And We Are Ashes: Chapter 4, Part 4
Nov. 5th, 2007 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thecatevariI'm feeling like this part is going to need some considerable revision. I'm not sure how I feel about it. But I kept myself from editing it, so that's something. Of course, I also suspect no one's reading this yet, so I suppose the only person it matters to is me. So yes. I was having a really hard time keeping in mind that Ellicott was running the asylum in the sixties; for some reason, I'd always thought/felt it was the earlier part of the century. I wonder how much my mom can tell me about mental health facilities during that time period? I don't think she started nursing until the early seventies and I'm not sure how much drift there was in medical procedures and stuff at that point.
I went a little long tonight because I was within KISSING DISTANCE of finishing Chapter Four by midnight and I felt it was worth it to go a little over my self imposed deadline and finish the chapter than to post one scene tomorrow and then start Chapter 5. *shrugs*
10545 / 50000 words. 21% done!
Today's Word Count: 3,333
Current Total Word Count: 10,545
Estimated Total Word Count: ~100,000
What's bad: The diary entries. I really need more time to get into the mindset of The Mysterious Diarist and I just didn't have that. I'm also iffy about Sam's diatribe.
What's good: The Mysterious Diarist. He really helps me connect the lines to Daniel Elkins and the Colt, saving me a lot of metaphorical legwork. I also like how crochety Mary is. It's a lot of fun to write.
What pleases me: Mary scribbles a directional note in white chalk on the doorframe of yet another room and steps across the threshold. Though everything has been moved and distorted by the fire and the subsequent searchers—as well as the passage of decades—this room (137) looks like it was the center of some kind of activity. More furniture, piled to either side of the door, like they were once a barricade. The door itself is gone, the hinges twisted and snapped and the frame on the other side is scratched. Rotted and rusted fragments of bedding are piled in the back, like a nest.
Mary thinks of her last glimpse of her mother, before Juneau guided her away; screaming and wild-eyed like a Maenad, a Fury, choking the life out of an orderly—a man nearly twice her size. A man with thick, piggish features and a lewdly sensual smile that had raised the hackles on the back of Mary's neck.
The patients rioted, she thinks, toeing aside an ancient and frightful teddy-bear half-consumed in slick green-black fungus. But what were they rioting against?
Mary scribbles a directional note in white chalk on the doorframe of yet another room and steps across the threshold. Though everything has been moved and distorted by the fire and the subsequent searchers—as well as the passage of decades—this room (137) looks like it was the center of some kind of activity. More furniture, piled to either side of the door, like they were once a barricade. The door itself is gone, the hinges twisted and snapped and the frame on the other side is scratched. Rotted and rusted fragments of bedding are piled in the back, like a nest.
Mary thinks of her last glimpse of her mother, before Juneau guided her away; screaming and wild-eyed like a Maenad, a Fury, choking the life out of an orderly—a man nearly twice her size. A man with thick, piggish features and a lewdly sensual smile that had raised the hackles on the back of Mary's neck.
The patients rioted, she thinks, toeing aside an ancient and frightful teddy-bear half-consumed in slick green-black fungus. But what were they rioting against?
She finds the answer in battered and pitted metal cabinet; a sheaf of patient records, the paper brittle and scorched around all four edges to make them mostly illegible, and a journal whose heavy leather cover protected the pages and pictures within.
Someone wanted this to be found, Mary thinks, bracing the flashlight in a twisted wreck of unnamed medical equipment so she has a hand free to turn the pages and a hand for her gun. She leafs through the bundle of photographs distastefully, sickened by the proud, shining faces of the doctors as they demonstrated their latest techniques versus the pained, haunted eyes of the patients. Mixed in with the pictures are notes, exhaustive catalogues of the abuses of the doctor and staff. Someone was trying to blow the whistle.
Mary reaches the end of the little sheaf of notes and scans the page of the journal beneath. The handwriting is the same, hasty, crooked and cramped.
…drink too much since Emmy. I should know better. I just get so angry. I get angry and then I start drinking and then I start talking about things no one wants to believe are out there. Of course, this is probably the longest I've been sober since she died. One thing to thank Ellicott for, crazy bastard. Now if only I could get out of here. My fingers itch at the thought of all the creatures out there still waiting, preying on the innocent and blind…ghosts and monsters and demons from hell…
Mary arches an eyebrow and flips another few pages deeper.
Sometimes I feel like I've fallen through a hole in the world and into the dark ages. I can't even imagine how a place like Roosevelt even exists in a sane world. Though I guess that's the point, isn't it? I haven't existed in a sane world since Emmy died. Since Emmy was murdered. I could almost expect the animal brutality of the orderlies, stupid bull-like men hardly a step up from the "criminally insane" they're supposed to be protecting the world from. But these horrible travesties that Ellicott calls "therapy"… Where are the watchdogs? Why isn't someone paying attention to what goes on here? It's one thing for people to turn a blind eye to the supernatural, but there's nothing remotely spiritual about what goes on here every day.
And, further down the same page, Thank God I gave the Colt to Elkins for safekeeping. So at least no matter what happens to me…and I'm starting to believe Cassie's predictions that I'll never get out of here…it'll stay in the hands of a hunter.
"Oh, good boy, Dean!" Mary breathes. "This is why you get paid the big bucks."
A clatter of something falling down the asylum's hallway startles Mary and dispels some of the warm glow of triumph that fills her like a heavy belt of Jim Beam, reacquainting her to her surroundings and how long she's been gone. Quickly, she slams the journal shut and shucks out of her flannel shirt, wrapping it around the book before she tucks it carefully in her backpack. It's not much, but she hopes it'll be enough to protect the heat damaged pages from the ravages of the weapons and equipment within. Then she tugs the flashlight out of its makeshift rest.
"Okay, Sam," she murmurs, taking a moment to get her bearings before retracing her steps back up to the ward doors. "Let's see where you've got to."
She nearly gets her head taken off coming around the last corner; the girl—Katherine—has the shotgun, firing before she even knows who's there. Only years of living on her nerves gives Mary the opportunity to catch the flash of the barrel and the time to duck, little chunks of plaster raining down on her bent head, neck and hunched shoulders. "Don't shoot!" she shouts. "It's me, dammit!"
"Sorry!" Katherine calls back. "Sorry!"
Mary growls a little under her breath and stands up, knees crackling like Rice Krispies. "What are you even still doing here? And where's Sam?"
She hadn't really noticed that Sam wasn't with them in that first, startled second, her attention pretty much consumed by the bore of the shotgun coming to bear on her, but she sure as hell notices now, worry skittering like spiders across her skin.
"He went to the basement," the boy—whose name Mary can't recall just that second—says, sounding confused. "You called him."
And clearly he is confused. "I didn't call him."
"His cell phone rang," Kat chimes in. "He said a name…"
"Dean," the boy says.
Kat nods at him and then looks back to Mary. "Yes! Dean. And then he said, 'Mom, you found Dean? So we figured it was you."
Mary's stomach clenches into a tight ball, radiating ache through her whole chest. "Basement, huh?" she ask, striving to keep her tone nonchalant. They both nod at her and she wants to slap the shit out of them both for letting Sam go. But, no. That's a Lillith thought. Mary lets her breath out in a long, slow exhalation. "All right. Watch yourselves. And next time, watch out for me."
***
Once she's out of sight of Kat and her erstwhile boy-toy, Mary fishes beneath the neck of her tee shirt for the silver chain of her pendant. It's nothing special and nothing worth stealing, twenty dollars of flawed amber with a bit of silver wire wrapped around it, but it helps steady Mary, helps her sink her mind fast and deep into itself until she finds and opens the doors that connect her to Sam.
She feels him almost at once, blazing like a bonfire amid the ephemeral, ectoplasmic white noise of the other roaming ghosts. Only years of discipline and training let Mary keep a rein on her emotions, showing how stupid she was to let Sam go roaming around this place by himself. Stupid and very unlike herself, meaning she's being affected by this place as much as any of the other victims. And if she, fully shielded and reasonably cognizant, is affected by the miasma of this place…
Mary lets the pendant drop and goes to find her son.
"Sammy?" It galls her to yell for him like a suburban housewife screaming for her kids to come in before the streetlights come on; counter-intuitive to a lifetime of trying not to draw attention, but if it helps her find him any faster, she'd strip naked and dance the can-can. "Sam, you down here? Sam!"
She turns and suddenly Sam is there, looming tall and silent. Despite herself, Mary flinches, startled. "Christ, Sam! Answer me when I'm calling you! You all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Sam shrugs carelessly.
"You know that wasn't me on your cell, right?" Mary keeps her voice level, strangely conscious of the bead of amber sitting above her breasts.
"Yeah, I figured that out, Mom. Something lured me down here."
"And I think I figured out who. Dr. Ellicott. You haven't seen him down here, have you?" She watches his eyes carefully.
"No." There's barely a flicker. "How do you know it was him?"
"I found some of his notes and the journal of one of his patients. He was experimenting on them. Really awful stuff, makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest look like the Girl Scout Handbook."
"But it was the patients who rioted. Ellicott was still alive."
And really, the dull monotone of Sam's voice is starting to creep her out big time. "Yeah, they were rioting against Ellicott, trying to get attention from the outside. Ellicott was working on some kind of extreme rage therapy. He thought that if he could get his patients to vent their anger they'd be cured. But it only made them worse and worse, angrier and angrier. I think his spirit's still carrying on with his 'good works'." Mary edges a little away from Sam, angling her body so he can't see her flip the revolver open and let the shells fall out into her palm.
"How?" Sam asks. "The police never found his body, remember?"
"The book said there was some kind of hidden procedure room down here, where he'd work on his patients in privacy. If I was one of his patients, I'd sure as hell have dragged his ass down here for a little payback."
"I don't know," Sam says doubtfully, sounding exactly like himself in every disagreement they've ever had.
"It won't hurt to look," she points out. "Especially if we want to get out of here. The doors are still blocked."
"I looked everywhere, trying to find you and Dean." Sam says, impatience creeping into his tone. "I told you I didn't find anything."
He's almost a foot taller than you and nearly seventy pounds heavier, Mary thinks, chewing on her thumbnail as she turns away.
Of course, you play dirty.
You could be wrong, Mary. Don't do anything, say anything until you're sure. Until you know.
"Well, that's why they call it hidden," she says lightly, walking into the nearest room. She wishes she was better with spirits. Her cousin Vivian could call and dismiss ghosts like a lion tamer in a circus. At once, she tips her head. "You hear that?"
"What?"
Mary crouches down. There's a space between the wall and the floor, wind whistling faintly through the gap. She straightens up, the lead ball in her stomach jittering around with nerves.
Okay. Time to put it to the test.
She turns to Sam. "I think we should leave."
"What?"
"You're right," she says simply. "There's nothing down here and I'm sure between the four of us we can figure a way out."
Sam blinks at her. "But. What about the ghost? Ellicott's ghost?"
Mary shrugs. "We don't even know for sure that Ellicott's ghost is down here. I was just speculating. Dean's not here and that's all I care about. We should go."
"But it's dangerous."
"To who?" Mary laughs. It sounds shrill and tinny to her own ears but Sam doesn't seem to notice the difference. "Us? C'mon, Sam."
"But." Sam's forehead wrinkles and he rubs his temples like he's got a headache. "People are dying, Mom. We can't just walk away. Isn't that what we do?"
Mary hardens her voice to a whip. It's not her Voice, but it's as good as she can do with Sam. "I said we're leaving, Sam. Now that's an order." She turns as if to walk away.
Mary isn't really sure what she expects, but whatever it is, it isn't for the sudden thunderous boom of the shotgun, or the impact of something heavy, right between her shoulder blades, pushing her down to the floor hard. It happens fast enough that she can't even get her hands out to catch herself and her head rebounds from the filthy cement with a noise like a rubber ball.
He shot me! Mary thinks, outraged, as consciousness slips from her finger as swiftly and delicately as water. Sam fucking shot me!
***
She can't be out for long; she comes to as Sam flips her over on her back. Her back stings like a bitch and it's only worse when it touches the concrete. She coughs faintly and tastes blood. "Sam…"
"Dean told me not to trust you."
He…what? Dean did what? Still dazed, Mary blinks up into Sam's face. She'd like to say his face is unrecognizable through the contorted haze of his anger, but she's seen this face too many times before, most of them right before he packed up and left for good.
"He left me a note. Mailed it to me from Jericho and said not to trust anyone, but especially you. Especially you," Sam repeats with vicious emphasis. There's blood leaking from his nose, thick and sluggish. "And I think he was right. Why should I trust you, Mom? All you ever do is fucking lie to me—lie to us!"
"Sam, you don't know what you're talking about…."
"No, I know exactly what I'm talking about." Sam drops to his knees on top of her. "You're fucking scary, Mom. More like all the shit that we hunt and burn than something human."
It shouldn't hurt. She knows he's not himself. She knows this is Ellicott, Ellicott's work.
It doesn't matter. It hurts anyway, all her worst fears, the words she'd always dreaded from John's mouth now coming at her from his son's.
"You're turning into someone—something—that I don't even understand. And you know what? I don't care. You fucked up Dean, turned him into your mindless robot, following you around like a little dog…"
Mary coughs again. "Well, which is it, Sam? Is he a robot or a dog?"
Sam backhands her. Mary's expecting it and rolls her head and neck with it. Even so, it's enough to tear her lip open and make her see stars again. She suspects she's concussed, at least a little bit.
"Shut up! God, no wonder Dean ran away. And now you're trying to do the same thing to me." Blood drops from Sam's nose onto Mary's belly, felt even through the thin cotton of her shirt. Mary shudders, she can't help it.
"Sam, I'm not…"
"You know, you would've thought you learned your lesson after Dad died, but you just won't be satisfied until me and Dean are dead too, will you? The whole family that you never wanted."
Mary doesn't even think about it—which is good, because she doesn't know if she could've managed it if she'd actually tried—she hits him with the TK dead on, making Sam fly off of her and across the room like a rag doll. He hits the far wall with an oomph and falls to his knees. Every bone in her body screaming in protest, Mary scrambles up, races across that short distance and kicks Sam in the head.
He drops like a stone and Mary fights down panic that she's killed him herself, fully aware she was pretty angry herself when she kicked him. Kneeling, she gropes for a pulse and only breathes again when she finds it, beating strongly against her fore and middle fingers.
"Oh, Sammy, I'm sorry," she said, tangling her fingers briefly in his hair. Then she grabs her bag and digs out the salt and one of the Zippos. "And you, Ellicott…oh, motherfucker, you're gonna burn…"
***
Sam wakes up and the whole room is wreathed in a fug of dirty gray smoke. His head is killing him and the smell of rancid burnt meat is almost enough to send him over the edge, except for his absolute conviction that his head will shatter into microscopic pieces if he moves too much. And then he remembers.
"Mom?"
He turns his head and she's there, sitting on the floor, panting and with her knees kilted up, one hand massaging her throat. "You're not going to shoot me again, are you?"
Shame scalds through him. "Um. No."
Mary nods. "Good. 'Cause that could be awkward." She reaches out and drags her backpack to her, slinging it over one shoulder before she slowly starts rolling to her feet. Sam sees the back of her tee-shirt is shredded and soaking through with blood. He gets up, ignoring the warning screams from his skull and holds out his hand to her.
On her knees, Mary looks from the hand up into his eyes for several burning seconds before she takes it and lets him haul her up. "You ready to get out of here now?" she asks.
Sam nods. "Oh, yeah."
***
The damnable thing is that he remember it all. Every moment from the second that Ellicott put his musty, moldering hands on Sam's skin up until the moment Mary knocked him out. And though he'd been conscious of his anger, living and molten beneath his skin, it hadn't really felt that different from any of a hundred other rages he's felt at something his mother's done or said. It hadn't felt that much different from the way he still felt, wading in her ocean of half-truths and outright evasions.
He's just never shot her before.
They make their way upstairs in silence. Sam takes the backpack away from Mary and she leans on his arm, her only admission of the pain that turns her face white and the line of her mouth grim and ugly.
When they're all the way up, daylight struggles to find its way through the dirt choked windows. Sam feels almost blinded by even that little light, showing up what a wreck they both look. Gavin and Kat are still waiting for them at the doors, looking alternately shocked and relieved at the sight of them.
"We were starting to think you weren't coming back," Kat says, relinquishing the shotgun and reaching for Mary's other arm to help her stand. Mary pulls away from her—though with more gentleness and politeness than Sam expects—standing stubbornly on her own two feet while he and Gavin put their shoulders to the door to force them open.
Emerging into daylight, into fresh air, untainted by mold and fire and rot, is almost like being reborn. Except that Sam's sins can't be sloughed off as easily as he steps from darkness into light. Uncaring who knows they were here at this point and aware that there's no way Mary's going to make it over the fence a second time, Sam snips through the chain link and peels it back, letting the four of them escape.
"Thanks, guys," Kat says, shuffling her feet uncertainly as they stand in the awkwardness of goodbye.
"Yeah, thanks," Gavin echoes, reaching to put his arm around Kat. Kat steps away from him and Sam hides his smile.
"No more haunted asylums, okay?" Mary gives them The Eyebrow, which is nearly worse than her magical Voice they nod. Mary's turning away before she sees their agreement, though and Sam jump steps to catch up with her and take her arm again.
At the car, Mary digs in her pocket and presses the Impala's keys into his hands. "Here." Gingerly, careful not to move her back, she starts circling around to the passenger side.
Sam looks down at the keys and then back at his mother. "Are we going to talk about it, or is this just it?" He feels horrible about what he said, remembering the way her face had flinched, twisted and then gone dead and still at his words…but at the same time, and though he would've never put it in those words exactly, the things he'd said hadn't been completely untrue.
Mary's eyes narrow, pale as water and nearly as cold as she leans an arm on the roof of the Impala. "I think you've said enough already, don't you, Sam?"
I went a little long tonight because I was within KISSING DISTANCE of finishing Chapter Four by midnight and I felt it was worth it to go a little over my self imposed deadline and finish the chapter than to post one scene tomorrow and then start Chapter 5. *shrugs*
Today's Word Count: 3,333
Current Total Word Count: 10,545
Estimated Total Word Count: ~100,000
What's bad: The diary entries. I really need more time to get into the mindset of The Mysterious Diarist and I just didn't have that. I'm also iffy about Sam's diatribe.
What's good: The Mysterious Diarist. He really helps me connect the lines to Daniel Elkins and the Colt, saving me a lot of metaphorical legwork. I also like how crochety Mary is. It's a lot of fun to write.
What pleases me: Mary scribbles a directional note in white chalk on the doorframe of yet another room and steps across the threshold. Though everything has been moved and distorted by the fire and the subsequent searchers—as well as the passage of decades—this room (137) looks like it was the center of some kind of activity. More furniture, piled to either side of the door, like they were once a barricade. The door itself is gone, the hinges twisted and snapped and the frame on the other side is scratched. Rotted and rusted fragments of bedding are piled in the back, like a nest.
Mary thinks of her last glimpse of her mother, before Juneau guided her away; screaming and wild-eyed like a Maenad, a Fury, choking the life out of an orderly—a man nearly twice her size. A man with thick, piggish features and a lewdly sensual smile that had raised the hackles on the back of Mary's neck.
The patients rioted, she thinks, toeing aside an ancient and frightful teddy-bear half-consumed in slick green-black fungus. But what were they rioting against?
Mary scribbles a directional note in white chalk on the doorframe of yet another room and steps across the threshold. Though everything has been moved and distorted by the fire and the subsequent searchers—as well as the passage of decades—this room (137) looks like it was the center of some kind of activity. More furniture, piled to either side of the door, like they were once a barricade. The door itself is gone, the hinges twisted and snapped and the frame on the other side is scratched. Rotted and rusted fragments of bedding are piled in the back, like a nest.
Mary thinks of her last glimpse of her mother, before Juneau guided her away; screaming and wild-eyed like a Maenad, a Fury, choking the life out of an orderly—a man nearly twice her size. A man with thick, piggish features and a lewdly sensual smile that had raised the hackles on the back of Mary's neck.
The patients rioted, she thinks, toeing aside an ancient and frightful teddy-bear half-consumed in slick green-black fungus. But what were they rioting against?
She finds the answer in battered and pitted metal cabinet; a sheaf of patient records, the paper brittle and scorched around all four edges to make them mostly illegible, and a journal whose heavy leather cover protected the pages and pictures within.
Someone wanted this to be found, Mary thinks, bracing the flashlight in a twisted wreck of unnamed medical equipment so she has a hand free to turn the pages and a hand for her gun. She leafs through the bundle of photographs distastefully, sickened by the proud, shining faces of the doctors as they demonstrated their latest techniques versus the pained, haunted eyes of the patients. Mixed in with the pictures are notes, exhaustive catalogues of the abuses of the doctor and staff. Someone was trying to blow the whistle.
Mary reaches the end of the little sheaf of notes and scans the page of the journal beneath. The handwriting is the same, hasty, crooked and cramped.
…drink too much since Emmy. I should know better. I just get so angry. I get angry and then I start drinking and then I start talking about things no one wants to believe are out there. Of course, this is probably the longest I've been sober since she died. One thing to thank Ellicott for, crazy bastard. Now if only I could get out of here. My fingers itch at the thought of all the creatures out there still waiting, preying on the innocent and blind…ghosts and monsters and demons from hell…
Mary arches an eyebrow and flips another few pages deeper.
Sometimes I feel like I've fallen through a hole in the world and into the dark ages. I can't even imagine how a place like Roosevelt even exists in a sane world. Though I guess that's the point, isn't it? I haven't existed in a sane world since Emmy died. Since Emmy was murdered. I could almost expect the animal brutality of the orderlies, stupid bull-like men hardly a step up from the "criminally insane" they're supposed to be protecting the world from. But these horrible travesties that Ellicott calls "therapy"… Where are the watchdogs? Why isn't someone paying attention to what goes on here? It's one thing for people to turn a blind eye to the supernatural, but there's nothing remotely spiritual about what goes on here every day.
And, further down the same page, Thank God I gave the Colt to Elkins for safekeeping. So at least no matter what happens to me…and I'm starting to believe Cassie's predictions that I'll never get out of here…it'll stay in the hands of a hunter.
"Oh, good boy, Dean!" Mary breathes. "This is why you get paid the big bucks."
A clatter of something falling down the asylum's hallway startles Mary and dispels some of the warm glow of triumph that fills her like a heavy belt of Jim Beam, reacquainting her to her surroundings and how long she's been gone. Quickly, she slams the journal shut and shucks out of her flannel shirt, wrapping it around the book before she tucks it carefully in her backpack. It's not much, but she hopes it'll be enough to protect the heat damaged pages from the ravages of the weapons and equipment within. Then she tugs the flashlight out of its makeshift rest.
"Okay, Sam," she murmurs, taking a moment to get her bearings before retracing her steps back up to the ward doors. "Let's see where you've got to."
She nearly gets her head taken off coming around the last corner; the girl—Katherine—has the shotgun, firing before she even knows who's there. Only years of living on her nerves gives Mary the opportunity to catch the flash of the barrel and the time to duck, little chunks of plaster raining down on her bent head, neck and hunched shoulders. "Don't shoot!" she shouts. "It's me, dammit!"
"Sorry!" Katherine calls back. "Sorry!"
Mary growls a little under her breath and stands up, knees crackling like Rice Krispies. "What are you even still doing here? And where's Sam?"
She hadn't really noticed that Sam wasn't with them in that first, startled second, her attention pretty much consumed by the bore of the shotgun coming to bear on her, but she sure as hell notices now, worry skittering like spiders across her skin.
"He went to the basement," the boy—whose name Mary can't recall just that second—says, sounding confused. "You called him."
And clearly he is confused. "I didn't call him."
"His cell phone rang," Kat chimes in. "He said a name…"
"Dean," the boy says.
Kat nods at him and then looks back to Mary. "Yes! Dean. And then he said, 'Mom, you found Dean? So we figured it was you."
Mary's stomach clenches into a tight ball, radiating ache through her whole chest. "Basement, huh?" she ask, striving to keep her tone nonchalant. They both nod at her and she wants to slap the shit out of them both for letting Sam go. But, no. That's a Lillith thought. Mary lets her breath out in a long, slow exhalation. "All right. Watch yourselves. And next time, watch out for me."
Once she's out of sight of Kat and her erstwhile boy-toy, Mary fishes beneath the neck of her tee shirt for the silver chain of her pendant. It's nothing special and nothing worth stealing, twenty dollars of flawed amber with a bit of silver wire wrapped around it, but it helps steady Mary, helps her sink her mind fast and deep into itself until she finds and opens the doors that connect her to Sam.
She feels him almost at once, blazing like a bonfire amid the ephemeral, ectoplasmic white noise of the other roaming ghosts. Only years of discipline and training let Mary keep a rein on her emotions, showing how stupid she was to let Sam go roaming around this place by himself. Stupid and very unlike herself, meaning she's being affected by this place as much as any of the other victims. And if she, fully shielded and reasonably cognizant, is affected by the miasma of this place…
Mary lets the pendant drop and goes to find her son.
"Sammy?" It galls her to yell for him like a suburban housewife screaming for her kids to come in before the streetlights come on; counter-intuitive to a lifetime of trying not to draw attention, but if it helps her find him any faster, she'd strip naked and dance the can-can. "Sam, you down here? Sam!"
She turns and suddenly Sam is there, looming tall and silent. Despite herself, Mary flinches, startled. "Christ, Sam! Answer me when I'm calling you! You all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Sam shrugs carelessly.
"You know that wasn't me on your cell, right?" Mary keeps her voice level, strangely conscious of the bead of amber sitting above her breasts.
"Yeah, I figured that out, Mom. Something lured me down here."
"And I think I figured out who. Dr. Ellicott. You haven't seen him down here, have you?" She watches his eyes carefully.
"No." There's barely a flicker. "How do you know it was him?"
"I found some of his notes and the journal of one of his patients. He was experimenting on them. Really awful stuff, makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest look like the Girl Scout Handbook."
"But it was the patients who rioted. Ellicott was still alive."
And really, the dull monotone of Sam's voice is starting to creep her out big time. "Yeah, they were rioting against Ellicott, trying to get attention from the outside. Ellicott was working on some kind of extreme rage therapy. He thought that if he could get his patients to vent their anger they'd be cured. But it only made them worse and worse, angrier and angrier. I think his spirit's still carrying on with his 'good works'." Mary edges a little away from Sam, angling her body so he can't see her flip the revolver open and let the shells fall out into her palm.
"How?" Sam asks. "The police never found his body, remember?"
"The book said there was some kind of hidden procedure room down here, where he'd work on his patients in privacy. If I was one of his patients, I'd sure as hell have dragged his ass down here for a little payback."
"I don't know," Sam says doubtfully, sounding exactly like himself in every disagreement they've ever had.
"It won't hurt to look," she points out. "Especially if we want to get out of here. The doors are still blocked."
"I looked everywhere, trying to find you and Dean." Sam says, impatience creeping into his tone. "I told you I didn't find anything."
He's almost a foot taller than you and nearly seventy pounds heavier, Mary thinks, chewing on her thumbnail as she turns away.
Of course, you play dirty.
You could be wrong, Mary. Don't do anything, say anything until you're sure. Until you know.
"Well, that's why they call it hidden," she says lightly, walking into the nearest room. She wishes she was better with spirits. Her cousin Vivian could call and dismiss ghosts like a lion tamer in a circus. At once, she tips her head. "You hear that?"
"What?"
Mary crouches down. There's a space between the wall and the floor, wind whistling faintly through the gap. She straightens up, the lead ball in her stomach jittering around with nerves.
Okay. Time to put it to the test.
She turns to Sam. "I think we should leave."
"What?"
"You're right," she says simply. "There's nothing down here and I'm sure between the four of us we can figure a way out."
Sam blinks at her. "But. What about the ghost? Ellicott's ghost?"
Mary shrugs. "We don't even know for sure that Ellicott's ghost is down here. I was just speculating. Dean's not here and that's all I care about. We should go."
"But it's dangerous."
"To who?" Mary laughs. It sounds shrill and tinny to her own ears but Sam doesn't seem to notice the difference. "Us? C'mon, Sam."
"But." Sam's forehead wrinkles and he rubs his temples like he's got a headache. "People are dying, Mom. We can't just walk away. Isn't that what we do?"
Mary hardens her voice to a whip. It's not her Voice, but it's as good as she can do with Sam. "I said we're leaving, Sam. Now that's an order." She turns as if to walk away.
Mary isn't really sure what she expects, but whatever it is, it isn't for the sudden thunderous boom of the shotgun, or the impact of something heavy, right between her shoulder blades, pushing her down to the floor hard. It happens fast enough that she can't even get her hands out to catch herself and her head rebounds from the filthy cement with a noise like a rubber ball.
He shot me! Mary thinks, outraged, as consciousness slips from her finger as swiftly and delicately as water. Sam fucking shot me!
She can't be out for long; she comes to as Sam flips her over on her back. Her back stings like a bitch and it's only worse when it touches the concrete. She coughs faintly and tastes blood. "Sam…"
"Dean told me not to trust you."
He…what? Dean did what? Still dazed, Mary blinks up into Sam's face. She'd like to say his face is unrecognizable through the contorted haze of his anger, but she's seen this face too many times before, most of them right before he packed up and left for good.
"He left me a note. Mailed it to me from Jericho and said not to trust anyone, but especially you. Especially you," Sam repeats with vicious emphasis. There's blood leaking from his nose, thick and sluggish. "And I think he was right. Why should I trust you, Mom? All you ever do is fucking lie to me—lie to us!"
"Sam, you don't know what you're talking about…."
"No, I know exactly what I'm talking about." Sam drops to his knees on top of her. "You're fucking scary, Mom. More like all the shit that we hunt and burn than something human."
It shouldn't hurt. She knows he's not himself. She knows this is Ellicott, Ellicott's work.
It doesn't matter. It hurts anyway, all her worst fears, the words she'd always dreaded from John's mouth now coming at her from his son's.
"You're turning into someone—something—that I don't even understand. And you know what? I don't care. You fucked up Dean, turned him into your mindless robot, following you around like a little dog…"
Mary coughs again. "Well, which is it, Sam? Is he a robot or a dog?"
Sam backhands her. Mary's expecting it and rolls her head and neck with it. Even so, it's enough to tear her lip open and make her see stars again. She suspects she's concussed, at least a little bit.
"Shut up! God, no wonder Dean ran away. And now you're trying to do the same thing to me." Blood drops from Sam's nose onto Mary's belly, felt even through the thin cotton of her shirt. Mary shudders, she can't help it.
"Sam, I'm not…"
"You know, you would've thought you learned your lesson after Dad died, but you just won't be satisfied until me and Dean are dead too, will you? The whole family that you never wanted."
Mary doesn't even think about it—which is good, because she doesn't know if she could've managed it if she'd actually tried—she hits him with the TK dead on, making Sam fly off of her and across the room like a rag doll. He hits the far wall with an oomph and falls to his knees. Every bone in her body screaming in protest, Mary scrambles up, races across that short distance and kicks Sam in the head.
He drops like a stone and Mary fights down panic that she's killed him herself, fully aware she was pretty angry herself when she kicked him. Kneeling, she gropes for a pulse and only breathes again when she finds it, beating strongly against her fore and middle fingers.
"Oh, Sammy, I'm sorry," she said, tangling her fingers briefly in his hair. Then she grabs her bag and digs out the salt and one of the Zippos. "And you, Ellicott…oh, motherfucker, you're gonna burn…"
Sam wakes up and the whole room is wreathed in a fug of dirty gray smoke. His head is killing him and the smell of rancid burnt meat is almost enough to send him over the edge, except for his absolute conviction that his head will shatter into microscopic pieces if he moves too much. And then he remembers.
"Mom?"
He turns his head and she's there, sitting on the floor, panting and with her knees kilted up, one hand massaging her throat. "You're not going to shoot me again, are you?"
Shame scalds through him. "Um. No."
Mary nods. "Good. 'Cause that could be awkward." She reaches out and drags her backpack to her, slinging it over one shoulder before she slowly starts rolling to her feet. Sam sees the back of her tee-shirt is shredded and soaking through with blood. He gets up, ignoring the warning screams from his skull and holds out his hand to her.
On her knees, Mary looks from the hand up into his eyes for several burning seconds before she takes it and lets him haul her up. "You ready to get out of here now?" she asks.
Sam nods. "Oh, yeah."
The damnable thing is that he remember it all. Every moment from the second that Ellicott put his musty, moldering hands on Sam's skin up until the moment Mary knocked him out. And though he'd been conscious of his anger, living and molten beneath his skin, it hadn't really felt that different from any of a hundred other rages he's felt at something his mother's done or said. It hadn't felt that much different from the way he still felt, wading in her ocean of half-truths and outright evasions.
He's just never shot her before.
They make their way upstairs in silence. Sam takes the backpack away from Mary and she leans on his arm, her only admission of the pain that turns her face white and the line of her mouth grim and ugly.
When they're all the way up, daylight struggles to find its way through the dirt choked windows. Sam feels almost blinded by even that little light, showing up what a wreck they both look. Gavin and Kat are still waiting for them at the doors, looking alternately shocked and relieved at the sight of them.
"We were starting to think you weren't coming back," Kat says, relinquishing the shotgun and reaching for Mary's other arm to help her stand. Mary pulls away from her—though with more gentleness and politeness than Sam expects—standing stubbornly on her own two feet while he and Gavin put their shoulders to the door to force them open.
Emerging into daylight, into fresh air, untainted by mold and fire and rot, is almost like being reborn. Except that Sam's sins can't be sloughed off as easily as he steps from darkness into light. Uncaring who knows they were here at this point and aware that there's no way Mary's going to make it over the fence a second time, Sam snips through the chain link and peels it back, letting the four of them escape.
"Thanks, guys," Kat says, shuffling her feet uncertainly as they stand in the awkwardness of goodbye.
"Yeah, thanks," Gavin echoes, reaching to put his arm around Kat. Kat steps away from him and Sam hides his smile.
"No more haunted asylums, okay?" Mary gives them The Eyebrow, which is nearly worse than her magical Voice they nod. Mary's turning away before she sees their agreement, though and Sam jump steps to catch up with her and take her arm again.
At the car, Mary digs in her pocket and presses the Impala's keys into his hands. "Here." Gingerly, careful not to move her back, she starts circling around to the passenger side.
Sam looks down at the keys and then back at his mother. "Are we going to talk about it, or is this just it?" He feels horrible about what he said, remembering the way her face had flinched, twisted and then gone dead and still at his words…but at the same time, and though he would've never put it in those words exactly, the things he'd said hadn't been completely untrue.
Mary's eyes narrow, pale as water and nearly as cold as she leans an arm on the roof of the Impala. "I think you've said enough already, don't you, Sam?"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-05 05:22 pm (UTC)So, carry on, and I'll be around when you're done!
;)
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Date: 2007-11-05 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 06:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-25 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 01:51 am (UTC)