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“Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don’t look back. Now, Dean! Go!”
*****
“Was anyone else in the house?”
John was sitting in the back of an ambulance, Sammy asleep in his lap, Dean plastered to his side. The paramedics had insisted on checking them all over using words like shock and smoke inhalation. The vehicle’s open doors blocked out the sight of the burning house. John didn’t think that was accidental.
The flickering orange light was gone, replaced by a haze of smoke. The fire was out. The street in front of the Winchesters' house looked like a stranded parade of emergency vehicles. The police and firemen were comparing notes.
“The wife didn’t make it out. The husband said she was upstairs in the nursery. We’re sending some guys in now.”
Remains. They were looking for remains. Recovery, not rescue.
Look on the ceiling, John wanted to tell them.
She had been on the ceiling.
How the hell had she been on the ceiling?
*****
John had no idea where the package of diapers had come from. Or the grocery bag of clothes, all second hand, but all clean and not smelling like smoke. Or the porta-crib that was wedged into the corner of Mike and Debbie Guenther’s spare room.
Debbie must have made some calls. She was good at that sort of thing. Level-headed.
John should ask her who had brought them. You were supposed to thank people for things like that.
The boys were asleep. Dean had wanted in the crib with Sammy, and John had let him. The crib made the room very cramped, but John didn’t care. He wanted the boys close.
He was tempted to lift them both out and tuck them into the bed. But they were resting easy—at least Sammy was—where they were. It wasn’t likely they’d sleep in a bed with a father sitting bolt upright and wide awake on the side of it.
So for the time he let them be.
*****
An official from the fire department came to the Guenther’s to deliver a report.
John only half listened to him. Short in the wiring. Freak accident. We’re so sorry for your loss.
Had it just been a freak accident? Had he imagined what he had seen in the nursery? Logic said that he must have. That Mary on the ceiling had been some sort of retroactive hallucination born out of shock.
But no matter how many times he told himself that, he couldn’t shake off what he’d thought he’d seen.
*****
John hadn’t been a churchgoer, but Mary had. Not every single Sunday, but enough that the minister knew her by name. She’d taken Dean once he was old enough for the nursery class. The kid had brought home the damnedest picture of the baby Jesus made of colored cotton balls once.
Rev. Thompson had offered to set up the memorial service and John had said okay. Mostly because it meant that he didn’t have to come up with a plan himself.
After the service, John found himself sitting on a bench along the wall in the reception area, Sammy in his lap, Dean pressed against his side. John had tried to talk to Dean before the service—trying to explain what it meant and why they were going and what was going to happen. Dean had nodded a couple of times, but John couldn’t say if he actually understood.
John couldn’t decide which of the boys had it worse. Dean for knowing what they had lost, or Sammy who would never remember.
He was grateful that, after the required condolences, most of the attendees left them alone. The pitying looks were easier to take from a bit of a distance. Though, he noticed that some of the looks that were cast at him held something a little different.
Suspicion.
“I heard that they had some marital problems,” one old bat who wasn’t quite out of earshot whispered to her companion.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, of course not. But that’s just what I heard….”
*****
The public library was a good place to go to avoid people, and had the added advantage that he could take Dean and Sammy with him.
John didn’t know what he was looking for other than a quiet place to take the boys. But one day, when late November rain beat down and blew against the windows, he found himself standing in front of a shelf of books on paranormal phenomena.
The sort of crap that he would have laughed his ass off at a few weeks ago.
That day, John took as many as he could carry, pulled a battered chair up beside the play area, and started reading.
*****
He picked Missouri Moseley at random.
It didn’t make any sense, going to a psychic. But what did make sense anymore?
Or maybe it wasn’t random. Maybe nothing was. Because John didn’t have to tell Missouri what he had seen that night.
She told him.
“But how? What could do that?” he asked her.
She had pursed her lips and looked at a spot over his shoulder for several seconds before answering.
“I can tell you,” she said. “But if I do, there’s no way back. Your life will change. So be sure you want to hear it.”
John didn’t tell her it was already too late to turn back. He had a feeling she knew that already.
“Tell me.”
*****
“This isn’t a negotiation, John. I don’t want a gun in this house.”
“You’re right. It’s not a negotiation.”
Mike looked like he wanted to take his friend by the shoulders and try to shake some sense into him. “John, nothing killed Mary. You heard the investigator. It was a short in the wiring. It was an accident. Maybe if you’d try talking to a counselor instead of some palm-reading conwoman--”
Two hours later, John and his sons had moved out.
*****
The motel wasn’t fancy or pretty (and the Dollar Store Christmas decorations that John had picked up for the boys made it seem even less so) but it was clean and neat. There was a bathroom, a kitchenette, and a decent sized living and sleeping area.
Moreover, it was theirs. At least temporarily.
“What do you think, bud?” John asked Dean, after one more futile attempt to get the little tabletop tree to stand up straight.
Dean silently eyed the tree, then turned to John and tried to muster up a smile. Like he was trying to make his old man feel better.
It wasn’t right, a four year old trying to make his dad feel better. But Dean had been so drawn into himself, John would take whatever glimmers of life he could get.
Sammy, it was turning out, was best at pulling Dean out.
“Can you go get me a diaper? Your brother’s a little bit ripe.”
Dean quickly ran to get the diaper and wipes. Helping. Getting him to help worked.
Yes, John would take what he could get.
*****
Missouri invited them all over a couple of days after Christmas. To help her eat down all the holiday baking, she said.
She filled Dean up with cookies and then settled the boys in the living room floor with a box of odds and ends of toys. John, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, could easily keep an eye on them through the open doorway.
Missouri settled down again in the chair across from him.
“You’re going after it, aren’t you?” she asked without preamble.
There was no need to specify what ‘it’ she meant.
John nodded over his coffee. “Yeah.”
It—whatever it was that Missouri had felt the echoes of in the burned out house—had come after them once. There was nothing to say that it wouldn’t come back. John would be damned if he was caught unawares again.
Missouri gave him a measured look. “You have a lot that you need to learn, you know.”
John took a swig of his coffee. “Then I guess I’ll learn it.”
“Then,” Missouri said, “I have a proposition for you.”
She had an acquaintance, she said. A man named Jim Murphy up in Minnesota who knew a thing or fifty about the supernatural world. She’d been in touch with him, and he was willing to teach John, get him up to speed, and provide a safe place for him and his boys.
“I trust him,” Missouri added when John asked. “And besides. Are you really eager to stick around Lawrence?”
There hadn’t really been any arguing with that.
*****
Leaving Lawrence was easier than John had ever anticipated.
All their belongings were in the trunk, and the boys were safely belted into the back seat. Dean had some green plastic army men to play with. Sammy, John was pretty sure, would conk out in his carseat as soon as they got on the highway.
He had four checks safely tucked into the inner pocket of his jacket: One from his bank, one from the insurance company, one from the sale of the house and lot, and one for his half of the garage. He might have gotten more for the house and business, but John had cared way more about speed than dithering over a profit. So long as he was careful, he and the boys could stay afloat for a good while.
John’s eyes never strayed to the rearview mirror once as he drove out of town.
*****
Missouri had failed to mention that she was sending him to a goddamn priest.
*****
Technically, Jim Murphy was a Lutheran pastor.
John had never had much use for men of God, but once his bristles had settled and they talked for a bit, he started to think that the arrangement might just work.
Murphy was older than John and had served in Vietnam himself (in the Army, but still). He was divorced with no kids, and his ex-wife still lived in Florida, where he was originally from. He’d moved to Blue Earth because he’d always wanted to live in a place where it snowed, or so he claimed.
He had a part-time housekeeper, Mrs. Gustavson, who was copasetic with having small children underfoot in the parsonage, and an unoccupied second floor that would provide ample room for the Winchesters. After some pushing, he agreed that John could pay him something on room and board.
John Winchester was many things, but he’d prefer to keep ‘candidate for charity’ off the list.
A supernatural education, he told himself, wasn’t charity. He’d damn well pay back what he learned.
*****
John didn't consider himself a stupid person, but school had never quite been his thing.
When Jim Murphy said he would teach him about hunting, John hadn’t quite known what that would entail. But he had not expected to basically be told to prepare to spend the next year or so of his life hitting the books.
“This might be a good time to tell you,” John said, doubtfully, leafing through a Latin text, “that I never got above a C in French.”
“Incentive has a funny way of boosting your brain power,” Murphy had replied.
John had a lot of questions about the more hands-on aspects of hunting, and Murphy had assured him that they’d cover those, too. In time.
“I’ve seen a lot of people jump into the hunt ill-prepared,” was what he told John. “Those are the ones who wind up dead. I know you want to get right into it, but if anything happens to you, what happens to them?”
Murphy nodded toward the kitchen where Dean and Sammy were getting acquainted with Mrs. Gustavson.
The pastor, it seemed, had quickly learned that he could steer John toward sense by invoking his boys. It irked John, but he couldn’t dispute the point.
“All right,” he said. “Where do we start?”
*****
“Was anyone else in the house?”
John was sitting in the back of an ambulance, Sammy asleep in his lap, Dean plastered to his side. The paramedics had insisted on checking them all over using words like shock and smoke inhalation. The vehicle’s open doors blocked out the sight of the burning house. John didn’t think that was accidental.
The flickering orange light was gone, replaced by a haze of smoke. The fire was out. The street in front of the Winchesters' house looked like a stranded parade of emergency vehicles. The police and firemen were comparing notes.
“The wife didn’t make it out. The husband said she was upstairs in the nursery. We’re sending some guys in now.”
Remains. They were looking for remains. Recovery, not rescue.
Look on the ceiling, John wanted to tell them.
She had been on the ceiling.
How the hell had she been on the ceiling?
*****
John had no idea where the package of diapers had come from. Or the grocery bag of clothes, all second hand, but all clean and not smelling like smoke. Or the porta-crib that was wedged into the corner of Mike and Debbie Guenther’s spare room.
Debbie must have made some calls. She was good at that sort of thing. Level-headed.
John should ask her who had brought them. You were supposed to thank people for things like that.
The boys were asleep. Dean had wanted in the crib with Sammy, and John had let him. The crib made the room very cramped, but John didn’t care. He wanted the boys close.
He was tempted to lift them both out and tuck them into the bed. But they were resting easy—at least Sammy was—where they were. It wasn’t likely they’d sleep in a bed with a father sitting bolt upright and wide awake on the side of it.
So for the time he let them be.
*****
An official from the fire department came to the Guenther’s to deliver a report.
John only half listened to him. Short in the wiring. Freak accident. We’re so sorry for your loss.
Had it just been a freak accident? Had he imagined what he had seen in the nursery? Logic said that he must have. That Mary on the ceiling had been some sort of retroactive hallucination born out of shock.
But no matter how many times he told himself that, he couldn’t shake off what he’d thought he’d seen.
*****
John hadn’t been a churchgoer, but Mary had. Not every single Sunday, but enough that the minister knew her by name. She’d taken Dean once he was old enough for the nursery class. The kid had brought home the damnedest picture of the baby Jesus made of colored cotton balls once.
Rev. Thompson had offered to set up the memorial service and John had said okay. Mostly because it meant that he didn’t have to come up with a plan himself.
After the service, John found himself sitting on a bench along the wall in the reception area, Sammy in his lap, Dean pressed against his side. John had tried to talk to Dean before the service—trying to explain what it meant and why they were going and what was going to happen. Dean had nodded a couple of times, but John couldn’t say if he actually understood.
John couldn’t decide which of the boys had it worse. Dean for knowing what they had lost, or Sammy who would never remember.
He was grateful that, after the required condolences, most of the attendees left them alone. The pitying looks were easier to take from a bit of a distance. Though, he noticed that some of the looks that were cast at him held something a little different.
Suspicion.
“I heard that they had some marital problems,” one old bat who wasn’t quite out of earshot whispered to her companion.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, of course not. But that’s just what I heard….”
*****
The public library was a good place to go to avoid people, and had the added advantage that he could take Dean and Sammy with him.
John didn’t know what he was looking for other than a quiet place to take the boys. But one day, when late November rain beat down and blew against the windows, he found himself standing in front of a shelf of books on paranormal phenomena.
The sort of crap that he would have laughed his ass off at a few weeks ago.
That day, John took as many as he could carry, pulled a battered chair up beside the play area, and started reading.
*****
He picked Missouri Moseley at random.
It didn’t make any sense, going to a psychic. But what did make sense anymore?
Or maybe it wasn’t random. Maybe nothing was. Because John didn’t have to tell Missouri what he had seen that night.
She told him.
“But how? What could do that?” he asked her.
She had pursed her lips and looked at a spot over his shoulder for several seconds before answering.
“I can tell you,” she said. “But if I do, there’s no way back. Your life will change. So be sure you want to hear it.”
John didn’t tell her it was already too late to turn back. He had a feeling she knew that already.
“Tell me.”
*****
“This isn’t a negotiation, John. I don’t want a gun in this house.”
“You’re right. It’s not a negotiation.”
Mike looked like he wanted to take his friend by the shoulders and try to shake some sense into him. “John, nothing killed Mary. You heard the investigator. It was a short in the wiring. It was an accident. Maybe if you’d try talking to a counselor instead of some palm-reading conwoman--”
Two hours later, John and his sons had moved out.
*****
The motel wasn’t fancy or pretty (and the Dollar Store Christmas decorations that John had picked up for the boys made it seem even less so) but it was clean and neat. There was a bathroom, a kitchenette, and a decent sized living and sleeping area.
Moreover, it was theirs. At least temporarily.
“What do you think, bud?” John asked Dean, after one more futile attempt to get the little tabletop tree to stand up straight.
Dean silently eyed the tree, then turned to John and tried to muster up a smile. Like he was trying to make his old man feel better.
It wasn’t right, a four year old trying to make his dad feel better. But Dean had been so drawn into himself, John would take whatever glimmers of life he could get.
Sammy, it was turning out, was best at pulling Dean out.
“Can you go get me a diaper? Your brother’s a little bit ripe.”
Dean quickly ran to get the diaper and wipes. Helping. Getting him to help worked.
Yes, John would take what he could get.
*****
Missouri invited them all over a couple of days after Christmas. To help her eat down all the holiday baking, she said.
She filled Dean up with cookies and then settled the boys in the living room floor with a box of odds and ends of toys. John, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, could easily keep an eye on them through the open doorway.
Missouri settled down again in the chair across from him.
“You’re going after it, aren’t you?” she asked without preamble.
There was no need to specify what ‘it’ she meant.
John nodded over his coffee. “Yeah.”
It—whatever it was that Missouri had felt the echoes of in the burned out house—had come after them once. There was nothing to say that it wouldn’t come back. John would be damned if he was caught unawares again.
Missouri gave him a measured look. “You have a lot that you need to learn, you know.”
John took a swig of his coffee. “Then I guess I’ll learn it.”
“Then,” Missouri said, “I have a proposition for you.”
She had an acquaintance, she said. A man named Jim Murphy up in Minnesota who knew a thing or fifty about the supernatural world. She’d been in touch with him, and he was willing to teach John, get him up to speed, and provide a safe place for him and his boys.
“I trust him,” Missouri added when John asked. “And besides. Are you really eager to stick around Lawrence?”
There hadn’t really been any arguing with that.
*****
Leaving Lawrence was easier than John had ever anticipated.
All their belongings were in the trunk, and the boys were safely belted into the back seat. Dean had some green plastic army men to play with. Sammy, John was pretty sure, would conk out in his carseat as soon as they got on the highway.
He had four checks safely tucked into the inner pocket of his jacket: One from his bank, one from the insurance company, one from the sale of the house and lot, and one for his half of the garage. He might have gotten more for the house and business, but John had cared way more about speed than dithering over a profit. So long as he was careful, he and the boys could stay afloat for a good while.
John’s eyes never strayed to the rearview mirror once as he drove out of town.
*****
Missouri had failed to mention that she was sending him to a goddamn priest.
*****
Technically, Jim Murphy was a Lutheran pastor.
John had never had much use for men of God, but once his bristles had settled and they talked for a bit, he started to think that the arrangement might just work.
Murphy was older than John and had served in Vietnam himself (in the Army, but still). He was divorced with no kids, and his ex-wife still lived in Florida, where he was originally from. He’d moved to Blue Earth because he’d always wanted to live in a place where it snowed, or so he claimed.
He had a part-time housekeeper, Mrs. Gustavson, who was copasetic with having small children underfoot in the parsonage, and an unoccupied second floor that would provide ample room for the Winchesters. After some pushing, he agreed that John could pay him something on room and board.
John Winchester was many things, but he’d prefer to keep ‘candidate for charity’ off the list.
A supernatural education, he told himself, wasn’t charity. He’d damn well pay back what he learned.
*****
John didn't consider himself a stupid person, but school had never quite been his thing.
When Jim Murphy said he would teach him about hunting, John hadn’t quite known what that would entail. But he had not expected to basically be told to prepare to spend the next year or so of his life hitting the books.
“This might be a good time to tell you,” John said, doubtfully, leafing through a Latin text, “that I never got above a C in French.”
“Incentive has a funny way of boosting your brain power,” Murphy had replied.
John had a lot of questions about the more hands-on aspects of hunting, and Murphy had assured him that they’d cover those, too. In time.
“I’ve seen a lot of people jump into the hunt ill-prepared,” was what he told John. “Those are the ones who wind up dead. I know you want to get right into it, but if anything happens to you, what happens to them?”
Murphy nodded toward the kitchen where Dean and Sammy were getting acquainted with Mrs. Gustavson.
The pastor, it seemed, had quickly learned that he could steer John toward sense by invoking his boys. It irked John, but he couldn’t dispute the point.
“All right,” he said. “Where do we start?”
