right — Dean's bed — unbolted itself from the floor and flung itself across the room to join its mattress and box spring.
Whoosh, ping, whoosh, ping, whoosh, ping, whoosh ping — THUD.
And there went the other bed.
He looked up, lifted himself to his knees, resting on his ankles and stared at the barricade he'd needed so badly, and that was just suddenly…there.
He'd be laughing at the absurdity of it — flying furniture, like something out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks —- if he wasn't so completely terrified.
"Nice work, Sammy," the voice laughed. "You're really coming into your powers, my boy."
"No," Sam whispered. "I didn't…I don't have….I can't have…."
"I'm so proud of you, boy."
"Shut up," Sam hissed.
"Doesn't it feel good, Sammy? To use what's inside you?"
"No, it's not me. I can't…" He shook his head, crying now, almost wishing that the whateveritwas on the other side of the door had gotten through, if it meant the terrifying last few minutes had never occurred.
"I can teach you to use it, you know. All that beautiful, raw power flowing through you."
"I don't have powers!" Sam insisted, his voice finally rising above a horrified whisper.
"We can harness it, you and I."
"I don't have powers," Sam yelled at the door. "I'm not a Monster!"
"Of course you are, Sammy boy," the voice laughed. "And I can teach you to Be All You can Be, Sammy! Together, you and I, we can rule the World!"
Sam jumped to his feet, and without plan or even thought, he thrust his right arm out in front of him, palm out. "GO TO HELL!" Sam yelled and jumped when a bright red light suddenly shone through the cracks around the window and the door, between and around the stacked up furniture, and with a scream of a thousand tortured souls…
Sam knew he was alone.
It was gone. The thing — the demon, the real monster — was gone.
Sam stumbled backwards until his back hit the wall behind him, and he slid slowly down the wall to sit, arms on top of his knees, forehead on his arms, crying in equal parts relief and fear.
Tink. Tink.
Sam lifted his head from his crossed arms and watched as the last two bolts embedded in the wall fell out of the plaster and landed next to the other two bolts that had held the dresser to the floor.
Sam's eyes fluttered, and he slowly slid, unutterably exhausted and spent, to lie on his side on the floor.
And the world faded away.
=======SPN======
A/N couple clarifications:
Erie, PA and the El Patio motel therein are real places, although the El Patio is now permanently closed, and the motel did sit at the corner of 8th and Peninsula roads.
The Blizzard of 1993 that hit the East Coast of the US between March 13 and March 15 of that year was also real, and Pittsburgh did get a great deal more snow than Erie (which is unusual).
Lake Effect is a weather phenomenon common to many locales on the southern, and sometimes eastern, edges of the Great Lakes and in particular Lake Erie, which is the shallowest of the Great Lakes. Moisture from the lake is picked up by cold winds coming across the lake, creating supersaturated air. When the air hits the land, typically colder than the lake water, heavy snows will develop. Erie sits in the middle of one such location, and is prone to Lake Effect snow unless Lake Erie has frozen solid.
Edinboro University is a State University located about 28 miles south of Erie in the town of Edinboro (go figure) and there are often public lectures held on campus.
The bible verse that Sam recalls is Marc 5:9, and comes from a parable of a man possessed by a demon, who called itself Legion, indicating there were many demons in the man at the time the demon confronted Jesus.
Sam's comment that he wasn't going on a Magic Carpet Ride with the monster at the door is a reference to the demon's previous comment "I cna give you the world," which is similar to the line in the song from Aladdin I can show you the world.