And We Are Ashes: Chapter 3, Part 2
Nov. 28th, 2006 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thecatevariOkay! I'm seriously going to do this, RL issues aside! OMGYAY! And yes, this chapter is shorter! YAY FOR THAT TOO!
"How come you never talk about Dad?" Sam asks quietly, once they're back in the car again. He feels like he's been breathing this same stale air for days and his skin hurts from rubbing against the vinyl of the seats. He's tired of the car. Tired of all of his, only the fact that Dean is still missing and Jess is still unavenged keeping him in place.
Mary glances at him. She's been really subdued since leaving the diner, the fond warmth she showed to Cathy flaking away like a particularly brittle mask so that Sam's no longer sure what's real. Mary rolls her shoulders and neck and then shrugs. "At first, it hurt too much," she admits. Her voice streaks roughly, like there's something caught in her throat. And maybe there is. "And I had you and Dean to take care of. You boys were so little. God. So little. I had to focus on where we were going to sleep that night or what we were going to eat, how we were going to get through the next day. How I was going to get through."
Her fingers creep down to toy with her keychain in the ignition, one of John's old dog-tags, worn nearly smooth. "And then when you were older, there didn't seem to be much point. You don't remember John at all and Dean…" Mary sighs. "Sometimes I think Dean remembers John too much."
"What happened that night?' Sam asks.
Another enigmatic look, slightly puzzled. "I've told you all this before."
"You told me the bedtime story version. Tell me the twenty-two year old version. Because you're right; I don't remember anything. I don't even really know anything, other than Dad was a Marine and a mechanic and he died in a fire. I mean…we are who we are because of him, right? Don't you think I should know more than that?"
"You never seemed that interested in more than that," Mary says and although it stings, he can't hear any reproach in her voice. His guilt is all his own, because he knows she's right.
"Well. I'm interested now," he offers.
Mary sighs and rubs the inside of her eye with one knuckle. "I'd fallen asleep," she says after a momentary pause in which she seemed to collect her thoughts. "I'd been up so late with you for the past several days and John… I think he was worried about me. Not that I could blame him. Dean was such an easy baby, but you were always so…prickly."
"Well, not that much has changed in the meantime," Sam jokes and Mary casts him an amused glance and smile.
"Anyway, I was exhausted and John put his foot down and put me to bed right around the same time he tucked Dean in." Her smile is both amused and sad and Sam tries to reconcile the idea of anyone 'putting their foot down' on Mary. She drags a hand through her hair, tugging new strands from her ponytail. "I didn't want to go. I felt…restless. But I was too tired to stay awake. I did try. I wonder sometimes if it would have been different, if I'd been awake. If I could have stopped it, or if it would have been me…"
"Mom," Sam says. "Don't."
Mary's smile is more ironical this time. "Anyway, I guess there was some kind of commotion from the nursery. Bad enough that it woke Dean up…and how sad is it to have to hear how your husband died from your four year old son?" Her hands clench taut on the steering wheel. "He said he woke up and there was all this noise and he got up to go see and there was your Dad and 'something else'. That's what he always said. Not someone; Dean was always very clear on that point, even at four. Something else.
"Your dad had you in his arms. He said, 'Dean!' and then he threw you. Threw you so hard Dean hit the wall trying to catch you. He had bruises on his shoulder blades for a week after, poor thing. And John said, 'Take your brother outside and don't look back. Now, Dean, go!'"
Sam remembers those words himself; they are seared into Dean's mind, same as whatever images made Dean's eyes turn flat and strange when he talks about it. Which hadn't been often.
"I woke up and the house…it felt so close. So hot. And I knew. Something was wrong. I almost broke my ankle climbing out of the bed and I got to the hallway just in time to hear John tell Dean to go and to see Dean running at me, fast as he could go. I ran past him to the nursery and it all went up in this huge cloud of flame, so hot I thought the skin would sear right off my face. I couldn't see John anywhere in it, but I could hear him.
"I could hear him scream. And I couldn't do a damn thing about it."
Sam looks down at his hands knotted in his lap, the knuckles white and bloodless. He feels held in thrall by Mary's voice, despite her dull matter-of-fact tone. He wonders if this is what it's like for the people she's turned her power against, half-imagined pictures and emotions that aren't quite your own.
"I… I left. There was still Dean to think of, and you. I grabbed you both up halfway down the stairs and carried you out of the house. One of the neighbors must have called the fire department because I wasn't in any state to do it. I just sat on the hood of the Impala with you boys while it all burned down."
"I didn't know that. I didn't know it was Dean who caught me, carried me," Sam says, feeling like some other small piece of the silent puzzle of his brother has finally slotted into place.
"Didn't you?" Mary looks startled. "Yeah. Dean…Dean's always been your Guardian."
Something about the way she says the word snags at him, an echo of the shapeshifter in St. Louis spitting its vitriol at him. "Mom," he says carefully. "When you say… When you say 'Guardian'…"
"We're here," Mary announces, pulling up to a house that looks no different from any of the others on the block, except for small wooden sign on a post that says: Consultation Hours and a list of days and times.
"Where's here?" Sam asks, hopping out and stretching his legs with numb gratitude.
"Mary Winchester!" a rather high-pitched voice exclaims. "As I live and breathe!" The door opens to reveal a heavy-set and curvaceous woman with short curly hair tied up with a bright red band that matches her sweater and her socks. "Girl, you got old
"Missouri." Mary smiles and holds out her arms as she comes up the walk to embrace the other woman. Sam thinks that if his mom is going to keep hugging people, he might need some serious therapy. "You still telling lies for money?" Mary keeps one arm around Missouri's shoulder as she turns back and gestures Sam up the sidewalk. "Missouri, you remember Sam, right? Sam, this is my friend Missouri Mosely."
"Oh, yes, I remember," Missouri says, eyeing Sam up and down in a way that makes him want to close the panels of his hoodie. "Well, let me look at you. You grew up handsome! Though you weren't quite so tall the last time I saw you." She squints up at him. "Your mama should've put bricks on your head, keep you from getting so big."
"Oh, that wouldn't have worked in Sam's case," Mary says, tapping her nose. "Sam's stubborn."
"Yeah, I can see that too." Missouri holds her hand out and Sam reflexively takes it. Immediately, Missouri's face crumples and turns sympathetic. "Oh," she says. "Oh, honey. I'm sorry about your girlfriend."
Sam's been doing a pretty good job about keeping a lid on his feelings, but at Missouri's words, unsolicited and unexpected, he feels his throat get tight and aching and his eyes sting. He drops her soft-well kept fingers and shoves his hands into his pockets, afraid of what else they'll tell her.
Missouri shakes it off quickly. "Well," she says, "Y'all'd best come on it. I expect you're here about Dean."
"Have you heard from him?" Sam asks. "Do you know where he is?"
"Oh no, nothing like that," Missouri shakes her head, leading the way deeper into her house. It's dimmer than he thought it would be for all the windows and smells of old incense and fresh baking.
"Then how did you know he was missing? I mean…" Sam looks around at the herbs and jars of things sitting around the small parlor. "You're a psychic, right?"
Missouri gives Mary a look, which Mary shrugs and turns away from, before Missouri transfers it to Sam. "Well, I was holding onto your hand just a second ago, wasn't I? And before that I was hugging on your mom. It's not like you weren't both just thinking it, clear as day. I'm not a magician, Sam; I can pick up thoughts and impressions from folks and objects but I can't just pull facts out of thin air." She takes a breath. "Now sit. Please."
Sam sits so fast it's like the tendons of his knees were cut. Missouri offers them a plate of pumpkin-cinnamon cookies with the best sugar frosting Sam's ever had. "So you don't know…you can't sense anything about Dean?" Mary asks, turning her one cookie around and around in her fingers. "If he's okay? If he's…"
Missouri leans forward in her chair to put her hand over Mary's. "No," she says softly. "I can't. You know I'd tell you if I could. But I just…I don't sense anything, good or bad."
"What about our old house?" Sam asks, struggling with his own sense of disappointment. It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself. It doesn't mean Dean's dead. She said she couldn't feel anything. It doesn't mean he's dead.
"What do you mean?"
"Sam's been having dreams," Mary explains. "About our old house, about the people that live there now."
"What kind of dreams?"
They both look to him and Sam swallows the remainder of his cookie through a throat suddenly dry. He relates what he remembers of his dreams to them both, tells them about the creeping sense of foreboding he felt in the house itself, shares what Sari said about a flame monster in her closet.
"So you think something's back in that house?" Missouri asks. "Something evil?"
Mary spreads her hands deprecatingly, but Sam nods. "Definitely," he says.
"I went through after you children and your mother left," Missouri admits. "Mostly for myself, to satisfy my curiosity if there was anything left, residue, something that might hurt someone else."
"Did you really?" Mary asks. She sounds surprised. "I went through with hellebore and salt right after John died, before the funeral, but I didn't find anything. Nothing more than echoes, anyway. Did you?"
Missouri shakes her head. "Impressions mostly," she admits. "The feel that something evil had been there." She shakes her head, looking troubled. "But it was gone, far as I could tell."
Mary shrugs. "Far as I could tell either."
"It just doesn't make any sense. I've been keeping an eye on the place, over the years. It's bee quiet. There hasn't been anything; no sudden deaths, no freak accidents…why is it acting up now?"
It's Sam's turn to shake his head, as troubled as Missouri. "I don't know. But with Dean disappearing, Jessica dying and now the house…it all happening at once…it just feels like something's starting."
"That's a comforting thought," Mary says. She puts the cookie down, tugs the elastic out of her hair and combs through it with her fingers, gathering up the straying strands and tangles to neaten it again. "Still, if there is something there, I don't feel comfortable just walking away and leaving Jenny and her family to whatever it is. It won't hurt us to go and do a cleansing?"
"Us?" Missouri asks, amusement in her rich voice. "That's mighty white of you for a woman I haven't spoken to in more than twenty years."
"I burn under strong enough lamplight, Missouri," Mary retorts. "They don't get much whiter than me."
***
"This isn't a good time," Jenny says. "I'm kind of busy."
Sam doesn't say or do anything this time when Mary uses whatever magic is in her voice to convince Jenny she should take herself and her kids off to the movies and leave the three of them there to conduct whatever this 'cleansing' is that Missouri and Mary keep talking about. Missouri is carrying the herb-bags they put together back at her house, holding them cupped in her hands like baby chicks.
Now that he knows what she's doing, it makes him uneasier than ever. Jenny is clearly spooked and although he thinks they're doing the right thing, he doesn't like how easy it is for Mary to say a few words the right way and push someone's thoughts and emotions the way she wants them to go. It makes him wonder if she's ever done it to him, or Dean.
Though, he supposes if she was ever going to use it on him, she'd have kept him from going to Stanford in the first place. But it doesn't stop him from wondering. From feeling distant and suspicious.
Once Jenny, Sari and Ritchie are all packed off, they go inside and lock the door behind them. Mary hands Sam the canister of salt for him to make a line across the threshold. Mary goes deeper into the house, but Missouri lingers in the doorway to one of the other rooms, her dark fingers idly tracing along the door jamb.
"You know, you're afraid of your mother, but you don't need to be," Missouri says suddenly and Sam's hand jerks, putting a little loop in the salt line. He nudges it with his toe and doesn't look up.
"What do you know about it?" he asks, not impolitely.
"Oh, honey, I'm a psychic, remember? And even if I wasn't, you're practically vibrating with it."
"You don't know anything about it," Sam says and it comes out sharper. More like Mary, he thinks and it makes him feel a little ill.
"I know more about it than you think," Missouri says, her own asperity coming to the front. "You got all this conflict in your heart, built up on two decades of resentment and you're damn near filled to bursting with it. And for what? What's your mother done that's so terrible, other than keep you and your brother safe and well?"
"Safe?" Sam laughs. It's not a happy sound. "Safe? I think you got the wrong family, lady. Because one thing we've never been is safe. What we are is one step ahead of the law, maybe tonight is the night that your mother just doesn't come home because she—and possibly your brother—are dead. What we are is 'I know you're only six years old, Sam, but here's your gun and there's the big, slobbering thing that's about to eat your brother's face off. The 'be good and quiet, Sammy or Child Services will take you away and lock you up forever' family. That's who we are."
He doesn't realize he's raised his voice or stepped that close to Missouri until his mother's low-voiced and dangerous, "Sam."
He backs up a couple steps, hands held up like it's the police instead of his mom. His mouth is twisted up and his face feels too tight over the bones.
"Like I said," Missouri says coolly, her eyes flat and unimpressed, "brimming over with it. You're going to want to watch it, son, or it'll turn on you. Make you do or say things you really regret."
Sam says nothing, trailing in their wake as they go upstairs to what's obviously Sari's room. "There's a dark energy here," Missouri says, stepping into the center of the room and looking around pensively. "This room should be the center of it."
"Why?" Sam asks. It doesn't look particularly different from any of the other rooms and they're off to one side, which means it's not the geographic center of the house.
"This used to be your nursery, Sam. This is where it all happened."
Reflexively and even though he knows it's not quite the same house, Sam glances at the ceiling. It's new and unmarked, the plaster smooth, featureless. Of course it is, he thinks. A moment later, he looks at Mary and sees her expression, peeled and stark, the bones of her face too prominent, her eyes darting and scanning fast without settling on anything.
"Do you feel it?" Missouri asks him mildly, drawing his attention back to her and after a moment's hesitation, Sam nods. "I don't know if you two should be disappointed or relieved," Missouri continues, looking around with a frown, "but this ain't the thing that took John."
"Are you sure? How do you know?" And Sam guesses he's not quite sure how to feel about it either.
"This isn't the same energy I felt the last time I was here. It's something different." Missouri goes to the closet and opens the door, looks at the neat row of small hung clothes and the few toys grouped in the bottom and covered in a layer of dust.
There's something in the closet.
"What is it?" Mary asks sharply.
"Not it," Missouri corrects, still wandering around the room's perimeter, though Sam notices she's careful not to touch anything, plump and manicured fingers wrapped in her purse straps. "Them. There's more than one spirit in this place."
"What are they doing here?" He scratches the back of his neck, even though he knows the feeling isn't really an itch.
"They're here because of what happened to your family. All those years ago, real evil walked through this house, left wounds. And sometimes wounds get infected."
"I don't understand."
"The house is a magnet for paranormal energy," Mary says, her tone simultaneously dull and edged. "Just as you are, Sam. It's attracted something—a poltergeist, maybe." Missouri nods in agreement. "One that won't rest until someone dies."
"Well, we're not going to let that happen, right?" Sam asks, looking from one woman to the other. "Right?"
Mary looks at Missouri, who looks right back at her and Sam doesn't know what to read from that look at all.
"So we're going to put these sacks in the walls in the four corners of each floor," Missouri explains to him, a few moments later, depositing four of the herb bags into Sam's hands. "North, south, east and west."
"We're going to punch holes in Jenny's drywall?" Sam asks doubtfully. "Man, she's going to love us."
"She'll live," Mary says tersely, twirling her sacks around on their braided strings restlessly, nervously. Usually, she's not this…kinetic before a hunt. "But you'll need to work fast, Sam."
"That's right," Missouri agrees. "Once we place the first one, the spirits will know what we're up to. They'll move to stop us."
"This just gets better and better," Sam says. "Any preference on floors?"
"I'll take the basement," Missouri says. "Mary, you want to take the second floor, put Sam between us?"
"Sounds good," Mary says. She reaches behind her and pulls a small hand-axe from what he sincerely hopes is a sheath in the back of her pants. She flips the blade and hands it to him, haft first.
"Thanks," he says, hefting the thing in his hand and looking for the balance.
"You got this?" Mary asks, looking at him weirdly.
Sam gives her strange eye right back and nods. "Yeah. Hack a hole in the wall, stick the bag in. I think I got it. All that college schooling and everything."
Mary's mouth presses flat, but all she says is, "Just be careful, Sam."
"I will, Mom. It's not like it's my first ghost ever." He doesn’t understand this edginess of hers and it's just making him nervous. Usually she's the one who tells him he can do it while he doubtfully considers whether he believes her or not.
Abruptly, she smiles. "I know."
Sam reflects again on habits he's never been able to get used to as he digs his compass keychain out of his pocket. He feels a momentary pang at the sight of it, empty of any keys other than the one for his storage locker and mailbox key back in California—all that's left of his previous life. A quiet sigh and he lets it go for the moment. The compass is small, but it's good and he uses it to orient himself East, side of the rising sun and new undertakings.
That turns out to be the kitchen. Sam goes to the far wall, hefts the hand axe again and starts cutting as small and careful a hole as he can manage in the wall. He wonders if they can stay long enough for him to patch the holes for Jenny later; he still feels kind of awful for wrecking her walls this way and he's had enough practice through their various apartments and handy-work for cash or board deals.
He's about to shove the bag into the resulting gap when he hears the warning saber rattle of cutlery behind him. It's enough warning for him to turn and see the flurry of knives lifting from their rests a moment before they fly across the room at him. Sam kicks the table over and dives behind it, careful to stay back from the leading edge as the knives punch through the thin surface and jitter the whole business. He peeks over the edge, doesn't see anything else immediately waiting to brain or stab him and darts for the hole, cramming the bag inside.
There's a noise like an indrawn breath and though he doesn't feel the ugly sense of presence disappear, it feels less close as if there's more distance between him and the spirit.
Sam's a lot faster and a lot less careful about placing the other three bags. Missouri comes upstairs, shaky and not quite steady on her legs. Sam guides her down into one of the chairs and she waves him off impatiently. "Where's your mother?" she asks, looking up at him.
Sam looks around. He hasn't heard anything from upstairs. "I'll go check," he says and leaves her there to take the stairs three and four at a time.
He finds Mary in one of the bedrooms; the poltergeist must have taken her unaware and quietly; there's a lamp cord wrapped around her throat and she writhes on the floor, her eyes desperate and her mouth open in futile effort to get air. "Mom!"
Sam's at her side in a second, prying at the cord but it doesn't budge, not even a little. The fingers of both Mary's hands are hooked through the cord in an effort to give herself that margin of breathing room; she lets go with one hand and fumbles across her body to tap him with the last little sack of Missouri's herb mixture.
He takes it from her and turns, half-crawling across the floor to shove it deep into the hole she'd already hacked in the wall down by the baseboards.
The result is considerably more dramatic this time; the sound of the air molecules exciting and moving is louder, closer to a scream and blue corpse glow flares like a supernova, blinding Sam for a second. He feels something go across his skin like the touch of a million hairy spider's feet (don't ask) and then he can breathe again and so can Mary.
She's weak—God only knows how long she was fighting with the damn lamp cord—and Sam helps her unwrap it from around her neck, cradling her as she coughs and gasps. She feels weirdly small in his arms, which makes him feel clumsy and too-big. Academically, he knows he's both taller and broader than his mom, but in other ways, he's never felt any larger than her.
Mary pats him on the shoulder, silent thanks as well as tacit indication that The Hugging is Over.
Sam laughs and it breaks in the middle, showing him for the first time how scared he was. It startles him, but he lets her go, lets her get slowly to her feet and shake it off.
"Well," she says finally, her voice scratchy and choked. "That was fun."
"Is it over?" he asks.
Mary shrugs. "It should be." She digs her homemade EMF reader from her vest pocket and turns it on. It chirps quietly to itself, all its lights green. "I'm not really sensitive to spirits," she admits. "It's not one of my gifts. It's why I've always used a meter, or something like it. Seems clean, though."
Sam nods, relieved. "Why not?" he asks. "I mean… You can talk people into just about anything, you can move things with your mind…why can't you sense spirits?"
Mary looks narrowly at him, but it's not the prelude to another argument, he's genuinely interested and after a moment, she gives a minute nod of her head, apparently willing to take him at face value. "Because it's like any other genetic trait," she says finally. "Some things you get, some things you don't. Missouri is a touch telepath and a; she needs physical contact to pick up her impressions or thoughts. And for the most part, that's it for her. I have true Voice and telekinesis. And that's pretty much it for me. You have your dreams. And, apparently, some sensitivity. You may come into other gifts later, you may not."
"What about Dean?" Sam asks as they come out into the hallway, EMF meter still chirping sedately.
"You all right?" Mary shouts down to Missouri.
"Just fine," the answer comes back. "I'm not picking up anything, are you?"
"Not so far," Mary calls back and turns away from the stairs again.
"Well, I've got a seven o'clock appointment. Estate thing. I need to get home," Missouri says.
"Okay," Mary agrees.
"You come and see me before leaving town, Mary."
"We will," Mary says. "Thank you, Missouri."
"Oh, honey, don't mention it." A few moments later, Sam hears the front door open and close.
"What about Dean?" Sam asks again, following behind her as she scans the different rooms.
"What about Dean?" she asks in return, brushing hair out of her eyes. Her hands are still shaking a little.
"Does he have any gifts? What can he do?"
"No, Dean doesn't have any gifts," Mary answers absently. They go into Sari's room and Mary pays special attention to the closet.
Sam rubs the back of his neck. "How come? I mean, if I do and you…"
"Because sometimes you just don't," Mary says, her voice turning irritated and short. "Geez, Sam. Your brother's had a hard enough road to walk without adding that to the mix. You should be glad he doesn't have that to deal with too."
"I am," Sam says stiffly. "I just don't know anything about…any of this. You never bothered to tell me any of this."
"Well, maybe there's a good reason for it." Mary finishes scanning the upstairs and they head down the stairs again.
"What good reason? So you could go out and cheat at cards and scam money with a clear conscience?" Sam asks bitterly. "Is that it? Just couldn't take the judgment of your kids if they knew how unethical you can be when it's in your own interests? Well, newsflash, Mom; Dean and I figured that one out on our own." A thought occurs to him. "Did Dean know? About your gifts? About how you use them?"
"No," Mary says, her jaw set. "Dean didn't know. And let's not kid ourselves here, Sam; it wasn't just my interests I was serving. You think we'd have lived half as well as we did if I didn't do all the 'unethical' things that I've done in the name of this family?"
A family you didn't even want! Sam thinks and is on the verge of saying, when Mary puts a hand on his arm near the elbow, checking him in place.
He's about to pull away from her when she looks at him, head tilted. "Wait," she says and Sam doesn't know if it's her Voice or just the obedience that she's trained into them, but he bites back both the words and the gesture. "This isn't really us, is it?" Her eyes sharpen on him. "You feel it too, right?"
"Something's still wrong," Sam says, startling himself even though the second the words tumble from his lips he knows it's true. "Something's still here."
Mary curses and Sam feels strangely outside himself as he turns and looks out the kitchen to see a vaguely human shaped figure made of flame making the turn down the stairs and coming towards them.
Mary's hand knots in Sam's shirt around his stomach; she starts to push him behind her, but Sam puts his fingers over hers, halts her. "Wait," he says, squinting through the fire. He feels like he can see something through it's veil, like the flame is just a cloak or some kind. "I think… I think I know what it is."
His heart's knocking double-time in his chest and he hears the excited race of Mary's breath as the spirit gets closer to them. And then suddenly, the seeming of flame rips away and what's left underneath is a tall, human man with a smiling face that Sam knows only from pictures.
"Dad?"
"John?" His mother's voice just shatters, flawing so hard on the word he can practically see the shards strewn around her. "Oh. Oh, God, John."
The ghost of his father looks past Mary for a moment to him and Sam has to reach out and touch the wall, feeling shaky and very young. "Sam," the ghost says, the warm graveled richness of his voice nothing like Sam thought it would be and everything like it should be. In his mind, he hears the words, be brave, son and doesn't know if they really come from his dad's spirit or his own wishful thinking.
The ghost's gaze returns to Mary then—as does Sam's—and John's ghost says, "Mary."
Mary's shoulders are shaking and when she inhales loudly, unsteadily, Sam realizes she's crying. He's never seen his mother cry before. He feels like he should turn away, give her the privacy of her grief, but at the same time, he can hardly take his eyes off his dad, something inside of him so hungry for every second they have.
I'm taller than my Dad. I have his hair. I have his eyes. So does Dean.
In fact, John looks a lot like Dean, more pieces of his brother finding their way into the assembling picture in his mind. The jaw is the same, the slightly stocky look of his torso, an illusion made by the breadth of his shoulders in comparison to the rest of his body.
That's my body too, he thinks. Long through the torso, long legs…I've just got those couple extra inches.
"John," Mary says again, thick-voiced and heartbroken. Sam's mind breaks away from it's stunned inventory of his father's attributes back into the moment. "John, I'm sorry. So very sorry. It was my fault. I should have… God, so many things that I should have." Mary shakes her head. "But I should have told you. I should have told you. It might have all been different then. I wanted to tell you, but I was scared. Which is a bad, shitty reason. But I should have. I know that. And I'm just… God, you don't know how sorry I am." She reaches for the ghost and her hand is trembling like a leaf in a high wind. Something in Sam breaks and tears, seeing that, unfaked and as intense as anything he feels for Jess. "So sorry."
The ghost smiles. It's a great smile; even Sam feels it brush over him like sunlight. It steps closer to Mary and its hand comes up as if to cup her cheek. Mary tilts her head into it, but Sam can see that they don't touch, not really.
And then, as if he's blinked—and he knows he hasn't—the ghost is gone, dissolving into nothingness and air.
And Mary falls to her knees and sobs.
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"How come you never talk about Dad?" Sam asks quietly, once they're back in the car again. He feels like he's been breathing this same stale air for days and his skin hurts from rubbing against the vinyl of the seats. He's tired of the car. Tired of all of his, only the fact that Dean is still missing and Jess is still unavenged keeping him in place.
Mary glances at him. She's been really subdued since leaving the diner, the fond warmth she showed to Cathy flaking away like a particularly brittle mask so that Sam's no longer sure what's real. Mary rolls her shoulders and neck and then shrugs. "At first, it hurt too much," she admits. Her voice streaks roughly, like there's something caught in her throat. And maybe there is. "And I had you and Dean to take care of. You boys were so little. God. So little. I had to focus on where we were going to sleep that night or what we were going to eat, how we were going to get through the next day. How I was going to get through."
Her fingers creep down to toy with her keychain in the ignition, one of John's old dog-tags, worn nearly smooth. "And then when you were older, there didn't seem to be much point. You don't remember John at all and Dean…" Mary sighs. "Sometimes I think Dean remembers John too much."
"What happened that night?' Sam asks.
Another enigmatic look, slightly puzzled. "I've told you all this before."
"You told me the bedtime story version. Tell me the twenty-two year old version. Because you're right; I don't remember anything. I don't even really know anything, other than Dad was a Marine and a mechanic and he died in a fire. I mean…we are who we are because of him, right? Don't you think I should know more than that?"
"You never seemed that interested in more than that," Mary says and although it stings, he can't hear any reproach in her voice. His guilt is all his own, because he knows she's right.
"Well. I'm interested now," he offers.
Mary sighs and rubs the inside of her eye with one knuckle. "I'd fallen asleep," she says after a momentary pause in which she seemed to collect her thoughts. "I'd been up so late with you for the past several days and John… I think he was worried about me. Not that I could blame him. Dean was such an easy baby, but you were always so…prickly."
"Well, not that much has changed in the meantime," Sam jokes and Mary casts him an amused glance and smile.
"Anyway, I was exhausted and John put his foot down and put me to bed right around the same time he tucked Dean in." Her smile is both amused and sad and Sam tries to reconcile the idea of anyone 'putting their foot down' on Mary. She drags a hand through her hair, tugging new strands from her ponytail. "I didn't want to go. I felt…restless. But I was too tired to stay awake. I did try. I wonder sometimes if it would have been different, if I'd been awake. If I could have stopped it, or if it would have been me…"
"Mom," Sam says. "Don't."
Mary's smile is more ironical this time. "Anyway, I guess there was some kind of commotion from the nursery. Bad enough that it woke Dean up…and how sad is it to have to hear how your husband died from your four year old son?" Her hands clench taut on the steering wheel. "He said he woke up and there was all this noise and he got up to go see and there was your Dad and 'something else'. That's what he always said. Not someone; Dean was always very clear on that point, even at four. Something else.
"Your dad had you in his arms. He said, 'Dean!' and then he threw you. Threw you so hard Dean hit the wall trying to catch you. He had bruises on his shoulder blades for a week after, poor thing. And John said, 'Take your brother outside and don't look back. Now, Dean, go!'"
Sam remembers those words himself; they are seared into Dean's mind, same as whatever images made Dean's eyes turn flat and strange when he talks about it. Which hadn't been often.
"I woke up and the house…it felt so close. So hot. And I knew. Something was wrong. I almost broke my ankle climbing out of the bed and I got to the hallway just in time to hear John tell Dean to go and to see Dean running at me, fast as he could go. I ran past him to the nursery and it all went up in this huge cloud of flame, so hot I thought the skin would sear right off my face. I couldn't see John anywhere in it, but I could hear him.
"I could hear him scream. And I couldn't do a damn thing about it."
Sam looks down at his hands knotted in his lap, the knuckles white and bloodless. He feels held in thrall by Mary's voice, despite her dull matter-of-fact tone. He wonders if this is what it's like for the people she's turned her power against, half-imagined pictures and emotions that aren't quite your own.
"I… I left. There was still Dean to think of, and you. I grabbed you both up halfway down the stairs and carried you out of the house. One of the neighbors must have called the fire department because I wasn't in any state to do it. I just sat on the hood of the Impala with you boys while it all burned down."
"I didn't know that. I didn't know it was Dean who caught me, carried me," Sam says, feeling like some other small piece of the silent puzzle of his brother has finally slotted into place.
"Didn't you?" Mary looks startled. "Yeah. Dean…Dean's always been your Guardian."
Something about the way she says the word snags at him, an echo of the shapeshifter in St. Louis spitting its vitriol at him. "Mom," he says carefully. "When you say… When you say 'Guardian'…"
"We're here," Mary announces, pulling up to a house that looks no different from any of the others on the block, except for small wooden sign on a post that says: Consultation Hours and a list of days and times.
"Where's here?" Sam asks, hopping out and stretching his legs with numb gratitude.
"Mary Winchester!" a rather high-pitched voice exclaims. "As I live and breathe!" The door opens to reveal a heavy-set and curvaceous woman with short curly hair tied up with a bright red band that matches her sweater and her socks. "Girl, you got old
"Missouri." Mary smiles and holds out her arms as she comes up the walk to embrace the other woman. Sam thinks that if his mom is going to keep hugging people, he might need some serious therapy. "You still telling lies for money?" Mary keeps one arm around Missouri's shoulder as she turns back and gestures Sam up the sidewalk. "Missouri, you remember Sam, right? Sam, this is my friend Missouri Mosely."
"Oh, yes, I remember," Missouri says, eyeing Sam up and down in a way that makes him want to close the panels of his hoodie. "Well, let me look at you. You grew up handsome! Though you weren't quite so tall the last time I saw you." She squints up at him. "Your mama should've put bricks on your head, keep you from getting so big."
"Oh, that wouldn't have worked in Sam's case," Mary says, tapping her nose. "Sam's stubborn."
"Yeah, I can see that too." Missouri holds her hand out and Sam reflexively takes it. Immediately, Missouri's face crumples and turns sympathetic. "Oh," she says. "Oh, honey. I'm sorry about your girlfriend."
Sam's been doing a pretty good job about keeping a lid on his feelings, but at Missouri's words, unsolicited and unexpected, he feels his throat get tight and aching and his eyes sting. He drops her soft-well kept fingers and shoves his hands into his pockets, afraid of what else they'll tell her.
Missouri shakes it off quickly. "Well," she says, "Y'all'd best come on it. I expect you're here about Dean."
"Have you heard from him?" Sam asks. "Do you know where he is?"
"Oh no, nothing like that," Missouri shakes her head, leading the way deeper into her house. It's dimmer than he thought it would be for all the windows and smells of old incense and fresh baking.
"Then how did you know he was missing? I mean…" Sam looks around at the herbs and jars of things sitting around the small parlor. "You're a psychic, right?"
Missouri gives Mary a look, which Mary shrugs and turns away from, before Missouri transfers it to Sam. "Well, I was holding onto your hand just a second ago, wasn't I? And before that I was hugging on your mom. It's not like you weren't both just thinking it, clear as day. I'm not a magician, Sam; I can pick up thoughts and impressions from folks and objects but I can't just pull facts out of thin air." She takes a breath. "Now sit. Please."
Sam sits so fast it's like the tendons of his knees were cut. Missouri offers them a plate of pumpkin-cinnamon cookies with the best sugar frosting Sam's ever had. "So you don't know…you can't sense anything about Dean?" Mary asks, turning her one cookie around and around in her fingers. "If he's okay? If he's…"
Missouri leans forward in her chair to put her hand over Mary's. "No," she says softly. "I can't. You know I'd tell you if I could. But I just…I don't sense anything, good or bad."
"What about our old house?" Sam asks, struggling with his own sense of disappointment. It doesn't mean anything, he tells himself. It doesn't mean Dean's dead. She said she couldn't feel anything. It doesn't mean he's dead.
"What do you mean?"
"Sam's been having dreams," Mary explains. "About our old house, about the people that live there now."
"What kind of dreams?"
They both look to him and Sam swallows the remainder of his cookie through a throat suddenly dry. He relates what he remembers of his dreams to them both, tells them about the creeping sense of foreboding he felt in the house itself, shares what Sari said about a flame monster in her closet.
"So you think something's back in that house?" Missouri asks. "Something evil?"
Mary spreads her hands deprecatingly, but Sam nods. "Definitely," he says.
"I went through after you children and your mother left," Missouri admits. "Mostly for myself, to satisfy my curiosity if there was anything left, residue, something that might hurt someone else."
"Did you really?" Mary asks. She sounds surprised. "I went through with hellebore and salt right after John died, before the funeral, but I didn't find anything. Nothing more than echoes, anyway. Did you?"
Missouri shakes her head. "Impressions mostly," she admits. "The feel that something evil had been there." She shakes her head, looking troubled. "But it was gone, far as I could tell."
Mary shrugs. "Far as I could tell either."
"It just doesn't make any sense. I've been keeping an eye on the place, over the years. It's bee quiet. There hasn't been anything; no sudden deaths, no freak accidents…why is it acting up now?"
It's Sam's turn to shake his head, as troubled as Missouri. "I don't know. But with Dean disappearing, Jessica dying and now the house…it all happening at once…it just feels like something's starting."
"That's a comforting thought," Mary says. She puts the cookie down, tugs the elastic out of her hair and combs through it with her fingers, gathering up the straying strands and tangles to neaten it again. "Still, if there is something there, I don't feel comfortable just walking away and leaving Jenny and her family to whatever it is. It won't hurt us to go and do a cleansing?"
"Us?" Missouri asks, amusement in her rich voice. "That's mighty white of you for a woman I haven't spoken to in more than twenty years."
"I burn under strong enough lamplight, Missouri," Mary retorts. "They don't get much whiter than me."
"This isn't a good time," Jenny says. "I'm kind of busy."
Sam doesn't say or do anything this time when Mary uses whatever magic is in her voice to convince Jenny she should take herself and her kids off to the movies and leave the three of them there to conduct whatever this 'cleansing' is that Missouri and Mary keep talking about. Missouri is carrying the herb-bags they put together back at her house, holding them cupped in her hands like baby chicks.
Now that he knows what she's doing, it makes him uneasier than ever. Jenny is clearly spooked and although he thinks they're doing the right thing, he doesn't like how easy it is for Mary to say a few words the right way and push someone's thoughts and emotions the way she wants them to go. It makes him wonder if she's ever done it to him, or Dean.
Though, he supposes if she was ever going to use it on him, she'd have kept him from going to Stanford in the first place. But it doesn't stop him from wondering. From feeling distant and suspicious.
Once Jenny, Sari and Ritchie are all packed off, they go inside and lock the door behind them. Mary hands Sam the canister of salt for him to make a line across the threshold. Mary goes deeper into the house, but Missouri lingers in the doorway to one of the other rooms, her dark fingers idly tracing along the door jamb.
"You know, you're afraid of your mother, but you don't need to be," Missouri says suddenly and Sam's hand jerks, putting a little loop in the salt line. He nudges it with his toe and doesn't look up.
"What do you know about it?" he asks, not impolitely.
"Oh, honey, I'm a psychic, remember? And even if I wasn't, you're practically vibrating with it."
"You don't know anything about it," Sam says and it comes out sharper. More like Mary, he thinks and it makes him feel a little ill.
"I know more about it than you think," Missouri says, her own asperity coming to the front. "You got all this conflict in your heart, built up on two decades of resentment and you're damn near filled to bursting with it. And for what? What's your mother done that's so terrible, other than keep you and your brother safe and well?"
"Safe?" Sam laughs. It's not a happy sound. "Safe? I think you got the wrong family, lady. Because one thing we've never been is safe. What we are is one step ahead of the law, maybe tonight is the night that your mother just doesn't come home because she—and possibly your brother—are dead. What we are is 'I know you're only six years old, Sam, but here's your gun and there's the big, slobbering thing that's about to eat your brother's face off. The 'be good and quiet, Sammy or Child Services will take you away and lock you up forever' family. That's who we are."
He doesn't realize he's raised his voice or stepped that close to Missouri until his mother's low-voiced and dangerous, "Sam."
He backs up a couple steps, hands held up like it's the police instead of his mom. His mouth is twisted up and his face feels too tight over the bones.
"Like I said," Missouri says coolly, her eyes flat and unimpressed, "brimming over with it. You're going to want to watch it, son, or it'll turn on you. Make you do or say things you really regret."
Sam says nothing, trailing in their wake as they go upstairs to what's obviously Sari's room. "There's a dark energy here," Missouri says, stepping into the center of the room and looking around pensively. "This room should be the center of it."
"Why?" Sam asks. It doesn't look particularly different from any of the other rooms and they're off to one side, which means it's not the geographic center of the house.
"This used to be your nursery, Sam. This is where it all happened."
Reflexively and even though he knows it's not quite the same house, Sam glances at the ceiling. It's new and unmarked, the plaster smooth, featureless. Of course it is, he thinks. A moment later, he looks at Mary and sees her expression, peeled and stark, the bones of her face too prominent, her eyes darting and scanning fast without settling on anything.
"Do you feel it?" Missouri asks him mildly, drawing his attention back to her and after a moment's hesitation, Sam nods. "I don't know if you two should be disappointed or relieved," Missouri continues, looking around with a frown, "but this ain't the thing that took John."
"Are you sure? How do you know?" And Sam guesses he's not quite sure how to feel about it either.
"This isn't the same energy I felt the last time I was here. It's something different." Missouri goes to the closet and opens the door, looks at the neat row of small hung clothes and the few toys grouped in the bottom and covered in a layer of dust.
There's something in the closet.
"What is it?" Mary asks sharply.
"Not it," Missouri corrects, still wandering around the room's perimeter, though Sam notices she's careful not to touch anything, plump and manicured fingers wrapped in her purse straps. "Them. There's more than one spirit in this place."
"What are they doing here?" He scratches the back of his neck, even though he knows the feeling isn't really an itch.
"They're here because of what happened to your family. All those years ago, real evil walked through this house, left wounds. And sometimes wounds get infected."
"I don't understand."
"The house is a magnet for paranormal energy," Mary says, her tone simultaneously dull and edged. "Just as you are, Sam. It's attracted something—a poltergeist, maybe." Missouri nods in agreement. "One that won't rest until someone dies."
"Well, we're not going to let that happen, right?" Sam asks, looking from one woman to the other. "Right?"
Mary looks at Missouri, who looks right back at her and Sam doesn't know what to read from that look at all.
"So we're going to put these sacks in the walls in the four corners of each floor," Missouri explains to him, a few moments later, depositing four of the herb bags into Sam's hands. "North, south, east and west."
"We're going to punch holes in Jenny's drywall?" Sam asks doubtfully. "Man, she's going to love us."
"She'll live," Mary says tersely, twirling her sacks around on their braided strings restlessly, nervously. Usually, she's not this…kinetic before a hunt. "But you'll need to work fast, Sam."
"That's right," Missouri agrees. "Once we place the first one, the spirits will know what we're up to. They'll move to stop us."
"This just gets better and better," Sam says. "Any preference on floors?"
"I'll take the basement," Missouri says. "Mary, you want to take the second floor, put Sam between us?"
"Sounds good," Mary says. She reaches behind her and pulls a small hand-axe from what he sincerely hopes is a sheath in the back of her pants. She flips the blade and hands it to him, haft first.
"Thanks," he says, hefting the thing in his hand and looking for the balance.
"You got this?" Mary asks, looking at him weirdly.
Sam gives her strange eye right back and nods. "Yeah. Hack a hole in the wall, stick the bag in. I think I got it. All that college schooling and everything."
Mary's mouth presses flat, but all she says is, "Just be careful, Sam."
"I will, Mom. It's not like it's my first ghost ever." He doesn’t understand this edginess of hers and it's just making him nervous. Usually she's the one who tells him he can do it while he doubtfully considers whether he believes her or not.
Abruptly, she smiles. "I know."
Sam reflects again on habits he's never been able to get used to as he digs his compass keychain out of his pocket. He feels a momentary pang at the sight of it, empty of any keys other than the one for his storage locker and mailbox key back in California—all that's left of his previous life. A quiet sigh and he lets it go for the moment. The compass is small, but it's good and he uses it to orient himself East, side of the rising sun and new undertakings.
That turns out to be the kitchen. Sam goes to the far wall, hefts the hand axe again and starts cutting as small and careful a hole as he can manage in the wall. He wonders if they can stay long enough for him to patch the holes for Jenny later; he still feels kind of awful for wrecking her walls this way and he's had enough practice through their various apartments and handy-work for cash or board deals.
He's about to shove the bag into the resulting gap when he hears the warning saber rattle of cutlery behind him. It's enough warning for him to turn and see the flurry of knives lifting from their rests a moment before they fly across the room at him. Sam kicks the table over and dives behind it, careful to stay back from the leading edge as the knives punch through the thin surface and jitter the whole business. He peeks over the edge, doesn't see anything else immediately waiting to brain or stab him and darts for the hole, cramming the bag inside.
There's a noise like an indrawn breath and though he doesn't feel the ugly sense of presence disappear, it feels less close as if there's more distance between him and the spirit.
Sam's a lot faster and a lot less careful about placing the other three bags. Missouri comes upstairs, shaky and not quite steady on her legs. Sam guides her down into one of the chairs and she waves him off impatiently. "Where's your mother?" she asks, looking up at him.
Sam looks around. He hasn't heard anything from upstairs. "I'll go check," he says and leaves her there to take the stairs three and four at a time.
He finds Mary in one of the bedrooms; the poltergeist must have taken her unaware and quietly; there's a lamp cord wrapped around her throat and she writhes on the floor, her eyes desperate and her mouth open in futile effort to get air. "Mom!"
Sam's at her side in a second, prying at the cord but it doesn't budge, not even a little. The fingers of both Mary's hands are hooked through the cord in an effort to give herself that margin of breathing room; she lets go with one hand and fumbles across her body to tap him with the last little sack of Missouri's herb mixture.
He takes it from her and turns, half-crawling across the floor to shove it deep into the hole she'd already hacked in the wall down by the baseboards.
The result is considerably more dramatic this time; the sound of the air molecules exciting and moving is louder, closer to a scream and blue corpse glow flares like a supernova, blinding Sam for a second. He feels something go across his skin like the touch of a million hairy spider's feet (don't ask) and then he can breathe again and so can Mary.
She's weak—God only knows how long she was fighting with the damn lamp cord—and Sam helps her unwrap it from around her neck, cradling her as she coughs and gasps. She feels weirdly small in his arms, which makes him feel clumsy and too-big. Academically, he knows he's both taller and broader than his mom, but in other ways, he's never felt any larger than her.
Mary pats him on the shoulder, silent thanks as well as tacit indication that The Hugging is Over.
Sam laughs and it breaks in the middle, showing him for the first time how scared he was. It startles him, but he lets her go, lets her get slowly to her feet and shake it off.
"Well," she says finally, her voice scratchy and choked. "That was fun."
"Is it over?" he asks.
Mary shrugs. "It should be." She digs her homemade EMF reader from her vest pocket and turns it on. It chirps quietly to itself, all its lights green. "I'm not really sensitive to spirits," she admits. "It's not one of my gifts. It's why I've always used a meter, or something like it. Seems clean, though."
Sam nods, relieved. "Why not?" he asks. "I mean… You can talk people into just about anything, you can move things with your mind…why can't you sense spirits?"
Mary looks narrowly at him, but it's not the prelude to another argument, he's genuinely interested and after a moment, she gives a minute nod of her head, apparently willing to take him at face value. "Because it's like any other genetic trait," she says finally. "Some things you get, some things you don't. Missouri is a touch telepath and a
"What about Dean?" Sam asks as they come out into the hallway, EMF meter still chirping sedately.
"You all right?" Mary shouts down to Missouri.
"Just fine," the answer comes back. "I'm not picking up anything, are you?"
"Not so far," Mary calls back and turns away from the stairs again.
"Well, I've got a seven o'clock appointment. Estate thing. I need to get home," Missouri says.
"Okay," Mary agrees.
"You come and see me before leaving town, Mary."
"We will," Mary says. "Thank you, Missouri."
"Oh, honey, don't mention it." A few moments later, Sam hears the front door open and close.
"What about Dean?" Sam asks again, following behind her as she scans the different rooms.
"What about Dean?" she asks in return, brushing hair out of her eyes. Her hands are still shaking a little.
"Does he have any gifts? What can he do?"
"No, Dean doesn't have any gifts," Mary answers absently. They go into Sari's room and Mary pays special attention to the closet.
Sam rubs the back of his neck. "How come? I mean, if I do and you…"
"Because sometimes you just don't," Mary says, her voice turning irritated and short. "Geez, Sam. Your brother's had a hard enough road to walk without adding that to the mix. You should be glad he doesn't have that to deal with too."
"I am," Sam says stiffly. "I just don't know anything about…any of this. You never bothered to tell me any of this."
"Well, maybe there's a good reason for it." Mary finishes scanning the upstairs and they head down the stairs again.
"What good reason? So you could go out and cheat at cards and scam money with a clear conscience?" Sam asks bitterly. "Is that it? Just couldn't take the judgment of your kids if they knew how unethical you can be when it's in your own interests? Well, newsflash, Mom; Dean and I figured that one out on our own." A thought occurs to him. "Did Dean know? About your gifts? About how you use them?"
"No," Mary says, her jaw set. "Dean didn't know. And let's not kid ourselves here, Sam; it wasn't just my interests I was serving. You think we'd have lived half as well as we did if I didn't do all the 'unethical' things that I've done in the name of this family?"
A family you didn't even want! Sam thinks and is on the verge of saying, when Mary puts a hand on his arm near the elbow, checking him in place.
He's about to pull away from her when she looks at him, head tilted. "Wait," she says and Sam doesn't know if it's her Voice or just the obedience that she's trained into them, but he bites back both the words and the gesture. "This isn't really us, is it?" Her eyes sharpen on him. "You feel it too, right?"
"Something's still wrong," Sam says, startling himself even though the second the words tumble from his lips he knows it's true. "Something's still here."
Mary curses and Sam feels strangely outside himself as he turns and looks out the kitchen to see a vaguely human shaped figure made of flame making the turn down the stairs and coming towards them.
Mary's hand knots in Sam's shirt around his stomach; she starts to push him behind her, but Sam puts his fingers over hers, halts her. "Wait," he says, squinting through the fire. He feels like he can see something through it's veil, like the flame is just a cloak or some kind. "I think… I think I know what it is."
His heart's knocking double-time in his chest and he hears the excited race of Mary's breath as the spirit gets closer to them. And then suddenly, the seeming of flame rips away and what's left underneath is a tall, human man with a smiling face that Sam knows only from pictures.
"Dad?"
"John?" His mother's voice just shatters, flawing so hard on the word he can practically see the shards strewn around her. "Oh. Oh, God, John."
The ghost of his father looks past Mary for a moment to him and Sam has to reach out and touch the wall, feeling shaky and very young. "Sam," the ghost says, the warm graveled richness of his voice nothing like Sam thought it would be and everything like it should be. In his mind, he hears the words, be brave, son and doesn't know if they really come from his dad's spirit or his own wishful thinking.
The ghost's gaze returns to Mary then—as does Sam's—and John's ghost says, "Mary."
Mary's shoulders are shaking and when she inhales loudly, unsteadily, Sam realizes she's crying. He's never seen his mother cry before. He feels like he should turn away, give her the privacy of her grief, but at the same time, he can hardly take his eyes off his dad, something inside of him so hungry for every second they have.
I'm taller than my Dad. I have his hair. I have his eyes. So does Dean.
In fact, John looks a lot like Dean, more pieces of his brother finding their way into the assembling picture in his mind. The jaw is the same, the slightly stocky look of his torso, an illusion made by the breadth of his shoulders in comparison to the rest of his body.
That's my body too, he thinks. Long through the torso, long legs…I've just got those couple extra inches.
"John," Mary says again, thick-voiced and heartbroken. Sam's mind breaks away from it's stunned inventory of his father's attributes back into the moment. "John, I'm sorry. So very sorry. It was my fault. I should have… God, so many things that I should have." Mary shakes her head. "But I should have told you. I should have told you. It might have all been different then. I wanted to tell you, but I was scared. Which is a bad, shitty reason. But I should have. I know that. And I'm just… God, you don't know how sorry I am." She reaches for the ghost and her hand is trembling like a leaf in a high wind. Something in Sam breaks and tears, seeing that, unfaked and as intense as anything he feels for Jess. "So sorry."
The ghost smiles. It's a great smile; even Sam feels it brush over him like sunlight. It steps closer to Mary and its hand comes up as if to cup her cheek. Mary tilts her head into it, but Sam can see that they don't touch, not really.
And then, as if he's blinked—and he knows he hasn't—the ghost is gone, dissolving into nothingness and air.
And Mary falls to her knees and sobs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2006-11-28 08:16 pm (UTC)*nods* Yeppers.
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Date: 2006-11-28 08:27 pm (UTC)In all serious, I loved the John scene and didn't find it at all melodramatic. Oh, Sam.
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Date: 2006-11-28 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 02:48 am (UTC)