Creepy, Supernatural, R-ish
Apr. 3rd, 2007 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Creepy (have I mentioned I suck at titles...?)
Characters/Pairing: Sam, Dean (are you shocked? no wincest)
Rating: R for creepiness
Word Count: 3708
Summary: Okay...umm...Dean finds himself in a bad situation...in a creepy place, with creepy people...and Sam...tries to save him.
A/Ns & Warnings: Umm...this sort of blindsided me today. I wasn't sure where it was coming from or where it was going so I just closed my eyes and went along for the ride. It's all kinds of creepy...there's blood and stuff...and did I mention the creepy?
The first cut is the deepest.
Which is utter bullshit. And why is he thinking in lyrics? Sheryl Crow lyrics especially.
The first cut is stuttered and jagged and shallow. It hurt like fuck and it bled slow. The second is a little better…hours later, a little more sure handed, a little less desperate. It bleeds longer, harder, leaves him feeling a little woozy.
The first cut is long…down the length of his thigh. The second is only inches, deep. The blade pushed in and pulled out clean, not pulled over the skin.
It’s the third that has him worried. It's sliced into muscle, into the pan of his stomach, ghosting over internal organs.
He’s lost track of how long.
The kid’s young, but learning fast. So far none of it will kill him…though the stomach wound would try. Gut wounds are the worst. He remembers stories his father told of gut wounds, rotting flesh, gaping holes…and pulls his attention back to his predicament.
He can't blame the kid. Okay, he can. Because this is fucked up, even by Winchester standards.
He starts as the door opens, praying it’s his brother…finally…but it's the kid, and his…pet. At least the stomach wound is still seeping blood. Maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to cut him again.
He growls around the gag as the kid leads the shaggy woman closer. Her hair is wild, dark brown shot through with gray and looking like it hasn’t been combed in a year. She’s bent over, hobbling, her gnarled hands caught in the belt around her waist. Her face is normal at the moment, normal and vacant…but as she nears and the smell of his blood reaches her, he watches her react, watches something in her features change, shift.
At least the kid has restrained her hands this time. She shuffles closer, sniffing her way to the oozing wound. He flinches when her tongue touches him. “There you go Nana…you get take what you need.”
He can't be much more than 14. Tall, like Sammy at that age, but thin, wiry with bushy brown hair and nerd glasses. The woman’s rubbery lips press over the wound and suck while the kid pets her hair. “That’s it. Good Nana.”
He tries to ignore the odd sensation as she gums at his stomach, slobbering over his skin and licking at the blood, making the most disgusting, nearly sexual sounds as she did. He concentrates on the pain in his shoulders from the way his arms are bound up over his head, bearing his weight as he hangs from hooks in the rafters in this dank basement. His feet are bound and pulled up behind him, his knees inches from the floor. He has no idea where the rest of his clothes are, and almost wishes the kid would take his blood soaked boxers off him, ‘cause they’re starting to get uncomfortable.
Yeah…like the seventy something year old woman nuzzling his open wound is the height of comfort. She pulled her bloody face back from him, turning opaque eyes up at him as she smiles toothlessly.
“I think she likes you,” the kid says. “You must taste good. She doesn’t like my blood. I tried that…but I got this disease, you know. In the blood. She doesn’t like the way it tastes.”
It’s the most the kid has said since he woke up here, but he doesn’t want to be friendly or conversational, because he’s fucking tied and gagged and bleeding.
“She was starving. Then I found you. You’d probably be dead you know. Frozen to death out there.”
And he thinks dead might be better…and tries to remember what happened, but there’s just this big black empty place where that memory should be. He has a moment of panic, because he isn’t sure what that means, where his brother is…if he’s even alive.
The kid must have seen the look on his face, because he tugs a little on the leash around the woman’s neck and chuckles. “That other guy? He’s looking for you, asking around town. Told him I saw you in the back seat of a car with Macy Rogers. He was pissed.” The kid laughed. “We’ll be back when Nana’s hungry. You hang in there.”
Yeah. Funny. Really fucking funny.
The old woman was obviously…what? He’d say vampire but there was the whole lack of teeth. But the way her mouth changed, the feral look in her eyes…he’d only seen that in vampires.
Not that he’d seen all that many vampires.
But why didn’t she have teeth?
He shakes his head and turns his eyes up at the rope around his wrists. It’s a pretty good knot. Leave it to him to get shanghaied by the fucking demonic boy scout and his blood drinking grandmother.
And where the hell is his brother anyway? Even Sammy wouldn’t be fooled by the whole shacked up with some slut thing for long. He always comes home, checks in…except when he doesn’t.
He pulls, jerks his body, testing the rope, the hooks. All he succeeds in doing is setting the stomach wound to bleeding again. His head is pounding. It’s the first time he’s realized that it’s a localized pain. He must have hit his head.
It’s frustrating, not being able to remember.
They were taking some down time. Letting Sam recover from a nasty bout with the stomach flu before they headed down to Baton Rouge for the next full moon. He’d gone to check out the local bar.
He groans. The bar. He’d gotten a little tipsy. Hit on a girl. Got punched. Hard. The last thing he remembers is being shown out the back door, into the freezing rain.
Sam was probably still puking his guts out at the motel when the kid found him. He still doesn’t know how long he’s been there. At least four feedings worth. Which would be helpful if there was any indication how long it was between feedings.
This last one seemed to be a snack. The first time had taken a lot longer. He shivered as he remembered the way she’d licked up his leg, mouthing over the cut, her hands working at the sides of it to make it bleed more…the way she giggled the second time, when the kid made a better cut…when he bled more profusely for her…the way her hands gripped his leg, the nails digging into his skin…
Fuck. He needs to get out of this.
He works the ropes harder and manages to cut off the circulation to his hands. That’s about when he realizes he really needs to pee. This whole thing was getting to be too much.
Too much. He’d laugh, if it was even a little bit funny.
They’d picked a hell of a town for him to get sick in.
Small towns could be quaint, peaceful…lovely…any number of descriptive adjectives. This one, however, was none of those.
He would have noticed it immediately, if he hadn’t been hell bent on venting his entire digestive system through his nose and mouth at the time.
Now, he’s on his feet…more or less…and he’s noticing.
First thing is it’s small. Like smaller than most. The entire town seemed to consist of the five room motel, a post office and a grocery/drug store and a bar. Oh, and the church. Can’t forget the church. Looked like it would fall down if you blew on it hard enough.
Second thing is, no one here seems to know he’s there. They look through him and to get one of them to talk, he has to touch them…which he’s really not comfortable with…not even if they weren’t creepy.
Third thing is, well…Dean. Or more to the point, the lack of Dean.
He knows Dean helped him into the room and poured Pepto down him. Pepto that he threw up ten minutes later, after Dean had wandered out to…do whatever it was Dean did.
And when he could stand again, Dean still hadn’t come back. Normally, he wouldn’t worry…yet…but it’s coming up on twenty four hours now and this place…was really creeping him out.
So he does what Winchesters do. He hunts. First he showers, because he stinks like two days of vomit and sweat, but then he follows the most obvious path for Dean. To the bar.
No one pays him much mind. He goes to the bar and has to practically grab the bar tender to get his attention and request a beer. The guy looks at him like he’s an alien or something, but opens a bottle and puts it in front of him.
“I’m looking for my brother.”
“Man should mind his own business,” was all the response he gets before the bartender is gone.
He shakes his head and sips the beer, surveying the room. Like the town, it’s small. Everyone in it is a regular, he can tell. The two at the pool table, younger than him, barely legal. The old man at the end of the bar, already slumped over his beer and listing to one side. The waitress with large breasts bursting out of a shirt that’s nearly two sizes too small.
It’s like a bad cliché of a town, instead of a real one.
Or something.
He thinks maybe the fever isn’t completely gone and the beer is definitely not a good idea…and maybe minding his own business is a better one. He drops a five on the bar and heads for the door, out into the snow…which he supposes is better than the sleet of the morning.
Maybe Dean’s already back at the motel.
He puts up his hood and sticks his hands in his jeans. It’s barely 6, but the streets are quiet, all but the odd kid darting around. In fact…he’s the only kid he’s seen.
He walks toward him, since the motel is in that direction too…and when he gets close enough he calls out. “Hey, kid?”
He stops, turns. He’s taller up close, younger too. His glasses fog as he grins and skates on frozen puddles toward him. “Stranger? My momma told me I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
He smiles, tries to be reassuring. “Yeah, mine told me that too. But, I’m just looking for my brother.”
The kid laughs and there’s something really unsettling in the sound. “For a minute I thought you were gonna say puppy and then I was gonna get worried. I read about this guy who did that and then took kids and did sick things with them.”
He forced a bit of a chuckle, but it sounded weak and nervous. “No…just need to find my brother. Maybe you saw him last night?”
“I come to town most nights to pick up stuff for my Nana. What’s he like?”
“A little shorter than me, lighter hair, cocky attitude.”
The kid smirked. “Oh, yeah. He got in the car with Macy. He was piss drunk, couldn’t even stand up.”
“Macy?”
“Macy Rogers. She comes in from up the hill once or twice a week. They were making out. I got to see her boobs.”
“How nice for you.” Of course, that was Dean for you. Leave his brother choking up his small intestine while he went off to get laid.
“She’ll bring him back when she’s done with him.” The kid was starting to move away. “Gotta get back to my Nana, it’s time for her dinner.”
“Thanks kid.”
“Don’t mention it.” The kid waved over his shoulder and skated off.
He shouldn’t be so angry about it. But he is. Furious. Fucking Dean, always leading with his fucking dick. Would serve him right to pack up the impala and head to Baton Rouge without him. They only had a week to get there. Six days now until the next full moon.
He sputters awake under the onslaught of water, a hose, beating water against him. When he can see past the stream, he sees the kid, chuckling at the way his body swings with the force of the water.
Finally he lowers the hose, drops it and goes to turn the water off. “Sorry, my fault really. Should have realized you’d need to pee eventually. Momma says I don’t have a lick of sense.”
He looks down, realizing he must have wet himself after he passed out. Great. So glad he could be a complete invalid for the kid. “She says I should feed you too. Make you last longer. We don’t get much strangers round here. And people might notice if town folk started going missing.”
Momma? This kid has a mother. One who knows he’s here…knows what the kid’s doing?
Way more fucked up…he’d never get to tease Sammy over the Benders thing again.
“So I brought some soup. It’s cold. I’m not allowed to use the stove. If I take the gag out, you promise not to yell?”
He nods slowly, not that he means it, but yeah, he could use some food. The kid nods and steps up on a chair, pulls the gag from his mouth. He works his sore jaw around while the kid gets down and fetches a dirty cup, then climbs back on the chair and holds it to his mouth.
It’s cold, straight from a can…concentrated, split pea…no water or anything, but he forces himself to swallow it…as much of it as he can before the kid is pulling it away. He wants to talk to the kid, but he isn’t sure how he’ll react.
“What’s your name, kid?”
He smiles, dirty yellow teeth all crooked and one of them broken. “Andy used to call me Kid. I like that.”
“Andy?”
“My big brother.”
Big brother. Okay, he can work with that. “Yeah, I’m a big brother too.”
He looks at him funny for a minute. “You can call me Kid if you want.”
He nods. “Okay, Kid. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”
“Where’s the fun in that? You make awesome faces when you’re trying to figure it out.”
That isn’t good. “Okay…so how about your mother? Where is she?”
The kid looks up at him, then over by the door. He points…to nothing. “Over there. She says I should put the gag back in before you cause trouble. You’re not going to cause trouble are you?”
He looks, but there’s no one there. He’s really sure there’s no one there. “No…no trouble. And the name’s Dean.”
“That’s a dorky name. It’s like a girl’s name.”
He bristles at that, but the kid just laughs. “I’m messing with ya. I used to tell Andy the same thing.”
“Used to?”
The kid isn’t laughing now. “You need to stop talking now. Nana’s gonna need to eat soon. She doesn’t like the voices.”
And just like that, he’s gagged again. Gagged and dripping wet and alone in the dark…waiting for Nana to want her dinner.
It isn’t a long wait. She seems more spry this time, scrambling over the floor as they come in…eager for more. The kid’s got the knife and he surveys the skin before he moves to the uninjured thigh.
The knife stings as it pierces flesh, dangerously close to the place that would let him bleed out…but as fucked up as this is, he still holds the hope that Sam will come. That Sam will find him…preferably before this psycho kid bleeds him dry into his Nana’s mouth.
As strange as it sounds, he’s growing accustomed to the strange sucking feeling as she feeds, to the near swooning as she finally backs off. This time as she looks up at him, his blood painting her mouth and obscene red, he can tell she’s blind behind those eyes…”She’s always been a little crazy. Pulled all her teeth out when Momma died. Andy thought he could help her…since he couldn’t help me.” The kid pulled her away, all bent over and old, toward the door.
That’s when he thinks he gets it.
Maybe.
Or maybe he’s just losing his mind along with his blood.
Dean is never gone this long. He sits on the bed in the motel room and fumes. Not at Dean. Not anymore.
No, he’s only angry with himself. Because he knows enough about this town now to want the hell out. He’s seen the signs. He knows what they mean. And Dean is out there, somewhere, waiting for him to figure it out.
No one will talk to him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know, that he can’t figure it out. There’s religious symbols and sigils on every window, every door. There’s no library and no town hall, but there’s a cemetery near the church.
A cemetery with tombstones for a hell of a lot of children. Some epidemic swept the town two years before, took nearly all of the kids…quite a few adults too. Then…it just stopped.
The graveyard is protected too. Sigils, symbols…old folk magic. Then there were the graves set apart…outside the fence. On unconsecrated land.
Andrew Murga, Andrea Murga and Joseph Murga. Joseph was the oldest, his death dated to ten years before. Then Andrea, who he assumed was Joseph’s wife. Five years later. Andrew though…that was recent. Like around the time the epidemic seemed to stop. He would have been 19 or so when he died.
Not that any of that is actually helpful. But it was something. Maybe the townspeople thought this Murga kid had something to do with it. Maybe…he remembers a mailbox, broken and hanging on it’s post on the way into town…Murga written in blue on a white rusted out box.
It’s a better lead than any since the bar and minding his own business, so he heads to the car. Even if it’s nothing…it’s better than sitting around here waiting for Dean to come back on his own.
There’s been more cold soup, and more bleeding and he’s beginning to think Sammy might not actually be coming for him. He has no feeling left in his hands or his feet, and he’s made out that as much as the kid tells him Nana is crazy, the kid’s way ahead of her.
And the mother’s there. He’s seen her now. She’s dead, of course, but since when does that stop some people? She obviously doesn’t like him. But then, what ghost has ever liked the ones who hunt them and put them down?
And Nana’s getting more lucid with every feeding, less tolerant of the way the boy manhandles her. She’s gonna be the bigger problem eventually. Half her dementia was starvation.
Of course, at this point he is teetering on the brink of dementia himself, curing her and damning himself.
Because, the kid is crazy. Fucking whacko insane. But the old woman was definitely a vampire…or some other blood-sucking fiend that he didn’t know about.
His wrists are ripped to hell, but he thinks he might be close to getting one free when the door creaks open. It’s too early for a feeding, either the kid feeding him or the old woman looking for more…and just like that his left hand slides out of blood soaked ropes and he’s hanging on with his right, but that isn’t going to last and before he can see the kid, he’s crashing to the floor.
“Dean!” The whisper is urgent and deep and not the kid’s, and he rolls over, spotting Sam moving toward him. He’s trying to talk around the gag, and Sam is trying to quiet him, then his mouth is free and Sam’s working on what’s left of the ropes.
“We gotta get out of here,” he says, though his body has plans more inclined to passing out. He’s bleeding again from the stomach wound and both thighs. And he’s lost a lot of blood, but Sam is there.
“Take it easy, man.”
“Ghost,” he squeezes out before Momma is taking a whack at Sam and Sam’s flying over the floor. “She’s gone to get the kid. We gotta go.”
He ‘s struggling to his feet, lurching for the door, even as Sam joins him, slips an arm under his and pulls him to lean against the stronger body.
The stairs are difficult and Sam nearly carries him, up and out into a house that looked like a fourteen year old lived there alone. He can hear him now, yelling and running and Sam’s propelling him out of the house, out into the falling snow and it takes a minute to realize he’s nearly naked, and it’s freezing and he’s leaving a trail of blood…
“Dean, come on.”
Sam’s pulling him, and he feels a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold. “Wards?”
“Keeps vampires out…or in this case, in.”
“Kid’s not a vampire,” he mutters as shivers take over his body, though he isn’t sure if it’s the cold or the shock.
“I know.”
He’s coming now, with a gun in his hands, but Sam has one too. “I don’t want to kill you, Kid.” Sam murmurs as he leans him against the impala and turns. There’s the sound of the shotgun cocking, then a bang as Sam fires first. The kid’s down, one shot between the eyes.
And then Sam’s wrapping him in a blanket, settling him into the car. “I got you Dean. You’re going to be okay.”
“T-took you l-long enough.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.”
There was a warm bath and stitches at the motel, and they were on the road despite the winter storm warnings a few hours later.
They can’t see the body from the road. But neither of them is inclined to investigate further. He was well inside the protective barrier, so it was possible the old woman had dealt with the body.
He’s struck by an odd thought as they get back into the car. “Full moon’s in three days?”
Sam nods and guides them back on to the road.
“What do you suppose a werewolf would taste like to a vampire?”
“You don’t think…”
He shrugs, too tired to really care beyond the curiosity, though they would have to come back now, rather than just leave the old woman to starve. “Don’t know, Sammy…just thinking out loud.”
Title: Creepy (have I mentioned I suck at titles...?)
Characters/Pairing: Sam, Dean (are you shocked? no wincest)
Rating: R for creepiness
Word Count: 3708
Summary: Okay...umm...Dean finds himself in a bad situation...in a creepy place, with creepy people...and Sam...tries to save him.
A/Ns & Warnings: Umm...this sort of blindsided me today. I wasn't sure where it was coming from or where it was going so I just closed my eyes and went along for the ride. It's all kinds of creepy...there's blood and stuff...and did I mention the creepy?
The first cut is the deepest.
Which is utter bullshit. And why is he thinking in lyrics? Sheryl Crow lyrics especially.
The first cut is stuttered and jagged and shallow. It hurt like fuck and it bled slow. The second is a little better…hours later, a little more sure handed, a little less desperate. It bleeds longer, harder, leaves him feeling a little woozy.
The first cut is long…down the length of his thigh. The second is only inches, deep. The blade pushed in and pulled out clean, not pulled over the skin.
It’s the third that has him worried. It's sliced into muscle, into the pan of his stomach, ghosting over internal organs.
He’s lost track of how long.
The kid’s young, but learning fast. So far none of it will kill him…though the stomach wound would try. Gut wounds are the worst. He remembers stories his father told of gut wounds, rotting flesh, gaping holes…and pulls his attention back to his predicament.
He can't blame the kid. Okay, he can. Because this is fucked up, even by Winchester standards.
He starts as the door opens, praying it’s his brother…finally…but it's the kid, and his…pet. At least the stomach wound is still seeping blood. Maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to cut him again.
He growls around the gag as the kid leads the shaggy woman closer. Her hair is wild, dark brown shot through with gray and looking like it hasn’t been combed in a year. She’s bent over, hobbling, her gnarled hands caught in the belt around her waist. Her face is normal at the moment, normal and vacant…but as she nears and the smell of his blood reaches her, he watches her react, watches something in her features change, shift.
At least the kid has restrained her hands this time. She shuffles closer, sniffing her way to the oozing wound. He flinches when her tongue touches him. “There you go Nana…you get take what you need.”
He can't be much more than 14. Tall, like Sammy at that age, but thin, wiry with bushy brown hair and nerd glasses. The woman’s rubbery lips press over the wound and suck while the kid pets her hair. “That’s it. Good Nana.”
He tries to ignore the odd sensation as she gums at his stomach, slobbering over his skin and licking at the blood, making the most disgusting, nearly sexual sounds as she did. He concentrates on the pain in his shoulders from the way his arms are bound up over his head, bearing his weight as he hangs from hooks in the rafters in this dank basement. His feet are bound and pulled up behind him, his knees inches from the floor. He has no idea where the rest of his clothes are, and almost wishes the kid would take his blood soaked boxers off him, ‘cause they’re starting to get uncomfortable.
Yeah…like the seventy something year old woman nuzzling his open wound is the height of comfort. She pulled her bloody face back from him, turning opaque eyes up at him as she smiles toothlessly.
“I think she likes you,” the kid says. “You must taste good. She doesn’t like my blood. I tried that…but I got this disease, you know. In the blood. She doesn’t like the way it tastes.”
It’s the most the kid has said since he woke up here, but he doesn’t want to be friendly or conversational, because he’s fucking tied and gagged and bleeding.
“She was starving. Then I found you. You’d probably be dead you know. Frozen to death out there.”
And he thinks dead might be better…and tries to remember what happened, but there’s just this big black empty place where that memory should be. He has a moment of panic, because he isn’t sure what that means, where his brother is…if he’s even alive.
The kid must have seen the look on his face, because he tugs a little on the leash around the woman’s neck and chuckles. “That other guy? He’s looking for you, asking around town. Told him I saw you in the back seat of a car with Macy Rogers. He was pissed.” The kid laughed. “We’ll be back when Nana’s hungry. You hang in there.”
Yeah. Funny. Really fucking funny.
The old woman was obviously…what? He’d say vampire but there was the whole lack of teeth. But the way her mouth changed, the feral look in her eyes…he’d only seen that in vampires.
Not that he’d seen all that many vampires.
But why didn’t she have teeth?
He shakes his head and turns his eyes up at the rope around his wrists. It’s a pretty good knot. Leave it to him to get shanghaied by the fucking demonic boy scout and his blood drinking grandmother.
And where the hell is his brother anyway? Even Sammy wouldn’t be fooled by the whole shacked up with some slut thing for long. He always comes home, checks in…except when he doesn’t.
He pulls, jerks his body, testing the rope, the hooks. All he succeeds in doing is setting the stomach wound to bleeding again. His head is pounding. It’s the first time he’s realized that it’s a localized pain. He must have hit his head.
It’s frustrating, not being able to remember.
They were taking some down time. Letting Sam recover from a nasty bout with the stomach flu before they headed down to Baton Rouge for the next full moon. He’d gone to check out the local bar.
He groans. The bar. He’d gotten a little tipsy. Hit on a girl. Got punched. Hard. The last thing he remembers is being shown out the back door, into the freezing rain.
Sam was probably still puking his guts out at the motel when the kid found him. He still doesn’t know how long he’s been there. At least four feedings worth. Which would be helpful if there was any indication how long it was between feedings.
This last one seemed to be a snack. The first time had taken a lot longer. He shivered as he remembered the way she’d licked up his leg, mouthing over the cut, her hands working at the sides of it to make it bleed more…the way she giggled the second time, when the kid made a better cut…when he bled more profusely for her…the way her hands gripped his leg, the nails digging into his skin…
Fuck. He needs to get out of this.
He works the ropes harder and manages to cut off the circulation to his hands. That’s about when he realizes he really needs to pee. This whole thing was getting to be too much.
Too much. He’d laugh, if it was even a little bit funny.
They’d picked a hell of a town for him to get sick in.
Small towns could be quaint, peaceful…lovely…any number of descriptive adjectives. This one, however, was none of those.
He would have noticed it immediately, if he hadn’t been hell bent on venting his entire digestive system through his nose and mouth at the time.
Now, he’s on his feet…more or less…and he’s noticing.
First thing is it’s small. Like smaller than most. The entire town seemed to consist of the five room motel, a post office and a grocery/drug store and a bar. Oh, and the church. Can’t forget the church. Looked like it would fall down if you blew on it hard enough.
Second thing is, no one here seems to know he’s there. They look through him and to get one of them to talk, he has to touch them…which he’s really not comfortable with…not even if they weren’t creepy.
Third thing is, well…Dean. Or more to the point, the lack of Dean.
He knows Dean helped him into the room and poured Pepto down him. Pepto that he threw up ten minutes later, after Dean had wandered out to…do whatever it was Dean did.
And when he could stand again, Dean still hadn’t come back. Normally, he wouldn’t worry…yet…but it’s coming up on twenty four hours now and this place…was really creeping him out.
So he does what Winchesters do. He hunts. First he showers, because he stinks like two days of vomit and sweat, but then he follows the most obvious path for Dean. To the bar.
No one pays him much mind. He goes to the bar and has to practically grab the bar tender to get his attention and request a beer. The guy looks at him like he’s an alien or something, but opens a bottle and puts it in front of him.
“I’m looking for my brother.”
“Man should mind his own business,” was all the response he gets before the bartender is gone.
He shakes his head and sips the beer, surveying the room. Like the town, it’s small. Everyone in it is a regular, he can tell. The two at the pool table, younger than him, barely legal. The old man at the end of the bar, already slumped over his beer and listing to one side. The waitress with large breasts bursting out of a shirt that’s nearly two sizes too small.
It’s like a bad cliché of a town, instead of a real one.
Or something.
He thinks maybe the fever isn’t completely gone and the beer is definitely not a good idea…and maybe minding his own business is a better one. He drops a five on the bar and heads for the door, out into the snow…which he supposes is better than the sleet of the morning.
Maybe Dean’s already back at the motel.
He puts up his hood and sticks his hands in his jeans. It’s barely 6, but the streets are quiet, all but the odd kid darting around. In fact…he’s the only kid he’s seen.
He walks toward him, since the motel is in that direction too…and when he gets close enough he calls out. “Hey, kid?”
He stops, turns. He’s taller up close, younger too. His glasses fog as he grins and skates on frozen puddles toward him. “Stranger? My momma told me I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
He smiles, tries to be reassuring. “Yeah, mine told me that too. But, I’m just looking for my brother.”
The kid laughs and there’s something really unsettling in the sound. “For a minute I thought you were gonna say puppy and then I was gonna get worried. I read about this guy who did that and then took kids and did sick things with them.”
He forced a bit of a chuckle, but it sounded weak and nervous. “No…just need to find my brother. Maybe you saw him last night?”
“I come to town most nights to pick up stuff for my Nana. What’s he like?”
“A little shorter than me, lighter hair, cocky attitude.”
The kid smirked. “Oh, yeah. He got in the car with Macy. He was piss drunk, couldn’t even stand up.”
“Macy?”
“Macy Rogers. She comes in from up the hill once or twice a week. They were making out. I got to see her boobs.”
“How nice for you.” Of course, that was Dean for you. Leave his brother choking up his small intestine while he went off to get laid.
“She’ll bring him back when she’s done with him.” The kid was starting to move away. “Gotta get back to my Nana, it’s time for her dinner.”
“Thanks kid.”
“Don’t mention it.” The kid waved over his shoulder and skated off.
He shouldn’t be so angry about it. But he is. Furious. Fucking Dean, always leading with his fucking dick. Would serve him right to pack up the impala and head to Baton Rouge without him. They only had a week to get there. Six days now until the next full moon.
He sputters awake under the onslaught of water, a hose, beating water against him. When he can see past the stream, he sees the kid, chuckling at the way his body swings with the force of the water.
Finally he lowers the hose, drops it and goes to turn the water off. “Sorry, my fault really. Should have realized you’d need to pee eventually. Momma says I don’t have a lick of sense.”
He looks down, realizing he must have wet himself after he passed out. Great. So glad he could be a complete invalid for the kid. “She says I should feed you too. Make you last longer. We don’t get much strangers round here. And people might notice if town folk started going missing.”
Momma? This kid has a mother. One who knows he’s here…knows what the kid’s doing?
Way more fucked up…he’d never get to tease Sammy over the Benders thing again.
“So I brought some soup. It’s cold. I’m not allowed to use the stove. If I take the gag out, you promise not to yell?”
He nods slowly, not that he means it, but yeah, he could use some food. The kid nods and steps up on a chair, pulls the gag from his mouth. He works his sore jaw around while the kid gets down and fetches a dirty cup, then climbs back on the chair and holds it to his mouth.
It’s cold, straight from a can…concentrated, split pea…no water or anything, but he forces himself to swallow it…as much of it as he can before the kid is pulling it away. He wants to talk to the kid, but he isn’t sure how he’ll react.
“What’s your name, kid?”
He smiles, dirty yellow teeth all crooked and one of them broken. “Andy used to call me Kid. I like that.”
“Andy?”
“My big brother.”
Big brother. Okay, he can work with that. “Yeah, I’m a big brother too.”
He looks at him funny for a minute. “You can call me Kid if you want.”
He nods. “Okay, Kid. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”
“Where’s the fun in that? You make awesome faces when you’re trying to figure it out.”
That isn’t good. “Okay…so how about your mother? Where is she?”
The kid looks up at him, then over by the door. He points…to nothing. “Over there. She says I should put the gag back in before you cause trouble. You’re not going to cause trouble are you?”
He looks, but there’s no one there. He’s really sure there’s no one there. “No…no trouble. And the name’s Dean.”
“That’s a dorky name. It’s like a girl’s name.”
He bristles at that, but the kid just laughs. “I’m messing with ya. I used to tell Andy the same thing.”
“Used to?”
The kid isn’t laughing now. “You need to stop talking now. Nana’s gonna need to eat soon. She doesn’t like the voices.”
And just like that, he’s gagged again. Gagged and dripping wet and alone in the dark…waiting for Nana to want her dinner.
It isn’t a long wait. She seems more spry this time, scrambling over the floor as they come in…eager for more. The kid’s got the knife and he surveys the skin before he moves to the uninjured thigh.
The knife stings as it pierces flesh, dangerously close to the place that would let him bleed out…but as fucked up as this is, he still holds the hope that Sam will come. That Sam will find him…preferably before this psycho kid bleeds him dry into his Nana’s mouth.
As strange as it sounds, he’s growing accustomed to the strange sucking feeling as she feeds, to the near swooning as she finally backs off. This time as she looks up at him, his blood painting her mouth and obscene red, he can tell she’s blind behind those eyes…”She’s always been a little crazy. Pulled all her teeth out when Momma died. Andy thought he could help her…since he couldn’t help me.” The kid pulled her away, all bent over and old, toward the door.
That’s when he thinks he gets it.
Maybe.
Or maybe he’s just losing his mind along with his blood.
Dean is never gone this long. He sits on the bed in the motel room and fumes. Not at Dean. Not anymore.
No, he’s only angry with himself. Because he knows enough about this town now to want the hell out. He’s seen the signs. He knows what they mean. And Dean is out there, somewhere, waiting for him to figure it out.
No one will talk to him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know, that he can’t figure it out. There’s religious symbols and sigils on every window, every door. There’s no library and no town hall, but there’s a cemetery near the church.
A cemetery with tombstones for a hell of a lot of children. Some epidemic swept the town two years before, took nearly all of the kids…quite a few adults too. Then…it just stopped.
The graveyard is protected too. Sigils, symbols…old folk magic. Then there were the graves set apart…outside the fence. On unconsecrated land.
Andrew Murga, Andrea Murga and Joseph Murga. Joseph was the oldest, his death dated to ten years before. Then Andrea, who he assumed was Joseph’s wife. Five years later. Andrew though…that was recent. Like around the time the epidemic seemed to stop. He would have been 19 or so when he died.
Not that any of that is actually helpful. But it was something. Maybe the townspeople thought this Murga kid had something to do with it. Maybe…he remembers a mailbox, broken and hanging on it’s post on the way into town…Murga written in blue on a white rusted out box.
It’s a better lead than any since the bar and minding his own business, so he heads to the car. Even if it’s nothing…it’s better than sitting around here waiting for Dean to come back on his own.
There’s been more cold soup, and more bleeding and he’s beginning to think Sammy might not actually be coming for him. He has no feeling left in his hands or his feet, and he’s made out that as much as the kid tells him Nana is crazy, the kid’s way ahead of her.
And the mother’s there. He’s seen her now. She’s dead, of course, but since when does that stop some people? She obviously doesn’t like him. But then, what ghost has ever liked the ones who hunt them and put them down?
And Nana’s getting more lucid with every feeding, less tolerant of the way the boy manhandles her. She’s gonna be the bigger problem eventually. Half her dementia was starvation.
Of course, at this point he is teetering on the brink of dementia himself, curing her and damning himself.
Because, the kid is crazy. Fucking whacko insane. But the old woman was definitely a vampire…or some other blood-sucking fiend that he didn’t know about.
His wrists are ripped to hell, but he thinks he might be close to getting one free when the door creaks open. It’s too early for a feeding, either the kid feeding him or the old woman looking for more…and just like that his left hand slides out of blood soaked ropes and he’s hanging on with his right, but that isn’t going to last and before he can see the kid, he’s crashing to the floor.
“Dean!” The whisper is urgent and deep and not the kid’s, and he rolls over, spotting Sam moving toward him. He’s trying to talk around the gag, and Sam is trying to quiet him, then his mouth is free and Sam’s working on what’s left of the ropes.
“We gotta get out of here,” he says, though his body has plans more inclined to passing out. He’s bleeding again from the stomach wound and both thighs. And he’s lost a lot of blood, but Sam is there.
“Take it easy, man.”
“Ghost,” he squeezes out before Momma is taking a whack at Sam and Sam’s flying over the floor. “She’s gone to get the kid. We gotta go.”
He ‘s struggling to his feet, lurching for the door, even as Sam joins him, slips an arm under his and pulls him to lean against the stronger body.
The stairs are difficult and Sam nearly carries him, up and out into a house that looked like a fourteen year old lived there alone. He can hear him now, yelling and running and Sam’s propelling him out of the house, out into the falling snow and it takes a minute to realize he’s nearly naked, and it’s freezing and he’s leaving a trail of blood…
“Dean, come on.”
Sam’s pulling him, and he feels a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold. “Wards?”
“Keeps vampires out…or in this case, in.”
“Kid’s not a vampire,” he mutters as shivers take over his body, though he isn’t sure if it’s the cold or the shock.
“I know.”
He’s coming now, with a gun in his hands, but Sam has one too. “I don’t want to kill you, Kid.” Sam murmurs as he leans him against the impala and turns. There’s the sound of the shotgun cocking, then a bang as Sam fires first. The kid’s down, one shot between the eyes.
And then Sam’s wrapping him in a blanket, settling him into the car. “I got you Dean. You’re going to be okay.”
“T-took you l-long enough.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.”
There was a warm bath and stitches at the motel, and they were on the road despite the winter storm warnings a few hours later.
They can’t see the body from the road. But neither of them is inclined to investigate further. He was well inside the protective barrier, so it was possible the old woman had dealt with the body.
He’s struck by an odd thought as they get back into the car. “Full moon’s in three days?”
Sam nods and guides them back on to the road.
“What do you suppose a werewolf would taste like to a vampire?”
“You don’t think…”
He shrugs, too tired to really care beyond the curiosity, though they would have to come back now, rather than just leave the old woman to starve. “Don’t know, Sammy…just thinking out loud.”