Appendix C

Section C

Alex age 17

This ghost was having none of it. Rock salt only kept it down for a few seconds. It showed up in unexpected places. It's grave was right behind the house it haunted. Sam kept digging, frantically trying to scrape the last deterring layers of dirt off the century old coffin, while Alex stood at the edge of the pit, holding off the spirit with her handguns.

"Are you there yet?!" she squawked to her uncle.

"Two seconds!" he stabbed at the dirt with his spade.

Alex gave a high-pitched yelp as the spirit appeared suddenly right in front of her and knocked her backwards into the grave. Landing like a human bridge across the gap, she tensed her muscles to keep from falling deeper. A quick and powerful assist from Sam along with her kip-like motion put Alex back on her feet. As she came up, the spirit appeared off to her side, at which she fired a shot to strike it between its 'eyes.'

A hollow, wooden thunk, and then a splintering crash; Sam had at last reached the coffin and broken it open. Once the lid was in pieces, he threw out the shovel and attempted to exit the pit. The spirit appeared and hoisted the spade to swing at Sam. Alex shot it just in time.

"Salt!" Sam called upon standing.

Alex tossed him the box as she began to dowse the corpse below in lighter fluid. All the while, they both kept an eye out for the spirit, who reappeared frequently only to be deterred by their rock salt ammunition. When Sam's clip ran out, he dropped his gun and Alex dropped the accelerant to focus on keeping the ghost at bay.

It wasn't enough, however. Right when Sam pulled out a lighter, the spirit smashed Alex across the back of the head, making the world spin around her and her ears ring. Almost in the same instant, the ghost took hold of Sam, detaining his ignition of the salted bones. It began to choke him, one supernaturally strong hand around the Winchester's throat, the other clamped over the lighter.

Alex regained her bearings in seconds and glimpsed through the leftover fog an instant in which she could take a shot at the ghost without shooting her uncle… hopefully. Taking careful aim, she pulled the trigger.

Her gun only clicked.

She had no bullets left. The Impala was too far away for her to make it there and back in time. The spirit was holding onto their only lighter. She had neither steel nor flint to spark the corpse. Alex cast her eye over the yard, desperate for an answer to her dilemma.

She found it in the rod iron fencing surrounding the property; what was left of it.

She raced across the ground, a flash of leather jacket and jeans. With all the force she could muster, she kicked out one of the posts. Snatching it up, she fled back to where Sam was now pinned against the side of the house, feet dangling above the ground, face turning purple. A mighty swing with her rod weapon severed the ghost in two, evaporating it. Her uncle dropped to one knee, gasping and scrambling to recover.

In the next second, the ghost reappeared behind Alex and shoved her into the side of the house, her head going through an already broken window. She dropped the iron bar on impact. Sam dove for it, snatching it up in time to fend off another attack from the spirit.

Then, in a wild lunge, he darted towards the grave, flicking a flame into existence and throwing the entire lighter into the pit.

The ghost shrieked, then dissolved in a torrent of sparks and smoke. Sam breathed a sigh of relief and stood for a moment.

"That was one angry ghost," he laughed, turning towards his niece.

As it turned out, the spirit they had just vanquished would not be the worst thing Sam would encounter that night. The sight of Alex laid out on the ground, body shaking, breathing erratic, arms pinned tight to her body with clenched hands held above her head was enough to make anyone's heart skip. Seeing the shard of broken glass from the window lodged deep in her throat, blood rushing out of the wound and leaking out of her mouth, sent a poisonous shock of panic ripping through Sam's entire body.

"Oh, god!" he exclaimed, and shot forward, dropping to his hands and knees at Alex's side. "Oh, god," he repeated as he inspected the damage, moving to touch the bloody mass but thinking better of it before his fingers landed on her throat. Instead, he cupped his niece's face. "Hey. Hey, it's going to be okay," he insisted to her.

She gaped at the air, trying to tease in whatever oxygen she could. The blood soaking into her throat and windpipe drowned her, keeping her from taking a decent breath, so she gagged each time she tried to inhale. More unsettling than her moist gasps were her eyes; wide and weeping, fear was sunk deep into her gaze, which she held on her uncle as if he were her life raft. Sam felt like the poorest life raft to have been created; this wound was well beyond his ability to stitch closed. Additionally, the shard appeared to have sunk clean through her jugular vein, making it clear that she would bleed out long before they made the drive to the nearest hospital. Sam wasn't even sure he could get her to the car.

So he did all he could think to do.

"CAS!" he cried into thin air. "CAS! HELP!"

"I am here," the calm, collected, gravely voice responded.

The trench-coated angel knelt down from where he had appeared above the pair. He looked at the glass protruding from the skin of Alex's throat with a curious, contemplative expression. Then he gave a small, "hm."

"What?" Sam asked, anxious.

Ignoring Sam, Castiel kept his focus on the dying young woman, locking his calm and confident gaze with hers. "It's going to be okay, Alex. This will only last a moment," Castiel explained simply. "Remember to breathe."

Then, in a motion appearing to require neither force nor any sense of sympathy from him, Castiel removed the shard from her throat. A remarkable length of glass came out, hidden in Alex's body. She convulsed, chirping as loudly as her blood-drowned lungs would allow. Sam made to support her as she writhed. Only an instant afterward, however, Castiel laid a hand upon the deep, gushing wound. A light sank into her skin where he touched her and moments later, she was healed.

She leaped up into her uncle's arms as he pulled her in tight, relief washing over the both of them.

"Oh, my god," Sam laughed nervously. "That was almost the end, right there."

"Yeah," Alex's voice was high, choked now by tears.

Without releasing Alex, Sam reached out one hand blindly to Castiel, gripping the angel's shoulder like a vice.

"Thank you, Cas," he hissed.

"Yeah, thank you, Cas," said Alex, and she parted from her uncle to embrace Castiel, burying her face in the folds of beige on his shoulder.

"You are welcome," he replied, returning her hug.

"Okay," Sam said as they all recovered from the ordeal. "Now I think we can all agree… no one says a word to Dean."

The others promptly agreed.