Archive of Our Own ^beta

I'm a rolling thunder, a pouring rain/
I'm comin' on like a hurricane/
My lightning's flashing across the sky/ 
You're only young but you're gonna die/

Hell’s Bells/

Hells bells, you got me ringing/

                        “Hell’s Bells”, AC/DC

For a moment it was like waking up. Dean had no idea where he was. Except you don’t wake up fully clothed in an abandoned subway station under Manhattan. Also, by definition, you don’t wake up dead.

            Because there was Sam, sitting on the ground, back against the wall, and there was Dean’s body, a bloody mess, cradled in Sam’s lap. There were dead angels everywhere. It was hard to see, there wasn’t much illumination except from a single maintenance light and Dean’s flashlight, lying on it’s side.

            “Crap,” Dean said.

            You don’t ever get used to dying, apparently. And also? When you are dead, you can still smell the stink of subway; damp concrete, standing water, and urine.

            Wait, Sam wasn’t moving and he was covered in blood, black in the half-light. His or Dean’s?

Sam?” Dean said. “Sammy?”

            Sam didn’t move.

            “SAM!”

            Nothing.

            Dean grabbed his shoulders but touched nothing, hands sweeping through. Sam shuddered like an injured dog and close up Dean could see that his eyes were open, even if they were focused on something in the invisible distance. Sam blinked. There was a far rumble and trash rustled on the train tracks. Something coming. Dean whirled around to look to the edge of the platform.

            Sound gathered and the One Line subway train came through, creaking as it slowed to take the turn. It was all lit up inside but empty. The old City Hall station was past the last stop and here the train turned around to start back uptown. Good that it was empty. The old platform was mostly dark but eventually someone was going to notice a lot of dead bodies.

            “Sam, you gotta get out of here.”

            Sam still hadn’t moved except for the shudder. Didn’t spirits pop right out when Death touched them? Where was the old guy? And where was his reaper? Tessa, he kinda hoped it was Tessa. She was a bit of a bitch but a familiar face. Maybe she’d let him talk to Sammy.

            “Sammy, you gotta get a move on. Come on.”

#

            It was a little over three hours later. If Dean laid belly down on the concrete and waited for the exact moment the train came through and illuminated Sam’s wrist, he could just make out the time on Sam’s watch so he knew it was a little after four in the morning. Laying down on the concrete put him a few inches from Sam’s gun, the pearl handle of the Taurus right next to his ear.

            They had been hunting a nest of vamps in the secret underground network of maintenance tunnels in the subway system. They’d found them in an underground graffiti art gallery. It was actually pretty straightforward. Three vamps. Behead some fangs, beers all around, as Bobby would have said. The graffiti art was pretty cool, too. Well, some of it. Some of it was just pointless, you know, in that look-at-me-I-make-art kind of way.

            Sam had been a little less distant, actually willing to talk, be friendly. Stuff like that got him jazzed. He’d found information about it doing research on the tunnels and was happy to see it.

            Good times.

            Then back to the old subway station. Used to be the station for City Hall. It had chandeliers and shit and during the day they kept it lit so people could ride the train all the way around and see it.

            In the station, they’d run into one of Malachi’s band led by a blue-eyed badass (angels seemed to prefer vessels with blue eyes or maybe that was just coincidence) and everything had gone south. Dean had taken an angel blade in the stomach and he’d known it was bad and he vaguely remembered searing horrible pain and feeling shocky and cold and now the damn reaper hadn’t shown up and Sam was just sitting there and couldn’t hear Dean for shit. Dean had screamed at Sam, paced the platform, timed the trains, and admired the chandeliers. Now he was thinking nobody could sit that still for three hours. Maybe Sam had been hit in the head but he couldn’t see any signs of it. Couldn’t see if he was bleeding somewhere under all that blood. Still he was clearly hurt or he’d be moving, right?

            Dean popped down on the track, kicked the third rail because he could and looked for the train. He wanted the lights to come on or someone to notice the bodies because someone had to see Sam.

He saw flashlights bobbing from two people coming down the maintenance walkway.

            “Finally.” He levered himself back up on the platform like a swimmer coming out of a pool. “It’s okay Sam, someone’s coming. Whatever’s hurting you, they’re finally going to look at it.”

            Nothing. Not that he expected it.

            He wasn’t sure how his body ended up in Sammy’s lap. He could see the blood smear; probably Sammy tried to pick up his body to haul it out of there and didn’t make it. Or maybe it was when he’d gotten cold. That was it, he thought. He remembered Sam talking, trying to keep him conscious. ‘Stay with me’ stuff. It was kind of creepy to see himself, honestly. Seriously, nobody should spend a lot of time looking at themselves dead. He needed a haircut and a shave, for one thing. For another, when you looked at yourself in a mirror you were reversed and he looked weird. And bloody.

            He went back to the edge of the platform.

            The flashlights were attached to transit cops.

            He went back to wait by Sam and about then he realized that once they got EMTs here they’d take Sam one way and the body another and he wouldn’t find out what happened.

            Crap, crap, crap. Maybe he could attach himself to some object. Sam had taken the amulet once when he died but people who were catatonic didn’t usually take souvenirs.

            “Sammy, you gotta take my jacket, okay? When they give you the bag of stuff, keep the jacket. Something. Even though it won’t fit you.”

            This was lame, even if Sam took the jacket, he’d keep it in a box or the trunk and who wanted to haunt the trunk of the Impala.

            The transit cops had gotten to the edge of the platform and shined the flashlight across it.

            “New York City police!” one of the cops called out.

            “Don’t come any closer,” Sam grated out, hoarse, and Dean startled.

            Without turning his head, Sam picked up the Taurus and fired—the muzzle flash lighting up the space. The slug nicked the platform a couple of feet from the cops, driving them back down the tunnel to cover.

            Thing to learn about being dead; he wasn’t blinded by the flash. No pupils or some shit.

            “Sammy?” Dean said. Except for the fact that now he had one hand griping the gun, resting on the concrete, he was just sitting there again. Possessed by an angel. That had to be it. One of those bastards was going to do something that got Sam killed. How had they gotten him to let them in? Promised to raise Dean?

            (Would Sam raise Dean if he could? He’d said he wouldn’t.)

            “Dean,” Tessa said from behind him.

Now she showed up.

Tessa looked like she always did, dark-haired and sweet which was probably a good thing in her line of work. Jeans, t-shirt. The girl had maybe the most perfect eyebrows on a human being except for the part about not being human.

            “Tessa,” Dean said, “I’ve been here for hours!”

            “We’re a little short since the angels hired a bunch of us and got them killed,” Tessa said. “And I wanted to be the one to come for you.”

            Oh great. Maybe it wasn’t so good that Tessa had come. Their history was complicated. She’d tried to take him once when he should have died and that hadn’t worked out. “Revenge is sweet,” Dean said.

            “No,” she said and smiled a little. “That’s not why. It was the whole meet cute thing.”

            Tessa was a reaper, a creature that collected the souls of the dead and took them to their respective afterlives. Dean had no doubt what his was. He’d shot a lot of people, made a lot of stupid decisions, committed every possible sin and some that were probably not possible by most standards. And the angels were pissed at him.

            “Look, you gotta let me talk to Sammy,” he said.

            Tessa started to say something, probably no—

            Sam did that shudder thing again. “I can feel you here,” he said.

            That stopped everything. They both looked at Sam. Who still wasn’t looking at anything in particular and certainly not them.

            “Fuck,” Dean said. “Sammy?”

            Any sound echoed except Dean’s voice.

            “What’s wrong with him?” Dean asked Tessa.

            “I don’t know,” Tessa said. “I’m not reaping him, not that I would be since Death’s got him tagged. If I had to guess I’d say grief.”

            “You don’t ‘grief’ by sitting there for three hours,” Dean said.

            “It hits different people different ways,” Tessa said. “Come on, Dean, you know how this works.”

            “Sammy!” Dean said.

            “I know you’re angry at me, Dean.” Sam still wasn’t looking at anything. What did he mean he knew that Dean was here?

            “Can he see me?” Dean said to Tessa.

            “How would I know?” she said.

            From down the tracks the police radio crackled distantly and the cops called in for back-up. Bodies, at least one still alive and armed, shots fired. Water dripped from the ceiling to the tracks.

            Dean squatted in front of Sam so that he interrupted that stare.

            “I’m here, Sammy, and I’m pissed, but not at you. Not at you, little brother. You gotta get up. Get out of here before New York’s finest shoots you. Are you hurt?”

            Sam didn’t see him.

            “Dean,” Tessa said, “We’ve got to go. It’s done. Sam isn’t your problem.”

            Dean waved her off.

            “Talk to me, Sammy,” he said.

            “I don’t know what to do,” Sam said, plainly and so quietly it was hard to hear.

            What the hell did that mean? “There’s not a lot to think about,” Dean said. “They’re calling in back up. Get up. Come on, get up. Find the way back up to the street.”

            “Sam is of the living,” Tessa said, “you are of the dead.” She reached to touch Dean.

            He evaded her, ducking his shoulder and moving to Sam’s side. “I can’t leave him. Look at him. Sammy, leave the body, just go.”

            “If I don’t go looking for you, you’ll be pissed. If I do go looking for you, I’ll fail. I’ll fail you.” Sam’s voice was eerily flat. “Like now. I just…don’t know what to do.”

            “Oh come on!” Dean erupted. “Get off your ass! You can’t do this now! Snap out of it!”

             Sam shuddered again.

             Dean felt as if he’d slapped a kindergartener. He was dead at the worst possible time, when Sam needed someone because he was dead. Which was fucked up seven ways from Sunday but there it was. The way Sam had been acting he’d have thought he’d be all right if Dean died. Well, not all right, all right. Sad and all. But ready to move on. Half the time they were barely talking to each other.

             “You know if you treated a girlfriend the way you treat your brother she’d probably get a restraining order,” Tessa said. “I mean I get that you two are the poster boys for PTSD but at least he doesn’t usually punch you.”

             How did she know he’d punched Sam? It didn’t really count because they were brothers. Brothers fought. Sometimes you just took a swing. Sometimes he took a swing. Especially if one of you broke the rules, like by fucking with the car. He tried to remember an actual time Sam had taken a swing. Or punched back. When they were kids, of course. Once when he told Sam to punch him so he could get to Charlie in the dream state. And Sam had punched him in the bunker—no that had been Gadreel. Wait, Sam punched him when Sam was doing demon blood. That counted. So Sam punched him once. Right?

             He knew he rode Sam hard. They were just different. Sam understood that a lot of time the anger wasn’t really about him.

             One of the cops called, “Drop your weapon!”

             “It’s just that you want us together,” Sam said. “I get it.” Then he raised the Taurus. Dean thought he was going to fire another warning shot at the cops but instead he brought it up under his jaw. Dean knew what he was thinking, one shot, up into the brain.  Very logical Sam. 

             “No, SAM! NO!” Bobby had practiced to appear in front of them. Anger, strong emotion. It turned out fear worked, too, because he could tell by the way Sam’s eyes widened that he could suddenly see him. “Sammy, whoa, whoa, let’s think this through, okay?” He was talking because he couldn’t see a flaw in Sam’s plan except that he didn’t want Sam to die. Why didn’t he want Sam to die? They’d be together. Except they’d be together in, you know, Hell. “You do that and you’re probably going to hell, right? Although I don’t know why you really should since you volunteered to end the apocalypse and actually chose to go to hell so that the world wouldn’t end which you and I both know should earn you a permanent get out of jail free card and besides, you’ve always basically been a good guy but it’s a rigged game. But think about it,” he gathered momentum as he realized the flaw, a thing he really never let himself think about but had to now,” you do this and even if you do go to Hell, we don’t end up together because that’s the last thing Hell wants for the Winchester boys. Right? You’d end up back in the Cage. You’d end up a cat toy again. So put the gun down, okay?”

             The cops were watching from the end of the platform. Bastards couldn’t see Dean, he was pretty sure. And they weren’t making any effort to stop Sam. Suicide prevention aren’t us. Sam putting a bullet in his skull just meant the guy would stop shooting at them. Fuckers.

             Sam was looking at Dean but the wheels didn’t seem to be turning.

             “Listen. Sammy,” Dean said slowly, carefully, “If you kill yourself, they’ll put you back in the Cage.”

             Sam heard it. He swallowed and then lowered the gun. “Am I there? Are you real?” he asked.

             “Yeah, I’m real. And you should fire at the cops again.”

             Sam did and the sound echoed down the tunnel. Gunshot-shot-shot. The cops fell back, if getting their asses out of the line of fire could be called ‘falling back.’ Radios crackled. People were coming. Lots of them. Shots fired at policemen. Police would be responding from everywhere.

            Dean turned to Tessa. “I’m not going.”

            “You’re going to become an angry ghost,” she said. “Do you really want that? For him and for you?” She shook her head. “Oh, Dean.” And she was gone.

             He was a ghost now?

             Deal with that later.

             “Sammy, you gotta go. I trust you, you can take care of this.”

             That did something. It was like Sam was present again. “Trust?” he said. “Right. Because we’re so good at that.” He tried to stand up. He was hurt—no, his legs were just asleep from sitting so long. He staggered, then picked up the body, throwing it over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He staggered sideways a couple of steps and then got under the weight.

             “Leave the body,” Dean said.

             Sam paid no attention and Dean didn’t argue because if Sam did then Dean would probably be stuck staying here. He wasn’t too gung ho on haunting an abandoned subway station.

            Sam turned and fired once more at the cops and then headed for maze of graffitied tunnels.

#

            The body was stiffening by the time they got to the Impala. Sam gently laid it on the ground and then dug a blanket out of the compartment under the trunk. He heaved the body onto the blanket and wrapped it.

            Only in New York City could a blood stained, 6’4” man wrap a body in a blanket at a little before 5:00 in the morning and not be noticed. It helped that it was dark and they were in the ass end of nowhere but still. More creepshow, watching his brother handle The Body. Better to think of it as The Body than anything related to him but hard because Sam treated it as if he was wrapping somebody’s grandmother’s antique glassware. At least his hands did.

            His face was back to Mr. Catatonic except for some twitchy thing going on in his jaw muscle.

            This was all too weird. Dean just wanted to walk away but when he tried he just couldn’t really get that far. Something didn’t want to go. Tied to the body. So he stood with his back to them and looked in the direction where the horizon was glowing and the sun was going to rise and let them have their moment.

            It was taking forever.

            Then the trunk slammed and the world went away.

#

            “Dean? Can you hear me? I’ve got to know.”

            They were in a clearing where the wind bent the pale, late autumn grass. There were pine trees around them. Sam had been digging. There was a person-sized hole cut deep and perfect. Sam had changed clothes. He was wearing a white t-shirt, no blood but lots of dirt stains. Dean was behind him.

            “Where are we?”

            Sam turned. “The Pine Barrens. New Jersey.” Sam was talking, that was good.

            “Oh great, I’m going to end up in Jersey.”

            “It’s supposed to be a good place to hide a body,” Sam said.

            “Where’d you hear that?”

            “The Sopranos.” Dean must have looked surprised because Sam explained, “You’d be out at some bar, and if the hotel had good cable, I’d watch it. The Pine Barrens episode was a pretty good one. I need to know for certain, do you want a hunter’s funeral or not?”

            “Why wouldn’t I want a hunter’s funeral?” Dean asked.

            Sam sighed. “Because if I burn your bones you stop riding around in the trunk of the Impala and go to Hell. Or wherever.”

            Oh right. “Wait, if I don’t go to Hell, how are you going to bring me back?”

            “I’ll find a way to get into Hell. You’ll do the head for the light thing at the gate, and then I’ll go into Hell and bring you out.”

            “Oh, no you aren’t. You’re not waltzing back into Hell.”

            Sam sat down on the pile of dirt. The sun was high in the sky, late, late afternoon. “Don’t start in on me, Dean.” He rubbed his eyes. It wasn’t the first time they’d gone a day without sleep.

            “That’s crazy. There’s another way. Plan B.” Now he knew Sam would say, ‘What way? You got another way?’ and he’d say that he hadn’t had time to think about it and there’d be a shouting match and that felt so normal he craved it like he craved a drink. Except he didn’t really crave a drink. He just craved the idea of a drink.

            Sam reached down and rooted around for something in the grass beside the shovel. “You’d prefer not to go to Hell right away, right? And you want to be brought back.”

            How could they even have a conversation this stupid? “Of course I’d prefer not to go to Hell, but come on,” Dean felt his anger rising, “you can’t convince me that you going in a Hell Gate is in anyway a good thing. You and what army?”

            Sam stood up and he had a tire iron in his hand.

            “What the hell!” Dean said. No pun intended.

            “Cold iron,” Sam said.

            “You’re going to disperse me?!”

            “I really wanted to ask you another question but fuck it.”

            “Damn it Sam, just listen!”

            “You listen. My brother died in my arms today and you know what, even if it’s happened before, I guess I just haven’t gotten used to it. I did what you wanted,” Sam said. “I got up. I kept going. I’m still going. I holding on by a thread, Dean, and just once, just once in your life—”

            Sam froze, and abruptly closed his mouth. The word hung there.

            Your life.

            A lot of little muscles moved around Sam’s mouth and jawline. It was like looking at a dam with a lot of water behind it and seeing tiny cracks. Great pressure behind there. Something big was about to give and once it gave it felt as if it might never be put back together. Sammy sitting on the subway platform for something like three hours without moving.

Dean knew his own mouth was open. He didn’t care what Sam had said, it was just an expression, but clearly it had gutted Sammy. Dean tried to think of what to say, to do. Couldn’t think of a thing. So they stood there while something did or didn’t break.

            Sam swallowed. It didn’t break. “Just this once, lay off,” he said, his voice harsh and dry.

            Dean still didn’t know what to say. So he nodded.

            Sam looked away.

            After a moment Dean said, “What did you want to ask?”

            Sam took a deep breath. “I was trying to think of what you might be bound to. You know, like Bobby and the flask.”

            Best to pretend everything was normal, right? Always. “Bottle of Makers?”

            Sam didn’t smile. “I thought this.” He reached behind and pulled Dean’s .45 out of his waistband. The gun Dad gave him. Of course. People were bound to the things that came to them, that represented their lives. He practically was the gun. He could all but feel it right now, warm as human flesh from resting against Sam’s back. The weight of it.

            “I was going to bury it with you but then I realized,” Sam said.

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “If anything is going to work, that will.

            “Okay,” Sam said, and cleared his throat. “Let’s get this done.”

            Let’s. Not that he was going to do anything except stand in the golden light of late day and watch Sam shovel dirt. He looked up as Canada Geese flew in V high overhead. Dad had said that when he was a kid there weren’t that many Canada Geese but once they’d banned lead shot, they’d come back with a vengeance. They were a pest. Something ached in his non-existent chest.

            Sam was on one knee next to the blood-stained blanket wrapping The Body and he had one hand on it. It was a touch so gentle and naked that it was embarrassing. He stayed that way and Dean couldn’t stand it so he turned away to look at pine trees. It was a nice place. After awhile, a long, hideously uncomfortable time, there was rustling and then the thump of something heavy falling into the hole.

            Dean knew when he turned he’d find his brother’s face streaked with tears and it would be equally uncomfortable but it would be a relief because it was a sign that the pressure behind that dam was finally starting to bleed off and it would be okay because that was who Sam was. It would be hard that he couldn’t do anything.

Except that when he turned around, Sam was digging the shovel into the mound of dirt and his face was dry.

#

            It was dark by the time Sam finished, planting a cross lashed together with bungee ties. They had not been the worst hours of Dean’s life—existence, whatever—but they’d been in the top ten. Dean could sit on surveillance for hours but watching Sam shovel dirt had been worse than having some monster tie him up or throw him in a rubber room in an abandoned psych hospital.

            “Okay,” Sam said.

            “Okay,” Dean said. “Let’s get out of here.”

            Sam hesitated.

            “What?” Dean said. “It’s done. It’s late. You need to get off your feet.”

            “If…”

Hard to see Sam’s expression when he was holding the flashlight but please, God, don’t get all final words, emoting. Truth was, the day hadn’t been Dean’s best, either.

            “If what, Sam?”

            “If you aren’t attached to the gun, what do you want me to do?”

            If he wasn’t attached to the gun then hell’s bells, he’d just…he’d just be stuck with The Body in the middle of the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. What did he want done? The Body dug back up, salted and burned? If he had to watch Sam dig all night he would lose his mind, swear to all that was Holy. Not that there was much Holy.

            “Let’s just assume I’m attached and deal,” Dean said.

            “Okay,” Sam said quietly. He stood over the grave for a moment and then said, “Let’s go.”

            Dean waited for some sort of pull, some drag. Five feet, ten feet. A minute, two minutes.

            They kept walking. Sam picking he way a carefully through the brush, breathing through his teeth and then normally. Dean exhaled. Or something like exhaled. It was like exhaling even if he wasn’t breathing.

            He was bound to something; the gun, Sam, fuck all if he knew. But he wasn’t stuck at the grave.

            Next time he saw The Body he wanted to be in it.

#

            They got back to the Impala and headed east across New Jersey. Sam reset the seat, moving it back. He reset the mirrors, too. It sucked when he drove. “You okay to drive?” Dean asked.

            “Probably not,” Sam said. “But I can’t sleep. I’m too wound up. And you can’t drive. I’ll stop at the first place I can and get coffee.”

            They drove black asphalt roads between pine forests, the way lit only by headlights, then turned on to a highway with no signs of civilization and no traffic. Sam rolled the window down and Dean watched the air roll through Sam’s hair.

            “How about music,” Dean said.

            “Okay,” Sam said. When he reached over to turn on the radio and find a station, the car slewed a little drunkenly.

            “Whoa, never mind.” Not okay to drive.

            Sam gripped the wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead. “Talk to me.”

            “About what?”

            “Anything to keep me awake,” Sam said. “Like, why do you think you’re able to manifest so soon after death? It took Bobby months.”

            “I dunno.”

            The white dashed line spooled out ahead in the headlights. Silence lengthened. The car started to drift right. Sam’s eyes were open but no one was home.

            “SAM!”

            Sam jerked the wheel back, overcorrected, the back wheels of old Detroit steel started to come around the front, Sam corrected again, they slewed around a bit, and Sam got it all under control.

            Sam let out a loud breath.

            “Pull over,” Dean said, “get a couple of hours on the side of the road. It isn’t going to help either of us if you get yourself killed, too.”

            “You could say something more than ‘I don’t know.’ You could talk to me.”

            “I think it’s because I’ve already been dead and we did the astral projection thing with that kid and we spent so much time in the Veil and dealing with ghosts ourselves now would you pull over before you crash my car?”

            “I want to get to Mansfield, check into a hotel.”

            “Why?” Dean asked.

            “Because I want a bed. A shower. It’s reasonable, Dean.”

            “Reasonable. Okay, Spock. Here’s reasonable. A ghost is suggesting you’d be safer on the road if you slept for an hour. A ghost is suggesting the kind of thing they teach you in Driver’s Ed. And you are ignoring it.”

            Sam got the look that said he was angry but he didn’t have an argument. He simmered for another mile and then pulled the car over to the shoulder.

            “Take the passenger seat,” Dean said.

            “Why?”

            “Because you’re used to sleeping here.”

#

            Sam didn’t sleep much and when he dropped off, he did that shuddering thing. Like an animal hit by a car or something. But he got some sleep and then some coffee and then drove through Pennsylvania and into Ohio. He kept the radio tuned to classic rock and didn’t ask Dean to talk. He got a motel room in Zanesville, Ohio.

            He had the .45 in his pocket so Dean followed him into the office. At some point Dean had stopped being visible. He wasn’t sure how or when. The lights flickered in the office when they went in and when the girl said hello and Sam asked for a double, their breath was visible. It made Dean almost not notice that Sam had asked for a double.

            The room had those avocado bedspreads with the nubbies on them—chenille. The walls were off white and had paintings of mills with water wheels. The sink was in back of the room, only the tub and toilet closed off. It looked like it had been a Holiday Inn back in 1962.

            Sam sat down heavily on a bed.

            “You need some food,” Dean said. “All you’ve had is coffee.”

            “I know.”

            “Order a pizza.”

            “I don’t think I can eat.”

            “You’ve got to get yourself together.”

            Sam said to the air, “Look, I feel like I’m having a conversation with myself. I feel you’re here. I know you’re here because it’s like the inside of a meat freezer. I keep imagining what pissed off thing you’d be saying to me.” Sam rubbed his eyes. “But it would be easier if I could see you and hear you. If you can do that.”

            How to do that? How had he done it before? He’d been scared, so scared it made him want to positively kill someone. Like the two cops. Like when Sam got all wrapped up in his own navel-gazing and he wanted to slap some sense into him, like right now—

            “Thanks,” Sam said. “I still can’t believe you can do that since you’ve only been dead a little over a day.”

            “Everybody has a talent,” Dean said. “Yours is whining.”

            Sam sighed and flopped back on the bed, feet still on the floor.

            “You can order a pizza and still maintain a sufficiently emo level of suffering. Order a salad with it if you’re too good for pizza.”

            Sam didn’t answer, just stared at the ceiling.

            “Fine. You’re a drama queen. Can you turn on the TV at least?”

            Sam reached over and found the remote. He switched through until he found the movie channel. Dirty Harry, which was a legit film and a good distraction. A way not to think about the fact that he couldn’t even turn on the television. Dean sat down on the bed, leaned back against the head board. He could feel the head board. It should have felt uncomfortable. It didn’t.

            “Let me know when you’re ready to sleep, or just turn it off,” he told Sam.

            Sam made a vaguely affirmative sound.

            “Look, if you’re not going to eat, how about a drink?”

            “I really don’t want to go to a bar.”

            “I’ve got a bottle in my duffle.”

            Sam cracked a hint of a smile. “You’ve always got a bottle in your duffle.”

            “So, go get it.”

            Sam shook his head on the pillow. “We don’t ever touch each other’s duffels.”

            “Because you’ll see my porn and I’ll see your comic books.” Sam hadn’t read comic books since he was nine, he read them too fast so he switched to novels. “Sam, I told you that you could.”

            Sam didn’t move.

            “Okay. Fine. Would you do me a favor. Since I can’t, would you get me my duffle?”

            Sam looked at him for a cold minute, then grunted as he got up. He went out to the car. Dean’s gun sat on the bedside table. On television, Dirty Harry was complaining to his new partner that he needed someone assigned to him with more experience because his partners kept getting injured or worse.

            Maybe not the best movie after all.

            Sam brought the duffle in and dropped it on the bed.

            “Would you open it for me?”

            Sam opened it, hair falling into his eyes as he did. Bastard was going to make him go through every step.

            “Thank you,” Dean said with vicious politeness. “Would you take the friggin’ bottle out and carry it to where the glasses are in the back?”

            Sam set the bottle down on the sink counter with a thunk. The water glasses were wrapped in paper that proclaimed they were Sanitized!.

            “Would you pour us each doubles, please.”

            Sam glanced back at him, perplexed, but did. He brought the glasses back and set one on the bedside table by Dean and one by him.

            “Okay, shoot yours.”

            Sam’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “You mean—“ he motioned like drinking the whole thing.

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “Bottoms up, Cinderella.”

            Sam drank the whole thing and then dipped his head at the burn. “Hah,” he gasped. “Okay, now what. You’re just going to sit and stare at yours? Or you want me to set it on fire or something?”

            Dean hadn’t thought about that. Burnt offerings and all. Would that work? Have to try that eventually but not tonight. “No, I want you to sip it for me.”

            Sam sat down on the bed. Picked up the glass and took a sip. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

            “When isn’t it a good idea?” Dean asked.

            Sam shrugged. He looked at the television. “Magnum Force?”

            “No, the first one. Based on the Zodiac Killer.” Dean sighed, pleased. Not perfect. He was a ghost. He’d prefer to be alive. But Sam would see it could be okay. That there was no need for a total freak-out. He could see things starting to loosen up in his little brother as whiskey did what whiskey does. He started to say that they would get through this when Sam suddenly heaved and ran for the bathroom.

            He threw up and then retched long after there wasn’t anything left in his stomach. Dean stood in the doorway.

            He wanted to say something, some joke about Sam holding his liquor. And he didn’t.

            “Sorry,” Sam finally said, hair plastered to his face.

            Dean shrugged. Hell, he was the one who had died. He was standing right here. So not only was he the one who should be upset about dying but they were still together. What the fuck? They just needed to figure it out, it wasn’t so bad and goddamn it Sam needed to nut up.

            “It’s just…” Sam said, and then that shudder thing followed by dry heaves. “It’s just that feeling, you know? You know that feeling you get when you walk in some place and there’s a monster?” He was hanging on to the toilet, looking up bleary-eyed.

            “You mean all keyed up, ready for the jump?” Dean said.

            “No,” Sam said, “Not the adrenaline thing, the feeling that something is in there. The wrongness. You get it sometimes.”

            No idea. Oh shit. Dean didn’t get it sometimes but Sam did. “Like you got with Benny.” When Sam shook Benny’s hand, he knew instantly that Benny wasn’t human. Sometimes Sam just felt things. “You get that now? With me?”

            Sam nodded. “It’s you and I don’t want you to leave but it’s…wrong, too.”

Woke up this morning with my head in my hand
Come on, children, come on
Snow was falling all over the land
Come on, children, come on

I don't know but I've been told
Come on, children, come on
That the streets of Heaven have all been sold
Come on, children, come on

                                    “Gabriel’s Mother’s Hiway #16 Blues”, Arlo Guthrie

            It was light outside the inadequate motel curtains. Again, at some point Dean had stopped being visible.

            Dean had spent the whole night as far away from Sam as he could get, hoping that would let Sam sleep. He’d done pretty much the same thing he would have done on surveillance, asked the big questions of life like whether the song “Cherry Pie” qualified Warrant as a serious rock band or whether in the end they were just a hair band. After this when they were in a hotel, he’d have Sam put the gun in the glove box of Impala and Sam could actually sleep.

             Sam almost always slept longer than Dean. That big brain needed at least five hours to Dean’s three or four, at least as long as Sam had a soul. Another thing about ghosts, they didn’t sleep. Weren’t ghosts all soul? Have to ask Sam.

            He couldn’t stand it so he ghosted over to the bathroom and looked in. It was creepy-stalker, sure, but Sammy couldn’t see him. Sam was awfully big for the tiny bathroom. His head was up against the tub and legs were curled because otherwise they’d stick out the door but he was asleep which was something. Before Dean could go back to the other end of the room, Sam did that shudder thing again and started awake.

            He sat up and draped his wrists over his knees.

            God, Sammy, don’t look so done, he thought. So gutted. I’m here, it’s still us.

            Back out to the other end of the room.

            “SAMMY! RISE AND SHINE!”

            A groan from the bathroom. “Fuck you.”

            “We’re wasting daylight.”

          “If you’re going to shout, stop doing it in some vague impression in my head and get visible.”

            Dean did the appearing thing. “Are you hungover?”

            “No. But sleeping like a pretzel on a bathroom floor is almost as bad.” Sam stood in the bathroom door. “Did you just come in the bathroom?”

            “Me? No. You were sleeping in there.”

            “Jerk,” Sam said.

            “Bitch.”

#

            They found a coffee shop and Sam left the gun in the Impala and went inside to eat. Dean…let go of his visibility and sat in the passenger seat and looked around to see if anyone—angels, demons, bored ghost cheerleaders—were following them.

            “Squirrel. So it’s true.” Crowley was sitting in the driver’s side seat. The King of Hell looked properly dapper.

            “Great,” Dean said. “How did you find out?”

            “It’s all over Hell,” Crowley said. “Dean Westchester’s gone for a Burton and ducked his reaper.”

            “Awesome,” Dean said. Of course Crowley could see him. Angels and demons would be able to see the dead.

            “So, Moose has got a plan to get you back, right?”

            “When he sees you here he’ll have a plan to put you back in Hell.”

            Crowley smiled. “I love when you talk dirty to me.”

            Sam would shit a brick when he found out Crowley knew that Dean was dead. Waltzing into Hell was going to be a lot more difficult.

            Crowley continued, “But this does put a crimp in things.”

            Crowley wanted Dean’s help in stopping Abaddon, the last demon Knight of Hell, who was staging a coup. With public approval currently running low among the Demon demographic, he had them looking for the one thing that could kill the knight.

            “Helping you has dropped several places on the list,” Dean said.

            “The simplest way to get you back alive is to resurrect you,” Crowley said. “But to do that, first your soul has to go somewhere. Now, if it were your brother who were dead then we’d have to worry a little because Sam might end up in Heaven.”

            Really? Sam might end up in heaven? He knew Sam was solid good (if a pissy bitch) but by all the rules that Heaven seemed to play by he and Sam had just both assumed they were bound for Hell.

            “You seem surprised,” Crowley said.

            “I’m surprised you don’t know who goes where,” Dean said.

            Crowley shrugged. “Only Death and the reapers know for certain.”

            “Unless they’re on your intercept list, like Bobby.”

“True, but,” Crowley said, “Your brother not only has Death’s ear, he is one of the greatest mages of the age and nearly became the greatest white mage of the age. The great white mages all get declared saints.”

            Dean scoffed. Sam was a hunter. Hunters were many things but they weren’t saints.

            “Moose nearly drove every demon off the face of the Earth. Would have, if you hadn’t stopped him. That’s a bit more of a feat than driving the snakes out of Ireland, wouldn’t you say? That’s all it took for Patrick. And he has all that humility and self-loathing that the angels just eat up.” Crowley rolled his eyes. “Sam is far from certain.”

            It was the fucking Hallelujah chorus. If Sam wasn’t doomed to Hell, then he certainly wasn’t doomed to the Cage.

           “But you,” Crowley continued, “you’re headed my way, aren’t you Dean. The obvious thing to do is send you there and then Sam goes, I let him collect your soul, he puts it back in your body and Bob’s your uncle, you’re ready to continue Mixed Doubles.”

            “Wait, are you offering to let Sam just walk right in?”

            “Well,” Crowley admitted, “there’s a catch.”

            “Right,” said Dean. “There’s always a catch.”

#

            Dean was standing in the parking lot when Sam came out. He knew he was visible to Sam. He didn’t know if he was visible to anyone else. He wasn’t really in control of fine details like that.

            “So,” he asked, “did you eat?”

            “Yeah,” Sam said, pulling out the keys.

            “What’d you eat?”

            “Why?”

            Dean shrugged. “Curious.”

            “I had something more than coffee and grease which is more than you would have done.”

            “I’m your brother, is it so bad that I just want to know what you had to eat?”

            “I have to tell you if I had a nutritious breakfast?” Sam was exasperated. “Fine. An omelet. Fruit. Satisfied?”

            “I just like the fact that the guy over there thinks you’re crazy because you’re talking to thin air,” Dean said. “You should wave to him.”

            A parking row over, a man in khakis and a yellow golf shirt was staring openly at Sam.

            “Don’t worry!” Dean called. “He’s fine when he’s on his meds!”

            The man, who couldn’t see or hear Dean, looked nervous when Sam looked at him and hopped into his S.U.V.

Sam sighed and got in the Impala. Dean popped into the passenger seat.

            Sam frowned. “Smells like sulfur—“ He rubbed yellow powder off the armrest.

            “Crowley was here.”

            “Crowley? He was here? Did he see you?”

            “Of course he saw me,” Dean said. “He wanted to have a little chat.”

            “Dean, he knows—” suddenly Sam couldn’t say ‘you’re dead’.

            “Yeah, he knows. All of Hell knows.”

            They sat there for a moment. Then Sam said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

            “Don’t puke in the car!” Dean said.

            Sam got out of the car and stood and took deep breaths. He put his hands on the roof of the next car and waited for a moment as if fighting off nausea. Dean felt the horror of knowing his existence made his little brother sick. Somewhere in the back of his brain he was having the screaming meemies about all this being dead business but he didn’t have time or inclination for a freak-out and neither did Sam. Like he’d told Sam, just go, one foot in front of the other.

            “Do you want me to give you some distance?”

            “No, no.” Sam shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m getting used to it. It’s weirder when you’re not around.” He straightened up and then leaned on the Impala for all the world like it was just another talk in a parking lot. “So what did Crowley want?”

            “He wanted to make a deal.”

            Sam’s frowned. “Like that’s a surprise.”

            “He’s locked out of Hell.”

            “He’s what? How can the King of Hell be locked out?”

            Dean shrugged. “Apparently there has been a little trouble in the palace. The Demonic Teamsters feels like he’s not paying enough attention to the membership. Abbadon has the popular vote.”

            “He’s a junkie, of course he’s not paying attention,” Sam said. “Okay, explain it all to me while I drive. Or they’re going to put me in a psych ward again for hearing voices.”

            “Just don’t ralph in my car.”

            Dean explained the deal, which was that if they could get Crowley back into Hell, he’d put Dean’s soul into Sam, just the way that Sam had carried Bobby and Dean had carried Benny. Then all they needed was a spell to get Dean back into his body.

            Sam drove steadily west, watching the road. Ohio was flat and boring. There were farms, silos, and harvested fields. This was industrial farmland, the cornbelt.

            “I know,” Dean said. “Don’t trust Crowley.”

            “All we need is a spell that will put your soul back in your body. Isn’t that kind of a big ‘all we need’?”

            “Crowley said you’re one of the greatest mages of the age.”

            “He said what?” Sam said. “What is this, Dungeons and Dragons?”

            “He also said that you probably wouldn’t go to hell. Because, you know, you’re not evil or something and you’re like St. Patrick. So you don’t have to worry about,” Dean cleared his throat. “You know.”

            What was he clearing when he cleared his throat? Ectoplasm? Really, he shouldn’t think about any of this shit. He was beginning to appreciate how incredibly useful whiskey was in occupying large amounts of time and brain space. Now he had nothing to do but think.

            Sammy’s face was doing all those funny little things—frowney stuff between his eyes and little muscle stuff along his jaw—that it did when he was really unhappy and upset. Dean couldn’t drive. Couldn’t turn on the radio.

            “How the hell do you just sit here all the time!” Dean said. “Doesn’t it drive you nuts?!”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Just sitting here in the passenger seat! Not even driving! Not doing anything!”

            “I do things!” Sam said. “I look for cases! I do research! I sleep! I think!”

            “Exactly!” Dean said. “Would you turn on some fucking music!”

            Turned out that crossing Ohio and Indiana you could hear “House of the Rising Sun” more times than you ever anticipated. Also, there were a lot of cows.

#

            The bunker didn’t want to let Dean in.  Wards and sigils, something meant that as they were driving in, suddenly everything disappeared.

            Evidently, though, once the gun was IN the bunker, that was okay because next thing Dean knew, Sam was on his feet in the main room, looking around.

            But Sam’s tone was not okay. “DEAN!”

            It was the sound of a hundred fights. It was the sight of his brother on his knees, or thrown through the air.

            “Sam!” The lights were flickering. Books and files were spread out across one of the tables and Dean’s .45 was acting as a paperweight. There were a couple of chairs broken, too.

            “Dean! It’s Sam! Stay with me!”

            “I’m here! What the fuck!”

            “Talk to me!” Sam’s eyes were big, he was scared of something. Dean knew he was visible, he could feel it, like adrenaline. He whirled around, what was wrong.

            “Tell me something!” Sam demanded.

            “Tell you what?” Dean asked.

“Anything. What are you thinking?”

“Thinking? That you’re scared out of your wits? That sitting fucking shotgun across the most boring part of the U.S. sucks? That the fact that radio stations in the US think Classic Rock includes Blondie is ass?”

            Sam was clearly relieved.

            “What?” Dean asked.

            “I was afraid you weren’t coming back.”

            “How long was I gone?” Dean asked.

            Sam hesitated for a moment. “About two days,” he said.

            “Are you shitting me?”

            “No. I kept going outside to see if I could get you there,” Sam said. He was spooked, still no pun intended. Two days? “Crowley swore you weren’t in Hell.”

            “You summoned Crowley?”

            Sam looked exasperated. “Of course not. I called him on your phone.” Sam flopped into an unbroken chair. “Anyway, I think I have a lead on a spell.”

            “To put me back in my body?”

            “Yeah, which I think we need to do sooner than later,” Sam said. “The spell’s in a place that’s kind of weird though.”

            “Dude,” Dean said. “We’ve had this conversation before.”

            “Yeah, I know. Our lives are weird. Where did you go? Do you know?”

            “I think I was, like, asleep. Maybe from, I dunno, appearing so much when I’ve only been dead for a couple of days.”

            “You don’t remember anything?”

            Dean shrugged.

            Sam had something to say, but didn’t.

            “Spit it out, Sam.”

           Sam hesitated. Then he might have changed track. “How are you on flying now that you’re already dead?”

            “Flying where?”

            “Labrador.”

            “Canada?” Dean said. “Sure. What’s in Labrador?”

            “A lighthouse.” Sam turned his laptop around. He had a huge bruise on his forearm, deep and fresh.

            “Where’d you get that?”

            Sam looked at it as if he’d never seen it before. “This? In the subway.”

            “I don’t remember it.”

“Dying is probably distracting.” He pointed to the laptop. “Watch this.”

            It was a video. In the lower left were the words Baccalieu Island, Newfoundland and a timestamp 01:04:57am. A squad of recon marines moved across a foggy landscape. They were luminous in the green of a nightvision headmounted camera one of the members of the squad wore.

            One of them said, “Watch for Mounties” and the sound crackled through an earpiece. Several snorts of amusement.

            A voice from whoever was watching the camera feed—back at base?—snapped, “Real discipline, McLevey, you’re not on vacation.”

            Another Marine murmured, “Killer attack moose.”

            The watching voice said, “You could be back in Afghanistan, soldier.”

            They came over the crest of a hill and were blinded. There was a moment where everything went white—night vision couldn’t handle even the slightest bit of light—and then someone had adjusted the headmount display to shut off nightvision and everything was just a regular night. There was a lighthouse. An old, touristy looking lighthouse made of stone. It had a house attached for the lighthouse keeper where the windows were glowing yellow. It was warm and inviting.

            “Looks like one of the paintings you see for sale in a mall,” Dean said.

            “Thomas Kincaid,” Sam said.

            “What the fuck,” said one of the marines. He sounded on edge.

            On edge about a warm and inviting house.

            “Proceed as ordered,” said the voice from base.

            The door to the lighthouse keeper’s place was like something out of one of The Lord of the Rings movies. Heavy wood with big brass hinges. One of the marines tried it and the door swung open.

            “This is just wrong,” Dean said.

            The screen started jittering with static. Never a good sign.

            The room was rustic but cheery with a fire in the fireplace and a braided rug on the floor. There was a dining table set with a meal and wine glasses. At one in the morning, Dean thought. Yeah right. The static got worse. The squad was silent, nervy, but they did their shit, checking behind the door, moving through the room like pros.

            There was an arched doorway just beyond the dining table and the point man went through there.

            The static went crazy and he yelled, “Shit!” and his rifle chattered. There were glimpses of the other guys in static and they were swearing and shooting and then the tape went gray.

            “What happened?” Dean asked.

            “Keep watching,” Sam said.

            The image came back up only it was the half light just before dawn. The words in the lower left still said Baccalieu Island, Newfoundland but now the timestamp was 05:49:24am. The world was gray and a new squad was moving through the fog. No jokes this time, just silence and speed.

            They came up on the lighthouse but now it was dark and the door gaped open and the windows were broken out. The building looked skull-like and toothless. No one had lived there in decades.

            The guy wearing the camera went in rifle first.

            Inside there was broken furniture, debris, and signs of animals living there. No cheery fire. It was like it was years rather than hours later. He lead the squad through the archway.

            More squalor and decay.

Except on the floor there were six sets of uniforms, neatly folded. Six sets of gear, neatly laid out. Six pairs of boots squared up. Six helmets.

            And no bodies.

            “What the fuck,” Dean said.

#

            There was a US special military base on Baccalieu Island but there was no way Sam could pass as J.A.G. and he refused a buzz cut. Baccalieu Island had a bird wildlife reserve so Sam spent some quality time making a Canadian Wildlife Service badge. Getting to St. John’s, Newfoundland took three flights. Getting a gun through TSA was pretty much impossible so Dean missed the trip. The .45 went declared and unloaded in luggage.

            Sam was jittery about putting the gun in luggage.

            “When you put The Body in the trunk of the Impala, I came right back,” Dean said.

            “Yeah, but you were gone two days when we got to the Bunker.”

            “That was because the Bunker is like Fort Knox against monsters.”

            “You’re not a monster,” Sam said.

            “I am to the Bunker,” Dean said. “But airlines are just worried about people not taking off their shoes. I’m willing to take off my shoes.”

            “Can you take off your shoes?” Sam asked.

            Dean took off his shoes.

            “Hey, your feet don’t stink!” Sam said. “Upside!”

            It was the easiest flight Dean had ever taken. Sam put the gun in his duffle and zipped it. Next moment, Sam was standing on rocks next to the water in late evening holding Dean’s gun in his hand. Waves were crashing, seagulls were making cliché seagull noises. Sam was saying quietly, worriedly, “Dean?”

            “I’m here.”

            Sam sat down next to his duffle and a sleeping bag. He looked like someone who had just spend a day in airports.

            From the water someone called in what sounded like a Maine accent on steroids, “You sure you okay?”

            A big guy, not quite Sam height but broader, wearing a flannel shirt and slicker, was standing in a fishing boat. Looked like something out of lobster restaurant commercial. The motor was idling. Sam’s ride, apparently.

            “Yeah!” Sam called. “Fine!” He waved.

            The fisherman waved back and opened the throttle, and eased the boat away.

            “How do we get back?”

            “As you always say, we deal with that when we come to it,” Sam said. He pulled the Taurus out of his duffle and found a clip and slid it home.

            “Where did you get ammo in Canada?” Dean asked.

            “Hunter named Kyle LeBeau knew someone who would front me some.” Sam looked out at the water. “It’s pretty.”

            “I’m thinking as beaches go it lacks a few things. Sand. Pool bars. Bikinis.” There was the sound of the waves and the wind and the seagulls. A sound like silver on silver just at the edge of hearing that he couldn’t quite place. “What is that?”

            “What?” Sam asked.

            “Do you hear it?

            The air between them and the water was shimmering with sunset. Light on the water and all that. The seagulls were diving and rising in elaborate patterns. Some sort of aerial Ice Capades of Nature thing. Ever nearer. Of course, there weren’t people here so the birds had probably just lost their fear of humans. Amazing patterns. Closer and closer.

            One swooped between them.

            “Sam,” Dean said. “Get up.”

            Sam looked up, and a gull struck his shoulder. Then another struck his head, drawing blood. Sam was up, gun in hand. He shot into the flock but they didn’t disperse the way birds should. What kind of birds weren’t afraid of the noise of a gun?

            Dean couldn’t do anything but watch.

            “Run!” Dean shouted.

            Sam ran, grabbing a long bleached stick. He smashed one of the birds out of the air but they kept striking at his shoulders and head.

            Dean looked for cover, trees, anything. He saw, at the top of a rise, a man in a yellow windbreaker. He was waving his arms and yelling.

            “Sammy, follow me!” Sam guarded his head with one arm and kept swinging his stick but he followed Dean.

            “This way!” the man in the yellow windbreaker called.

            The seagulls were positively berserk, striking Sam in the back and on the head and shoulders but Sam could cover a lot of ground, fast. The building was a cabin, rough looking on the outside. The man in the yellow windbreaker slammed the door behind Sam and the seagulls screamed in frustration.

            Sam slowly straightened up and looked around. He had blood on his forehead.

            “Les Salenko, Waterloo Univeristy,” the man said, offering his hand. He didn’t particularly look like a local, certainly not like the guy in the fishing boat. And he didn’t have the accent.

            Sam patted his pockets and found his ID, flashing it in a perfunctory way, “I’m Officer Peart, Canadian Wildlife, what the hell was that?”

            “The gulls. I don’t know. I’ve been coming here for twelve seasons and I have never seen anything like them.”

            This place wasn’t the usual cabin, at least not like any cabin Dean was used to. It had a big table like a lot of people ate and worked here. The kitchen was set up like a rudimentary church kitchen or something. There was an ancient couch. Through an open door he could see bunk beds. Boy Scouts? Were there Canadian Boy Scouts? The only things he knew about Canada was that they liked hockey and they made drinkable beer.

            “This is the ornithological station,” Sam said.

            “Yeah. What are you doing here, Agent Peart?”

            “Call me ‘Sam’ considering you just saved me from killer seagulls. Right now I’m wondering what the hell is going on.” Sam looked at Dean.

            “Fucking Hitchcock,” Dean said. “You all right, Sam?”

            Les startled. “Who are you and how did you get in here?”

            “You can see me?” Dean asked and Sam said at the same time, “You can see him?”

            To Les’s obvious confusion, Sam explained, “He’s my—“ and then get tangled in emotion.

            “I’m Sam’s dead brother, Dean. I’d shake hands but,” he shrugged, “it gets kind of fucked up. What’s an orthological station?” Dean was trying. Doing the talking thing while Sam went to pieces six ways from Sunday and some guy was actually looking at him which was way stranger than it should be, stranger than the whole episode of The Birds out there by the ocean because they were used to that kind of weird.

            “Is this some kind of joke?” Les asked.

            Why do people always think that. “Sure. Sam and I came all the way to the ass end of no where to punk you. Do I look like I’m a fucking joke?”

            “My grad students set this up?”

            Heat was rising in Dean. For one thing, this was really doing a number on Sam who was still fighting to keep his composure. For whatever Sam reason. For another, Dean could finally do something other than sit in the fucking passenger seat and it felt awesome. “No, this is not a joke! And one thing I’ve learned about being dead is it doesn’t make me real damn patient!” The lights began to flicker.

            “Dean,” Sam said. “Listen to me.”

            Papers began to swirl as something tore through the room. A hot wind.

            “Dean,” Sam said, “I need you here. Listen to me. Hold together. DEAN! PLEASE!”

            Fuck Sam. Dean had been doing what he was told his whole life. Since he was four years old he’d done what he was told. Take care of Sammy. Train. Take care of that ghost. Kill your brother if you have to. Sam had made him promise to shoot him if he went monster for fuck’s sake and Sam hadn’t come for him when he was in purgatory. Did people not see you can only ask so much? He could feel the explosion of rage within him and it was orgasmic. Feelings were muted now that he was a ghost but this, it was red hot and real.

He wanted it so much.

            Sam backed up, as did Les. Sam’s back was against the wall and he slid down it, sitting on the floor and on this face was the look, the dry, cold look of the subway, The Body in his lap, dead angels all around. Sam had blood on his forehead from the attack.

            This was not the first time Sam had seen Dean do this.

            “Sammy,” Dean rasped. “Talk to me.”

            “I don’t know what to do,” Sam said, his voice flat and empty.

            It was like a loop. This tearing into each other. The papers were fluttering.

            Les was saying the Our Father like that would do anything.

            The rage felt so good. He deserved it. He had died and it was all he had to drown out the horror. No one else had ever taken care of him, he had to take care of himself. Sure he screwed things up but what did they expect? He was four years old when they dumped all that responsibility on him!

            Sam was forcing himself to his feet. Good for him. Maybe Sam would finally grow a pair. There was a fireplace in the cabin, and Sam grabbed a poker and swung—

People are strange/

When you’re a stranger/

Faces look ugly/

When you’re alone./

Women seem wicked/

When you’re unwanted/

Streets are uneven/

When you’re down./

                        “People Are Strange”, The Doors

            Sam sat at the big table with Les Salerno. His laptop was flipped open.

            The lights were flickering. The ham radio was crackling. The two men exhaled and their breath was visible.

            Sam stood up. Where they were sitting was circled in salt but Sam carefully stepped out of the circle. There was an iron fireplace poker on the table. Sam had a cut on his forehead. “Dean,” he said.

            Why salt? Was something attacking them?

            “Sam, what’s going on?”

            “Dean, stay with me. Talk to me.”

            “Can we skip the encounter session and get straight to what’s going on?”

            “Is he here?” Les asked.

            “Can you become visible?” Sam said. “This is Dr. Les Salerno. He may be able to see you and you can stop doing the—“

            “Stop mind melding, I know.” Dean did the appearing thing. “He can see me?”

            Les nodded warily. “I can see you.”

            “You’re a psychic? Where’s the candles and shit?”

            “He’s an ornithologist,” Sam said. “He might be an untrained psychic. He says his Irish grandmother had the sight.”

            “He doesn’t remember,” Les said.

            “Doesn’t remember what?” Dean said.

            “Nothing,” Sam said. “Let me introduce you to my brother Dean. He’s dead. But other than that he’s mostly harmless.”

            “Glad to meet you,” Dean said. “Sorry, I’d shake hands but ectoplasm gets everywhere.” Sam sounded casual but he looked…flat. Not RoboSam flat but, Dean cast around and all he could come up with was wintertime when you first got to a cabin and inside felt cold and dry like outside instead of like an inhabited place. Dangerously close to poetry. Was this what happened to people who couldn’t drink? They thought about poetry? Best way to squish that was, “What don’t I remember?”

            “We had some flickering lights before,” Sam said. “I think you were sort of coming awake or something.”

            “How long have you been here?”

            “Almost twenty-four hours to get here, another six with Les. It’s about two in the morning. No internet here.”

            “So what attacked you?”

            Sam looked down at the salt. Les looked expectantly at Sam. “Seagulls,” Sam said.

            “Like Hitchcock?” Dean asked.

            “You made me watch that movie when I was six,” Sam said. “I couldn’t go to sleep near a window for a year.”

            “Yeah,” Dean grinned, “Good times.” It was an awesome movie. Held up, too. Hitchcock.

            “Les, if you want to bunk down, I’ll stay with Dean.”

            “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Les said.

            “Yeah,” Sam said. “Your windows and door are lined with salt. And I’ll sleep in there if I need to.”

            “Good to meet you, Dean,” Les said. “You’ve got a good brother.”

            “Yeah,” Dean said, “Thanks. Taught him everything he knows.”

            Les seemed a bit hesitant to step out of the salt. He glanced at Sam and then at the poker. He stepped out of the salt and walked fast to the door to a room. Dean could see what looked like bunks.

            “Weird vibe off that guy,” Dean said.

            “He’s just scared,” Sam said.

            “You okay?”

            “I’m fine. Really.”

            “Yeah, right. You act fine.”

            “Just too much travel,” Sam said. “I prefer the passenger seat.”

            “Okay, what have we got?”

            Sam told him he was attacked on the beach. “Except Les says they’re not really birds. They’re more like fish.” Sam explained that while running he had hit one with a stick so they’d gone back out and found it.

            “It’s in a cooler in the cold room. You’ve got to see it.”

            Sam took him down a hallway to another room, this one with a door like a refrigerator. Inside were regular ice coolers like for beer. “The room is really just like an ice chest,” Sam said. “They run off solar out here but it isn’t enough to run a big refrigerator so when the grad students are here they have someone bring ice over from St. John’s.”

            “Just like grandma,” Dean said.

            “With killer bird-fish,” Sam said.

            Inside one of the coolers on a tray was one of the seagulls, dead, it’s head bent back like some ancient fossil. Its eye glittered in the light. It looked like a gull but its beak was scaly.

            “Does this remind you of biology class?” Dean asked. “Minus Annie Chu.”

            “Annie Chu? National Merit Scholar Annie Chu?” Sam said.

            “The world’s best lab partner,” Dean said. “She could dissect anything.”

            Sam rolled his eyes.

            Dean grinned. Sam was feeling less weird, more like just tired Sam.

            “Les says its feathers aren’t right but I can’t really tell what’s different about them,” Sam said. He picked up a probe and pulled up feathers on the neck. “And if you look here, see those slits? Those are gills. Les says he’s seen a flock of them diving under water like flying fish.”

            “So tomorrow we check out the lighthouse.” The cold room had fluorescent lights which made Sam look more washed out. Dean debated whether he should say something or not. Sam was touchy and weird. And he was a ghost. Fuck it.

            “Go to bed, Sam.”

            Sam rubbed his nose. “I…”

            “What, you don’t sleep anymore?”

            “I slept on the plane.”

            “You can’t even fit on a plane, much less sleep on one. Is this about me and the feeling weird thingy? Cause if it is, it’s okay, put the gun outside. My feelings won’t be hurt.”

            Sam shook his head. “I’m used to the feeling.”

            “Then what? You forgot your footie pajamas?”

            “I want to…hang.”

            “Here?”

            Sam grinned a little. “Not in the cold room.”

            “There’s no TV. There’s no beer. I can’t play poker.”

            “I know.”

            “Then what?” Dean started to feel nervous. “Oh God, you don’t want to have some kind of talk. Sam, I am really not interested in some late night heart to heart, soul baring, I mean, not without a lot of alcohol, not even then—“

            “Christ no!” Sam said, looking equally anxious. “Dude! I just miss hanging! We spend a lot of time sitting in a car or a hotel room or something. Wait, I’ve got music on the laptop.”

            “Not that crap you listen to.”

            “No, I’ve got some of your stuff.”

            “Okay, you gotta lie on the couch,” Dean said.

            “But you’ll hang,” Sam said.

            “Take your boots off,” Dean said.

            Sammy sat down and the springs of the couch squeaked. The couch was beige plaid. They must have made a million of these couches because about every third cabin or place furnished in street furniture had one. He watched Sam unlace his boots. “You just get off on telling people what to do,” Sam said.

            “Call me Napoleon.”

            Sam groaned as he stood up. “You’re right, I don’t fit on planes. What do you want to listen to?”

            Sam had something called Dean’s Playlist. Zeppelin, Foreigner, Bad Company, Mettalica, Motorhead, some Stones, a Styx song or two. “There’s no Bon Jovi.”

            “I hate Bon Jovi.”

            “Yeah, but it’s supposed to be my playlist.”

            “Shut up.” Sam hit play and lay back down on the couch. The music was quiet in deference to Les sleeping in the other room. Sam’s stocking feet were propped on the arm of the couch—he rarely fit on couches other than Bobby’s big old one.

            “You’ll hang,” Sam said, already drowsy.

            “Yeah,” Dean said. Sam was freaked. Big time to the core freaked. Cause he never asked for anything. Dean didn’t understand. Sure, he was dead but he was right here. They were going to fix it.

#

             “Is your brother gone?” Les asked. It was morning, Sam was sitting up on the couch. His boots were set neat. Before Dad died, Sam left his boots everywhere. It drove Dad nuts. Never know when you’ll need to move fast. Since Dad died, Sam always put his boots in arms reach.

             “No,” Sam said. “He’s here. He just doesn’t stay visible unless he’s, like, talking or doing shit or something. It’s like he forgets.”

             “Oh,” Les said.

             “Morning sunshine,” Dean said.

             “Look,” Sam said. “He’s fine. He’s friendly.”

             “Call me Casper,” Dean said.

             “We’re going to head for the lighthouse today,” Sam continued.

             “The US Navy is messing around over there,” Les said, “Be careful. They’re hard asses. You know how US military is. Well, the US in general.”

             “Does he think we’re Canadian?” Dean asked. Did they act like they were from Canada? Were they the slightest bit polite? Well come to think of it, maybe Sam could be a candy-ass polite Canadian type. Sometimes.

             “Um, actually, I’m from Kansas,” Sam said.

              “Oh,” Les said. “No offense.”

             “None taken.”

            Les brought coffee, black. “Breakfast?”

            “No, thanks,” Sam said.

            “You should eat,” Dean said.

            Sam casually scratched his head with a ‘fuck you’ finger.

            “That for me or your brother?” Les asked, amused.

            Sam ducked his head and smiled, embarrassed. “Not you.”

            “You can hear him?”

            “Not in words. Exactly. You ever had a conversation with someone in your head?” Sam said. “Like the things you wish you said to someone after an argument?”

            “L'esprit d'escalier,” Les said. When Sam didn’t understand he explained, “The wit of the staircase. All the things you think of that you should have said after you’ve had an argument.”

            “Yeah,” Sam said. “It feels like I’m making up a conversation. Except I can’t imagine making up a conversation where someone is nagging me.”

            “That’s because you couldn’t find your ass with both hands without my help,” Dean said.

            Sam sipped his coffee.

           “Older or younger brother?”

           “Older,” Sam said. “Four years. Our dad was away a lot. Dean raised me, really. In a cereal and mac ‘n cheese way. It’s amazing I don’t have rickets.”

           “Hey!” Dean said.

           “How long ago—”

           “Six days,” Sam said.

           Les shook his head. “No, I meant, not that it’s any of my business, how long ago did your brother die, if you don’t mind my asking.”

           “Six days ago,” Sam said. His gaze was hard. A muscle started jumping in his jaw.

           Don’t fuck with him, Dean thought.

           Les said quietly, “I’m so sorry. I—”

           Sam just sat there.

           Furious. Dean felt furious. Don’t hurt him you fucker. The pause got awkward. Sammy was rearranging things behind his face or something and couldn’t say anything yet. Les should change the subject. People were jerks. Fucking son of a bitch. Canadians are supposed to be polite, right? Couldn’t the guy see what was happening? Rage. Like whiskey. Pure and burning.

          “Thank you,” Sam said. “I’m taking care of some things.”

          The rustle of hot wind.

          “DEAN!” Sam said. He was up and grabbed the iron poker. “Step in the salt circle, Les.”

          Les looked around, startled.

          One of the chairs fell over.   Les scrambled for the salt circle, scuffing it as he crossed it.

          “Damn it, Dean, stop. I swear to God if you keep doing this I’m tempted to take a gun to my own head.”

          Fear and anger in Sam’s shoulders, in the way he stood, feet slightly apart, not exactly looking like it was going to be a fight but ready for one. Like he was possibly facing a monster. Facing him.

          Sam in the subway. Sam with the gun under his chin. Sam was willing to die when it was his time but he wasn’t suicidal. Was he?

          “Sammy, no.” Dean was visible. The wind was gone. “What’s this about.”

          Sam let out of shuddering breath and was looking straight at him. “Dean, can you understand me?”

          “I’m dead, not Helen Keller.”

          Les was on his knees, trying to fix the salt. He looked up and saw Dean, too. He didn’t look happy.

          “You’re afraid…of me?” Dean asked.

          “Come on,” Sam said. “Thanks Les. We’re hiking to the lighthouse.” Sam grabbed his coat and his boots, checked his pocket for Dean’s gun, and hoisted his duffle. Outside was bright and Sam grimaced at the light.

          “What was that,” Dean said. He was being put off and he knew it. Pissed him off.

          “If you need to blow, do it out here,” Sam said. He plopped the duffle on the ground and rooted through it. He put on his boots. He put his own gun in his holster, the pearl of the handle flashing briefly in the sunlight. Then the usual stuff; flashlight, EMF, knife, rope, salt. “I got to the airport three hours early and still almost missed my flight,” he said. “I kept telling TSA I was meeting a friend to go hunting. Not a lie, right?”

          “You’re not telling me something, and I’m not liking it.”

          “I know,” Sam said. “Look, you’re a…ghost. Mostly you’re you but maybe Les isn’t used to Dean Winchester pissed, much less the ghost of Dean Winchester. He’s been attacked by bird fish and he said he’s seen a strange woman standing in the water who he is pretty sure is not human and has something to do with the bird fish. So when he started to get nervous I told him about salt circles and that made him feel better.”

          “Not the whole story,” Dean said.

          Sam was fiddling with a couple of cell phones. One was Dean’s. “I’ve got a bar,” he said. “We must be close enough to St. John’s to get a signal.” He laid them out. “Les says after the birds attack he doesn’t see them for at least two days. He’s putting together a spread sheet to track their coming and going.”

          “Okay, so we’re safe from fish birds this morning.”

          “Probably,” Sam said.

           The phones sang out, message after message after message.

            “Who’s called?”

            “On your phone? Cas, Cas, three different hunters, 666—Crowley, right?—Cas. On my phone, Cas, Cas, Charlie, Cas, the same three hunters that called you with two more Cas calls in between, Crowley, Cas, Cas, and Cas. I think I should call Cas.”

            “I guess I’m the headline.”

            “Well, you know, Dean Winchester is a big story,” Sam said and tried to flash a smile. “Um, Dean, this isn’t going to be an easy conversation. Do you mind if I put the gun here and walk up there a little ways?”

            Yeah, he did. “No, sure. Go ahead. You need a little privacy. Although if those things come back—”

            Sam nodded. He put Dean’s phone down by his duffle bag. Dean let go, let himself not be visible. He was getting better at that part. Funny, letting go was not his strong suit. Sam walked down towards the water and the rocks, probably hoping to get a strong signal. It wasn’t too windy yet. Good for Sam since a cell phone call in wind was a bitch. Dean let himself wander a bit behind Sam knowing that the gun would pull him up short.

            Sam kept walking and Dean kept drifting. He waited to just sort of feel the need to stop but he didn’t. Instead, as Sam got farther away, he felt pulled towards Sam.

            He wasn’t attached to the gun. He was attached to Sam. How could he be attached to Sam?

            “Cas,” Sam said. “Yeah. It’s true… I…didn’t, I mean there were some of Malachi’s thugs and I saw the one who did it but I, I just couldn’t get between them. I…I’m sorry Cas.”

            Damn it, Dean thought. Could I just die for once without it being your cross to bear? He could imagine Cas intoning, I’m sure you did your best, Sam. I’m worried about you.

          “I’m doing okay, you know. Doing what Dean wants, just keep going, get him back.”

          Is that what he wanted?

           “No! Of course not. Not like any crossroads demon would touch my soul anyway,” Sam laughed but it rang false. “I tried that, remember? No. Different plan this time. Dean’s with me. Here.”

            Dean resisted the impulse to wave.

            Sam lowered his head, “No, no. Cas, listen. I can’t put him on the line… No, he’s all right… not all right exactly. Actually it’s all fucked up. He wouldn’t go with his reaper.”

            ‘Things to do, Cas,’ Dean thought. ‘People to take care of, problems left unfinished. Angels and demons every-fucking-where.’

            “Right, if he didn’t he would be a ghost. Is a ghost. He’s attached to his gun like Bobby was to his flask. I thought it was okay, you know? Better than hell, at least until we could get him in…” Sammy did one of those weird can’t say it pauses and then in a completely normal voice, “better until we get him back. But he’s changing already.”

            Cas must have been talking. Sam was listening. Intent.

            “He might not. If things were straight I’d take the chance he’d end up in Heaven; warrior of God and all that,” Sam said. “He doesn’t see it but yeah, he’s the truest, bravest, most loyal son of a bitch and that’s got to count for something—“

            Sammy pulled the phone away and stared at the straight and the land across it. Labrador. Sam could play a hell of a hand of poker. He was great a reading people. But he sucked at hiding his own tells and the guy was trying not to crumble. Dean tried to imagine crying with Cas on the line.

            Awkward.

            Dean could hear Cas’s voice from the phone, “Sam? Sam? Are you there? I’m concerned that we’ve lost the connection although you might be overcome by emotion. Would you like me to call you back? I can wait thirty more seconds and then I can hang up, Sam, and call you back.”

            ‘Cas, you moron,’ Dean thought fondly. And Sam was wrong. No way he was going to Heaven, even if the pearly gates were open and it was ladies and asshole’s night.

            Sam put the phone to his ear. “No, I’m here. Anyway, with Heaven closed, I thought it would be like Kevin staying with his mother. I’ve, I’ve been a shit to him the last couple of months. I said some things, Cas. And this is what he wants. But he’s an unfinished business ghost.”

            Dean knew exactly what Cas was asking because he was asking it himself. ‘What unfinished business?’

            Sometimes when the light hit Sam exactly right you could see the bones of his face laid clear as a skull. The high cheekbones, the deep set of his eyes. “Me,” he said.

            “What the fuck?” Dean said, visible as Mount Rushmore.

#

            Sam kept walking. The ground was uneven and he was pretending to spend a lot of time watching his footing.

            “I show up, I get pissed, I throw things around, I don’t remember it afterwards,” Dean said. “In a way, this is like—” he spread his hands, “being black-out drunk, right?”

            “No.”

            “No? Just no? Okay then, what is it like?”

            Sam stopped. “There are two things that set you off. When you think someone is upsetting or hurting me—“

            “Well, yeah, okay. I’ll admit, sometimes I have a little bit of ‘the only person allowed to pick on my little brother is me’ attitude—“

            “—And when I piss you off. So it’s like you can’t decide whether you’re homicidal to everyone else in the world or to me.” Sam started walking again.

            “No way. I mean, sure, fuck the rest of the world but—“

            “Admit it, Dean. You’re angry at me. Really angry at me. And I don’t blame you. It’s okay. I deserve it—“

            “Don’t start that crap—” Dean said but Sam kept on talking over him.

            “—but you’re a vengeful ghost now. You could do something really bad. You don’t remember what you’ve done but I do and you scared Les with just a minor shitshow.”

            “I’m never going to hurt you, you know that.” Then it hit him. “That bruise on your arm.”

            “From a chair. And you flung a table at my head in the bunker and that’s a problem because you’re a ghost and if you kill me you’ll stay a ghost. Right now the bigger problem is that every time you come back from one of these, these anger storms, you’re…” Sam stopped, stumped for an explanation.

            “I’m what?”

            “You’re less you and more like the ghost of you.”

            “Come on!” Dean made himself hold in his anger although that deserved a whole screaming match. “I’m me. I feel like me. I talk like me.”

            “Maybe to you. And yeah, sometimes you do. But don’t you feel a little, washed out, Dean?”

            Dean shook his head.

            “Don’t you care that you’re dead?”

            “Sure I care that I’m dead!” Dean said. But did he? Yeah he did. He had the sense that somewhere he was really freakin’ unhappy about it. But he was concentrating on the matter at hand. “I’m just doing what we always do, getting things done, dealing with the fallout later.”

            He waited for the next thing Sam would say. Dreaded it.

            Instead, Sam had stopped and was looking at something in the grass and weeds. “Is that one of those birds?”

            It was. Just sitting there. It didn’t even look at them but it was plain as day. Killer seagull. Or fish-gull.

            Dean looked for the rest of the flock. No where for Sam to hide, except… There was only one.

            Sam took out his gun and walked up, scanning the sky and the ground. The bird just sat there, white and gray. It looked lost. It looked stupid. Sam kept going closer. Dean expected it to fly.

            Finally Sam was standing right over it.

            The bird looked up at him but didn’t even stand. It’s eyes were empty. Bird eyes were weird.

            “Is it sick?” Sam asked.

            He nudged it with the toe of his boot. Dean expected it to strike but it didn’t. It didn’t do anything.

            Sam crouched.

            “Sam,” Dean warned.

            It was like a stuffed animal, empty of whatever made things really alive. Sam reached out tentatively and touched it. Then stroked it. It didn’t seem to like it or dislike it.

            Dean heard a kind of silvery sound, a ringing sound. He looked around and pretty far off he saw specks flying.

            “Incoming,” he said.

            Sam stood up, both hands on the gun. “Cover?”

            Except for the occasional clutch of stunted pine, the island was mostly bare. “Not an attraction in this theme park,” Dean said.

            The sound got a little louder although never loud.

            “Do you hear that?” Dean asked.

            “Barely,” Sam said.

            The bird on the ground was suddenly a bird. Alert. Alive. Its black eyes were full of malice and it leapt into flight, struck once at Sam and then winged away towards the specks on the horizon.

            Sam stood ready to run although to where, neither one of them was sure.

            The sound grew fainter.

            “Can you still hear it?” Sam asked.

            “No,” Dean said after a moment. “I think they’re gone.”

            “Well, that’s interesting,” Sam said.

            “Next time you want to go to an island?” Dean said. “How about Hawaii?”

#

            After that, by unspoken agreement, there was a truce. They were hunting. They’d talk about everything later.

            They found a rock, four feet tall but pretty narrow, just sitting in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t exactly like a gravestone because it wasn’t cut. It was like a boulder sort of roughly shaped like a gravestone.

            “A menhir,” Sam said. When Dean gave him the look, he added, “A standing stone. Like Stonehenge only just one, not a circle. They’re all over Ireland and England and France.”

            “You’re the Wikipedia of nerdom,” Dean said.

            “You know what Wikipedia is?” Sam said.

            Sam studied the standing rock. Dean wandered around to the other side because there wasn’t much to look at. Nature was pretty and all but after awhile pretty gets boring unless you’re drunk and she has double D’s and might want to take you back to her place. “Hey Sam, something is carved over here.”

            It was the crude outline of a bird.

            “Maybe Celtic,” Sam said. “Vikings got to the new world and there’s evidence that the Celts got here earlier.”

            “The Irish discovered America?”

            “Sure, unless of course you’re Mohican or something. Then you might feel different,” Sam said. “Anyway, standing stones are usually from an earlier culture than Celts but they put some up, too.”

            “Not Leprechauns,” Dean said. “Anything but Leprechauns.”

            “Earlier than that. When the Fey were still Gods,” Sam said. He took photos with his cell phone.

            “Are there Celtic fish-birds?”

            “I don’t know. Until I can get a signal, I can’t do any research.”

            “So I can’t drink and you can’t get on the internet.”

            “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “We’re both detoxing.”

            “You’re still a nerd.”

            “You’re still an asshole.”

            “Wear it with pride,” Dean said.

#

            “I’ve been thinking,” Sam said. Not the ‘Let’s talk’ kind of thinking tone but the ‘about the case’ kind of tone.

            “I figured,” Dean said. “I wish we were driving instead of hiking. At least we’d have tunes.”

            “So what do we have?” Sam said. “We have guys disappearing in a lighthouse that looked all nice and storybook like but wasn’t.”

            “Yeah, so illusion. Djinns? But the Marines were all seeing the same thing and so was the camera. Also, djinns don’t usually have killer bird-fish hanging around.”

            “Right,” Sam said. “Les said he’s seen a woman standing in the water.”

            “Not exactly a tourist beach,” Dean said. “Did he say anything about her?”

            “He said when he saw her the sun was behind her so she was hard to make out.” They were climbing a hill. Sam leaned into it as he talked. “I was thinking about the bird we saw. You know how it was like, like—“

            “Stupid.”

            “Yeah, stupid, until we heard the sound.”

            “Right, when it went from one of the robot Presidents at DisneyLand to real live killer.”

            “I think they’re a gestalt,” Sam said.

            “What is this, SAT day?”

            “A gestalt is a collective intelligence. A hive mind. Imagine that instead of each bird being an individual, the flock is the animal and each bird is like, like a brain cell. So if you have one bird it’s like having one cell. But you put them all together then you have a thing that’s aware.”

            “That’s really creepy.”

            Sam pointed. “So’s that.”

            It was the lighthouse.

            In the sunlight it didn’t even look as bad as a lot of the places they’d checked out. Sam pulled out the EMF meter.

            “You ready?” he asked.

            “Kick it,” Dean said.

            The door was still half open and half off its hinges. Sam had to step sideways to ease in (Sam was taller than your average Marine.) Inside the first room was full of twigs and weedy blown leaves. No graffiti on the walls. Most of the places they went had been tagged up. The fireplace was empty. The windows were dirty but broken and let in enough light. Sam had pulled his gun and walked carefully.

            “Let me check it out,” Dean said. “I mean, take advantage of the fact I’m already a stiff.”

            Sam threw him an irritated glance but let him go ahead.

            Dean felt weird walking through the arched doorway empty handed. It was the room where the uniforms had been all folded neatly. It was empty and cleaner than the first room, probably from the Marines doing forensics. Beyond through an open doorway was what had been a kitchen. He could see a counter and a dry sink.

            “Nothing,” he said. He was straining to hear the sound of ringing, clear like the ring of a real silver coin. But he didn’t, just wind and far away what was probably a boat motor from the military base.

            Sam came in. He put his gun in his pocket and ran the EMF around.

            “Anything?” Dean asked.

            Sam shook his head. “Not a ghost.”

            “Got a theory?”

            “Not without research.”

            Sam checked the window and Dean joined him. The lighthouse stood at a high vantage at one end of the island. Rock cliffs fell to a narrow gravel beach and then just profoundly blue ocean and sun.

            “It’s beautiful,” Sam said, smiling.

            “Hands in the air.” Standing in the archway were four Marines, rifles trained on Sam.

            Sam raised his hands.

#

            The Navy Base was organized around a clapboard farmhouse that must have been from before the island became a bird preserve. Back when someone manned the lighthouse. Around it were Quonset huts and prefab sheds. The whole complex was bordered in a double run of tall wire fence topped with razor wire.

            There were soldiers but the place felt contained, without the sort of endless hustle and bustle that Dean expected of a military base.

            Dean didn’t like military bases. Or cops. Or organizations that told you what to do.

            They hadn’t handcuffed Sam. Dean kept half-expecting him to break for it but he didn’t. Probably the smart thing to do. They marched him into the clapboard farmhouse—converted into offices—and into what used to be the parlor and was now labeled Security.

            The man behind the desk was young, slight of build but with the pounded into muscle look of a soldier. He had a mobile, intelligent looking face. The nameplate on his desk said Lt. Dobek. He looked up.

            “Found him in the lighthouse, sir. He was carrying.” The marine dumped Sam and Dean’s pistols on the desk and Sam’s demon killing knife. Also, a five pound bag of salt, a flashlight, the EMF detector, a rope, and a couple of cans of red spraypaint. Just the usual paraphanalia.

            Dobek looked at the weaponry and back up at Sam. He raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘Really?’ “Can I see your permit?”

            The marine handed Lt. Dobek Sam’s Canadian Wildlife Service badge and his credit card and American driver’s license. The credit card and badge said Paul Frehey. The driver’s license said ‘Roger Waters.’ Dean winced.

            “So do I call you Frehey or Waters?” Dobek asked. “And can you explain this?”

            “I study birds,” Sam said.

            “You’re a bird watcher,” Dobek said.

            “No,” Sam said. “I don’t just watch them. And you guys are morons who can’t see what’s in front of your noses.”

            ‘What the hell?’ Dean thought. Dobek just looked surprised but the four Marines stiffened.

            “There is something killing your men. A monster.”

            Dobek looked a little startled. But he still sounded skeptical. “Monsters,” he said. “What kind of monsters?”

            Sam shrugged. “You name it, I’ve probably killed it. Although seagulls that breath under water and attack people are pretty new to me.”

            The marines exchanged looks. Not exactly ‘he’s crazy’ looks. Dean was thinking they were right. This was not Sam’s style.

            “I don’t know who you are but you’re one guy and we’re a naval base—” Dobek started.

          “I kill monsters. I’ve done it most of my life. I can help you kill this one,” Sam said.

            Dobek shook his head.

            One of the marines put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

            Sam leaned forward and said something so quietly that Dean couldn’t hear it.

            “Okay,” Dobek said.

          “You’re so hidebound, so rule blind, so pigheaded, you’ve all got your heads stuck so far up your asses that you wouldn’t know what was going on if it walked into this office and shit on the desk,” Sam said.

            “Sam!” Dean barked.

            Dobek started and glanced around, as did one of the Marines. The other three just glared at Sam.

            Sam roared, “It’s going to kill you!” and smacked his hands on Dobek’s desk.

            Four Marines grabbed him and threw him to the floor and he hit hard. Dean heard the air go out of him.

            Unnecessary roughness. Dean clenched his fists. He couldn’t do anything. Sam threw three of them off and rose, dragging the fourth one up with him. Sam’s nose was bleeding. He reached around trying to get at the Marine hanging on around his neck. Sam wasn’t fighting, not even swinging. He could do real damage but the big oaf wasn’t even trying to do anything except get them off. One of the guys he’d thrown off tried to tackle him and drove him into a bookcase and then a Marine slammed him in the side of face with rifle butt.

            Sam’s eyes rolled white into his head and his knees gave. He slid bonelessly down the bookcase.

            Dean saw red. One of the Marines reached down and grabbed Sam’s arm. Don’t touch my brother, he thought. No one touches Sammy. The hot wind swirled through and blew out the window and everything came off the desks in the office.

            The Marine who was starting to haul Sam up let go and jumped back.

            Sam moaned, trying to get up.

            Sam was in pain. Sammy was hurt.

            Books came off the bookshelf and flung themselves at the Marine who’d touched his brother, driving him back towards the door.

            Get away from Sammy.

            It was joyous. It was righteous. The fuckers deserved it.

#

Daylight, alright/
I don't know, I don't know if it's real/
Been a long night and something ain't right/
You won't show, you won't show how you feel/

No time ever seems right/
To talk about the reasons why you and I fight/
It's high time to draw the line/
Put an end to this game before it's too late/

                                    “Head Games”, Foreigner

            “What do you remember?” Sam asked.

            They were sitting in the dark on the rocks near the ornithological station: Sam, Lt. Dobek, and Dean. Dobek was in a white t-shirt and jeans. Sam was barefoot in the sand and had a bruise down the side of his face. A fire of driftwood burned.

            “I remember the base,” Dean said.           

            “That’s more than you usually do,” Sam said.

            “Did anybody get hurt?”

            “Nobody stayed long enough,” Dobek said. “When we got back in there was a wall of debris around your brother. A kind of fort of bureaucratic mess.”

            “What did you say to him,” Dean said, indicating Dobek.

             “He said he could show me,” Dobek said.

            “I’m sorry to use you that way, Dean,” Sam said. “I just needed to prove that…”

            “That there are monsters,” Dean said, his voice gravelly. “It was brilliant, brain boy. No harm, no foul.”

            “Reap the whirlwind,” Dobek said. “So this is what you do?”

            “Incite my brother to violence, not so much. Get beat up?” Sam said. “More than I’d like to.”

            “Kill monsters.”

            “We’re hunters,” Dean said.

            “And you’re…”

            “Dead,” Dean said. “At the moment, yes.”

            Sam looked away.

            “At the moment?” Dobek said.

            Dean shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

            Sam’s face was turned enough away from the fire to be mostly in shadow.

            Dobek looked at the beer in his hand. “You think you can kill this thing?”

            “I think we can,” Sam said. When he looked back at them he was calm. “It would help if you could tell us everything you know about it.”

            “I’ve been stationed here about six months,” Dobek said. “They found the fisherman a couple of days after I got here.”

            Dobek told the story. The base was leased from the Canadian government. The US was studying long range, deep sea sonar and this was a research post. Not much for the marines to do so they trained and patrolled and had sentry duty. A team of marines was patrolling.

            They came across a boat that had been pulled ashore. Not that unusual. Fisherman came ashore to drink or whatever. The kind of guys who became fisherman tended to be outdoorsmen. They saw a mound and some stuff, debris maybe, around it. Some gulls were picking at the debris.

            Then they realized that the large mound was moving. It was made up of those bird things. When the team got closer the birds flew off. Underneath was the naked body of a man. The fisherman.

            “I saw the body,” Dobek said. “It was one big bruise. No pecks or cuts. He’d been battered to death. Stripped. Undressed. Some of his clothing was half folded.”

            “Great. Bird origami,” Dean said.

            “You think that’s what happened to the men in the lighthouse,” Sam said.

            Dobek nodded. “I don’t want it to happen again. It’s not like I can send a message to my superiors saying supernatural birds are killing my men so if you can stop it, I’ll do what I can to give you a clear way in and anything you need.”

            “What happened to the bodies?” Sam asked.

            “I think, if they aren’t interrupted, they drag them to the sea,” Dobek said.

            Dean glanced out at the dark water. There was a gleam of phosphorescence.

            “What is that?” Sam asked.

            “Jellyfish, probably,” Dobek said. “Or plankton.”

            It was lovely and they watched it for a moment. Dobek took a pull on his beer. “I should get back,” he said.

            Dean kept watching the sea.

            A woman rose out of the water. She was silhouetted against the phosphorescence but her proportions were off; a little too thick. Not fat so much as like badly modeled clay or something.

            There was the distant sound of ringing, tinkling silver.

            Then she dissolved into things winging, swooping towards the shore.

            “Get back to the station,” Dean said.

            Sam was on his feet. He grabbed a branch sticking out of the fire and swung it into the air. An arc of orange sparks showed that the night was full of birds. Then Sam and Dobek were buffeted by bird bodies.

            Dean tried to feel rage, but it was like there was nothing there. The well was empty.

            Dean could hear the thumps, like clubs. Sam swept the branch around driving them back. Dobek stumbled backwards on the rocks, close to the water’s edge. It was slippery there with slime and wet and Dobek windmilled, went to one knee, and then went into the surf.

            He struggled up and a wave caught him sideways and he disappeared under.

            Sam was holding the birds off pretty well with his branch but he looked around just in time to see Dobek go under.

            Dobek came up again, his upturned face white against the dark water and tried to stand, but birds slammed into him knocking him farther into deeper water and he went under again.

            Dean felt his gut clench. He knew what Sam was going to do—he’d have done it too but Sam—in first, always saving, dropping the branch and heading across the rocks. The birds abandoning him and diving into the dark water.

            No, Sam.

            He followed even though it meant nothing. Sam hit the water full length like a racing dive although Dean wasn’t sure it was deep enough. For a ghost, swimming was meaningless. Air above, dark water below, it was all the same. Above he looked around, fear building until Sam came up, his hair slicked to his head. The bird things flew out of the water at Sam and dove. “I can’t find him!” Sam gasped and then he went under again where those things battered at him even there. But not so many of them because more of them were somewhere else. Beating at Dobek.

            Saltwater smelled of dead and living things.

            Dean ghosted through the water—he wouldn’t get Sam out of there until Sam either found Dobek or—so he had to find Dobek and he did, touch of fabric, wet jeans, a leg. He rose up like smoke. “Sam! Sam!”

            Nothing. There was just the cold surface of the water and the surf grinding against the rocks. They were fifteen, twenty feet from shore.

            Then Sam surfaced.

            “Sam!”

            Sam found him—amazing that someone could tune in on the sound of a ghost voice, another weird ghost fact. Sam hauled Dobek to the surface and pulled him to the shore.  It seemed like Dobek had been under a long time. The fish-birds kept diving and pounding at Sam both above and below the surface. Dobek was limp when Sam pulled him to the shore.

            Sam threw Dobek over his shoulder and stumbled as best he could to the station.

            Les was sitting at the table working on his laptop. “Oh no,” he said.

            “Get the door!” Sam gasped. A fish bird flashed in. Les raised a binder and smashed it in mid flight and it slapped to the floor, neck broken. Les pushed the door shut.

Sam laid Dobek down on the floor, tilted Dobek’s head back and started breathing. He laid his head against Dobek’s chest and listened, then started CPR. “Can you call for help on the radio,” he gasped out as he pushed. (To the speed and beat of “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees. Dean remembered that weird fact, shared by Sam.)

            Les scrambled to the radio. “Coast Guard, this is Les Salenko at Waterloo University Research on Baccalieu Island, I’ve got a medical emergency.” While he raised the coast guard at St. John’s, Sam kept up compressions. Dobek’s face was inhumanly white where it wasn’t black with bruises. His lips were not the sort of purple of a kid who was too cold, they were pale blue.

            Dean wondered if ghosts could see the dead. Then yeah, a reaper, one he’d never seen, was there. The reaper touched Dobek and Dobek rose up out of the body.

            Dobek looked down, shocked.

            The reaper touched Dobek’s arm. Dean waited for the ‘why,’ the recrimination. Dobek closed his eyes in a moment of resignation.

            “I’m sorry,” Dean said. Sam didn’t even seem to notice.

            Dobek looked at Dean. Just looked and then they were gone.

            “Sam,” Dean said.

            “Come on,” Sam whispered. “Come on.” One, two, three, four, stayin’ alive, stayin alive. The new CPR guidelines said don’t bother with breathing, just keep the heart going. Sam had explained it all to Dean. Sam kept up on that shit.

            “Sam,” Dean said gently. “He’s already gone.”

            Les turned around to look at them.

            Sam stopped. His hair was wet and hanging in his face. He sat back on his heels and wiped his bangs back.

            “Coast guard is coming,” Les said.

            Sam swallowed. “I tried,” he said.

            “I know. He knew.”

            Sam shook his head. “Don’t say it,” he said huskily.

            You can’t save them all.

#

            Les gave Sam a towel, and he toweled his hair and changed his shirt. His chest and back were marked with plate-sized bruises, one bisecting his protection tattoo.

            Outside the coast guard cutter came in, lights flashing. The EMTs looked like fisherman, too; local guys with crew-cuts, no nonsense types. One of them was a guy almost as tall as Sam who looked like he might have had some First Nations blood. Sam explained that he’d met the lieutenant and they’d hit it off and that he’d come by to have a beer. He’d said he was going to finish his beer and hike back.

            “I went back out to, you know, take a leak,” Sam said, “and I saw him in the water. He didn’t have a pulse so I did CPR but…”

            Les agreed that was what happened.

            “Funny how he’s all bruised up. Rocks maybe?” the big EMT said. “Usually they cut people up but the sea is funny. You did what you could do.”

            Sam shook his head.

            Dean stayed silent and as unobtrusive as possible. He wondered why the rage hadn’t risen in him. Why he couldn’t have ‘blown’ as Sam put it. If he had just…done whatever. Instead Sam was lying to the authorities (not so big a deal, they did that all the time) and feeling the weight of the world. Dobek had seemed like a good guy.

            They watched the coast guard zip Dobek’s body in a body bag and put it onto a gurney and then wade out into the water and lift the gurney onto the boat.

            “Now what?” Les said.

            “Now we figure out how to kill it,” Sam said. “Once we figure out what it is.”

            “I…I have an idea,” Les said. “You know, after you tethered the laptops to that phone this afternoon, I was thinking.”

            “This afternoon?” Dean said.

            “You gotta be visible, Dean. My head is killing me,” Sam said.

            Len pulled open a cabinet and pulled out ibuprofen. He handed the bottle and a glass of water to Sam. Sam tossed back four.

            To the now visible Dean he explained, “Sam wouldn’t go across the water to the hospital after he was knocked in the head. I know it’s not good science but I always heard a person with a head injury shouldn’t be allowed to fall asleep so we talked for awhile and I checked ever so often to make sure his pupils were dilating evenly.”

            Sam broke in, “I’m fine, Dean. Really. Headache. No dizziness, no slurring, I can recite the presidents. Business as usual.”

            “How many fingers, Sammy?” Dean asked. He held up two.

            “How many fingers, Dean,” Sam held up his middle finger.

            Dean smiled.

            “So while he slept a couple of hours I went researching. I found something. I don’t know if it’s even remotely helpful.”

            He turned his screen to them. On it was an illustrated page for an Irish goddess with the usual long curling red hair and diaphanous airy-fairy gown. Most of the goddesses that Dean had seen were not very Princess-like.

            The goddess was called Fand.

            Les made sandwiches while they read about her. When she wasn’t a beautiful human she was a seagull who flew around with her handmaidens, all of them connected by silver chains.

            “A lot of the Celtic gods could create illusion,” Sam said. “They’re the original Fairy. Not the cute little cartoon kind. The six foot tall, dressed like kings, psychopathic kind. I think she’s using the lighthouse as a barrow.”        

            “Barrows are underground,” Les said. “Right? I mean, I’ve read Lord of the Rings. Tom Bombadill and all that.”

            “Yeah, but I’m thinking that she used illusion on those marines there because that was home. Or at least close to home.”

            “Great. So how do we kill her?” Dean asked.

            “She’s Fey,” Sam said. “Cold iron.”

            “Does steel count as cold iron?” Les asked.

            “No,” Sam said. “I’ve got a knife of cold iron.”

            “Getting close to her with just a knife isn’t going to be easy,” Dean said.

            “We need to get in that lighthouse anyway,” Sam said. “Somewhere in there is a spell, remember?”

            “You think it’s still there?” Dean asked.

            “We’re here. Might as well check it out.”

            “A spell? Like a magic spell?” Les asked.

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “Sam is a tenth level wizard.”

            “Shut up,” Sam said.

#

            Two hours of sleep for Sam so they could wait for moonrise. Sam pointed out that the Marine Corps was probably not going to take Dobek’s death well so they should check the lighthouse that night.

            Moonrise.

            “I don’t hate camping,” Dean said. “But, no forget it. I hate camping.”

            “You used to like to go deer hunting with Dad,” Sam said.

            “No, I hated deer hunting with Dad,” Dean said. “It’s November, you’re freezing your ass off in a tree stand waiting for some deer to show up. Dad makes you climb down every time you have to pee and walk downwind. Plus deer are harder to hit than targets.”

            “You acted like you liked it.”

            “It was Dad. It was better being miserable with Dad than sitting in a hotel room without Dad.”

            “It was better reading at Bobby’s,” Sam said. “Sleeping in a bed. Sometimes Bobby would pour a teaspoon of whiskey in my hot chocolate.”

            “He did that for you, too? He said he only did it for me.”

            “Dude, it made us fall asleep faster.”

            “Ahhhhh, right,” Dean said. “Bobby had some special ideas about parenting.”

            They climbed the last bit of the hill in silence.   The lightkeeper’s house blazed, lit up like a hobbit house.

            “I guess Fand is home,” Dean said.

            “Notice how the lighthouse itself is dark?” Sam said. “I don’t think you could make a cellar in this island.”

            “Not without dynamite. Solid rock.”

            “Right,” Sam said. “So if you were a lighthouse keeper who for God knows what reason collected occult shit, and you didn’t keep it in your house…”

            “Because you don’t want the kiddies coloring all over it or whatever…”

            They looked up at the dark lighthouse.

            “Sam, that’s totally fucked. It’s a ruin in there. You weigh what, 190?”

            “Fuck you, Dean. 220.”

            “Dude, since the trials you’ve been eating once a week, maybe. And you never work out.”

            “If you weren’t ectoplasm, I’d kick your ass.”

            No, Dean thought, you wouldn’t. “Sammy, why don’t you ever just haul off and punch me?”

            “Because every time I put my hand through you it creeps me out. And it doesn’t do anything to you so what would be the point.”

            “No, really. I mean, I punch you.   I mean, only when you deserve it, like when you screw up the car. And you know the rules, don’t mess with the car—“

            “I don’t know what you are talking about but do you think we could debate the rules of Dean some other time?” Sam looked up at the lighthouse.

            “Right,” Dean said. “Right. Just,” he tried to think of what to say. Know that I get mad at you but it doesn’t mean anything? Forgive me? What the fuck, was he trying to jinx this whole thing? He should just send chocolate and flowers for God’s sake.

            “Just what?”

            “Just be careful,” Dean said.

            He couldn’t see Sam’s face that well in the dark but he knew what it looked like. Knew Sam was trying to see him. “You okay?”

            “This plan sucks.”

            “You mean not really having one? Yeah.”

            “Watch your head, you’ve already cracked it once in the last twenty-four hours.”

            “Dude,” Sam said, “we’ve had more concussions than the entire NFL. We’re going to be drooling by the time we’re forty.”

            “I figure every time Cas heals us, we start over.”

            Sam laughed quietly. They were spiked with before-the-action-adrenaline. He took out the knife and moved slowly to the door. He called out, “Fand! Dia dhuit!” (Greetings.)

            (“Fuck all,” he’d said earlier, “Gaelic is impossible.”)

            Nothing.

            He looked over his shoulder back at Dean, his face half-illuminated by the light from the window.

            He called, “Cad é mar atá tú?” (How are you?)

            Awesome. They’d announced themselves so they were going in without the element of surprise and with less chance that they’d meet a goddess and a lot more chance that they’d meet a bunch of carnivorous seagulls.

            A woman called out, “Tráthnóna maith daoibh.” It was a ‘hello’ kind of tone of voice.

            Sam put the hand with the knife in a pocket and pulled open the door.

            It was like the video. A fire crackled in the fireplace. The table was set with wine and a ham, bread and pears.

            The voice floated from the other room, “C'ainm atá oraibh?”

            Sam shrugged. Memorizing Gaelic did not mean understanding much of it.

            A woman came to the doorway. She looked strange to Dean. She shimmered between a woman and something ancient and not very pretty that had been shattered into pieces. As a woman she had dark hair, not red, and wore a long straight blue dress that didn’t do much for her figure. She was attractive, as best he could tell with the shimmering. She looked at Sam and then at him. “An bhfuil Gaeilge agat?”

            Dean wondered what Sam was seeing. Sam took a step towards her.

            “You’re not Irish?” she said. She didn’t have an Irish accent, but something thicker, more like Scottish only, Dean thought, even harder to understand.

            Sam shook his head. He took another step towards her.

            “I asked you who you were? And why is a dead man keeping the company of the living?”

            “Tá áthas orm buaileadh libh, Fand,” Sam said. (We are pleased to meet you.) Another step. He was almost in arms length of her. She was interested and perplexed.

            “Your pronunciation is terrible. But it is nice of you to take the trouble,” Fand said. “How do you know my name? And what do you have in your pocket?”

            “Tá m'árthach foluaineach lán d'eascanna,” Sam said. It was the thing he had worked the hardest on pronouncing correctly. ‘My hovercraft is full of eels.’

            It did have the effect of momentarily flummoxing her. Which was the point. The element of surprise.

            Sam lunged, whipping the knife out of his pocket and she only managed to get out of the way at the last moment, the iron hissing across her shoulder.

            She whipped her arm and threw him back against the wall.

            “Watch it,” Dean said.

            The inside of the lighthouse shifted and wavered, one moment brightly lit, the next moment a dusty ruin. Sam tried to get up, but couldn’t seem to get his legs underneath him right.

            Fucking bitch had smacked his head against the wall again.

            “DEAN, NO!”

            The goddess whipped her head around. “What are you? You’re hunters! You’re the brothers!”

            “So we’re famous even in Ireland,” Dean growled.

            “But you’re dead,” she said. “I’ve never heard of a dead hunter. What can you even do?”

            Sam used his hand to steady himself and got back to his feet. He had the knife.

            “Why do you want to do that?” Fand asked him.

            “Because you killed people,” Sam said.

            “I’ve been scattered…for a long time. It took a long time to get enough birds together to be,” she said. “People used to bring me sacrifices but everyone has forgotten. Until people bring me sacrifices, I have to find my own.”

            “This is not your time anymore,” Sam said. “You can’t just kill.”

            She frowned. “You’re just a mortal. Why are you talking to me that way.”

            Sam lunged and she lowered her hand in a smacking motion and flattened him easily against the ground. He was struggling against the weight to breath.

            Dean swung at Fand.

            She shattered into birds. That had been a mistake. The whole plan had been to stab her in her goddess form. No way was Sam going to be able to stab a flock of seagulls.

            The room plunged into darkness, with the only light being a line of moonlight through a window. Dean heard Sam moving.

            “SAM!”

            “I can get up,” Sam said and then, “Uh—” as something thudded him. A flicker across the window. More impacts against Sam. Dean could feel them flying through him although he couldn’t have said what it felt like.

            “Get out!” Dean yelled.

            “Ye-AH—” A sound like Sam going down.

            “SAM?”

            “Trying…” from down at the ground. And then Sammy yelled as things thudded into him. In the moonlight Dean could make out a mass, moving, covering his brother.

            “Sam!”

            Nothing.

            “Talk to me Sammy,” Dean growled.

            This had been a stupid plan. Dean had been stupid to agree to it. Sam really couldn’t be trusted on his own. And some 3,000 year old bitch was fucking with his little brother.

            He was dead. Sam seemed to think that Dean’s being dead was a sad fact for Sam but nobody, as usual, expected anything of Dean except that he would fuck up. That he would lose his temper and scare the bird scientist. And yes, he had just fucked up and shattered Fand into birds but he was tired of trying to control himself.

            My hovercraft is full of eels? Jesus. They needed to have come in silent. They needed to have caught the bitch off guard. He couldn’t stop Sammy from doing whatever he wanted because Dean was a fucking ghost.

            He couldn’t even drive his own car.

            The hot wind came up. Birds started to be swept into walls.

            They were in Canada. He wanted to be back in the States.

            He was tired of all of them. Mostly, he was tired of himself. Tired of Dean fucking Winchester.

            Fucking bitch didn’t know what she was dealing with.

#

            “Sammy!”

            It was still dark. Was it the same night?

            “SAMMY!”

            Sam groaned.

            “Come on, talk to me.”

            “Dean? Where—”

            “Talk to me Sammy. Talk to me or so help me—”

            “K’ jus’ head hurs.”

            “I don’t care if your head hurts. You gotta get up.”

            “Yeah.”

            The moonlight was constant. The room smelled strange; brine and blood and something old. What the fuck use was smell for a ghost?

            “Sam. You’re concussed. You’ve gotta work with me here.”

            “K’. Sorry. Dean, little help here?”

            He meant, ‘help me up.’ Fuck the world. “I can’t, Sammy. Remember? I’m…not alive right now.” He wished there was some light because he could just imagine Sam hearing that, remembering all over again. “Sammy?”

            He wasn’t going to answer. Goddamn it, Sam. Grow a backbone.

            “SAM!”

            Whispered, almost airless in the dark, “yeah.”

            “Come on, little brother.”

            Sam was moving, he could hear the shuffling sound.

            “What are you doing?”

            “Crawling,” Sam said. “Duffle. Flashlight. I stand up, I’ll hurl.”

            Ragged breathing. It sounded like he might have stopped moving. Dean wished he had something more than just words. “Sam,” he said, using the only weapon he had, “You better not let me down.” He heard Sam’s sharp intake of breath.

            “Talk to me, you non-communicative asshole,” Sam said. It sounded more exhausted than angry, but it was something. Sam trying in the darkness.

            “How many fingers, Sammy.”

            “Don’t make me laugh, you fucker. Oh, crap.”

            “What?”

            “I just put my hand on a dead bird. They’re all over the place. ‘Cept this one gushy and still moving.”

            Sam must have been at the archway because Dean could hear him using the wall to stand up.

            “Is that a good idea?”

            “I don’t know,” Sam said. “Better than accidently groping slimy half-alive birds.”

            “I’m gonna remind you of this the next time you order chicken salad.”

            Sam didn’t throw up until he got outside and got a flashlight. Then he threw up and breathed for awhile. Dean waited him out. Sam was tough. You don’t do 180 years in Hell and get stopped by throwing up with a headache.

            There were a couple of birds visible in the beam of the flashlight; injured, stupid and listless.

            “What do you think she meant,” Sam asked. He sat. He opened a bottle of water.

            “I don’t even know what you meant. Something about eels.”

            Sam rinsed his mouth out and spat. “No, about getting enough birds together to be.”

            “Not an expert on the lifecycle of bird fish. We’ve got a long hike, Sammy, and then you need an ER.”

            “First,” Sam took a swig of water. “We go up there.” He looked up at the top of the lighthouse.

            “Oh fuck a duck. No. You can’t see straight.”

            “There’s a spell up there that will put a human soul back in a body,” Sam said.

            “Might be,” Dean said.

            “How about I climb until you can check.”

            “You’re not climbing.”

            “You’re dead, which means unless you want to get pissed and blow me off the stairs, you can’t stop me from trying.”

            “Bitch.”

            Sam didn’t even bother to respond. He just grinned.

            Why was it that they were happiest with each other, most themselves, when they were hunting? Not saving the world, just hunting.

            Sam used the wall of the lighthouse to help himself to his feet.

            The inside of the lighthouse was in pretty good repair. Sam had to beat the padlock off the door, wincing every time he struck it. The wind and weather had not done the work on the tower that they had the inside of the lightkeeper’s house.   But there wasn’t any light and there were places where the handrail was gone.

            Sam leaned a shoulder against the wall to steady himself and that way he slowly climbed the spiraling stairs.

            “So,” Sam said. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you’re alive again?”

            “Kick your limp ass,” Dean said. “Then get drunk. Then get laid.”

            “Then what? Which band you gonna listen to.” He sounded tired.

            “Concentrate on climbing, Sam.”

            Sam stopped and the light showed steel steps, rusting in places. “I need you to do this, Dean. Talk to me. Let me pretend.”

            “Pretend what?”

            “That everything is pretty much Winchester normal. That we’re in the middle of just another hunt.”

            “What do you think this is?”

            Sam flicked the flashlight around, looking for him, and in doing so, disturbed his own precarious sense of balance. His foot slid on the steps and he went part way down, scraping against stairs. The water bottle fell through the stairs to the floor below. He hung on to the flashlight.

            For a moment there was only Sam’s ragged breathing.

            “Every time you do the rage thing,” Sam finally said.

            The lighthouse sounded hollow. Sam breath was very loud. It made it obvious that there was only one person breathing.

            “I told you,” Sam finally said. “You’re less…you. More ghost.”

            “Once I get back it’ll all be okay,” Dean said.

            Some vermin, mouse, something, was scrabbling in the bottom of the lighthouse. Dean checked it. Mice. Sam was still collecting himself.

            Sam got back up and started climbing, careful to watch where he put each foot. The outer rail was gone once they got about two-thirds of the way up. “Sometimes I think I didn’t come back from Hell all me.”

            “Come on, Hell changed us but you’re still you,” Dean said. You ever think what came back from Hell wasn’t entirely Sam? Yellow-Eyes had asked. “Watch what you’re doing. This isn’t the time.”

            “So if I let you go to Hell not completely Dean, what will happen? If you come back less you… what if I’m fucking up again. What’s better, letting you go to Hell or keeping you as a ghost?”

            “Climb, Sammy. Then we hike, then Les calls someone to get you to the ER.”

            The one bit of luck was that the hatch at the top of the stairs was open.

            The top of the lighthouse was pretty small, really. Space for where the big lighthouse light and lens used to go and a little area to walk around it. Not much space at all.

            No cabinets. Nothing. No place for a spell. It was crazy to think that anyone would keep a spell or anything up here. Just the island and stars and far away, the street and city lights of St. Johns looking jewel like.

            Sam looked around and it was clear the view was lost on him. Whatever he’d been holding onto collapsed and he sat, the emotional wind knocked out of him. “Sorry, Dean.”

            “Let’s get you down and to an ER. We’ve struck out before. We’ll try again.”

            Sam didn’t have room to stretch his legs out (when did he?) He draped his wrists over his knees. Didn’t answer. Dean knew. It was hard to give a rat’s ass about anything when you were concussed. Really, he was beginning to wonder if he gave a rat’s ass himself.

“Time for some sleep, Groot,” he said.

            “Just let me sit,” Sam said.

            “A minute, just a minute.”

            Concussed and empty. Thousand yard stare.

            “Okay Sam. Deep breath. New day, Snow White. Sun comes up in the morning.

            Sam didn’t answer. It was like he didn’t hear. No. Not the subway platform again. “Cut it lose, Sammy. Salt the bones, burn ‘em. It’s okay. You did good.”

            “I don’t know what to do,” Sam said.

            That flat Sam/not Sam voice. Not possessed, but Sam so far into despair, holding on to the moment by so little it was as if he spoke English like a second language.

            “You’re tired and you’re hurt. But we’ll deal with it.”

            Sam struggled to get his legs underneath him and pushed himself up. “I’m gonna do it, Dean,” he said but he sounded hopeless. As he stood, the beam of the flashlight jumped around the tiny room.

            “Wait,” Dean said. “Flashlight, up.” Up near the ceiling he’d seen something.

            It took Sam a moment but he turned the light up. Up just two feet below the ceiling was a ledge that circled the entire room. It was lined completely with old books and manuscripts.

            Castiel was at the bunker when they got back. “Sam,” Castiel said. “Dean. Sam, I am so sorry.” Castiel looked at Dean. “I do not know what one is supposed to say to the deceased. But I grieve for you.”

            “Thanks, Cas,” Dean said.

            “Thank you, Cas,” Sam said.

            “You don’t look well, Sam,” Castiel said.

            “Sam discovered a great way to get out of the usual long interview with airport security,” Dean said. It was perfectly legal to carry unloaded guns in checked luggage but Sam’s stash of pistols and knives had meant a long interview in a room most people never saw in airport security. “Get a pretty serious concussion then ralph all over the nice security guard’s shoes. Shortest interview ever.”

            “Ralph?” Cas asked.

            “Throw up,” Sam said.

            “Ah. Vomiting is a symptom of a concussion.”

            Sam looked as if he had several things he could have said about that but had chosen to say none of them. He found a bottle of ibuprofen, knocked back four with water, and headed off to crash.

            Dean was drawn in his wake. “Sorry Cas. I’d stay to talk…”

            Sam slept for half a day. To Dean’s surprise, Cas was still there when Sam got up. Coffee, four more ibuprofen, and a real meal. Sam had found something he thought was the spell to put a soul back into a body.

            “Cas,” Sam asked. “Do you know anything about burnt offerings?”

            “Yes,” Castiel nodded. “I was in the garrison so I didn’t carry them myself. But until the Word was made flesh, and even for a few hundred years after, there were many offerings from the Great Temple in Jerusalem.”

            Sam pushed a file at him. “Does this look right?”

            Dean knew they had to give Sam a few days before he tried to sneak into Hell and open the gate for Crowley but come on, this seemed pointless. “What’s this for?”

            “I’m trying to understand something,” Sam said.

            Okay. Dean felt he’d used up about all the fucks he could give on managing Sam for awhile. He had Sam put some Zeppelin on.

            He was tired of being a ghost. He wasn’t thrilled about going back to Hell. The idea gave him the howling fantods. Whatever fantods were. Ghost life wasn’t all that it could be, either. Dean wasn’t a hands off kind of guy. He could spend hours in a car with Sam, stay in the same hotel with Sam for months on end. But locked to Sam 24/7? It was a little like nothing but PBS, all day, every day. Sam drinks coffee. Sam researches on his laptop and in books. Sam reads Latin faster than Dean does so even when he’s trying to read along, Sam flips the page too soon. Sam sleeps. Sam forgets to turn the television on because Sam has a concussion. Sam ralphs on the TSA guy’s shoes. Okay. The last one had been entertaining, except for the whole ghosts-could-smell-things part.

            A little over a week since the fight with Malachi’s thugs and it was starting to all feel so disconnected. More and more he would find he had disappeared and it was all a case of who gives a crap.

            Sam spent the next day shopping with Cas. Food, liquor, that he understood. Supplies. Sam bought pie which Sam loved but often didn’t eat because, well Sam. They bought a ton of magazines. Not Sam magazines. When he had time to read, Sam liked books. Dean magazines. Dean asked why and Sam said, “I’m throwing you a party.”

            Whatever that meant. The thought made Dean feel a weird kind of exhaustion. Ghostly ennui. Dean didn’t hate parties. He liked bars better but parties were fun. Parties where you couldn’t drink, drug or fuck, not so much.

            Sam, though, was keyed up. Happy wasn’t the right word. More focused. Dean just let himself be pulled around in the preparations.

            Sam put a table and chair in Dean’s room, next to his bed. He hauled another table into the room. He wouldn’t let Castiel lift. “You’re not in great shape yourself,” Sam said. Sam grabbed the box of magazines and crap that he and Castiel had bought at Walmart while Dean had tried to follow a MILF. (MILFs weren’t really Dean’s thing but it was Walmart. He was just going through the motions. What he had wanted to do was feel something and he wasn’t feeling much of anything.) Sam knocked back another four ibuprofen.

            “Sam,” Castiel said. “I have noticed that you routinely take four of those.”

            “Yeah,” Sam said, putting the box on the floor in Dean’s room. “Two doesn’t do much anymore.”

           “The warning on ibuprofen says that the dosage is two and that chronic used can lead to kidney damage and even failure, requiring kidney dialysis,” Cas said. “I’m concerned about the amount you are taking.”

            “I know, but two doesn’t cut it. I figure if I take four Tylenol, that stuff fries your liver,” Sam said. He was in the storage room pulling a bronze brazier off the top of a shelf. It was almost three feet across. “You can live without kidneys, you can’t live without a liver. Besides, in a couple of days, I’m going to Hell for Crowley. On a scale of potential killers, I think ibuprofen abuse is pretty far down the list.”

            Castiel considered this. It was like watching him add it to a data bank.

            Sometimes Cas had entertainment value.

#

            That evening they set a table and chair in Dean’s room and Sam ‘consecrated’ an alter to Dean. This involved a fair amount of stuff including some of Dean’s hair, scraped from his bathroom sink, some of Sam’s blood, cut from his arm, and a drop of Castiel’s blood.

            “Don’t get your hopes too high,” Sam said. “I’m using real sources but also kind of, you know, improvising.”

            “You’re using a marble remnant that’s meant to be a bathroom sink counter for an alter,” Dean said. “I don’t know what you’re doing and my hopes aren’t high.”

             Sam put a big brazier on it and started a pretty good sized fire. He asked Cas to serve as assistant.

            “Why are you doing this?” Dean asked. “I feel stupid.”

            “If you have something better to do, let me know,” Sam said. He shattered a glass, and then poured whiskey into a pan and set it on fire. He swept up the glass bits and poured them into the brazier, too. As it burned blue flames, he intoned, “Dean Winchester, Ex hoc dabunt tibi dicimus . Nostra tibi fumus surgit . Rogamus bonum invenire.” The fire burned white and Castiel reached into it and pulled out a glass of whiskey and put it in front of Dean.

            Cas and Sam looked at Dean.

            “What?” he asked.

            “Can you drink it?” Sam asked.

            Dean reached out and touched glass. It wasn’t hot. He picked it up and smelled. It smelled like whiskey. He tried tasting it. It was wet. It tasted exactly like whiskey. He could drink it. It burned on the way down and it settled with the faint warmth of alcohol. More than that, it awakened the memory of sensation. Bars. Hotel rooms. A thousand drinks in a thousand places. He closed his eyes in an ecstasy sensation. Only a little over a week and he had forgotten already.

            He opened his eyes and Sam and Cas were staring.

            “It’s awesome,” he breathed.

            Sam burned more whiskey.

            Then a burger and fries. The burger was incredible. Ketchup. Didn’t people realize how friggin’ complicated ketchup tasted?

            While he was eating, Sam burned a copy of Busty Asian Beauties. Cas snatched it out of the fire, whole, and handed it to Dean. He paged through it.

            More whiskey. Beer poured into the flames. Pizza. Car and Driver, Maxim, Soldier of Fortune (he’d been obsessed when he was fourteen and memories of being fourteen flooded him.) Guns and Ammo. Pie.

            The room was full of smoke. Sam went and found a fan and plugged it in to blow the smoke out. More whiskey. A deck of cards.

            Dean found he could feel the pleasure of the food but couldn’t get full but Sam was burning color copies of photos between bags of Reece Cups and Oreos. All sorts of photos. From a picture of their house to newspaper clippings from some of their hunts to Jenna Jameson.

            A photocopy of the picture of Bobby and them when they were boys. Photocopies from Dad’s journal. Sam burned a scale replica of an Impala, not a ’67 but still. He threw firecrackers in the brazier. Sunglasses. An iPod loaded with Metallica, Zeppelin, Bad Company, Stones, Rush, dozens of bands. A cheap set of headphones. A pack of Marlboros. A grilled cheese sandwich. Nachos. A foot long sub with jalapenos.

            Dean was drunk. He was horny. He felt happy. He had his music blaring in his ears. He was drinking beer and playing air guitar.

            He felt alive.

            His brother stood behind a makeshift alter. Sam Winchester, the High Priest of Dean. Beside him stood Castiel, dressed in the ceremonial trench coat of the priesthood. Sam was smiling. He shouted over the music, “Sorry! I couldn’t figure out how to get you laid.”

            “MORE WHISKEY!” Dean yelled.

#

            Castiel left them with identical bottles of whiskey, each on their side of the alter.

            Sam was wrecked, legs sprawled, sipping and swirling the whiskey in his glass. He rotated his head, cracking his neck.

            Dean was drunk. He had a stack of magazines. Tunes sounding a bit tinny from the iPod

            Sam raised a glass. Dean raised one in return.

            “Next time I’ll bring a television and a bunch of DVDs,” Sam said. “Burn those.”

            “Better do that outside. Flat screens are toxic when they burn. Also, an iPod recharger.”

            “Fuck,” Sam said. “Forgot.”

             “No big deal. There isn’t gonna be a next time, right? We’re hittin’ the road.”

            “Yeah,” Sam said. Not much enthusiasm.

             A little awareness cut through the happy, drunken fog. “Are you up to it? You know,” Dean tapped his head. “You need your head to be clear.”

             “I’m fine,” Sam said, irritated.

             “Winchester Family Motto. Gonna be carved on our tombstones as our last words. ‘I’m Fine.’”

             “Let’s just…enjoy this, okay?”

             “Who’s not enjoying?” Dean said. “This is genius. Fucking genius.”

             “You think it worked?” Sam asked.

             “Of course it worked!” Dean said. “I got swag! Stuff I can touch! Taste!”

             “What next?” Sam said.

             “What next? We kick it in the balls, Sammy!”

             “Sounds like it worked,” Sam said.

            This wasn’t just a way to make Dean happy?

            “Why do the gods and goddesses want offerings, Dean? To feed them. It makes them alive. You were getting more and more ghost-like. Less and less interested in anything except, except rage. So I thought that if we fed you, I don’t know, essence of Dean, it might help. Cas thought it was a strong possibility.”

            This was obscurely infuriating. “Why didn’t you say something,” Dean said.

            “I did,” Sam said. “You said you were fine. Then you just weren’t all that interested. You’re not interested in anything. Abaddon is out there in the wind. Crowley can’t help us find the Frist Blade because he’s locked out of Hell. Gadreel is out there somewhere. I mean, not that I don’t understand. You’re dead.”

            “It’s not like that,” Dean said. He was fueled with alcohol. Feeling everything rise within him. Sam sitting there lecturing him. Sam always demanding. If I go that way, Dean, you gotta promise me, you’ll shoot me. Who puts that on their brother? Take care of Sammy. He was four fucking years old. I’m drinking demon blood, but it’s for a good cause, trust me. I’m going to waltz into Lucfer’s Cage in Hell for all eternity, you go have a life, okay?

            “It isn’t like you,” Sam was saying. “You never stop. That’s who you are. The only person you ever give up on is yourself. But everything else, you’re a pit bull. It was a little scary, Dean.”

            It was a little scary. Heart’s needle. Pierce right through the rage. Sam didn’t mean that, didn’t mean a ‘little’ scary. He meant terrifying.

            “Also, I wanted you to be happy. Seemed like being dead kinda sucks.” Sam took a sip of his whiskey.

            “Hey, Maleficent, should you really be drinking so soon after a concussion?”

            Sam’s look said, ‘Really?’ “Grab some stuff, I’m going to bed.”

            “You could sleep in here,” Dean said, “then I wouldn’t have to drag my stuff with me.”

            “Dude,” Sam said, “it smells like a car fire in here.”

#

            Crowley said to meet him in Las Vegas.

            “There’s an entrance to Hell in Las Vegas?” Sam said. He had the phone on speaker. “Strike that, of course there’s an entrance to Hell in Las Vegas.”

            They headed west, with Dean in the passenger seat alternating between Busty Asian Beauties and Car and Driver. “They fired Jeremy Clarkson? What the fuck!”

            As they drove into Vegas, Dean said, “I want you to burn this whole city for me. Every bit of it. Except Caesar’s.”

            “What’s wrong with Caesar’s?”

            “I can’t get a break in Caesar’s.”

            Sam swallowed ibuprofen and let him play Bad Company as they cruised down the strip and people admired the Impala.

            They met Crowley in Paris Casino. The ceiling of the casino was painted like a sky with fancy clouds. The walls were Parisian streets with shops full of purses and shoes and chocolate shops. Dean was pissed at Sam because Sam had used valet parking. “Nobody drives the car, Sam. Nobody drives the car except me and you.”

            Sam clenched his jaw.

            Crowley was sitting at a demon-themed slot machine. He was ahead just under seven hundred dollars and he was sipping on a white drink with a lot of fruit in it. Pina Colada maybe.

            “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” he said.

            “The King of,” Dean smiled, “something you can’t get into.”

            Crowley drained his drink and cashed out. As they walked across the casino floor, empty in the late afternoon except for the hard core, tethered to the machines by the cards they wore around their necks, he stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “The smell of emptiness and desperation,” he said. “I love this town. Moose, you ready to shamble into Hell and unlock it from within?”

            Sam’s loathing was palpable. “Tell me what to do, Crowley.”

            “I’ve got you a coyote. She doesn’t know it’s you and she doesn’t know I set it up. You probably shouldn’t mention my name, demons are a little skittish at the moment. She’ll get you in. She also has a map for you. Use it to find the Gate of Ashes.”

            “Then what?” Sam asked.

            “Open it,” Crowley said.

            “Is there a spell or a giant doorknob?” Sam asked.

            “Oh, right.” Crowley fished through pockets, finally producing a long, brass, skeleton key. “I keep a spare hidden on this side. In case I lock myself out.”

            “You’re kidding me,” Dean said. “You’ve got one of those fake rocks?”

            “Did it ever occur to you that there is absolutely no reason for a city to exist here, Squirrel? There are no resources, there is no water, and it routinely gets to be 120 degrees. No one should live here. This whole city is a fake rock.”

            Dean had not considered the absurdity of Las Vegas in that light before.

            “All right,” Crowley said. “Ichtaca is handing out flyers for a strip club about half a block that way,” he pointed up the strip. “She goes by Maria Teresa these days. Missionaries made them all change their names, you know. She’s about so high.” Crowley put his hand at about the middle of his chest.

            “Then you meet me and give me Dean’s soul,” Sam said.

            “I am a demon of my word,” Crowley said.

            “You’re a weasel,” Dean said.

            “I do believe in the letter, not the spirit of a contract,” Crowley agreed, “but there’s not much wiggle room in this one. You open the gate, I get in and bring you Dean’s soul.”

            “What’s to keep you from waiting a thousand years to fulfill your end?” Dean asked.

            “I need you to kill Abaddon,” Crowley said. And vanished.

            At least no one here would even blink at a strange conversation. It was Vegas. What happened in Vegas…

#

            They walked up the sidewalk. Guys in scrubs passed out flyers for eye tucks and face lifts.

            “Who would find a surgeon on a sidewalk in Vegas?” Dean asked. “I mean, I can see being drunk enough for a tattoo but liposuction?”

            Three Central American women were handing out flyers for strip clubs. They were the opposite of the women pictured on the flyers. They were short, as Crowley had indicated, stocky, Amer-Indian looking with short legs. Sam said, “I’m looking for Maria Teresa?”

            One of the women said, “Es me.”

            “A friend sent me,” Sam said.

            She looked up at him. She had a profile that could have come off of a Mayan carving with a forehead that slanted back and a jutting nose. “What kind of friend?”

            “Ichtaca?” Sam said very quietly.

            She blinked and her eyes were black and then they were normal again. “You’re not what I expected,” she said.

            Sam shrugged.

            She looked at Dean and clearly saw him, and then back at Sam. “I know who you are,” she said. “Why do you want to go there?”

            “My brother is,” Sam cocked his head at Dean, “illegal at the moment. I’m going to see if I can get him back over the border in a more legal way.”

            “You know things are locked up tight right now,” she said. “I was told one way.”

            “Just get me in,” Sam said.

            “I’m not taking him and you.”

            “It’s just me.”

            “They’ll smell you, fresh mortal,” she said.

            “I’ve done it before.”

            She grinned suddenly and her teeth were black and filed into sharp points. “Yes, you have carnal.”

            “I’m not part of your gang,” Sam snarled.

            She laughed. “Come on, then.

            “Wait. I need a few minutes with my brother.” Sam turned to Dean.

            “This sucks,” Dean said.

            “You have to stop worrying about it.”

            “Like hell,” Dean said.

            “You have to let go,” Sam said. “You have to pass over, Dean.”

             Pass over? He was in Vegas. Sam had pumped him full of tunes and whiskey and brought him back to fucking life! The Bellagio fountain had just started up and the water was dancing and in a few hours some beautiful women would be coming out to play…and Sammy was about to go to Hell. Alone.

            “We can figure out another plan,” Dean said.

            Sammy just stood there. “I’d love to give you a hug,” he said. “One for the road. But I’m never going to do that again unless this works. You don’t belong here.”

            Most people skirted around the big crazy guy talking to air on the sidewalk but a woman in a lime green dress walked right through Dean.

            “Not like this,” Sam said. “Dean Winchester is not a ghost. You’re either part of this world, punching and shooting, or you shouldn’t be here. Ghost just isn’t your nature, big brother.”

            The feeling that Dean had been trying to deny rose up. The utter horror of it, of being dead. He just wanted to grab something. Sam was right, he wanted to be in the world and if he let himself think about it, he wanted to scream.

            “Sammy. You, you’ll be here alone.”

             Sam shook his head. “If this works, I won’t. And if it doesn’t,” he smiled a quirky little smile, “I won’t and we’ll both have to deal with that, together, right?”

             It won’t be like that, Dean thought. But Sam was going into Hell alive so maybe there was some room in there.

             “Just once in your life,” Sam said, emphasizing the word just a little, “Trust me, big brother.”

             Trust. No, he didn’t trust Sam. Sam alone. In Hell. But here they were.

             “Okay.” Dean nodded. “Okay.” How to do this. He’d told ghosts to do it. Had seen ghosts do it.

             “Remember what you told me, at the church,” Sam said. “Let go.”

             Dean Winchester was pretty sure he didn’t know how to let go.

             He stood there on the sidewalk of the least spiritual city in America, surrounded by street noise and strip malls.

             He looked up at the sky. There was nothing like dessert sky. It was loud here on the ground but if he thought about that blue sky so blasted by light, he could almost feel all this didn’t matter.

             He looked and felt the opening expanse of empty air and thought about how nice it would be for once to just let go…

#

            He opened his eyes in the dark and smelled dirt and pine. You can wake up dead or at least newly alive. He drew in a long shuddering breath. A bright light shown in his eyes and Sam said, “Dean?”

            It was night and he was in a hole in the ground. It felt as if an endless time had passed since Vegas and it felt as if no time had passed. He had the sense memory of rising and being caught and a period of suspension.

            Dean sat up. “How long,” he gasped.

            “Two days since Vegas,” Sam said. He put the flashlight down so it no longer shown in Dean’s eyes. Dean stood and Sam reached down and grabbed his forearm and hauled him out of the grave. Dean grabbed his brother in a hug. Bony shoulders and long arms.

            Sam pulled away, distracted.

            “Hello, Dean,” said Crowley. He stood in the dark field. Dean remembered the autumn grass bent by the wind and the Canada geese flying above.

            “Why is he here?” Dean said.

            “Your brother got into Hell, out again with your soul, and from Las Vegas to New Jersey in that compensatory object you call a car in two days and you ask about me being here?” Crowley said.

            Dean was chilled and the air felt heavy as though it were going to rain soon. Everything had a delicious edge. Even this, Crowley being a douche, had a delicious edge. He was alive and Sam was here and even if things were crap it felt great.

            It was a fight. A hunt. It was life.

            “I was just worrying about your poor brother,” Crowley said to Dean. “You know I’ve always had a soft spot for Moose. We had tender moments in that church.”

            “Fuck off,” Sam said.

            “I thought, while you were looking for the First Blade, I should maybe take him with me for a little rest in Hell.”

            “Touch him and I will kill you,” Dean growled. Anger felt different. Blood in his veins.

            “Hold on,” Crowley said. “I’m not talking about killing him. Time would pass normally for him. He’d be well looked after. It would be a regular spa visit. And you’d have extra incentive wouldn’t you.”

            “Oh right, he’d be well looked after. You just got locked out of Hell!”

            Crowley shrugged. “That’s been taken care of. Heads on posts, still alive so everyone could enjoy watching their eyes move.”

            “Why the hell do you want Sam?”

            Sam said quietly. “He’s addicted to human blood.”

            Crowley opened his hands in admission. “It’s true. I like Sam’s. That faint touch of Azazel in the mix is extra piquant, don’t you think?”

            What did they have as weapons? A shovel, a flashlight. Sam had at least his gun. And was probably dead on his feet from two days of almost no sleep.

            “Sam,” Castiel called. He walked out of the trees in his trench coat and his Florsheims looking rather inappropriate, as always. He had a big piece of plywood in front of him and he was carrying it like it was some kind of board game. It had a big brass bowl.

            Sam’s look of relief was palpable.

            “This is the cavalry?” Crowley said. “How much juice have you got left, angel.”

            “I don’t have enough to kill you,” Castiel said. He put the plywood down in front of Sam. On it was the devil’s gate and ingredients for a summoning. A summoning?

            Sam immediately started chanting in Latin.

            “What are you doing,” Crowley said, frowning. “Who are you calling?”

            Sam added the name of the called, “Abaddon.”

            And she was there, standing in a devil’s trap no more than three feet across on a piece of playwood so flimsy an 8 year old karate student could chop it in half.

            “You?” she said. She had black hair and looked like a fashion model. She was facing Sam. She glanced at Dean. “You people just can’t stay dead, can you.” Her gaze returned to Sam. “You cost me a particularly fine meat suit. This may be the most incredibly asinine thing you’ve ever done, Sam.”

            “You stupid fuck,” Crowley hissed, his composure completely rattled.

            Abaddon whirled. “Crowley.” Her eyes narrowed.

            “Run!” Sam said.

            Sam, Dean, and Castiel did. She was trapped but there was no real question that it wouldn’t last long.

#

            Dean drove. Dean drove. The Impala purred. Sam slept in the passenger seat. They dropped Castiel off just outside Pittsburgh at his request. They ate fast food standing in the parking lots, busting ass for the bunker. Dean found Foreigner playing in Ohio and Styx in Indiana. He promised Sam that they would eat pizza and drink beer. He got Sam to tell him what the Gate of Ashes was like. They were like something poured from a volcano. Pyroclastic flow, Sam said.

            Sam smiled but never really laughed.

            Sam was business as usual. Like they were coming home from a difficult hunt.  He expected Sam to be watching him like a hawk. Or to be earnest. Or to want to talk.  Does your head hurt, Dean asked. Sam said it wasn’t too bad and knocked back ibuprofen. Are you okay? I’m fine.

            In the long silences, the other parts of their lives came back to Dean. Not just the fierce feeling of life but the complications. Dean found himself thinking about Kevin Tran dying. About Metatron lose. About Gadreel. About Castiel with almost no grace left. Dean though about a world stalked by angels. About trust and betrayal.

            He didn’t want to. He wanted to think about sex. Maybe beer. But how had he not thought about all these things for weeks?

            Because he was dead.

            Sam drove for awhile, not too long, just enough for Dean to sleep a few hours, and then Dean was driving again and Sam fell back asleep in the passenger seat. Dean turned off the radio.

            Dean kept track of him, glancing over, driving through the dark. Funny thing about driving through the dark, he thought, you can’t see more then 150 feet ahead but you can cross the whole damn continent if you have to. He thought Sam was dreaming, maybe a nightmare, but not a wake you up kind of nightmare. He debated, but didn’t disturb him up. They crossed over into Kansas at night, only a few hours from the bunker. Sam was awake by then, watching into the darkness and in the fields outside the window there was a wind farm.

            The windmills were vast in the night, long blades spinning in grave silence. The lights on the top of their pylons blinked red.

            “Were you dreaming?” Dean said.

            Sam shrugged, neither yes nor no.

            “What’s wrong?” Dean asked.

            “Nothing.”

            “What are you thinking?”

            Sam didn’t seem like he was going to say anything. The silence stretched on. Dean was about to lean over and see if he could find a radio station when Sam said, “I have this dream sometimes. It’s never exactly the same.” He was still looking out the window into the dark farms. Sometimes it’s at Stull Cemetery and then it’s bad. Sometimes it’s at the church and that one’s good.” Dean didn’t have to ask what church. The church where Sam nearly completed the Trials. “At the church, we’re outside and we’re sitting there on the ground, leaning up against the car and I’ve completed the trials and I feel…light, like everything has been burned clean. I know I’m dying but it’s okay and it doesn’t hurt and you’re there. The angels are falling and it’s sad but it’s beautiful. I feel so sad because I know how much you don’t want me to die but you’re telling me something and even though I can’t exactly understand you, I can feel what you’re saying and you’re saying you understand and I should let…”

            Dean didn’t need to see to know that the tiny muscles in Sam’s jaw were twitching and he was loosing it.

            The damn was breaking, right now.

            “I used to think that we might be able to get to what was right,” Sam’s voice was flat with the effort of control. “Correct mistakes. Forgive. Or that if we couldn’t, you could stop me from—but we can’t anymore, and the trials was the last chance to put things to right and now I don’t know what to do—”

            Dean pulled over as Sam leaned his head against the window and surrendered. He touched Sam’s shoulder but Sam wasn’t crying like a little brother. It was inconsolable, broken crying from a man who didn’t know how to cry and couldn’t stop.

            Once in a town called Cold Oak, South Dakota, Dean found his brother. When Sam heard him calling he turned and his face opened. A moment later Sam was on his knees, dead weight in Dean’s arms and Dean was trying to hold him up. Nothing has ever been open that way again. Some things can’t be mended.

            Dean didn’t know what to do.

Once there was a way to get back homeward/
Once there was a way to get back home/
Sleep pretty darling do not cry/
And I will sing a lullabye/

Golden slumbers fill your eyes/
Smiles awake you when you rise/
Sleep pretty darling do not cry/
And I will sing a lullabye/

                                    “Golden Slumbers”, The Beatles

Fin

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