Supernatural: Carved in Flesh (20 page)

You know when a place is bad, son. And I’m talking
really
bad. You can sense it, same way an animal senses danger. We’re animals, too, deep down, and we still have those instincts within us. All we have to do is listen when they try to warn us. Promise me you’ll always listen, Dean.

Dean had promised, and he listened now. He turned to Trish and kept his voice low as he spoke.

“Your dad may not be a hunter, but he knows plenty. Why hasn’t he ever told any of them about this place?”

“He doesn’t believe the stories people tell about this place. The old Herald House.”

“Harold?” Sam said. “Like the man’s name?”

Trish shook her head. “Herald as in ‘Hark, the herald angels sing.’ I guess it’s the last name of whoever lived here.” She shrugged. “I don’t really know.”

“What kind of stories?” Dean asked. He was beginning to fear they were in serious danger of getting in over their heads,
way
over. When Trish had told them that there was a haunted house not far from her cabin and asked if they wanted to go there and “bust some ghosts,” both Dean and Sam had agreed, trying to act as if it was no big deal, like they were veteran hunters despite their age. That was because they didn’t want to lose face in front of Trish. Dean figured the “haunted house” would turn out to be nothing but a rundown, abandoned building that kids talked about when they wanted to enjoy a shiver or two. He hadn’t expected there to be any
real
ghosts here. He knew enough about vengeful spirits—and those were the ones that usually stuck around after they died—to know that they were about as far from Casper the Friendly Ghost as it was possible to get. If they were angry enough and could muster sufficient energy, they could affect the physical world. That meant they could kill.

“A long time ago, the man who lived here killed his whole family,” Trish said. “He didn’t have any reason, at least no reason anyone was ever able to find out. One night he just went crazy, got out of bed, went downstairs, grabbed his hunting rifle, went back upstairs, and ordered his family to get up. He marched them downstairs at gunpoint—his wife, son, and daughter—and then forced them outside into the cold night. He told them he was going to hunt them, but if they could run fast enough and managed to get away, he’d let them live. They cried and begged him not to do this, but he fired his rifle at the ground near their feet to prove he was serious. They screamed and took off running.

“The man didn’t go after them right away. He wanted to give them a sporting chance. He waited five minutes or so, and then he started after them. He found his little girl first. She hadn’t gone far before climbing into a tree to hide. Most people figure her mother told her to do it because she didn’t think the girl would be able to run fast enough to get away. She was sobbing and begging for her life when her father killed her with a single shot. He found his boy next. He was running from tree to tree, trying to use them as cover. It took the man three shots before he hit his target. His wife had heard the shots and knew her children were dead. She picked up a large rock and approached her husband from behind, intending to kill him for what he’d done. But quiet as she was, he still heard her. Maybe she let out a sob just as she was about to bring the rock down on his head, or maybe she just stepped on a twig. Either way, he spun around and fired his rifle point blank at her. At the exact same moment she smashed the rock into his head. They both died. Not right away, but they were gone before the sun rose. It was almost a week before the wife’s sister got worried because she hadn’t heard from them. She and her husband came out to investigate, but there wasn’t much left of the bodies by then. The animals had picked them clean.”

Dean looked at Sam. He thought maybe the story had disturbed his younger brother, but instead of looking upset, Sam looked thoughtful.

“If the whole family died, then how does anyone know what happened?” he asked.

Dean hadn’t thought about that. He’d been too caught up in listening to the story. Still, he found himself coming to Trish’s defense, for no other reason than because he wanted her to like him.
Really
like him.

“The police probably figured it all out later,” he said.

Trish gave him a grateful smile, and Dean felt his cheeks flush. Sam scowled with obvious displeasure at his big brother having scored points with Trish.

Too bad you’ll never be as smooth as your big brother, Sammy-boy!
Dean thought.

“So where does the haunting come in?” Sam asked.

“As the years went by, people began reporting encounters with an armed man out here, and stories began to circulate that the area was haunted. People came out to investigate, and soon they began turning up dead. No one could ever locate the shooter, and eventually folks just stayed away.”

Too bad we aren’t as smart as them,
Sam thought.

“Over the years, the Herald House ghost became a local legend,” Trish continued. “Sometime in the nineteen fifties people nicknamed him the Rifleman after some old TV show, and the name stuck. Hardly anyone ever comes out this way anymore. Every once in a while a hiker or a hunter—a regular hunter, I mean—goes missing. Sometimes the body is found, sometimes it isn’t. When it is—”

“It’s got a bullet hole in it,” Dean finished.

“Usually several,” Trish corrected him. “Who knows how many people he’s killed over the years? He’s got to be stopped, and I figured since you guys have been hunting with your dad before, you could help me get rid of him.”

Dean exchanged glances with his brother. Sam had an annoying tendency to be honest at the most inconvenient times, but he said nothing now. Dean was almost disappointed. Part of him was beginning to think being here was a bad idea, and he would have liked an excuse to leave, even if it made them look like jerks in Trish’s eyes. He could have backed out on his own, he supposed, but he wasn’t the backing-out type. He was the charge-ahead-and-hope-things-didn’t-go-all-to-hell type. Especially when there was a girl involved.

“You ready?” he asked Sam.

Sam pulled a gallon-sized plastic storage bag out of his jacket pocket. It was filled with table salt. He nodded.

Dean held an iron poker he’d borrowed from Trish’s fireplace. Maybe they’d never really gone hunting with their dad, but they’d picked up a few bits and pieces of lore from him. Salt could be used to temporarily disperse a ghost. Iron did the same thing. If you could find a ghost’s bones, you could pour salt on them, set them aflame, and the ghost would be banished to wherever it was ghosts went. Dean had no idea how something so simple as a little salt and fire could do that, but if it worked, it worked, and that was all that mattered to him. He had a container of lighter fluid and some matches in his jacket pocket, so they were good to go. He hoped.

He turned to Trish. “You should probably stay behind us.”

She scowled. “Why? Because I’m a girl? I’ve got a bag of salt, too!” She removed the bag from her pocket and shook it in front of Dean’s face for emphasis.

“No, because you’ve never done this before,” he said. Although the truth was, he had wanted her to stay back because she was a girl. It was what all the tough-guy heroes in the movies did. But he could tell that wasn’t going to fly with her, so he’d go with the other excuse.

It mollified her somewhat anyway, and she nodded, although she didn’t look happy about it.

Dean and Sam stepped in front of Trish and began walking toward the Herald House. Dean made sure his younger brother stayed behind him, but as they drew closer to the front door, he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was making a terrible mistake. He was supposed to watch out for Sam. Their dad had drilled that into his head over and over throughout the years, and it had become so deeply ingrained that it went beyond a mere feeling of responsibility. It had become an important cornerstone of Dean’s identity. So what the hell was he doing leading Sam toward a house haunted by a trigger-happy ghost? Was he out of his mind? Neither of them was prepared for this, and impressing a girl—no matter how hot—was not worth putting his brother in danger.

He stopped walking and turned to face Sam and Trish. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think—”

There was a loud crash as the front door burst off its remaining hinge and flew through the air, barely missing them. Dean spun around in time to see a man walk out onto the top step. No, not walk. He emerged from the darkness within the house, pulling himself free from the shadows, almost as if they had given birth to him.

When Trish had first told them about the Rifleman, Dean had imagined the ghost as a cadaverous, chalk-fleshed scarecrow of a creature, with empty dark hollows where his eyes should be, but the man that stood on the front stoop of the Herald House looked almost disappointingly normal. He was of medium height—shorter than Dean, but a bit taller than Sam—and a paunch sagged over the front of his belt. He wore a white button shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black pants with suspenders, and black shoes. His cheeks held a touch of red, he sported a pencil-thin black mustache, and his short black hair was combed and neatly parted in the middle. It looked wet, as if he’d slicked it down with something. His face appeared human enough, all the parts present and arranged in the proper configuration. Of course, his features were contorted into a mask of raw hatred, and he carried a rifle. And there were bloodstains on his shirt... bright red, as if they were still fresh.

Despite appearances, Dean could sense right away that the figure wasn’t human. Not anymore, anyway. There was the way he’d appeared... the word manifested came to mind, but it was more than that. Dean could feel the wrongness emanating from the Rifleman, rolling off of him like waves of heat rising from coal-black asphalt in July. He was unnatural, plain and simple, his existence an insult to life itself. Dean could almost feel the woods around them drawing back from the apparition, recoiling from the presence of something worse than death.

The brothers didn’t hesitate. Dean hurled the poker at the same instant Sam flung the contents of his plastic bag. Iron and salt struck the ghost, and the Rifleman’s mouth opened in a silent scream of rage as the substance of his body dissipated into wispy shreds like fog.

Before he vanished, the ghost managed to get off a single shot, his gun booming loud as cannon fire.

Dean felt a rush of elation. They’d done it! They might not have banished the ghost for good, but they’d driven it off. Not bad for their first real hunt!

His excitement left him when he remembered the Rifleman had managed to fire his gun before disappearing. He was all right, but...

He turned to Sam, who was staring at the now empty doorway, an expression of awe on his face. “Are you okay?” Dean demanded.

Without taking his eyes off the doorway, Sam nodded.

Relieved, Dean turned to Trish. “So, what do you think about—”

He saw her lying on the ground, eyes wide and staring, the front of her sweater soaked with blood.

* * *

Dean sat up in bed. Darkness surrounded him, and for an instant, he didn’t know where he was. He realized he was holding something in his right hand, and it took him a second before he recognized the Colt. He must have grabbed it from under the pillow as he awoke. Damn good thing he hadn’t fired it.

He sat still for a time, skin slick with sweat, as his pulse and breathing slowly returned to normal. He could hear Sam’s breathing, slow, soft, and steady, coming from the bed next to him. He was glad he hadn’t woken his brother. As wiped out as he’d been lately, he needed all the rest he could get.

Dean remained there, thinking about Trish Hansen, until the sun rose.

Sam opened his eyes, yawned, and stretched. He didn’t feel rested by any means, but he didn’t feel as if he was going to slip back into unconsciousness any second either, and he figured that was an improvement. He sat up and saw Dean sitting at the table, working on the laptop.

“Maybe we should switch roles. How about you do the research from now on, and I fix cars and chase women?”

“In your dreams,” Dean muttered. He grimaced then, as if regretting his choice of words. “Coffee’s on your nightstand. It’s probably cold by now.”

“As long as it’s got caffeine, I don’t care.” Sam picked up the cup and took a sip. “How are you feeling this...” He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 9:34. “Morning?” he guessed.

Dean nodded. “I should be asking you that question.”

“I wasn’t a snack for a two-headed energy vampire yesterday.”

“I’ve got to admit I’m dragging a little, but I’ll be okay. I figure losing life force is like losing blood. You have to give your body time to build the supply back up.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Sam had gone to bed in a T-shirt and sweat pants the night before. Both he and Dean had showered before turning in, and he couldn’t smell any traces of Frankenstink in the room. Then again, his senses had been dulled lately, so the room could reek, and he might not know it. They’d stuffed their funkified clothes into a plastic garbage bag, tied it tight, and then stuffed that into another bag and tied that one even tighter. They’d then tossed the clothes into the car’s trunk. When they had time, they’d hit a coin-operated laundry, or maybe just burn the damn things and be done with it.