Supernatural: The Unholy Cause (10 page)

“And he was wearing the noose,” McClane said. “No doubt in my mind.”

“So where is it now?” Sam asked.

Tommy McClane looked up at them wearily.

“Wherever it is,” he said, “good riddance. There’s a reason why I’ve got protection charms over every door and window in my house.”

“Have you ever heard of something called Moa’ah?” Dean asked.

Tommy flinched visibly at the mention of it.

“Where did you hear about that?”

“Let’s just say I got to see some of it up close and personal,” Dean said.

“That’s impossible. If you came across the Moa’ah, you wouldn’t be sitting around talking about it.”

“Well, I had help.”

“You really think it’s that powerful?” Sam asked.

“It’s inside the noose.” Every trace of good humor had fallen away from McClane’s face. “And those knots were tied in Hell.”

Their motel room was painted blue and gray.

Half of it was decorated with old photos of Union soldiers and paintings of the Yankees. The other half was decorated with Rebel flags and replicas of Confederate artifacts. An imaginary Mason-Dixon Line divided the space cleanly between two sagging single beds.

“You want Lee or Sherman?” Sam asked.

“Huh?”

“North or South?”

Dean didn’t answer, just climbed on one of the beds and lay on his back with his hands locked behind his head, staring straight up at the ceiling fan as it paddled the humid night air.

After a moment of silence, Sam set up the laptop on the desk and went online, running an image search on different types of nooses. In the quiet, he could feel the slow tension boiling off his brother until finally it became something he could no longer ignore.

Sam turned around and looked at Dean.

“Dean? Is there something you need to say to me?”

Dean didn’t move. “Nope.”

“So you’re just going to lie there and watch the fan spin all night?”

“I was thinking about brushing my teeth.”

“Come on. If you internalize one more dark thought, you’re going to explode.”

Dean sat up fast, the shadows under his eyes making him look simultaneously exhausted and bursting with nervous energy.

“Your buddy McClane talks about Hell like he did time there. Meanwhile I could give him a freakin’ guided tour of the place.”

“He knows about the noose,” Sam said.

“And that’s another thing. What
does
he really know? History’s not my strong point, and personally I could give two craps about who lost the war and why. I’m here to smoke this thing, whatever it is, and get out of Dodge.”

“It’s not that simple.” Sam stood up from the desk. “What’s this really about? McClane or me?”

Dean stopped pacing and faced him across the room.

“It used to be about us, Sammy. You and me and Bobby, and that’s it. Now it’s you and me and whoever you feel like trusting on any given day. And frankly I’m not so crazy about that.”

“Well, it’s a little late to cut him out,” Sam said. “So for the sake of getting this figured out, let’s focus.”

Sitting back down at the computer, he added, “Take a look at this.”

He clicked back to the digitized image of Jubal Beauchamp that showed the hangman’s knot around his neck. Dean stepped up beside him and stood, arms crossed, peering down.

“Beauchamp’s rope had six coils around it, the standard technique. Right?”

“Sure.”

“It says here that the more loops you make, the more the friction increases on the rope.”

“So?”

“But if you look at this picture—” Sam magnified the Beauchamp image, squinting at the grainy pixels. Centering on the noose, he looked closer. “there’s a seventh coil.”

“Riveting. Really.” Dean returned to the bed. “So where does that get us?”

“We need to go out there in the morning and talk to Oiler again. Find out
exactly
what he saw—what happened at the wedding. He has to be holding something back.”

“And this time he’ll definitely tell us the truth.”

“No,” Sam said, “he’ll prevaricate and lie and try to cover up, just like everyone else is doing. But we’re going to lean on him—just you and me—until he levels with us.” He turned and faced the bed. “Because I, for one, am sick of feeling like we’re not getting the whole story here.”

Dean studied his brother’s face, saw cold steel in his eyes and wanted to believe in it.

“And then what?”

“And then we find this thing,” Sam said, “and we deal with it.”

Dean didn’t say anything.

Sam closed his eyes and listened to the silence.

Far off in the distance he heard the scream of a train whistle.

Outside of town, night fell over the battlefield, its full weight sinking fast over the star-rattled sky.

Campfires dotted the hillside where the men bivouacked, re-enactors on both sides hunkered in front of their tents, drinking from tin cups, scraping food off plates, talking in the hushed tones of men away from their families and homes. Corncob pipes were produced, muskets disassembled and lovingly cleaned and oiled by lantern-light, the old rituals brought out and pored over one more time.

Here and there cell phones shone between the trees like blue fireflies as one man or another sneaked a quiet call to a wife or girlfriend.

Private Terry Johnson sat in front of the fire with his banjo, plucking out the first plaintive notes of ‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ He played softly, almost to himself, unselfconsciously. It was late now, and most of the 32
^nd
had already bunked down for the night in preparation for the long march in the morning.

The only other sounds were the crackling of the fire and the nickering of the several dozen horses corralled near the cavalry troops, as the animals too settled down for the night.

“Know any Coldplay?”

Johnson flinched a little in surprise and stopped plucking. Phil Oiler—also known as Norwalk Pettigrew, of the 32
^nd
Georgia—sat down on a stump next to him.

“Oh,” he said. “Hey, Phil.”

“Call me Norrie.” Oiler leaned his musket against one of the big stones that formed the fire-pit and brought out his bayonet, wiping it with a chamois. “That was my guy’s nickname.”

“Cool.” Johnson started to put the banjo aside, and Oiler stopped him.

“No, man, keep playing. In the camps that was what kept the men’s spirits up.” Reaching into his jacket, he brought out a dented metal flask, removed the cap and held it out. “Whiskey?”

“Thanks.” Johnson tipped it back and took a sip, letting it burn. It was good, smooth stuff, probably not what the boys on the battlefield had sipped a hundred and fifty years earlier, but who knew? This was the South, after all. Maybe it was even better then.

“Much appreciated.”

“That’s an authentic Civil War flask, by the way,” Oiler said. “1860s.”

“Pretty cool.”

“Set me back a pretty penny, but it’s worth it.” He fell silent, regarding the flask in the firelight. “You know any more songs?”

“Just a handful, really. ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown,’ and the first part of ‘The Rainbow Connection,’ that’s about it.”

Oiler sighed and placing the bayonet on a piece of cloth sat back in the flickering firelight.

After a moment of silence, Johnson picked listlessly at the banjo while casting about for something to say. He was relatively new to the 32
^nd
, having only joined up a few months earlier, after his wife left him for some orthodontist that she’d met online. The loneliness had driven him to seek out men with similar interests. He didn’t know Oiler very well, except that the man sold insurance and had a family somewhere in Atlanta.

Oiler, for his part, didn’t seem to mind the silence. He passed the flask back again, nodding his encouragement, and Johnson took another pull of whiskey. All around them the night intensified, gaining bulk and breadth until the hillside and trees and everything outside the campfire’s immediate glow was rendered in varying shades of blackness.

“Almost
feels
like 1863,” Oiler said, “doesn’t it? So still...”

“Yeah.”

“Here, let me show you something,” Oiler said. He sounded different now, his voice soft and strange. The fire crackled and popped hypnotically in front of them.

“What is it?” Johnson asked.

Oiler didn’t answer right away. For a moment the flames guttered low, dropping them into near-total darkness.

When the fire brightened again, Johnson thought he saw something around the other man’s neck, just for an instant. Then it was gone, a trick of the shadows. He rubbed his eyes.

It has to be the whiskey
, he thought.
I’m seeing things
.

“Phil...”

“Call me Norrie.” Oiler was smiling now. “Did you see it?”

“Did I see... what?”

“I know more about Jubal Beauchamp than what I let on,” Oiler said. “A lot more.”

“You mean Dave?”

Oiler shook his head and smiled.

“He let me try it on for myself, you know—around my own neck. And it felt
good
.”

Johnson stood up a little unsteadily. Maybe he was drunker than he thought.

It was time for bed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Oiler’s voice asked gently.

“I—I’m just—”

Sudden, shocking pain exploded through his foot, erupting up his leg. Looking down, he saw that Oiler had jammed his bayonet down through his boot, impaling his foot directly into the ground.

Before Johnson could even scream or get loose, Oiler yanked the blade free and landed on top of him, clapping a hand over his mouth and pinning him to the ground, holding him in the dirt with the full weight of his body.

Johnson fought to get free, but Oiler was too strong. One of them kicked over the banjo in the struggle, knocking it into the fire where it emitted sour little
blunks
and
twangs
. Then Oiler’s face was right next to his, close enough that he could feel the other man’s chin-stubble scrape against his cheek and smell the whiskey on his breath.

There’s no noose around his neck
, Johnson thought dizzily.
There’s nothing there at all
.

“War is hell,” Oiler whispered in his ear.

He seemed impossibly strong, an instrument of coiled muscle. Vaguely, through his agony, Johnson realized that smells were pouring off the other man’s skin in waves: alcohol, tobacco, and something else, the stink of a moldy old cellar. “Welcome to it.”

“Please,” Johnson muttered into the other man’s palm.

“Put this in your mouth.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Johnson looked down and saw the bayonet poised just below his chin.

“Please. No.”

Oiler slammed the blade’s tip upward, cracking Johnson’s teeth. He gagged as the oily metal invaded his mouth, pain spiking deep as the sharpened edge sliced through his lips and tongue. His sinuses began to fill with salty warmth. All his life he’d wondered what went through men’s minds as they faced death. Now he understood.

His thoughts circled back to his parents and his estranged wife and his sister in New Jersey, and all the things he’d never done and would never get to do. He tried to talk but his lips couldn’t form the words beyond a few desperate whining sounds. Tears flooded his eyes, spilling down his cheeks.

Above him, the stars had lost their shape—they shivered and streamed like mad planets against the outer wall of a universe that no longer made any sense.

Still pinning him, Oiler whispered something, speaking words in some other language that Johnson couldn’t understand.

He felt the blade jerk forward.

And then nothing.