Season Two

Episode Twenty: Unfinished

by Irismay42 & Thru Terry's Eyes

Part Three

Outside Mansfield Public School
May 1993

“What’s goin’ on?”

Missy Monaghan turned slightly, almost choking on her day-glo pink bubblegum when she realized who it was that had just addressed her.

“Oh, hey Dean,” she said casually, fluttering eyelashes clumped together with so much mascara Sam was surprised she didn’t collapse under the weight.

He glanced up at Dean, who he wasn’t entirely sure had noticed the way Missy’s airhead girlfriends were giggling hysterically behind perfectly-manicured fingers, his attention for once not on any female drawing breath nearby but instead on the big handwritten sign taped lopsidedly to the school’s closed front doors:

“School closed due to unforeseen circumstances. Principal Reeve apologizes for any inconvenience caused.”

“Well,” Missy glanced back at her giggling gaggle of girlfriends before ensuring her attention was all on Dean. “I heard somebody died–”

“Someone died?”

Sam stepped forward abruptly, dragging Missy’s rapt attention away from his brother for all of three seconds.

“That’s what I heard,” she confirmed, raking her gaze over Sam as if he were a particularly disgusting insect, before turning her dazzling white smile back on to Dean. “But at least we get a day off school, right?” she simpered, batting her eyelashes. “Maybe we could go to the mall? I’ll let you buy me a smoothie…”

The invitation was far from subtle, but Dean unaccountably seemed to miss it completely, brows drawn together in obvious concern. “Who died?” he asked, making no move to respond to Missy’s advances.

Maybe he was sick, Sam mused.

“Heard it was a teacher,” Harmony Bishop piped up, garnering an over-the-shoulder scowl from Missy which she promptly ignored. “Slipped and fell down the stairs. Broke his neck or something.”

Dean exchanged a suspicious glance with Sam, before turning back to Missy with an evil glimmer of a smile flickering briefly on his lips. “Oh God, please let it be Mr. Entwhistle –”

“Dean!” Sam chided him, shocked.

“What?” Dean looked down at his brother, all innocent self-justification. “The guy’s a dick, Sam,” he pronounced, Missy and her flunkies giggling in sycophantic agreement.

Sam frowned at them. “No need to wish him dead.”

“Treats me like I’m an idiot,” Dean continued. “How was I supposed to know ‘mastication’ meant ‘chewing’ and not –”

“Dean!”

“What?”

Sam sighed heavily. “We should go.”

Missy reached out a tentative hand, gently running her fingers over Dean’s upper arm and looking up at him suggestively through her considerable lashes. “Are you sure you don’t want to come to the mall with me?” she wheedled, squeezing slightly and barely suppressing a sigh as she felt the unexpected firmness of Dean’s bicep. “We could maybe sneak in to a movie – I hear they’re previewing that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie this week. Sleepless in San Francisco or something.”

Dean’s gaze drifted to Missy as if only just realizing she was there. He looked at her appraisingly for a second, parts of him considering things his brain really knew he shouldn’t be considering while he weighed up the relative pros and cons of enduring some girlie chick flick with her.

“Hey, Missy!” A voice suddenly emanated from the direction of the parking lot. “If Weirdchester’s too cheap to buy you a crappy smoothie, least I can do is spring for a chocolate sundae, huh?”

Missy’s attention shifted to the athletic junior making his way across the parking lot from where he’d left the engine of his brand new Mercedes convertible running idly. She glanced back at Dean, who affected his best air of detached indifference, still smiling at him hopefully as she murmured, “Oh, hi Dale,” with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, not even bothering to turn around.

The school track star pulled up next to her, draping one long, cashmere-clad arm possessively over her shoulder but never taking his eyes off Dean. “Something I can help you with, freakshow?” he asked pointedly.

Dean merely shrugged. “Not looking for pointers in being an asshole right now, Corrigan, but thanks for the offer,” he replied calmly, unconsciously reaching behind him for Sam. “You got that down to a science, though, I gotta admit.”

Corrigan bared his perfect white teeth at him for a second, but was prevented from trading further insults with the annoying little upstart by Missy suddenly shrugging off his arm and almost desperately asking Dean one last time, “Are you sure you can’t come to the mall, Dean?”

Corrigan blanched, obviously affronted by Missy’s unfathomable lack of taste, and Dean grinned, tilting his head slightly in what Sam immediately recognized as his patented “James Dean” moody-gaze-off-into-the-distance. “Maybe another time, babe,” he drawled. “Got things to do and places to be.”

Missy’s disappointment was palpable, and Dean cast her an enigmatic smile as he turned away, pointedly ignoring Corrigan’s growled, “Weirdo Winchester,” as he made to steer Sam back in the direction of the motel.

Sam cast one disapproving scowl over his shoulder in Corrigan’s direction before turning his attention back to his brother. “Just exactly where do you have to be?” he asked, frowning. “And what happened to ‘love ’em and leave ’em, Sammy’?”

Dean shuddered. “Dude. Seriously. You think I’m letting Missy Monaghan stick her tongue down my throat after it’s been anywhere near Dale Corrigan? I got some standards, y’know.” He shrugged. “Besides, I’d probably end up choking on her bubblegum and that’s the kind of mastication I can do without.”

“Gross!” Sam burst out, as close as he ever got to speechless. “And – and – gross!”

Dean snickered, ruffling Sam’s hair. “Out of the mouths of babes…”

Sam shoved his brother’s hand away testily. “Am not a ‘babe’!” he protested.

“No you’re not,” Dean agreed. “You’re my trusty sidekick research nerd and you’re gonna spend the day making sure we hit the right grave tonight –”

“You said that wasn’t my fault!”

Dean shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

Sam sniffed. “Woman’s prerogative, I guess,” he snarked, ducking to avoid the hand about to come into sharp contact with the back of his head.

“Smartass.”

“Dumbass.”

“Geek.”

“Airhead.”

Mansfield Memorial Park
May 1993
12.25 a.m.

“So you’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!”

“Really sure?”

“Dean–!”

“Alright, keep your pantyhose on there, Gertrude! Just don’t want to waste another night digging up the rest of the nutjob librarian’s entire family.”

“It was one grave, Dean,” Sam observed as the blade of his shovel cut into the recently-laid turf covering the remains of Carlyle Withers III.

Dean grinned, his own shovel having already excavated a good couple of inches of dirt over near the gravestone. “Don’t worry, Sammy,” he snickered. “When the time comes for your funeral, I’ll make sure to bury a map with you. Wouldn’t want you to get lost trying to find your own grave, now would we?”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Don’t worry Dean,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “You keep watching Sesame Street and hopefully when the time comes you’ll actually be able to read your gravestone.”

The two of them glared at each other over their shovels for a second, before both suddenly started to snigger in unison.

Dean shook his head. “Jeez, Sammy. We better make sure Dad never finds out about this or the scariest thing he’ll ever let us near will be that shopping mall Santa we ran into in Oklahoma City that time!”

Sam shuddered. “Dude, don’t. I still have nightmares about that guy…”

They continued digging in silence for several minutes, until Sam finally stole a look at his brother and hesitantly asked, “We’re doing the right thing aren’t we?” causing Dean to pause before meeting his uncertain gaze.

“Sure we are,” Dean assured him, although his confidence of the previous day seemed to have waned somewhat. “Someone died today, Sam. And if Dad were here, he’d do something about it. But he’s not. And that’s why he trained us – to take care of this kind of stuff when he’s not around. To make sure that we know what we have to do to stop it from happening again.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed reluctantly. “This is what Dad would want us to do –” He bit off the rest of his sentence at the sudden sound of a dog barking nearby.

Really nearby.

“Over here!” a gruff voice suddenly yelled. “I heard voices!”

Sam’s panicked gaze tore instantly to Dean, who stared back at him, eyes deer-in-the-headlights big.

“This way!”

A different voice, and suddenly there were flashlight beams playing across several crumbling gravestones under a nearby stand of trees.

“Crap.”

Dean grabbed his shovel at the same time as he grabbed Sam’s shoulder, tugging at the younger boy’s jacket as he tried to urge him in the opposite direction to the rapidly approaching flashlights.

“C’mon, Sammy!” he barked urgently, his kid brother seemingly rooted to the spot in abject horror. “Sam, now!”

It was an order, and for once Sam obeyed, feet suddenly responding to commands again as he began to tear after his brother, the two of them running flat out down the grassy grave-strewn hillside until they finally reached the little gap in the cemetery railings through which they’d entered, Dean shoving Sam through first and following straight after, ashen-faced and breathing hard.

“Dean, what do we do?” Sam was asking, still clutching the shovel as Dean rearranged the canvas bag containing salt, lighter fluid and several boxes of matches on his shoulder.

Dean shook his head, glancing back the way they’d come, to where the figures of two men could be seen silhouetted against the dancing flashlights up on the brow of the hill. “Nothing we can do, Sammy –” he began, turning back to his brother with a defeated slump in his shoulders, just as another growling voice suddenly barked,

“Hey! You boys! Whaddya think you’re doing?”

Both boys’ eyes shot to the pickup truck parked a few feet away at the cemetery entrance, a burly man in mud-caked jeans beginning to clamber out of the driver’s seat.

“– Except maybe run!” Dean finished his sentence by reaffirming his grip on Sam’s shoulder and pulling hard, the two of them hightailing it as fast as they could down the street in the opposite direction to the pickup truck, feet pounding on concrete in perfect time to their hammering hearts.

They didn’t stop running until they were back in the motel room, backs jammed against the door as they stood shoulder to shoulder, panting hard and trying not to lose their dinner on the interestingly multi-hued carpet.

“Crap,” Dean said again once he’d regained his breath. “Crap.”

“Dean?” Sam panted. “You think they’ll recognize us? We could get thrown in kid jail for digging someone up, right?”

Dean glanced down at him, trying for “calmly reassuring” but missing by a mile. “No way,” he said tightly. “It’s the middle of the night and it was dark as hell back there. No way they saw us.”

“They had flashlights.”

“Which they were pointing at each other, not at us,” Dean returned. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“But we still didn’t salt n’ burn Mr. Withers!” Sam pointed out plaintively. “He could still hurt someone else!”

Dean swallowed. “Yeah,” he grunted by way of agreement. “Yeah he could.”

Sam paused for a beat, before slowly looking up at his brother. “We need to call Dad.”

Dean’s eyes slid to the phone perched on the nightstand between the beds, his father’s words, “Don’t call me unless you’re dead. I mean it. I’ll check in when I can,” still ringing in his ears.

“No,” he said firmly, straightening. “Dad said we weren’t to keep calling him. And there’s probably no cell reception where he is anyway. We can handle this. We can finish the job.”

Sam raised a nervous eyebrow. “How?”

Mansfield Public School
Present Day

Sam and Dean jerked awake as their police scanner blared to life at 5.45 a.m. proclaiming a 10-32 at the Mansfield Public School.

Rubbing his eyes, Dean frowned. “What the hell’s a 10-32?” he asked thickly, unable to pull the information from his sleep-fogged brain.

Sam sat up, listening. “Drowning,” he replied. He glanced at the clock. “It’s not even 6 a.m., how could there be a drowning at the school?” He brushed his hair out of his eyes and leaned closer to the scanner as the dispatcher gave the responding unit information.

Dean struggled out of his blankets and put his feet on the floor. “Maybe we should check it out.” He stretched and scratched a hand through his hair.

Sam nodded. “It’ll just take a minute to get there.” He reached out and grabbed his jeans.

It didn’t take long to throw on some clothes and Dean was just coming out of the bathroom when the scanner came back on, making them look at each other in anticipatory disgust.

“Carla...this is Barkley, Unit ten…Jesus God…” The voice broke off but they could still hear gasps and the sound of choking. “We’ve got a possible homicide here…my God…Christ I’ve never…seen anything…like this…”

Dean grabbed his jacket. “Let’s go.”

* * * *

It was obvious from the confusion reigning at the scene that Mansfield’s finest we’re a little overwhelmed with two bizarre deaths in such a short expanse of time. The sudden influx of people moving into the relatively small town was taxing their small police force, used to dealing with the occasional drunk, car wreck, or minor domestic violence.

Judging from the frantic efforts of the few officers available trying to get the police tape up to keep the gathering onlookers out of the way they were rattled to the core.

Sam and Dean had little difficulty getting into the building unseen and made their way to the gymnasium with its adjoining pool. An official-looking name tag hung from each of their shirts and Dean had great faith in the concept that if you acted like you belonged somewhere people took it for granted you did.

The door to the office with Jared Macklin’s name on it stood open and they stepped in, looking around at the chaos in the room.

Trophies, pictures and books were strewn about the room, smashed, torn and broken. Pages that had obviously been ripped from the various books lying around were scattered everywhere, creating a trail that led right through the smashed out glass doors that faced the pool. More papers littered the concrete decking and floated on the water’s surface. Drops of blood peppered the tan carpet and most of the other surfaces.

Sam looked at Dean. “What the hell happened here?”

Dean shook his head, toeing a book. “Someone was sure pissed,” he commented. He sighed and led the way out through the glass doors, glass crunching under their boots as they stepped outside and squinted at the scene before them.

Sam made a gagging noise and looked away for a moment, getting himself together.

Dean closed his eyes briefly, cupping a hand over his mouth, then opened them again, surveying the bits and pieces of flesh that littered the concrete among the papers that were everywhere, nestling in drying pools of blood: a pathway of carnage that ended at the edge of the pool where the water was red and a police officer and two paramedics were trying to pull the ragged remains of Jared Macklin to the edge of the pool with a rescue hook.

Dean closed his eyes again as he saw thin strips of flesh trailing along in the body’s wake, soaked papers bunching up against the body as it was dragged in. The face was torn almost beyond recognition, but it was undeniably Jared Macklin.

“This is our fault,” Sam hissed in Dean’s ear. “If we hadn’t screwed up none of this would be happening.”

Dean glared at him, grabbing his arm and dragging him back to the side of the building. “You don’t know that, Sam! It’s been over fifteen years! We were a couple of dumb kids.”

Staring into Sam’s angry face Dean finally gave in. “Fine, you’re right! If we’d burned the son of a bitch like we should have, that son of a bitch,” Dean nodded at the pool, “might still be alive. Are you happy?” Dean glanced back out at the pool, where more people were gathering, the paramedics struggling to get Macklin’s body over the edge onto the concrete. One of his arms dangled by a few shreds of flesh and only a quick grab by one of the medics kept it from falling away, back into the water.

“We gotta get to those books!” Sam insisted. “There’s got to be a reason why Carlyle Withers’ spirit would vanish for fifteen years and then suddenly show up again. Something had to trigger it. Maybe all the remodeling.”

He leaned out to check the area and watched in horror as one of the paramedics gestured for a skimmer and leaning out scooped some small object out of the pool and brought it closer to examine. He lifted it from the mesh screen, a thin tendril dangling from it and carefully put it on Jared Macklin’s chest.

Sam swallowed as he realized it was an eyeball.

“Well, we can’t do anything right now,” Dean spat. “This place is crawling with people. We’ll have to come back tonight and take a look at those books, see what the hell that idiot was into.” He jerked Sam’s arm as he saw one of the older policemen suddenly catch sight of them, yelling at one of the other younger officers to get these gawkers the hell out of here.

Sam and Dean were only too happy to oblige, allowing themselves to be herded out and reprimanded along with several others who had managed to get into the building as well.

* * * *

Dean kept watch as Sam quickly gained them entrance via the rear door by the cafeteria. It was the closest section of the building to the library. Defeating the alarm system was no big deal and he was in within a few minutes.

They padded swiftly through the dark hallways, dim security lights the only infrequent illumination. Dean made a frustrated noise and an enigmatic statement about architects in general as he tried to make sense of the tangle of hallways.

“This way,” Sam murmured, giving him a push to the right. The media center doors were at the end of the hall.

Dean smacked him. “How the hell do you do that?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “C’mon.” He made short work of the lock on the door and pushed it open, slipping inside, followed by Dean.

They moved quickly to the back of the room where the media coordinator’s personal office was. Sam crouched down to pick the lock and was surprised to discover the door was open. Trading a look with Dean he slowly turned the knob and pulled the door open enough to get in.

They both stiffened as they heard someone talking loudly and from the sound of it, the someone was drunk. Helen’s office was empty, but the door in the back that led to the store room was half open and a shifting light glowed in the opening.

Dean stole carefully up to the door and peered into the next room.

Sam followed on his heels, glancing at Helen’s desk as he passed, it was piled with books, computer manuals, office supplies. On the top of one pile was a large black book that looked oddly familiar but as he reached for it Dean hissed at him and gestured him to the open door.

Sam joined him and had a look of his own.

A tall, skinny man in a white shirt and an askew tie, balding with an undershot chin, was angrily digging through a large crate of books. He would dig among the contents, pull a book out, glance at it then drop it and go back to digging. He muttered to himself, occasionally barking the words he was saying for emphasis, seeming to favor the term “crazy old bastard.”

Sam pulled Dean back out of earshot. “Do you know who that is?”

Dean glanced back into the room as the gawky man inside pulled another book from the crate that was clearly labeled “Carlyle Withers” and dementedly began ripping pages out of it, scattering them on the floor.

“Some guy trying to win the Barney Fife on crack award?”

Sam hit him. “No! That’s Steven Entwhistle!”

Dean couldn’t have looked more blank.

“He was a teacher when we were here.” Sam whispered hoarsely, trying to jog Dean’s convenient memory. “He taught Civics and American Government. I can’t believe you don’t remember him. He sent you to Detention every day – I don’t think you were in his class more than ten minutes at a time. He hated you.”

“It’s that guy?” Dean exclaimed indignantly, clapping a hand over his mouth as the words came out louder than he intended. They both paused as the sounds in the room stopped momentarily then began again with even more enthusiasm. “How was I supposed to know his name? Like you said, I was barely in his class!”

“Well he’s the new Principal,” Sam supplied, watching again as Entwhistle pulled a stack of books out and read off the titles in an angry, slurred voice.

“Grim...grimorium Verum, Natural Magick, Heptameron!” he made a disgusted noise and dropped all but the largest book. “This is all your doing you…crazy old…fool!”

Sam clutched at Dean’s arm as Entwhistle tore a handful of pages out of the book. “Dean those books are priceless!” he gasped. “We can’t let him destroy them!”

Before he was through speaking, Entwhistle, swaying now, was holding aloft a handful of yellowed parchment pages and a lighter which he flicked into life.

“Aw, hell!” Dean snarled pushing through the door.

Before they made it two steps a hot wind roared through the room and the burning pages were blown into Entwhistle’s body, fire exploding outward in a heart stopping display of instant combustion. The wind swirled around Entwhistle, engulfing him from head to toe as he screamed and staggered toward Sam and Dean who instinctively fell back.

The heat was appalling as flames rolled from the man’s body. He fell into a stack of books, shrieking and beating at himself but the flames spread to nothing else.

Looking around frantically for anything to help put the roaring flames out, Sam grabbed a canvas moving pad and tried to get close enough to Entwhistle’s raging form to throw it over him but the flames belched outward every time he or Dean came near.

The room filled with smoke and the smell of burning flesh. Entwhistle stopped screaming as his body was finally eaten away too much to hold itself up and he collapsed on top of the pile of books on Helen’s desk in a twitching, fiery heap.

Standing with their mouths open they both stared as the body continued to burn.

“Holy crap…” Dean breathed.

Sam grabbed his phone but Dean caught his arm.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling 911,” Sam replied, jerking his arm away.

“What for? He’s dead. We need to check out these books, see what the hell Withers was up to.”

“But…”

Dean rolled his eyes; he admired Sam’s sense of fair play but there was time and a place and this wasn’t it. “Trust me, Sam, he’s dead, a few more minutes isn’t gonna make him any deader than he already is.”

As if to punctuate the need for speed, the fire alarm belatedly went off.

Sam made a face but Dean had a point. He nodded, pocketing the phone and hurried after Dean back to the storeroom.

As he tore through the pile, fire alarm buzzing overhead, he had to admit it was an impressive collection. Bobby would have been slavering over them. Medieval magic books, spell casters, half a dozen grimoires Sam had never even heard of, most of them in Latin, some in Italian and French and one Spanish book with woodcuts so horrific Sam wasn’t sure he would have wanted to read the text even if he could have.

Whatever the hell Withers had been into, it wasn’t nice stuff.

He grabbed an armful of likely prospects and looked at Dean who was standing by the door looking anxious.

“C’mon, Sam we gotta go! I hear fire truck sirens!”

The instant his arms closed over the books, heat blasted his face as the same wind suddenly tore through the still room, fanning the flames on Entwhistle’s body back to life.

Oh shit…

He felt Dean hit him from the side as the glass windows suddenly exploded inwards, showering them both with jagged bits of glass. Wind roared around the room as he and Dean snatched up the books that had fallen from his grasp as Dean knocked him down and bolted across the main library floor. Books and equipment began to fly around the room, striking them despite their best efforts to dodge the objects. As a finale, computer screens began to explode in their wake, following them like bombs as they ran out the door.

Behind them the sprinklers kicked on and began to rain down into the room.

Sirens began to scream from outside and they raced back down the hallway to the cafeteria and out the back door.

Mansfield Memorial Park
May 1993
12.48 a.m.

“I can’t believe they closed the library.”

Sam’s plaintive whine cut through the chilly midnight air and Dean glanced up at him from his position in the half-dug grave of Carlyle Withers III, sitting on the edge of the grave, legs dangling below him much as they had the night before last, his cheek smeared with dirt and his hair clumped together in sweaty curls.

“Put your jacket back on,” Dean told him, noting that, despite being soaked with sweat, Sam was shivering.

“I’m not six, Dean,” Sam grouched, nonetheless tugging his discarded jacket back on and pulling it tightly about himself.

“No, if you were six you’d still be trying to help me dig,” Dean observed, returning to his steady excavation of the grave.

“I’m tired,” Sam whined defensively. “We’ve been out three nights in a row now!”

“And with the library being closed you’ve had nowhere to sleep in the daytime,” Dean observed with a wry grin. “I get it.”

Sam favored him with his most affronted scowl. “I do not sleep in the library!” he burst out, cheeks coloring. “Not – not ever!”

Dean inclined his head to one side and shrugged. “You’re right. I was getting you confused with me there for a second.”

Sam huffed. “It’s not funny,” he chided his brother. “Three kids got really badly cut up when they tried to bust in to Mr. Withers’ office this morning –”

Dean whistled. “Yep. Gotta watch them paper cuts. They can be nasty suckers.”

“Dean,” Sam continued to scold his brother. “They had to take Elijah Roberts to hospital he got cut up so bad! They reckon Mr. Withers’ books just flew at them and started attacking them when they tried to take a look!”

“They’re obviously not as good at breaking and entering as we are, Sammy,” Dean commented, heaving another shovelful of dirt out of the grave and narrowly avoiding dumping it in his little brother’s lap. He straightened, a thought occurring. “Why were the kids trying to look at Mr. Withers’ books anyway?” he asked.

Sam sighed. “Jared Macklin,” he began. “He said that – he said that…” he trailed off, suddenly more interested in minutely examining the holes in the knees of his jeans than continuing his explanation.

“Sam?”

Sam looked up, embarrassed. “He’s telling everyone you’re a Satan worshipper,” he managed eventually. “That you used Mr. Withers’ books on Black Magic to cause all the accidents in the library. He dared Elijah and his friends to go check out the books if they didn’t believe him.”

Dean just blinked at him for a second, expression unreadable.

“Dale Corrigan’s saying you put a spell on Missy Monaghan to try and make her go out with you,” Sam continued, looking away again. “And he’s telling everyone Dad’s a psycho killer who sacrifices his victims to the Devil.”

Dean surprised Sam by actually laughing at that. “Man! Is that loser desperate for a date or what?” he commented, shaking his head and resuming his digging.

Sam jumped down into the grave with him, causing him to pause again. “Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked. “The things they say about us? The things they say about Dad?”

Dean shrugged again, wiping sweat from his forehead with a muddy hand and leaving a smear of dirt across his brow. “Nope,” he said shortly. When Sam just frowned at him, he added, “Sammy, what do we care what they think? They’re never gonna know. About anything. They just go on living their stupid lives without ever once opening their eyes to see what’s really going on around them. They call us ‘weird’ and treat us like crap and make up stupid stories about us because they’re never gonna understand us, never gonna know. But that’s okay because we know, Sammy. We know, and we do something about it. We save lives. We save their lives. And it doesn’t matter whether they treat us like crap while we’re doing it, because as soon as we’re done they won’t see us for dust and we’ll be on to the next town. We’re not trying to make a life here, Sammy, so what does it matter what these people think of us? In a few weeks they won’t even remember us and we won’t remember them.”

Sam scuffed his foot against a mound of dirt beneath him. “What if we want to make a life someday, Dean?” he asked, meeting his brother’s uncomprehending gaze. “What if we want to stop moving around? What if we want to be normal like they are someday?”

Dean rammed his shovel into the earth, looking away uncomfortably. “Never gonna happen, Sam,” he said quietly. “And why would we want it to? This is it for us. And we should be grateful. At least we’ve got a purpose, a reason to be here. More than most of them can say.”

Sam didn’t respond to that, merely reaching for his shovel and resuming his digging alongside his brother, trying not to think about whether Dean was right or not. Whether this was always going to be their life.

They carried on digging for another hour or so, hands still raw from the two previous nights’ aborted attempts at excavating Carlyle Withers, until Sam decided that he’d really had enough.

“How much further?”

Dean looked up at the stars twinkling out of the patch of early morning sky visible above their heads, gauging how far they’d dug and how far they still had to go. “Another foot, maybe,” he estimated, turning his attention to Sam, who looked like he might just collapse right there and then.

Sam groaned. “Dean, maybe we should just call Dad?” he said, leaning heavily against the side of the grave. “Please? I don’t think I can dig anymore!”

“No,” Dean said firmly. “We can’t tell Dad. He’ll go nuts if he finds out the mess we made of this gig! We started this, we need to finish it.” His expression softened as Sam turned tired eyes up at him. “Look, there’s not far to go now, squirt. Tellya what, you go up top and take five. I’ll finish.”

Sam looked at him for a long moment, the stiffness in his arms and shoulders, the ache in his back and his legs and the soreness in his hands convincing him that he really couldn’t dig anymore. Not even if his life depended on it.

But from the way Dean was favoring his left hand and the way he seemed to be struggling to straighten up, Sam wasn’t sure his big brother was faring much better than he was.

“You sure?” Sam asked, reluctant to admit defeat and abandon his brother to finish the task they’d both set out to do.

Dean set his shovel aside and intertwined his fingers, making a sling for Sam to step into. “C’mon, kiddo,” he said with a tired smile. “Past your bedtime anyway.”

Sam accepted Dean’s boost gratefully, pulling himself up out of the hole and collapsing on the cold, damp turf in fatigued relief.

“I’ll get this done as quick as I can, Sam,” Dean assured him, his voice sounding oddly distant from five feet below the earth.

Sam might have responded, but he wasn’t sure, things becoming hazy as his head hit the turf and he immediately began to descend into an exhausted sleep.

The next thing he was aware of, he was convinced he was having a nightmare about the previous evening’s efforts to salt and burn the irascible librarian, the same shouts and barking dogs assaulting his eardrums as he turned over onto his back, his shoulder, arm and one leg of his jeans damp from the falling dew.

There were lights flickering behind his closed eyelids.

Eyes snapping open, Sam looked immediately in the direction of the distant stand of trees, from where the men and their dogs had approached the night before.

“Dean,” he whispered, raising his upper half off the ground in alarm, blinking sleep out of his eyes as he tried to determine whether or not he was dreaming. “Dean?” His voice was a little louder, the sounds of barking dogs a lot closer than they had been a few seconds ago, flashlights illuminating a white marble angel only three or four rows of graves away as they swept down the hill in their direction, like searchlights in a black and white war movie. “Dean!”

Sam jumped to his feet, grabbing the canvas bag and almost falling in headfirst as he skidded to a stop at the edge of the nearly-dug grave. “Dean, we gotta go!” he yelled, playing his own flashlight down into the hole, where Dean blinked up at him from a mud-smeared face, the whites of his eyes unnaturally illuminated by the beam of Sam’s flashlight.

“Sam, I’m nearly there –” Dean began to protest, but Sam cut him off.

“Too late!” he snapped. “We gotta go!”

“Over there! It’s the Withers grave again!” A man’s voice cut through the night air, and Dean’s eyes widened even further.

Hesitating for only a microsecond, he tossed the shovel up out of the grave, holding his hand up for Sam to grab hold of.

“Help me up, Sammy!” he yelled, trying to find purchase in the slick mud of the grave wall with his other hand. “Quickly!”

Sam dropped to his knees, glancing back over his shoulder towards the approaching flashlights, barking dogs and thudding boots of angry men as he grabbed hold of Dean’s hand with his own, blisters screaming as he tried to haul his brother up out of Carlyle Withers’ not-so-final resting place.

“Dean, I can’t!” he burst out, panicking, looking down into the hole at his brother’s frantic face. “You’re too heavy!”

“Bull!” Dean snapped. “Too many Gummi Bears and not enough push-ups for you, Sammy! You can do this!” He blinked up at his brother. “Sam, you gotta do this.” He laughed nervously. “You don’t want me to wind up in Juvie for real, do you?”

Sam shook his head fervently, glancing back as one of the dogs, a slavering Rottweiler, became clearly visible only a couple of rows of gravestones away. “I can do this,” he told himself. “I can do this.”

Gritting his teeth and wrapping his left hand around Dean’s wrist, Sam pulled with every bit of strength he had left in him and more besides, Dean grabbing for the edge of the grave with his left hand as he scrabbled at the wall of the grave with his feet.

“That’s it, Sam!” Dean encouraged his brother, managing to get his left elbow up onto the grave’s edge and wedging one foot against a large rock sticking out of the grave wall just as a flashlight beam backlit Sam and a man’s voice ordered,

“You over there! Don’t move!”

Dean pointedly ignored that order, swinging one leg up out of the grave and hauling the rest of him up in its wake, scrambling to his feet, Sam’s hand still clutched in his own. “Run, Sam!” he ordered, fairly dragging Sam behind him as they charged back down the hill, the dogs having reached the open grave and the men not far behind.

“You there!”

Dean skidded to an abrupt halt as another man appeared not twenty feet below them at the bottom of the hill, a dark silhouette raised to his shoulder that might very well have been a shotgun. “Crapola,” he muttered, casting about himself for an alternative escape route and, finding none, his eyes latching on to the next best thing. “This way, Sam!”

Running for a large granite crucifix, Dean tugged Sam down behind it before dodging back into some nearby bushes, thorns snagging his clothes as he shoved his way through, coming out at the entrance to a squat black marble crypt that had probably cost the “Mayberry” family a ton of cash back in the day.

“No.” Sam dug his heels in and wouldn’t move.

“Sam?” Dean grit out. “This is no time to get squeamish!”

Sam shook his head vehemently. “I’m not going in there. Not again. Not after last time!”

Dean knew Sam still had nightmares about their previous adventure in crypt-breaking, but he really didn’t see an alternative, the barking dogs sniffing at the other side of the bushes and blue and white lights clearly visible up on the pathway beyond the trees covering the back of the crypt. A police radio crackled, and an authoritative voice cut through the shrubbery behind them.

“Come out right now! Mansfield Police!”

Sam looked up at Dean with an expression that at any other time would have turned his resolve to jelly. But this time, there was no alternative.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” he said, putting one firm hand on Sam’s shoulder and bending slightly to look him in the eye. “We get caught, you know what’ll happen, right? CPS’ll have a field day. You think Dad’ll ever get us back?”

Sam yielded slightly, the tension in his body relaxing visibly as he reluctantly allowed Dean to pull him towards the crypt. “You promised me we’d never have to go in one of these places again,” he grouched, nevertheless following his brother in through a tiny gap between the crypt door and the slightly crumbling door jamb.

Dean nodded, pulling Sam down into a crouch next to him as he shoved his shoulder up against the door, ensuring the place would look undisturbed to any curious passersby. “I know, Sammy,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry. We’ll just hang here for a little bit, and when the cops get tired of not finding us and head back to the station house or the donut shop or wherever the hell cops go when they’re not hassling kids trying to burn the remains of an undead school librarian, we’ll book, okay?” He put a reassuring hand on the back of Sam’s neck and ducked down towards him. “Okay?”

Sam nodded reluctantly. “Okay,” he agreed, eyes skittering nervously about him as a single beam of moonlight speared through a crack in the roof and illuminated the pitch black interior of the crypt in which he found himself.

From what he could see, there were three coffins all raised on marble plinths, tarnished brass name plates unreadable in the half-light and copious cobwebs hanging from the vaguely unstable-looking ceiling. Several empty sconces were arranged at intervals around the walls, and Sam wasn’t sure whether they were for illumination or for flowers. Either way, they didn’t look like they’d been used in a very long time.

He felt Dean’s arm tighten around his shoulder as his breathing had begun to quicken, and he took some comfort in knowing that at least he wasn’t alone and they weren’t locked in this time.

“They came this way!” A voice suddenly broke the silence outside, more police radios audible as footsteps approached their position.

“Dean –” Sam began to whisper, but his brother clapped a hand over the younger boy’s mouth, raising a finger to his own lips and not letting go of his brother until Sam nodded his understanding.

“Damn kids,” a different voice said, and Dean was pretty sure it was the same guy who’d been in the pickup truck at the cemetery’s entrance the night before. “Three nights they’ve been back, trying to dig up the poor old Withers family.”

“You think it’s the same kids, Wayne?” the first voice said, clearly one of the police officers.

“I didn’t see ’em too good last night,” the second voice – Wayne – said. “Definitely a coupla kids though. Couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve.” Dean scowled at that. “But my boss said I oughta call the cops if there was any sign of ’em tonight.”

“We lost ’em,” a third voice, slightly out of breath, joined the first two. “Dogs can’t find ’em anywhere. Swear to God, these two are about as much use as Lassie with no nose, no legs and a doggie hearing aid.”

“You get a look at them, Ned?” the cop asked.

“Not really,” Ned replied. “Skinny kid and a chubby smaller one…”

Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Dean replaced his hand over it quickly.

“…Don’t know what beef they got with the Withers family though.”

“I blame that goddamn movie,” Wayne put in with a grunt. “That cheerleader vampire thing. [i]Bunny the Vampire Slayer[/i] or some such nonsense. Kids think it’s ‘cool’ to hang out in cemeteries waiting for monsters to show up. Swear to God…”

“I loved that movie!” Ned burst out, in perfect time with Dean whispering exactly the same words to Sam.

“That is so lame,” Sam whispered back.

“Kristy Swanson though…” Dean muttered, gaze going distant for a second. “She could stake me any day of the week…”

“That’s just sick,” Sam commented. “And Dad says vampires don’t exist anyway.”

“You always did have crappy taste in movies, Neddy boy,” Wayne sniggered.

“Well,” the cop put in, “whatever their motive, I don’t think they came this way. C’mon, we’ll head back up to the squad car. Maybe keep a lookout from there.”

Sam crumpled visibly. “Aw, man…” he whispered, leaning his head against the crypt door.

Dean patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, chubby,” he muttered. “Cops have short attention spans. Soon as he wants a cup of coffee, he’ll be outta here, I promise.”

* * * *

It was five a.m. before Dean finally heard the sound of an engine turning over and the crunch of gravel under tires.

The chink of moonlight peeking through the hole in the roof was beginning to turn an early morning gray and he couldn’t help thinking that they had to be at school in three hours and really couldn’t show up covered in grave dirt.

Sam was snoring softly against his shoulder, still trembling a little bit, even with Dean’s arm wrapped tightly around him. Dean himself had nearly succumbed to sleep several times while the cops maintained their stubborn stakeout, jerking himself awake every time his head started to droop for fear of the lawmen or the groundsmen sneaking up on them when they weren’t expecting it.

He listened intently for several minutes, the sound of birdsong the only thing to reach his ears apart from Sam’s regular breathing.

“Wake up, Sammy,” he said softly, gently nudging his brother until his eyes slitted open.

“Mmmmm?” he murmured sleepily.

“C’mon, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean said. “Time to go.”

“The cops have gone?” Sam still sounded distant and only half awake, eyes blinking in the muted light.

“Uh-huh,” Dean confirmed.

“We still got to finish digging up Mr. Withers?”

Dean thought about that one for a second. “Not today,” he said eventually. “We’ve got to get to school. And right now you look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, squirt.”

Sam blinked again, eyes becoming more focused. “But we didn’t finish the job,” he said quietly. “Mr. Withers could still hurt people.”

Dean barely covered a wince. “I know, Sammy,” he said softly, gently helping his brother to his feet. “I know.”

Mansfield Memorial Park
Present Day
2.48 a.m.

Dean stared six feet down into the earth, the decayed remains of Carlyle Withers III staring sightlessly back up at him from beneath the remnants of his splintered coffin lid.

“Ugly old bastard,” he murmured, leaning on his shovel. “Took me fifteen years to dig up your moldy old bones, you sonofabitch.”

Sam began to shake copious amounts of rock salt into the grave, glancing briefly up at his brother. “Get the lighter fluid, will ya?” he urged. “Got some serious excavatus interruptus flashbacks goin’ on here.”

Dean looked up at him, grinning. “How many times did we try to dig this sucker up?”

“Three,” Sam replied. “Nearly got caught the last time.” He glanced over his shoulder, up the hill to where he vividly recalled the sound of barking dogs and the beams of approaching flashlights.

“Oh yeah,” Dean agreed, “I remember. Ended up in that crypt for the whole night with the cops outside waiting to bust us!” He shook his head as he dug a can of lighter fluid out of the canvas bag at Sam’s feet.

“I’ll never know how the hell we avoided Child Protective Services that time,” Sam muttered. “Especially when Miss McKenzie noticed I had graveyard dirt in my hair the next day!”

Dean sniggered as he squirted lighter fluid into the open grave. “Can’t believe she even saw that – I always thought you could hide a bird’s nest in that mop of yours and no one would find it.”

Sam cast him a “screw you” scowl. “You know, we were lucky,” he said at length. “Things could have gone a whole lot worse than they did. If Old Man Withers’ spirit hadn’t been dormant these last fifteen years, the body count could have been a helluva lot higher.”

Dean nodded his agreement. “We screwed this up royally when we were kids, Sammy,” he said. “Dale Corrigan and Mr. Entwhistle were both assholes, but they shouldn’t have died like that. Not if we’d done this right the first time around.”

“And Jared Macklin?”

Dean shrugged. “Meh. Jury’s still out on that one.”

Sam sighed. “Look, it wasn’t our fault, Dean,” he said, moving over to stand at his brother’s shoulder. “We were kids.”

They both looked down into the grave, for a second lost in their own memories.

“It’s no excuse,” Dean said finally. “When we realized we couldn’t finish the job, we should have told Dad. He would have fixed it. He would have put this sucker down.”

“And kicked our asses in the process…”

Mansfield, OH
May 1993

“Dean, get your ass in gear right now, I’m not kidding, boy!”

Dean opened one eye wearily, fixed it on the half-open bathroom door and tried to pretend this was all a bad dream. He’d not slept in three nights, hurt all over as if he’d been kicked from here to Iowa by the entire school football team, and added to that, Dad had come back from his hunt pissed off and grouchy.

He and Sam had only come home for a catnap after school and a quick visit to the local burger bar, another attempt at Carlyle Withers’ grave already planned for that night. But glancing at the clock on the nightstand, Dean saw that it was already nine p.m. and explaining they needed to go salt and burn the school librarian to their dad in his current mood wasn’t going to be an easy task.

Sam was sitting on the other bed watching him, hair tousled and dark circles under his eyes as if he’d not slept in a month. The bruise on his cheek where Jared Macklin had slapped him was fading, but Dean knew there’d still be hell to pay when Dad saw it.

“Sammy, you spoken to Dad yet?”

Sam shook his head. “He was already in the bathroom when I woke up,” he said, looking down at his bare feet. “I’ve not seen him yet. I was – I was waiting for you to get up.”

Dean groaned, levering himself up onto his elbows before finally managing to sit. He rubbed at his eyes as the sound of the bathroom cabinet opening and the contents being hastily shoved into a duffel bag caused Sam to ask,

“We’re moving again, aren’t we?”

Dean didn’t answer, instead swinging his legs off the bed and dragging a hand through his hair tiredly. “We better go talk to him,” he said, standing and making a move toward the bathroom door, Sam close by at his heels.

Taking a breath, he plastered on his best fake smile and opened the door, only to be greeted by the sight of his father glaring at him over a half-packed duffel balanced precariously on the side of the bathtub.

“Hey, Dad,” he said brightly. “You made it back in one piece. Good hunt?”

John squinted at him, as if gauging his sincerity level. “Don’t be a smartass, son,” he grunted. “It doesn’t suit you.”

Dean raised his chin a little and smirked lopsidedly. “C’mon, Dad, it totally suits me!” he protested.

A tiny smile began to flicker across John’s lips but faded rapidly into a grimace when he caught sight of Sam cautiously emerging from behind his eldest son. “Dean, what the hell happened to your brother?” he demanded instantly, pushing Dean aside and crossing the short distance between himself and his youngest so fast Sam barely had time to blink before his father’s hand was gripping his chin and forcing his bruised cheek up to the light.

“Got in a fight,” Sam said in a small voice, trying to look away.

Dean stepped in front of him slightly. “My fault,” he said quickly, calmly meeting John’s heated gaze. “Shoulda been there and I got caught up with something else.”

“Female something else?” John hazarded.

Dean forced his cockiest grin. “Is there any other kind?” he asked, casually putting an arm around Sam’s shoulders and easing him away from the probing hands of their father.

“Well,” John pronounced, straightening. “I hope she was worth it ’cause as soon as we’re settled you’ll be pulling kitchen duty for the next month.”

Dean could feel Sam’s eyes on him, even though the younger boy was standing behind him. He swallowed. “‘Settled’?” he echoed a little uncertainly.

John resumed his obvious packing, retrieving the emergency shotgun from its position under the sink in the murky kitchenette and adding it to the duffel he’d slung on the table. “Hunt two states over,” he said. “Could be a succubus. Won’t know till I get there.”

“You – you said we could finish up the school year here,” Sam piped up suddenly, a trace of defiance in his voice.

“We only have a few weeks left,” Dean added quickly, trying to soften his brother’s protest. “Couldn’t we –”

“Hunt won’t wait a few weeks, Dean, and you know that,” John said, tone clipped and brooking no argument. “Get yourself and your brother packed. We’re leaving tonight. I wanna be in Tennessee by tomorrow morning.”

Sam shoved Dean insistently in the ribs, the older brother casting him a warning glance before John suddenly asked, “Cat got your tongue, Sammy?”

Sam froze, fingers curling in the back of Dean’s t-shirt. “No sir,” he said quietly. He nudged Dean again.

John raised an eyebrow. “Dean? Something you boys want to tell me?”

The brothers exchanged a guilty look before Dean shook his head slightly. “No sir,” he said at length. “We’ll go pack.”

He turned, spinning Sam with him and nudging him insistently in the small of his back until Sam reluctantly complied, allowing Dean to push him toward the walk-in closet in the corner of the room. Sam glanced back at their father, who was hefting the duffel and a canvas bag containing the shotgun out of the room toward the waiting Impala.

“Dean, we can’t just leave…!” Sam burst out as soon as Dad was out of earshot, desperate anxiety written all over his face. “We didn’t finish… We didn’t…”

“I know, Sammy,” Dean said with a sigh, shuffling into the closet and retrieving the duffel bags they always kept half-packed at the bottom. “But there’s nothing we can do. We gotta go, you heard Dad.”

“We should tell him.”

“The mood he’s in right now? Thanks, Sammy, but I’d like to live to see fifteen.”

“But what about ‘Winchesters don’t leave a job unfinished’?”

Dean looked at him as he hefted the duffel bags onto the nearest bed. “This time they have to, Sam,” he said, wearily. “Even if we tell Dad, he’s not gonna let us stay to fix this. You heard him. He wants to be in Tennessee tomorrow.” His shoulders slumped as he began mechanically stuffing Sam’s clothes into one of the bags. “At least we tried, Sammy.”

Sam bit his lip. “But what if someone else gets hurt?”

Dean glanced back up at him, a guilty sigh on his lips. “I don’t know, Sammy,” he said truthfully. “But there’s nothing else we can do about it right now.”

Mansfield Memorial Park
Present Day

“Why didn’t we ever tell Dad?” Sam finally asked, eyes still locked on the remains of Withers, dirt crumbling into the open grave as his boot strayed too close to the edge.

Dean snapped himself out of the dragging silence as Sam spoke, lost in his own thoughts. He shrugged. “I dunno. So much stuff was always happening and we never came back this way.” He shrugged again, uncomfortable in the face of their obvious failure. “Hell, Sam, we were kids, we did something we shouldn’t have, tried to prove something that didn’t matter.”

“People have died that shouldn’t have,” Sam replied, getting that hitch in his voice that Dean hated, gave him that crawly feeling that he should have been able to stop this and now here they were.

“I know that, Sam!” he snapped, rubbing a hand over his face and raking it back through his hair, snorting in angry bad humor. “I guess the fact that they were total jerks doesn’t matter.”

Sam sighed, knowing Dean didn’t mean it the way it sounded. “Dean…”

“Okay, okay…I get it. We can’t change what’s happened. It’s done. All we can do is burn this mother and hope it ends here.” He flicked on a lighter and tossed it in the box below, drawing back with a slight squint as flames shot upwards.

“You know the attacks stopped after the library was closed,” Sam remarked, watching the corpse burn. “They didn’t start again until all this new stuff started going on. After the crate was opened.”

Dean reached down and grabbed up the items scattered on the ground next to his feet and wearily stuffed them into the rucksack. “So?”

“I want to take a look at the books we got away with. Something about this is still bugging me.” He accepted the duffel Dean handed him.

Dean snagged the two shovels and the pick. He sighed, looking up at Sam. “You don’t think this is over, do you?”

Sam looked at him. “Do you?”

They stared at each other for a moment, then Dean shook his head. “No. I don’t, dammitall. Something still feels wrong.”

They walked slowly back to the Impala and loaded their equipment in the trunk.

It was a silent ride to the motel.

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The Winchester Chronicles