Supernatural: Night Terror (18 page)

At the curb in front of the house, Lucy Quinn argued quietly with her father. The police chief ’s concern for his daughter was evident in his eyes and body language, but clearly he found her account of the attack unconvincing. In deference to the grieving parents standing less than twenty feet away, Chief Quinn and Lucy spoke in hushed but urgent tones.

“Why would I make this up?” Lucy demanded.

“You wouldn’t,” Chief Quinn said. “Not intentionally. I’m suggesting you didn’t see what you think you saw. A car might roll down a hill unattended, but they simply don’t drive themselves.”

“This one did,” Lucy said. “Saw it with my own eyes.”

“Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate,” the police chief countered. “Three people witness the same crime. Later, they’ll each give completely different descriptions of the perp. And they’re all positive about what they saw.”

“So, you’re saying you don’t believe it was Teddy’s car?”

“Teddy’s car was totaled, Lucy. You know that.”

“Then it was an exact copy.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Somebody—a real person, not a ghost or an invisible driver—got hold of a similar car. Maybe even painted on the white stripe.”

“What?”

“An old friend, maybe,” Chief Quinn suggested. “Out for revenge.”

Lucy placed her hands on her hips and stared at him. “You know how crazy that sounds?”

Chief Quinn scoffed in frustration. “Any crazier than a car driving itself around town, running down civilians?”

“You’re impossible.”

Dean stepped up during the awkward silence.

“Mind telling us what you saw. Or didn’t see,” he asked Lucy, with a quick glance at her father.

“Why bother?” Chief Quinn said. “There’s a simple explanation. A tinted windshield hid the driver from view.”

“The windshield was
not
tinted!” Lucy glanced at Tony’s parents as she spoke, trying to keep her voice under control.

Chief Quinn threw his hands up in the air.

Lucy turned to Dean. “He’s right. What’s the point? I already told him what I saw. He refuses to listen.”

“We—Agent Shaw and I—might be open to different possibilities.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Chief Quinn asked indignantly, as if Dean had called his judgment and entire law enforcement background into question.

“Have you been listening to your police reports, Chief?” Dean asked. “Giant spiders, Nazi zombies in the restaurant district, packs of hunting dinosaurs. You saw the sinkhole deep enough to hold a gymnasium.”

Quinn shook his head. “Crazy talk. If I hadn’t been tied up here with this terrible accident... Well, let’s just say I’m now willing to believe your information about a hallucinogen was credible. Clearly, some people in Clayton Falls have been dosed. It’s the only explanation for all the irrational radio chatter. As far as the sinkhole, that’s all it was. Bigger than most, I’ll grant, but they happen.”

“Mind if we have a word with your daughter?” Sam asked in a reasonable tone. Dean always figured Sam had the better chance of making it in the world of politics.

“No, go right ahead,” he said. “I love her, but her fantasy story is not helping the situation.”

Chief Quinn walked brusquely to his police cruiser, climbed in and slammed the door. He brought the police radio to his mouth and spoke rapidly into it. Dean watched as the chief began to listen to more reports from his officers. Within seconds he was shaking his head in disbelief.

“Lucy, tell us what happened,” Sam said gently. “Were you here when the car hit Tony?”

“No,” she said. “It started before that. I had already left his house. I was walking home when the car... saw me.”

“Saw you?” Sam asked.

The possessed car talk made Dean nervous. He glanced at the Impala parked at the curb, willing it to stay silent and dark. He took a breath and refocused on the conversation.

“That’s what it felt like. I believe it was coming for Tony,” she said. “But it saw me and decided to take a swipe at me. So, maybe it was thinking, two-for-one, right? First Lucy, then Tony.”

“How so?”

“About the same time I saw the car, it drove to my side of the street, jumped the curb and tried to run me down. I froze for a moment. Kept thinking, this can’t be happening. But I remembered that it
had
happened, that it got Steve.”

“What did you do?”

“I snapped out of it. I was standing next to a white picket fence. Fortunately, it wasn’t too high. I dove over it to get out of the way. The car hit the fence, pretty much wrecked the whole thing. I can show you if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you.”

Lucy smiled in relief.

Probably the first she’s heard those words all night
, Dean thought. “So, the car kept driving. Back the way I had come. Toward Tony’s house. Since it had already got Steve, and tried for me, I thought maybe it’s going after Tony next. When I left his house, he was out on the porch. I wanted to warn him. Thought he’d be safe as long as he didn’t come down to the sidewalk or try to cross the street. I had no idea it would drive up on the lawn and... and ram the porch.”

Dean scanned the ruined front lawn, scored with deep tire ruts, the sagging midsection of the porch and the overturned Adirondack chairs. It had been easier to imagine the car hitting someone standing in the middle of the road. Aside from the last-second acceleration to hit Steve Bullinger, the hit and run fit the profile of an accident. This attack was... premeditated. The car had known where Tony Lacosta lived, had sought him out and used every means at its vehicular disposal to kill him.

“The car jumped the curb and struck the porch?” Dean asked.

“Yes,” she said. “First it turned to face the house. Then it went right over the curb and slammed into the porch. Over and over until the porch collapsed. Tony fell onto the lawn. Once he was at ground level, the car... it crushed him.” She pressed her wrist against her mouth and started to cry quietly.

Sam placed his hands gently on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes.

“Lucy, I’m sorry about your friend. I know this is hard.”

She nodded quickly and a tear slipped down her cheek.

“Why is this happening?”

At the risk of losing her trust, Dean said, “Lucy, can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you and your friends? Because of Teddy’s death?”

“Revenge? Like my father said?”

“I’m not saying what you saw isn’t real,” Dean said quickly. “But maybe somebody caused it to happen.”

“We were Teddy’s closest friends,” Lucy said, genuinely puzzled. “His only friends in school.”

“What about family?” Dean recalled Sam’s reading newspaper articles about the accident. “Lived with his grandmother, right?”

Sam nodded. “Olga Kucharski.”

Lucy shook her head. “Mrs. Kucharski is an old woman. Other than grocery shopping, she never leaves her house.”

“You on good terms with her?”

“Not really,” Lucy said. “I mean, she never really approved of us hanging around with her grandson. And she dismissed my relationship with Teddy as a crush. Thought it would pass. But she knew we were his only friends.

“After the accident, I visited her a couple times, but it was just... too much, you know. I couldn’t handle her grief and my grief. Because, after Teddy died, I couldn’t breathe in that house. Felt like it was crushing me. I’ll never forget what happened, but it’s... easier without the constant reminders. Last few months, I haven’t really seen her. Or made an effort. Guess that makes me a bad person.”

“Everybody handles grief in their own way,” Sam said.

“I know,” she said. “But I still feel guilty.”

“You should go home,” Sam said pointedly.

“No, I’m okay,” Lucy said. She glanced toward the Lacostas, still huddled together in their driveway, whispering to each other. “Maybe I should stay with them...”

“It’s not safe here,” Dean said. “You’re not safe here.”

She looked up at Sam and then at Dean. “You think it will come back?”

Sam cleared his throat. “Definite possibility.”

“We could drive you home,” Dean said.

“Thanks, but—” she glanced over at her father’s police cruiser—“I should go with my father.”

“You’re okay with that?” Sam asked.

“If I’m not safe with the chief of police, I’m not safe with anyone.”

Dean frowned but said nothing. He’d feel better about her safety with her dad if the man actually believed in what was trying to kill her and had already killed her friends. The car might be a blind spot for him. Until it was too late.

Taking out one of his FBI business cards, Dean handed it to her.

“That has my cell number. If anything—and I mean
anything
—weird happens, call me.”

“Okay, Agent DeYoung.”

“No matter how crazy it seems. Call.”

“I will,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

With a brief smile, she walked to the police cruiser and knocked on the passenger side window. When her father looked up at her, she opened the door. Then she hesitated and glanced back at them with a slight wave goodbye before climbing into the car. Inside, she gave her father a mild shove to disarm his stubborn frown.

Watching father and daughter, Dean cast a sidelong glance at Sam and said, “You thinking what I’m thinking.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “She’s next.”

A few blocks east, the Winchesters approached the house with the killer tree.

“Have I told you it’s good to have you back,” Dean said, smiling. “The real you?”

“What?”

“Sammy with the soul inside,” Dean said. “You were good with her back there.”

“Lucy?”

“May seem natural to you,” Dean said. “And I know you don’t remember how it was—how you were, before. But it’s night and day, man.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. I don’t remember being different. Hell, I don’t remember being gone. Guess it’s like waking from a coma. Everyone else lived through that time and I was... on pause. This part of me, I mean. But, in some ways, feels like I recovered from a serious illness. Feels good to be back.”

From where Dean parked the Impala on the shoulder of Chaney Lane, it looked as if somebody had killed the tree. The large white oak had toppled onto its side right across the street, completely uprooted, and blocking through traffic. A municipal truck with a flashing yellow light idled nearby. The driver had tied a rope around the upper trunk, preparing to tow it out of the way. A few neighbors stood in front of their houses or in doorways, silently watching the workman.

“That tree killed a man? Friggin’
Day of the Triffids
?”

“According to Jeffries,” Sam said. “A branch broke through a second-story window and impaled Max Barnes.”

“So they put it down?” Dean asked. “Like a rabid dog?”

“That’s all I know, dude.”

“Storm wasn’t that bad,” Dean said. “Lightning, maybe?”

“No sign of a lightning strike.”

“Maybe the truck driver knows.”

Before they reached the man, Dean noticed something odd. The tree had come out of the ground with its roots
intact
. Behind the cluster of roots, clods of dirt and stones trailed back to the side of the house at 109 Chaney Lane. The large hole in the ground where the roots had been reminded Dean of the ever-expanding sinkhole he’d fallen into earlier in the evening. But this hole, for now at least, remained stable. He glanced up the side of the house and saw the shattered secondstory window, the edges of the glass streaked with blood.

“That’s the boy’s room,” a middle-aged woman said to him from the neighboring yard, nibbling nervously on her thumbnail. “But it wasn’t him.”

“Excuse me?” Dean said.

“Are you with the police?”

“FBI,” Dean said. “And you are?”

“Barb,” she said. “Barb Henn.”

“You know what happened here?”

“Max Barnes, the father, was killed. Some kind of freak accident.”

“Freak accident?”

“Apparently he was killed by a tree branch going through the son’s window. That’s what I meant about it being the boy’s room but the boy wasn’t the one hurt.”

“What happened leading up to the... accident?”

“When the storm started, I was watching TV with my daughter Nicole.” She pointed back toward her house and Dean saw a teenaged girl standing in the doorway, arms folded, leaning against the doorjamb, which had a black ribbon pinned above the doorbell. When Dean’s gaze fell on the girl, she gave him a little wave. Dean smiled with a slight nod of acknowledgment before turning his attention back to the mother.

“Go on.”

“The wind was gusting, but I didn’t think about it too much,” she said. “Other than worrying we might lose power, which we did, briefly. A brownout.”

“And the tree?”

“I heard it thrashing about, hitting the siding, but...” She shrugged. “Nothing unusual, considering the wind. Then I heard glass shatter.”

“Did you go outside? Look out your window?”

“Not until I heard Melinda—poor Mrs. Barnes— screaming. I thought something had happened to her boy, Daniel. That’s when I looked out the side window. I knew something was off. Then it hit me. Their white oak tree was missing. I could see the entire side of their house.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Of course, I went outside then and that’s when I saw the tree. In the street.”