Supernatural: The Unholy Cause (2 page)

Sam Winchester was dreaming.

He dreamt he was standing in front of a picture window in a high-roller’s suite at the Bellagio, with all the gaudy lights of Vegas spilled out below him like a handful of cheap jewelry.

Behind him, a smooth voice on the flat-screen plasma TV was giving him instructions for blackjack, an in-room tutorial that played twenty-four-seven on this particular channel.

Sam wasn’t listening.

Somehow, in the dream he understood that he’d come here to gamble and that he’d won—won big. Turning around, he saw piles of chips and cash heaped on the unmade bed next to an empty champagne bottle that nestled in a chrome bucket full of half-melted ice.

The voice on the TV droned on in the easy, mellifluous manner of a lounge magician’s patter.

“When the player chooses to double-down, it always behooves him to look at the dealer’s card first, and then his own.”

The voice changed, brightening a little.

“How about you, Sam? Do
you
know what the dealer’s holding?”

Sam glanced up at the screen. The face he saw there was familiar, from other dreams and nightmares through which he’d been suffering every night.

Lucifer.

“Sam?”

“Go away,” Sam said. His voice was pinched tight. A feeling of tension was gathering around his throat, hot friction taut against his skin, constricting his vocal cords. “Leave me alone.”

“Afraid I can’t do that, Sam,” Lucifer replied. “Not now. Not ever.”

Sam tried to respond, but this time nothing came out. He couldn’t even breathe.

“Look at yourself,” Lucifer said, and then he was standing next to Sam. “Take a good long look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”

Look at himself? That was easy. There was no shortage of mirrors in the suite.

He turned to the nearest one, fingers already clutching for whatever was tightening around his neck. But all he could detect in the mirror was a faint rippling of the skin around his throat.

Behind him, Lucifer started laughing.

“You won’t remember most of this when you wake up,” he said, almost sympathetically. “But you’ll know that I’m coming for you.”

Sam still couldn’t speak. Deep bruise-colored marks were appearing like a collar around his neck. He saw them darkening, forming like the imprints of invisible hands.

Fear—panic—sprung up in his belly like a cold spike.

He wanted to scream.

Somehow he understood that if he could just manage to make a noise, it would stop. The marks would vanish and he’d be able to breathe again.

But he couldn’t.

And he
couldn’t
.

And he—

“Hey! Hey, Sam.
Drooler
.” There was a hand, shaking him, and none too gently. “Yo! Wake up.”

Sam grunted, jerked backward and opened his eyes, lifting his head away from the window. Behind the wheel of the Impala, Dean regarded him with a look of brotherly amusement.

“Wipe your face off, man, you look like a freakin’ glazed donut.”

Without saying a word, Sam grabbed the rearview mirror and tilted it down, lifting his chin to look at his neck. It was unblemished, the skin normal. He let out a breath and sank back into his seat, feeling more wrung-out than relieved.

Dean glanced over at him again, his expression carefully neutral.

“Bad dream?”

“You could say that.” Sam could feel Dean waiting for more, but the imagery was already starting to fade, leaving only a nebulous sense of dread. Trying to articulate it now would only make his brother more suspicious. “Anyway, I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Dean didn’t sound convinced.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” That was that.

Dean reached down to turn up the radio, where Lynyrd Skynyrd was trucking through one of the final iterations of ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ The song had played twice in the last half-hour, but Dean dialed it up anyway, filling the silence with guitars and drums.

Sam found a fairly clean fast food napkin on the floor and wiped the corner of his mouth, then balled it up and peered out of the window at the scenery. Georgia pines and scrub oak flashed by—heavy forest. Beyond it lay miles of swampland interrupted only by the occasional plantation house, creeks, and hills—the same terrain that had challenged the soldiers of the North and South almost a hundred and fifty years earlier.

“How much further?” he asked.

“Shush, I love this part.” Dean turned the guitar solo up, lost in the moment, then came out of it. “Sorry, what’d you say?”

“You do realize we’re not in Alabama, right?”

“None of Skynyrd was from there, either.” Dean shrugged. “But you know where they recorded the song?”

“Let me guess—Georgia?”

Twenty minutes later they arrived at the cemetery.

* * *

The state police had cordoned off the front gates to keep the TV reporters out, along with what looked like at least a hundred curious onlookers. Some held homemade signs: “Cemetery Boy, We Love You” and “Come Home, Toby.” Driving through the crowd, Dean reached out of the window and flashed an FBI badge, and a trooper waved them through with the tired expression of an official long since exhausted with his duties.

Sam didn’t blame him. It was a zoo out there.

The graveyard itself was a sprawling old stretch of moss-covered swampland, dotted with ancient gray headstones, many of which sloped sideways or had fallen over, disappearing into the soft earth. The names had disappeared completely off many of the stones, leaving only smooth amnesiac marble.

Dean parked the Impala under a tall oak tree and he and Sam climbed out, wearing ill-fitting suits that clung to them in the heat. They walked toward the police cruisers and blue uniforms clustered a hundred yards ahead.

“So,” Dean said, “this kid, Cemetery Boy...”

“Toby Gamble,” Sam said.

“Four days ago he disappears from the house.”

“Right.”

“Nobody sees a thing.”

“As far as I know.”

“And then, yesterday morning...”

They stopped in front of the mausoleum where a few of the cops were gathered, drinking coffee. Most were staring at the words that had been scrawled directly on the stone in childish, dark reddish-brown letters.

HALP ME

“Kid isn’t much of a speller,” Dean commented.

“He’s only five.”

“Probably a product of home-schooling.”

“So are we.” Sam checked the pages he’d printed out earlier. “His mom confirmed that it’s his handwriting.”

“And the blood?”

“Sample’s still at the lab.”

“So that’s all we got?”

“That,” Sam said, “and this.”

He pointed over the hill. Dean looked at the headstones that stood on the western edge of the cemetery.

“Oh.”

The stones, dozens of them, were all splattered and streaked with the same crooked, spidery childish handwriting.

HALP ME HALP ME HALP ME HALP ME HALP ME

Dean nodded.

“At least he’s consistent.”

“His mother says she heard voices in his room the night before he disappeared.”

“What kind of voices exactly?”

“We can ask.” Sam turned and glanced back at a blonde woman who was standing next to the police. She was in her early twenties, but thin and tired in a way that made her look at least two decades older. It was easy to imagine her waiting tables on a Saturday night, bussing trays of empty bottles and getting pinched by drunken patrons while the jukebox yodeled out this month’s country anthem.

Moving closer, Sam could see that she was holding what looked like a pale blue rag, wringing it in her hands and clutching it to her chest. After a moment he realized it was a child’s t-shirt.

“I just want him back,” she was saying, her voice thick with barely-contained emotion. “I just want my boy back.”

“Ma’am?” Dean asked, stepping up next to her.

She jerked her head up, startled and red-eyed. The cop she had been talking to eyed them warily.

“Yes?”

“I’m Agent Townes, this is Agent Van Zandt, FBI. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about your son.”

“I’ve already talked to the police.”

“This will only take a minute.”

“I don’t... I’m sorry... I just don’t know if I can...”

“The voices you heard in your son’s bedroom,” Dean persisted, “what were they saying?”

“It was... words, some language I didn’t understand. Then they just kept saying his name. At first...” new tears began to well up in her eyes, “I just thought it was the TV. Then I heard him scream. I ran inside, but he was already gone.”

She shook her head, pale blue eyes flashing out over the cemetery, and held the t-shirt closer to her chest.

“When I heard about all of this, I thought...”

There was a sudden shriek from across the graveyard, and Sam and Dean spun around, searching for the source of the noise.

An African-American man was walking from between the tombstones, and he was carrying a young boy in his arms. The child’s entire upper body was splashed and splattered with scarlet, but he was alive, squirming in the man’s grip.

“You!” one of the cops shouted. “Freeze! Drop the boy, now!” He pulled his pistol and aimed it at the newcomer.

Sam scowled.

“Is that...?”

“
Rufus
?” Dean blinked. “What the hell...?”

Dean and Sam stepped toward their fellow hunter. The jittery policeman lowered his gun, puzzled by their familiarity with the apparently blood-soaked stranger.

Rufus Turner stopped and released the boy, who immediately ran over to his mother.

“It’s okay,” Rufus said, and he glanced down at his jacket. It too, was covered with red. “Except for the damn karo syrup all over my clothes.”

“Karo syrup?”

“Kid had a whole bottle of it stashed behind the trees over there.”

The boy was talking now. Though he was speaking in a low tone, his words were clear.

“Mommy, I don’t want to play this game anymore,” he said, hugging his mother—who suddenly looked as though she didn’t want to be anywhere near here. “I’m hungry, and my stomach feels funny.”

Then, abruptly, he threw up.

“Swell,” Dean muttered, and he cast a glance at Rufus. “I didn’t know you were on this one already.”

Rufus shrugged.

“I was in the neighborhood, headed over to the town of Mission’s Ridge. Thought I might stop in here first and see what’s what. Now my last clean shirt looks like somebody did heart surgery in it.”

“Sir, we’ve got some questions,” one of the plainclothes detectives said. “Would you mind coming with us?”

“You gonna pay my dry cleaning bill?” Rufus asked.

Sam glanced up.

“What’s the Mission’s Ridge thing?”

“Shooting during a Civil War re-enactment,” Rufus said quietly. “Couple of civilians died.”

“So?”

“The guns were replicas.” Rufus looked at them. “And they were covered in blood.”

“
Real
blood this time?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“That’s it?” Dean asked. “Where d’you hear about it?”

“Anonymous email tip. Source up in Maryland of all places.”

Dean scowled.

“Maryland?”

“Place called Ilchester. Why, have you heard of it?”

Dean turned to Sam, who was already staring at him.

“Who was your source?”

“I told you. Anonymous.”

“Then we’ll take that one,” Dean said. “Give us whatever you’ve got, and we’ll work it.”

“You sure? Why are you so interested?” Rufus asked.

“Forget it,” Dean said. “You go get your jacket cleaned.”

An hour later Dean took one hand off the wheel and pointed at the sign that stood on the right side of the two-lane highway.

WELCOME TO HISTORIC MISSION’S RIDGE,
GEORGIA, FRIENDLIEST LITTLE
TOWN IN THE SOUTH
“WE’RE DANG GLAD YOU’RE HERE!”

“See, I told’ya this was a good idea,” Dean said. “They’re
dang
glad.”

Sam glanced up from the open laptop on his knees.

“Wonder if the victims of the massacre enjoyed that famous Southern hospitality, too,” he said dryly.

“Hey. So what’s the Ilchester connection?” Dean asked.

Sam shook his head.

“Somebody wants us here.”

“Or doesn’t.”

“Either way...”

“Let’s call it what it is, Sammy,” Dean said. “St. Mary’s Convent in Ilchester, Maryland, is where you set Lucifer free. That’s not a coincidence.”

“I know.” Not wanting to dwell on it, Sam turned his attention to the outskirts. Crossing a set of train tracks, they reached the center of town.

From their vantage point, Mission’s Ridge consisted of a narrow main street with storefronts on both sides. Pedestrians milled around on the sidewalks, none of them in a hurry to get anywhere. Overhead, a banner announced the annual historical celebration and re-enactment of the Battle of Mission’s Ridge. Whole families of curiosity-seekers wandered in and out of antique shops and cheap-looking museums advertising Civil War relics, moonlight ghost tours, and historical photos of you and your family in “genuine old time costumes.”

None of them seemed particularly bothered by the recent shootings out on the battlefield.