Supernatural: Night Terror (22 page)

Nobody answered.

“Maybe the doorbell’s broken,” Dean said.

They certainly couldn’t hear much over the tree destruction in progress twenty feet behind them. Sam rapped on the door.

A few seconds later, a young woman with puffy eyes greeted them, taking a moment to check their IDs.

“What do you want?” she asked loudly, frowning as the wood chipper shrieked in the background.

Dean wondered if the constant reminder of the tree that had killed her husband bothered her, or if she found some solace in witnessing its methodical dismemberment. Either way, Dean decided he’d defer her question to Sam.

“Just a few questions, Mrs. Barnes.”

“I can’t hear,” she said, shaking her head. “Come inside.”

She led them through the house to the kitchen, which was decorated in a country style with pink gingham wallpaper, white cabinets with glass-front doors, and a light-colored hardwood floor. The windows overlooked a backyard with an all-purpose wooden playset in the center that featured a mini fort and climbing wall, a sliding board and swings. The kid wasn’t out there.

Melinda Barnes sat down at the kitchen table and motioned them toward chairs. Dean and Sam sat facing her.

“You’re with the FBI?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “We’re sorry for the loss of your husband. We have a few questions and then we’ll get out of your way.”

“I talked to the police last night,” she said, pressing one hand to her quivering chin. “Don’t know what else I can say.”

“We’re conducting a parallel investigation,” Dean said.

“This was a freak accident,” she said. “A horrible freak accident. That’s all, right?”

“Ma’am, you may be aware of some of the other... strange incidents around town in the last few days.”

“A boy killed in a hit and run.”

“Two now,” Dean said.

“Two?” she shook her head. “I hadn’t heard. Just some crazy talk down at the hair salon about a giant alligator.”

“Gila monster,” Dean said. “And a giant tarantula.”

“What?”

“Red-kneed.”

“The point is,” Sam said. “We believe there may be a connection between all these incidents.”

“How could there be a connection to what happened to Max?” she asked. “It was a storm and the—the tree branch came through the window. Max was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Was he?”

“Yes. We talked about trimming the tree because the branches scraped against the house. They scared Daniel, my son. Max said he would cut them in—in the morning.”

She clamped a hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she quickly wiped the tracks away.

“I’m sorry...” she choked.

“No need to apologize, ma’am,” Sam said.

“He was standing by the window because of the branches being so close... checking them, and the wind gust...”

“Is that what your son saw?”

“What? Of course, that’s what he saw. That’s what happened.”

“Did he tell you what he saw?” Sam pressed softly.

“He’s not—he’s not talking about it. I told him he didn’t have to talk about it,” she said. “But I saw. I heard him calling me and I ran into the room seconds after it happened. There was—the window was broken and... and Max was on the floor and there was so much blood.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m taking Daniel away from here for a while. I called my sister in Colorado Springs and we’re going...”

“I understand how upsetting this is, Mrs. Barnes,” Sam said. “It’s important that we talk to Daniel—”

She shook her head violently. “No!”

“He’s the only witness.”

“No!” she said again. She looked down at the kitchen table, nibbling on the fingernail of her index finger, slowly shaking her head. “No. I don’t want him to go through that again. To relive what happened to his father. Can you imagine how horrible that must have been? For a ten-year-old boy to see that... to see his father...”

Sam waited while she composed herself. Then he tried again.

“Ma’am, whatever caused this, whatever killed your husband, we don’t believe it was a freak accident. And we believe these incidents will continue to happen until we figure out what’s causing them and stop it.” Sam paused for a moment, then continued, his voice gentle but firm. “As a wife and as a mother, you wouldn’t want something like this to happen to another family, to another little girl or boy.”

She continued to shake her head.

“No, of course not,” she said.

Finally, she looked up at Sam, met his gaze, and her eyes were wet with more unshed tears.

“But, as a mother, I can’t put my son through this.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” a small voice said from the kitchen doorway.

“Daniel?” she said, wiping her cheeks hastily again. She rushed from the table and placed her hands on his shoulders. “You’re supposed to be sleeping in the guest room. What are you doing down here?”

“Couldn’t sleep with all the noise outside,” he said. “And I heard you talking to these men.”

“They were just leaving,” she said and glanced over her shoulder. “Weren’t you?”

Sam glanced at Dean, who nodded, and they stood.

“You said you can stop this from happening again,” Daniel Barnes said, looking around his mother’s protective stance at the Winchesters. “Is that true?”

Standing there, the kid reminded Dean of Ben.

“Yes,” Dean said. “That’s true.”

“Then I want to help.”

“Daniel, you don’t need to—” his mother began.

“I want to,” Daniel insisted. “For Dad.”

Melinda Barnes sobbed and clamped her hand over her mouth again.

“Dad would want me to be brave.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he would.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

The boy took his mother’s place at the kitchen table and the Winchesters sat again. Melinda Barnes poured glasses of water for all of them. Dean sensed that she wanted to keep her hands busy or she would simply wrap Daniel in her arms and not let go until they left.

With a quick look at Sam, who nodded his understanding, Dean took over the questioning. “Tell us what happened, Daniel,” he said.

The boy nodded. Took a sip of his water and held the glass tightly in both hands.

“The tree branches scared me,” he said. “They looked like arms with long pointy fingers. I could see creepy shadows on the walls and ceiling of my room. The branches kept tapping the window when I was trying to sleep. I was afraid they wanted to grab me. But I kept telling myself ‘wind and shadows’ and that it was nothing to be afraid of and I fell asleep.” He took another sip of water. “Then I had a nightmare about the tree.”

“A nightmare,” Dean said. “Must have been spooky.”

Daniel nodded. “The tree was evil in my nightmare. It wanted to kill me and its branches were like arms and fingers. They tried to grab me. Reaching through my window.”

“In your dream,” Sam said.

“Yes,” Daniel said. “And that was when the window cracked.”

“The dream window?” Dean asked.

“No. The real window,” Daniel said. “It cracked in real life. Woke me up.” He took a deep breath. “It was like my nightmare had become real.”

Sam exchanged a meaningful look with Dean, but didn’t interrupt the flow of the boy’s account. “Go on.”

“I freaked out,” Daniel said. “I called out for Mom, but Dad came instead. He was kind of mad, but I told him about the window. And that’s when we found out the lights wouldn’t work.”

“You lost power?” Sam asked Melinda Barnes.

“Briefly,” she said.

“He—my dad—was standing by the window,” Daniel said. “He asked me to try my lamp, but that wouldn’t work either. And that’s when it happened. The wind was blowing hard and the branch came all the way through the window...”

“Daniel?” Melinda Barnes came around the kitchen island toward her son.

“I’m okay,” Daniel said and took another sip of water. “The branch went through Dad. All the way from his back out through here.” Daniel tapped his chest. “It was like—like it wanted to stab him. Like a sword fight with knights.”

Sam nodded grimly.

The poor kid’s only ten freakin’ years old
, Dean thought.

“But then the tree acted like it did in my nightmare...”

“What do you mean?” Dean said, leaning forward.

“It moved. The whole tree—” Daniel spread his arms to the sides and raised them together—“lifted itself up. And, it lifted Dad up, off the floor.”

“Oh, my God!” Melinda whispered harshly. “Daniel...”

“Dad was still alive...” Daniel continued.

Now the boy’s voice became strained with emotion. Dean could tell the kid was holding back tears, bravely trying not to cry, for his old man.

“And the tree... the tree made him... dance in front of me.”

“Jesus,” Dean whispered.

Melinda Barnes finally ran forward, dropping to her knees and wrapping her son in her arms, pressing her face against his chest and neck.

“Oh, God... oh, God...” she murmured.

“The branch swung him back and forth,” Daniel continued even though tears ran freely down his cheeks now. “Like he was a puppet.”

“Oh, honey, stop,” Melinda whispered. “Please stop! Oh, God...”

“I think it wanted to scare me before it left,” Daniel said, holding his palm against the back of his mother’s head in an effort to comfort her. “And then the tree... scraped him off the branch... and Dad’s blood smeared on the window... and he fell to the floor and I knew he was...” Sniffling, he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “It was just like my nightmare,” he said. “The tree was evil.”

Without speaking, Sam and Dean walked past the tree service workmen, who had made a fair amount of progress in destroying the murderous tree. Sam almost regretted their having to prod the information out of Daniel Barnes, if only for the mom’s sake. Talking about the incident had seemed almost cathartic for the kid. He’d been keeping that horrible incident bottled up inside. His mom, already devastated by the accident, now had to accept a whole new and horrifying reality about her husband’s death. Sam wondered if Melinda Barnes could accept that a tree had willfully killed her husband. Or if she would rather convince herself that Daniel was wrong, that his version of events was informed by an already over-stimulated imagination.

Sam settled into the passenger seat of the Impala and stared numbly through the windshield.

Dean dropped into the driver’s seat and hesitated before inserting the key into the ignition.

“Poor kid,” he said. “Probably have nightmares for the rest of his life.”

“Nightmares,” Sam said. “Kid’s mom never suspected.”

“How could she?” Dean said. “Usually, you wake up and escape the nightmare. Kid wakes up and the nightmare comes out with him.”

Sam turned to Dean. What if there was more to his waking nightmare of Soulless Sam than he’d been willing to admit to himself, something beyond psychological fallout from the wall in his brain? “Maybe that’s what’s happening all over town. Nightmares coming to life. Lucy said she has nightmares about the accident that killed her boyfriend. And now his car is back.”

“People are sleepwalking and having nightmares. Guy jogging was dreaming of a giant tarantula? That what you’re saying?”

“What if it doesn’t have to be one-to-one,” Sam said.

“What if the nightmares of the sleeping are coming to life and attacking those who are awake?”

“So Joe Townie, safe in his bed, has a nightmare about a giant tarantula which then pops into existence near Harvey Dufford’s jogging route and slurps him up?”

“Essentially.”

“Whose nightmares?” Dean asked. “Everybody dreams.”

“Judging by last night,” Sam said. “Only the bad dreams.”

Sam recalled his own nightmare about Soulless Sam. Another nightmare from last night, however brief, that seemed to intrude on reality. But that wasn’t the first dream about his soulless doppelganger. He’d had a similar but normal—for him, at least—dream the night before. The second dream had been different. But after Dean woke up unscathed, Sam had convinced himself that he’d imagined the Soulless Sam manifestation. Sleep experts called it a false awakening. Dean hadn’t been injured by the butcher knife. The bedcovers hadn’t been sliced or punctured by the blade. Before they spoke to Daniel Barnes, Sam had no trouble attributing the brief apparition to a waking dream, probably caused by a combination of sleep deprivation and hours spent battling what they now knew were nightmare manifestations. Before that realization, he’d been unable to entertain the possibility that a dream could assume some sort of altered reality.

After hearing Daniel’s account of the tree attacking his father, Sam had to reevaluate what he himself had experienced. It seemed that whatever was happening to the residents of Clayton Falls could as easily affect him and Dean. The Winchesters weren’t immune.

“So we should all think happy thoughts?” Dean said. “Sam, we can’t control our subconscious.”

“Dude, you and I are time bombs,” Sam said. “Nuclear time bombs.”

“What are you saying?”

“If this can happen to anyone in town, including us, we could be the worst thing to happen to Clayton Falls.” Sam shook his head, appalled by the possibility of their subconscious minds out of control. “If memories of our experiences over the past years work their way into our dreams now, Clayton Falls could be primed for a bloodbath, maybe even an apocalypse.”