Season Three

Episode Three: Hole In The World

By irismay42

Part Two

Okay, don’t panic, Sam told himself, leaping out of bed and nearly wrenching the bathroom door off its hinges in an effort to find his missing brother.

“Dean!”

Nope, not in there. Think, Sam…

Keys. Impala keys. He never goes anywhere without that car…

Sam stopped abruptly as his eyes lit on the key ring still sitting on top of the slightly lop-sided wooden dresser.

We’ll take something more valuable…

No. No, that had just been a dream. Sam had been dreaming. No one had said those words to him. No one had warned him that…that…

“Dean!”

Sam threw open the motel room door, insensible to the early morning chill of the parking lot, the other residents who may have been spying out of grimy windows to see what all the noise was about, or the fact that he was only wearing his underwear.

The Impala stared back at him silently.

No. No, this wasn’t happening.

He turned, slamming the door closed again and grabbing his jeans.

Haris couldn’t possess Dean before. The amulet wouldn’t let him. So if this was demons…

But what if it wasn’t? What if this wasn’t demons and the thing that had been trying to get into Sam’s head had… Taken something more valuable?

Struggling into a shirt and his jacket, Sam reached down for his sneakers, his hand brushing against Dean’s boots, still lined up neatly where Sam had left them last night, under the chair by the door which…

Sam just stood, numbly looking at his brother’s jacket draped over the back of the chair.

It was pretty chilly out and Dean didn’t have any shoes…

Okay, enough! Snap out of it, Sam! They did something to him and you’re the only one who can find him!

Sam yanked on his sneakers before grabbing one of the duffels and beginning to stuff it with everything from Dean’s sawed-off Remington to a flask of holy water, silver bullets to rock salt rounds, a Bible to Dad’s journal.

Snatching up the keys to the Impala, Sam grabbed Dean’s jacket and boots before stepping out into the deserted parking lot, slamming the motel room door shut behind him so hard the window rattled. Stalking over to the waiting Chevy, he yanked open the door and slid purposefully into the driver’s seat. Then he just sat there for a second, staring out of the windshield and breathing heavily.

C’mon, Sammy, get a grip! Dean’s voice echoed in his head.

“Dammit,” he swore softly.

Gunning the engine, he quickly snapped off the CD player as it began to blare out Motorhead’s The Ace of Spades, trying not to think about how Dean always insisted on screaming along at the top of his lungs, head thrown back in a self-proclaimed “homage to Lemmy.”

Shoving the car into gear, he screeched out of the parking lot without the first idea of where he was going or what he would do when he got there, only one thought stuck on perpetual repeat in his brain.

Gotta find Dean…

He’d slung Dean’s boots and jacket onto the passenger seat next to him and was doing his damnedest not to keep looking at them, because looking left him hoping that the next time he looked Dean would be sitting there bitching about Sam ruining the Impala’s transmission.

Dean’s not there, he reminded himself. But he will be soon. He will be…

Arriving at an intersection, Sam wrenched the steering wheel, slewing the Chevy to the left and straight through a red light as he hurtled towards the road to Worcester. It wasn’t even 5 a.m. and Sam figured all the traffic cops would be sitting in some coffee shop eating donuts. Or whatever cops who weren’t in The Simpsons did at this unearthly time of the morning.

Slamming his foot down even harder against the accelerator, Sam flew down the highway so fast he wouldn’t have been surprised if he had arrived at Saint Vincent’s Hospital before he set out, having broken through the time-space continuum somewhere outside of Leicester.

He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d decided the hospital should be his first port of call in his search for his brother. Maybe he was secretly hoping there were some cops in the area and they’d found Dean wandering along the highway in bare feet and instantly decided he was a whack job who needed sectioning.

Sam knew he was unlikely to get that lucky, but he at least figured if Dean wasn’t at the hospital, then Rosa might be able to give him some clue as to where he should start looking.

Of course, he also doubted Rosa would be at work at 5 a.m., but there was no way he was sitting around his motel room counting ceiling tiles and waiting for office hours to roll around while his brother was out there somewhere; maybe not himself, not in control of his actions. Alone. Barefoot and without a jacket.

Sam glanced once again at the passenger seat, clamping his lips together and pressing even harder against the accelerator.

Saint Vincent Hospital
5.30 a.m.

Pale red light was beginning to color the sky a delicate pink by the time Sam reached the hospital parking lot, which seemed pretty deserted, even for this ungodly hour. Hospital staff were shift-workers after all, and even without visitor traffic, he would have expected the lot to be fairly busy.

As it was, Sam was able to pull into a space only a few yards from the main entrance, shifting the Impala into park and glancing about himself, unnerved by the lack of movement around him.

Casting his gaze toward the E.R. entrance on the far side of the building, he noted four ambulances parked empty in the emergency bays, no paramedics or hospital staff rushing around patients strapped to gurneys or in wheelchairs; no cop cars ejecting drunks whose heads had come into sudden and unfortunate contact with the gutter; no cabs dropping off screaming women in imminent danger of giving birth right there on the asphalt.

Overall, the general atmosphere was…eerie.

Unlike Dean, Sam had never really hunted alone, and while he had no evidence to suggest anything was amiss at the hospital, his hunter’s instincts were currently screaming at him that he shouldn’t go in there, not without backup.

Still, with no backup forthcoming and his brother God knows where, Sam didn’t have a whole lot of options.

Drawing in a breath, he swung himself out of the Impala and made purposefully toward the glass lobby doors, which slid noiselessly aside to admit him into the hospital.

Stepping over the threshold, he felt a chill run down his spine.

The lobby was deserted.

Not one patient, not one visitor sat on the rigid plastic chairs in the waiting area; no clerks or nursing staff buzzed around the front desk, where the computers were still switched on and a half-eaten Danish rested atop a stack of manila folders; the elevators all stood empty, doors gaping open and no lights flashing above to indicate they had been summoned to another floor.

Sam swallowed. “Hello?” he called out hesitantly, taking a further step toward the abandoned front desk.

The only response he received was the low hum of air conditioning units and the lazy motion of screensavers.

Unsure what to do next – call the cops or just get as far away from here as he possibly could – Sam finally decided on a third course of action.

Swallowing again and wishing he’d brought his Glock with him now that it transpired hospital security wasn’t something he needed to concern himself with, he strode decisively toward the elevator bank. As he boarded one of the cars, he silently prayed that this was all some incredibly well-executed evacuation drill and the elevator doors would open onto a comfortingly bustling psych ward.

Hell, he would even have been happy to see Nurse Schwarzenegger scowling at him over her glasses right about then.

But it was not to be, the elevator doors opening only to reveal another floor as deserted and desolate as the lobby.

Inching cautiously along the hallway, the flat of his left hand pressed against the cold gray wall, the first thing Sam noticed was that the entrance to the psych ward’s secure dayroom was no longer barred, the gateway hanging open at a crazy angle from only one hinge still secured at the top.

Making his way slowly into the dayroom, he ran his gaze over upturned tables and broken chairs, several drugs carts piled atop one another in the center of the room like some whacky avant-garde sculpture.

“H-hello?” he said quietly, clearing his throat before managing to repeat the greeting a little louder. “Anyone here?”

With no answers in the affirmative forthcoming, Sam crossed the dayroom and made for a doorway that had been securely locked on his and Dean’s previous visit but now hung open, the metal door almost twisted right out of its frame.

Hesitantly entering the psych ward’s secure accommodation, Sam shuddered when he realized the door to each small room branching off the main hallway was hanging open, the occupants long gone, beds unmade and empty, possessions strewn all over the floor.

This was bad.

This was incredibly bad.

He backed up a few steps before making to turn back toward the dayroom, sucking in a sharp breath when a dark shape suddenly flung itself at him from one of the rooms he’d already passed.

Caught off guard, he was knocked backwards, hitting the wall with a thud as he instinctively brought up his arms to protect his head from whatever was attacking him, steeling himself for the inevitable punch, kick, bite or recurrent strangulation that generally accompanied occurrences such as these.

When nothing happened after several seconds of breathless waiting, he cautiously lowered his arms, only to find himself eyeball to eyeball with a disheveled Doctor Benjamin.

“Mister? Mister, can you help me?”

Her hair hung wildly around her shoulders, crisp white lab coat gone completely, eyes sunken and hollow and staring at him as if he were the last lifeboat on the Titanic.

“Doctor – Rosa?” Sam straightened, frowning at the young woman, whose pretty face was contorted into a look of confused agony. “Are you –” he reached out a hand toward her, but she lurched back, covering her head with her arms, much as Sam had done moments earlier.

“Please, mister, I’m sorry!” she burst out, cowering away from him. “I never meant to do it! I never! I never saw the baby…”

Sam frowned at her, hands held out at shoulder height to prove he had no intention of hurting her. “Rosa?” he said quietly, perplexed by the doctor’s sudden change in demeanor. Not to mention her sudden change of accent. He couldn’t quite place it, but he was inexplicably reminded of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

The woman looked up at him cautiously, slowly lowering her arms away from her face. “I never saw no baby, mister, I swear!”

Sam swallowed, deciding to play a hunch. “What’s your name?” he asked neutrally.

Rosa stiffened, back suddenly ramrod straight, shoulders back, eyes front, and Sam was uncomfortably reminded of a twelve-year-old Dean standing to attention in front of their father. “Private Frederick Clarke, sir,” the doctor snapped out smartly. “His Majesty’s 64th Regiment.”

Sam nodded. “How did you get here, Private?”

Rosa’s eyes flickered uncertainly. “Lost the rest of me regiment, sir,” she said, a trace of embarrassment in her confused voice. “Can’t find ’em nowhere, sir. Looked everywhere I did.” Her eyes were suddenly downcast, shoulders drooping again.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Sam asked gently.

Rosa seemed to shrink in on herself. “Boston, sir. Fighting the rebels, sir. The Patriots. And I – I –” She broke off, suddenly burying her head in her hands. “Didn’t see no baby. Musket just went off in me hand. Didn’t mean…”

Sam put a gentle hand on the young woman’s shoulder, and although she flinched slightly, she didn’t pull away. “Is that when you lost your regiment, Private?”

Rosa seemed to ponder that. “Terrible pain in me back, sir. Like – like nothing I ever felt before. And then – then I was – I was somewhere else. Alone. Not here. And there was –” Her eyes widened, absolute terror suddenly reflected in her dark irises. “Fire!” she cried out. “There was fire, sir! Burning. Pain beyond imagining.” She pulled away from him again, backing up against the corridor wall and sliding down, curling herself into a ball on the floor, her head buried against her knees. “Fire. Terrible. Brimstone. Brimstone…” She began to rock slowly backwards and forwards, shaking her head from side to side and repeating the words, “Never saw the baby. Never saw the baby…” over and over.

Sam sighed. He wasn’t getting anything else out of Doctor Benjamin right now, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to be any help in finding Dean. The best thing he could do for her would be to track Dean down, figure out what the hell was doing this to her town and finish it before there was no town left for them to save.

Sam gently patted her shoulder before backing slowly away from her in the direction of the dayroom. “I’ll get help for you,” he promised. “I swear, you won’t be alone for long.”

“Never meant to kill the baby, sir. Didn’t see it…”

* * * *

Sam was exceeding the speed limit.

Just a little bit.

Okay, Sam was way exceeding the speed limit.

He justified his blatant disregard for highway safety with the fact he hadn’t seen a single vehicle the entire trip from Worcester to Leicester and that his brother could be in some kind of mortal danger. If some deputy with a radar gun tried to pull him over, then he figured they deserved the humiliation that would undoubtedly follow when they found themselves eating the Impala’s dust.

Of course, if he wrapped the aforementioned Impala around a tree in his bid to escape local law enforcement, he was pretty sure Dean would be less than pleased.

It was just after 7 a.m. now, and he should have been seeing signs of life as he crossed into Leicester. But there was no one; no early morning joggers or dog walkers; no delivery vans or kids on bikes delivering the morning paper; no cops, no buses, no cabs. No nothing.

As he neared the town center he began to realize why.

They were here.

All of them.

It was almost like a scene out of one of those cheesy ’70s disaster flicks with Chuck Heston or Doug McClure. There were people everywhere – fighting, looting, running from something. Although Sam wasn’t convinced they knew from what, constantly glancing over their shoulders as they stumbled onward, no idea where they were going, picking their way through abandoned vehicles, torn down billboards, glass littering the sidewalks from smashed store windows.

A cacophony of intruder alarms almost drowned out the wailing and the screaming, and Sam had to swerve almost onto the sidewalk to avoid a man brandishing what looked like a metal fence post stumbling down the middle of the road, yelling in Russian as he waved his makeshift weapon toward the heavens.

Taking a breath, Sam briefly considered what Dean would do to him if he left the Impala here and something happened to it. But, figuring he could live with whatever punishment Dean saw fit to dish out, as long as he had Dean back to dish it, he cautiously exited the big Chevy, his Glock gripped firmly in his right hand and his brother’s silver Colt tucked in at the small of his back.

Slowly edging his way down the main road into town, it was becoming all too clear to Sam the place was a total disaster area.

And that that had been no dream he’d had last night.

It seemed the locals had all had their own nocturnal visitations, but they obviously hadn’t been able to fight off – whatever it was – the way Sam had.

And neither had Dean.

Once again, his mind tracked back to the way he had “reflected” Alyssa’s memory-stealing powers back onto her; the way he had “reflected” the spell the shaman had cast to create the tupilaq back in Canada. Maybe he had done something similar to the – whatever it was – that had tried to take possession of him last night?

Dean, apparently, had not been so fortunate.

Sam checked himself mentally, refusing to give in to the wave of guilt that always came crashing down over him whenever he considered his dubious “gifts.” After all, it wasn’t his fault he’d been able to fight this thing off when the rest of the town couldn’t. It wasn’t his fault these other people – and Dean specifically – hadn’t been so lucky. They’d been defenseless. So maybe even though most of the time he didn’t feel particularly “gifted,” this actually was a gift – because he was still in control of his faculties, still able to save his brother from whatever currently had a hold on him.

And he would save Dean. Of that he had no doubt.

Or at least, he had no room for doubt.

Dean was counting on him, and so was the rest of this town. Time to step up and be a hero. Like Dad. Like Dean. Not the sub always waiting in the dugout for his one chance at glory.

Of course, this was never about glory for Sam. Saving people, hunting things… Saving Dean. That was all that mattered to him right now, all he could think about.

Wrapped up in his own considerable angst, he almost collided headlong with a young woman he vaguely recognized as the waitress from the diner where he and Dean had eaten the night before. Belinda? Bonnie?

“Brenda.” He caught hold of the young woman’s shoulders and she glanced up at him, sparkling blue eyes now dull and desperate, devoid of any spark of recognition. Which was surprising, considering she’s made several rather – uh – forward suggestions to both Sam and Dean during the course of their meal, and had they not both been so exhausted, Sam was pretty sure Dean at least might have taken her up on a couple of them.

“Brenda, right?” Sam repeated the name, shaking her slightly. “Waitress at the diner down the street?”

The girl seemed to straighten then, righteous indignation finally igniting some fire in her eyes. “Young man,” she said, a pronounced southern cadence in her accent that definitely hadn’t been there last night. “I am certainly no waitress! I’ll have you know my husband owns the largest cotton plantation in all of Georgia!”

Sam frowned. “Your –?”

“Been in the family for generations,” Brenda continued haughtily. “Renowned throughout the country! Why, we have over a hundred Negroes working our land! My husband paid a small fortune importing them from Africa or wherever it is they come from…” She shook her head, eyes suddenly downcast. “Although if this Lincoln fellow has his way, well I honestly don’t know what will happen. Emancipation indeed.” She said the word as if it left a bitter aftertaste on her tongue. “For Negroes! Did you ever hear of such a ridiculous thing?”

Sam baulked slightly. “Wait,” he stopped her with a wave of his hand, ducking as something flew over his head and smashed into the streetlight on the corner of the block. He never even turned around to assess the damage, continuing to stare at the person formerly known as Brenda in complete horror. “Let me get this straight,” he managed, when he once again had control of his vocal cords. “Your husband’s a slave owner?”

Brenda returned Sam’s horrified gaze guilelessly, as if owning slaves was the most normal thing in the world. “Well of course he is!” she burst out, blinking in a way that suggested naive ignorance rather than malevolence. “Who else would tend our crop if not for the Negroes?”

Sam did a reasonable impersonation of a goldfish, opening and closing his mouth several times before finally managing to splutter out, “But you – you can’t own another person –!”

The girl giggled merrily. “Oh, but they’re not people, silly!”

Sam just stared at her mutely, the rational side of his brain telling him whoever was currently borrowing Brenda’s body was a product of her time, her society and her education. The emotional side of his brain, however, was struggling to resist the urge to shake some sense into her.

Finally deciding he really didn’t have the time or the energy to get into an argument on the immorality of slavery with a twenty-year-old waitress who believed herself an early nineteenth century plantation owner’s wife, Sam just shook his head and sighed. “Listen, Brenda,” he began, figuring from the look on her face that right now she didn’t take too kindly to being addressed by that name. “I gotta find my brother. I don’t guess you’ve seen him, huh? The guy who was with me in the diner last night? Y’know, yay big, short hair, loud mouth and kinda – uh – pretty in a guy sort of way?” Brenda continued to stare at him vacantly, and he wondered whether he was suddenly speaking in Swahili. “You were pretty much trying to get in his pants all evening,” he added helpfully.

The angry slap to the face kind of took Sam by surprise just a little bit, and when Brenda turned on her heel and began to stalk away, squeaking, “Young man, if you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting… Well, I am not that kind of woman!” followed by a string of affronted mutterings about never having been so offended in her entire life and having her attorney sue Sam for slander, Sam figured letting her go would probably be for the best; she wasn’t going to be any more help in finding Dean than Dr. Benjamin had been. And right now, that was pretty much all that mattered to him.

Continuing on into the town center, it wasn’t long before Sam stumbled across another familiar face, this time the weedy teenaged motel clerk who had checked them into their room last night without once taking his eyes off the TV balanced on the corner of the front desk. He was about five feet five, weighed about a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet and was utterly convinced he was an Irish navy building a railway tunnel in nineteenth century England when it collapsed in on him, burying him alive. He’d then burst forth into a litany of Hail Marys as he confessed to having slept with his brother’s wife, and, God forgive him, he never meant for it to happen.

Sam, although once again disappointed in his quest to find someone who might lead him to Dean, was beginning to put together a pattern, something all of these people from the past had in common: They were mostly horrible human beings. Killers, adulterers, thieves and liars almost to a man. Or woman. Or woman who thought she was a man.

But they weren’t demons.

Rounding a corner, he almost tripped over a stocky figure curled into a ball on the sidewalk, head on his knees as he rocked back and forth, much as Sam had last seen Rosa.

“Malik?”

Sam knelt down next to the engineer, one gentle hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Malik? You hear me?”

Malik didn’t even seem to register his presence, mumbling jumbled words under his breath in a language Sam couldn’t identify.

So far this morning, Sam had seen countless people like Malik dotted around Leicester’s streets, islands of stillness in the midst of chaos, all in some state of deep shock or trauma, pressed into doorways or curled up behind dumpsters, in the grip of fear so terrifying, so bone-deep that it was all they could do just to breathe.

Sam had visited a couple of VA hospitals with his dad when he was younger, when John had been looking up old buddies from the Corps. So he recognized Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder when he saw it.

These people had been through something truly horrifying, witnessed something beyond their ability to process it, to deal with it. Something terrible. Something Hellish.

Or at least, they believed they had.

Sam continued to hold on to Malik’s shoulder as the engineer’s incoherent mumblings were gradually replaced by silent sobs, the sidewalk beginning to send a chill up through his knees as he gazed around the stricken town, not entirely sure what to do next.

He didn’t know what this was, what was afflicting these people, but if the same thing had taken Dean then he needed to find his brother. Right now.

But where to look?

His eyes drifted down to Malik’s ID card, still clipped to his jacket, a little askew but clearly showing the logo of the local utilities company, a flowing river forming the initials MPW – Massachusetts Power and Water.

And then it hit him.

The river.

The bloody river.

That’s where the people had been congregating before this happened, where some of the more acutely affected residents of Leicester had said goodbye to the world.

The consciousness that had tried to take control of Sam last night hadn’t seemed desperate, just determined, but Sam had no way of knowing whether the same entity had taken his brother. “We’ll take something more valuable,” she’d said, implying she – it – was but one of many. And she had been a whole lot more lucid than the people Sam saw all around him, wandering around like lost souls looking for pieces of their lives to pick back up.

Patting Malik’s shoulder again, Sam murmured, “I’ll get you some help, man, I swear,” before slowly rising to his feet, pulling the young man up with him. The engineer didn’t resist, merely looked at Sam with tear-filled eyes and nodded slowly.

Sam swallowed. He’d been wandering the streets of this town for a good few hours now – the sun was already high in the sky – and he still had no clue where to find Dean or whether he was in an even worse shape than Malik.

So what could it hurt to check out the river?

His stomach lurched slightly as he pondered that, the people who had thrown themselves into the water not knowing what they were doing; the corpses rising bloated and lifeless to the bloody surface days later.

He had to find Dean. Before it was too late.

Pulling Malik behind him, he started to run.

River Quabaug
Outside Leicester, MA

Sam slewed the Impala into the same graveled parking lot Dean almost parked in the day before, opening the door before he’d even shut off the engine.

Glancing at Malik, who was curled in on himself on the passenger seat, Sam exited the Chevy and carried out a brief visual recon of the area, noting how deserted it seemed compared to yesterday. Only one lone figure dressed all in black was anywhere within Sam’s field of vision, standing by the edge of the river slightly downstream from his position.

Sam blew out a frustrated breath when he realized it wasn’t Dean, running a hand through his hair as he scanned the area for any further signs of life.

The water was still bloody, but it looked as if yesterday’s glut of corpses had been removed overnight, and Sam was about to turn back to the Impala when the guy further down the riverbank suddenly began to wade into the crimson water.

“Hey!” Fearing another attempted suicide, Sam sprinted toward the man, slowing as he drew level with him. “Sir! Just – just come back up onto the bank! I can help you –!”

“Only God can help me,” the man said calmly, not turning back as he continued to wade out into the river. “Only God can help all of us.”

Sam recognized the determined voice as that of Elijah Warriner, the preacher he and Dean had seen here yesterday. “Sir –”

Sam made a move toward the edge of the water, but Warriner had stopped his forward movement, the bloody currents only reaching up to his chest.

“Dear Lord,” the man said, raising his head and his hands toward the heavens. “With this water, wash away my sins. Make me clean, make me innocent. Free me from my past transgressions. Let your waters cleanse me, oh Lord! Wash away my sin with your grace and let your waters run as pure as the heart that beats within this chest!”

Sam stood watching as the preacher continued his prayer, relaxing slightly once he realized Warriner wasn’t about to kill himself, but was instead attempting some kind of self-baptism. Sam wasn’t sure whether baptism in blood could ever be a good thing, but right now maybe the preacher’s faith was all the town and its inhabitants had going for it.

His attention wandered further downstream, where the waters became choppier as they headed off into the rapids which in turn led to a small waterfall known locally as Devil’s Gorge. The current was faster flowing once it passed beneath the rusty bridge upstream, but Sam figured the preacher would be safe between the two as long as he stuck to the shallows.

The sound of a car pulling up behind him alerted Sam to the arrival of a dirty brown Ford pickup that halted with a jerk and a spray of gravel before a middle-aged couple jumped out and headed straight for the riverbank nearest the preacher’s position, passing Sam by as if he wasn’t even there.

He began to turn toward the couple when the muted midday sunlight glinting off something shiny up on the bridge suddenly caught his attention. Squinting, he felt himself compelled to move toward the shiny object, his footsteps speeding up to match the increasing rhythm of his heart as he realized the thing up on the bridge glinting at him was attached to a figure moving toward the center of the span. Like the person was wearing a necklace. Or an amulet.

“Dean?”

He said the name slowly, uncertainly, pace quickening to a trot as the figure on the bridge stopped dead center and began to climb the rickety-looking safety railing.

“Dean!”

Sam broke into a run, eyes never straying from the figure on the bridge; the figure straddling the railing; the figure about to jump.

“Dean!”

Sam sprinted to the bridge’s footings, looking up into his brother’s vacant eyes as the older Winchester swayed slightly in the wind beginning to pick up along the river.

“Dean! Don’t!” Sam yelled, feet pounding against the bridge’s metal footplates as he raced toward his brother’s position, skidding to an abrupt halt six feet away from him as Dean suddenly raised a 9mm Beretta and aimed it at his little brother’s head.

“Stay away!”

Sam raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, visually checking Dean over for injuries as he balanced precariously atop the railing, the gun trembling in his hand. Aside from the paleness of his face and the wild terror in his eyes, he seemed to be in one piece.

Although he didn’t have any shoes on his feet.

“Dean,” Sam said softly, voice artificially calm. “Dean, it’s okay. Just come down from there. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dean stared at him unblinkingly, a tiny frown creasing between his eyebrows as the Beretta continued to tremble. “Don’t!” he said, a pleading quality to his voice Sam didn’t ever remember hearing before. “Please! The – the water. I have to – I have to – to put out the fire. I have to put out the fire.”

Sam swallowed, eyes never leaving his brother’s. “There’s no fire, Dean,” he assured him softly, resisting the urge to rush over and grab hold of his brother for fear of causing him to lose his balance and fall into the fast-flowing water below. “There’s no fire. Come back over here and let me help you.”

As if in response, Dean swung his other leg over the railing until he was balanced precariously on the opposite side of the barrier, Sam lurching forward a step before Dean once again brought the automatic to bear in his direction. “Dean –”

“Have to get away from the fire,” Dean insisted, his voice sounding odd, somehow not his own, as if his throat was raw and scratchy from breathing in smoke.

“Dean, nothing’s on fire, it’s okay –”

“Don’t let it get me! Please!”

“Dean –” Dean never talked about the fire that had taken their mother, and Sam couldn’t help wondering whether whatever had taken control of Dean’s body had somehow released the childhood trauma locked up in his brain. “The fire’s not here. It’s not going to hurt you –”

I’m not going back.” Dean squeezed his eyes closed, the barrel of the Beretta pressed against his temple. “You can’t make me go back there!”

“Dean –” Sam made another abortive lurch toward him, but Dean once again brought the gun back up in his direction.

“You can’t make me go back!” he insisted. “It’s like – like drowning. But – but in fire. Drowning in fire. And – and you can’t breathe and you can’t move and you can’t pull yourself out because it’s everywhere and it’s always and forever and there’s never ever any end to it…” He trailed off, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, the Beretta dangerously close to his head. “I can’t go back there,” he whispered at length. “I can’t. Please don’t make me go back…”

“Dean…” It slowly dawned on Sam Dean wasn’t talking about Kansas. In fact, Sam didn’t think it was Dean doing the talking at all.

“Please,” Dean’s voice broke on the single syllable. “I can’t go back. The fire – the – the screaming. The noise of it. The heat of it. Fire and brimstone, just like they warned us. And – and the Beast. Always there. Always watching. Always hurting… I can’t –” His hand trembled, the Beretta dropping to his side as he ran his left hand over his face. “No more. I can’t. I can’t. No more. Please don’t let them take me back there! Hellfire and brimstone and – and demons. I never meant – I didn’t think – I didn’t think it was real. I didn’t think they’d really send me there! After. After I – when I –” He looked at Sam suddenly, blinking tears out of his eyes. “When I died.”

“Dean –”

“Please don’t send me back there.”

“Dean.” Sam took a cautious step forward, hands still raised placatingly. “Dean, that’s not you. You’ve not been there. It’s the thing inside you! You have to fight it! Understand? You have to fight it, Dean!”

Dean blinked at him, the gun lowered a few more inches. “I can’t go back –”

“Dean, whoever you think you are right now, that’s not you! Something – someone – has taken control of you! Dean, listen to me –”

“Who are you?”

It was Sam’s turn to blink. “It’s me, Dean,” he said after a second’s pause to collect himself. “It’s Sam. Your brother, Sam. Sammy.” He smiled awkwardly, and Dean just continued to gaze at him. “And you’re Dean. Dean John Winchester. You were born in Lawrence, Kansas, January 24th 1979. Your dad’s name is John. Your mom was called Mary. And I’m your geeky kid brother, right? Sam. You remember me, Dean? Huh?”

Dean continued to stare at him, brow creasing slightly. “She had – long blonde hair…” he stammered uncertainly.

“Yes! Yes!” Sam agreed enthusiastically. “Mom! You remember Mom!”

Dean frowned again. “I remember fire.”

Sam bit his lip. “It’s okay,” he repeated, although he wasn’t entirely sure he meant it this time. “It’s okay, Dean.”

Dean brought the Beretta back up as he once again rubbed at his temple with his right hand, seemingly oblivious to the weapon now held slackly between trembling fingers as a look of stark confusion darkened his features. “Fire and brimstone,” he mumbled. “Fire and demons…”

“Dean –”

“Take your brother outside –”

Sam’s breath hitched in his throat as his brother’s eyes slowly rose to meet his own.

“Sammy?”

The recognition rippled across Dean’s face for the briefest of instants, the 9mm dropping heavily to his side while with his left hand his grip increased on the rusty railing, knuckles whitening as Sam pressed home his advantage, making a swift and sudden lunge for Dean’s wrist.

In that split second, however, something altered in Dean’s expression, breaking apart and reforming into the fearful look of a cornered animal, and Dean once again brought the Beretta up to shoulder height and pointed it straight at his baby brother. “No! Have to put out the fire –”

Unable to slow his forward momentum despite the weapon now aimed squarely between his eyes, Sam only registered the sharp crack of a gunshot as he crashed headlong into the railing, all the air driven from his body as pain lanced out from the point of impact with the rusty metal and his arm collided with Dean’s hand, knocking the Beretta from his grip and sending it tumbling into the waters below them.

The decaying barrier groaned ominously as Sam’s powerful frame slammed into already weakened support struts, the railing finally giving out and crumbling into little more than metallic dust as Sam fell through, barreling into his brother.

Sam’s eyes met Dean’s as he felt himself briefly suspended, time seeming to stop as gravity paused before reasserting its inevitable hold.

Then he was falling, one had clutching Dean’s t-shirt at the shoulder, the other encircling his brother’s wrist as the brackish waters of the bloody River Quabaug rose up to meet them, claiming them with icy fingers as it pulled them down into the churning darkness below…

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The Winchester Chronicles