Supernatural: The Unholy Cause (6 page)

Small divots of black hair tufted the young man’s skinny breastbone and the almost emaciated concavity of his belly. Here was a body that could very easily have come from an actual surgeon’s tent back in 1864.

Looks like he died hungry
, Dean reflected, the randomness of the thought surprising him.

He found himself staring at Wolverton’s face, the sunken cheekbones and sagging lips. Even vacant and slack, the face had a strange leering quality that put him on edge. He realized that he didn’t want to spend any more time with the corpse than he absolutely had to.

“You find anything unusual in the autopsy?” Dean asked.

“Not really,” Winston said.

“Toxicology report?”

“Not back yet.” He took another drag on his cigarette, then looked around for an ashtray. A used coffee cup fit the bill.

“You don’t do that yourself?” Dean asked.

Winston shook his head.

“Lab at the M.E.’s office takes care of that part, down in Waldrop City. Don’t have the equipment here.”

“Well, I guess that’s something to put on your Christmas list, isn’t it?” Dean bent down closer to examine the flesh around Wolverton’s neck, inspecting the bruises that Sam had first noticed in the photo. “What about these?”

“Twisting abrasions. Rope burns.”

“Where’d they come from?”

“Rope,” Winston replied, without a hint of humor. “Maybe some kind of cord.”

“Thanks,” Dean said. “That clears that up.”

Winston didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm.

“There wasn’t anything wrapped around his neck when the sheriff brought the body in. No trace of fibers in the skin either. And you’d see those.”

“There are other ways of binding men’s souls,” Castiel said, leaning forward to touch the hematomas on either side of Wolverton’s neck. “Some forms of demonic bondage are not so easily detected.”

“Bondage?” Winston glanced at Dean. “What the hell’s he talking about?”

Castiel opened his mouth to answer, but Dean cut him off.

“Forget it,” Dean said. “Is there an inventory of what Wolverton had with him when he died?”

“Sheriff’s office is still typing it up.” He glanced at the doorway. “I just remembered, I gotta make a phone call.”

Without awaiting a response, he walked out, leaving Dean and Castiel alone with the corpse.

“Well, might as well give this a shot,” Dean said, glancing at his companion and reaching into his back pocket. He pulled out an index card and began reading the
Rituale Romanum
.

“
Deus, et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, invoco nomen sanctum tuum
...”

“You don’t have it memorized by now?” Castiel asked, completely in earnest.

“I got sick of everybody correcting me all the time so I just wrote it down,” Dean said, and then he kept reading. “...
et celmentiam tuam supplex exposco
...”

Without warning Wolverton’s corpse jerked a little in the bin, hard enough that one hand twitched and fell palm-open, and the fingers quivered and twitched.

The corpse’s head rolled slightly to one side.

“...
ut adversus hunc, et omnem immundum spiritum
...”

“Something’s happening,” Castiel said.

Dean paused and glanced down.

Something black was emerging from Wolverton’s left ear. At first he thought it was some kind of fluid, and then he realized that it was alive. Tiny, cilia-like legs—dozens of them—wiggled around it. With weird, deliberate speed, the black thing began to scurry like a malformed cockroach across Wolverton’s pale cheek, as if making its way toward his eyes.

As Dean stared at it it stopped, frozen in place.

It’s looking at me.

The hairs rose up on the back of his neck.

That’s impossible, it doesn’t even have—

Then, with a high-pitched shriek, the black thing sprang upward, launching itself at Dean’s face.

He jerked backward on reflex and the thing hit the floor. He lunged and stomped on it, crushing it under his heel, then grimaced at the sticky stuff that spattered outward from the bottom of his shoe. The thing was still wiggling, pulsing furiously as it crawled upward, onto his ankle.

He could feel it sucking against his skin, pulling as it slithered upward toward his calf.

“It’s still moving!” Dean shouted. “
Get it off!
”

Without hesitating, Castiel picked up the bottled water. He closed his eyes, murmuring over it briefly, then dumped the water over Dean’s lower leg.

There was a smoking hiss and the thing gave another shriek. Dean felt it go limp against his skin. He yanked up his soaking wet pant-leg and saw nothing but a faint reddish mark just above his Achilles tendon.

Grabbing a piece of paper towel, he wiped the last of the holy water from his leg, wadded up the wet towel and tossed it in the trash.

“What
was
that?” he asked, trying to calm his own breathing.

“Moa’ah,” Castiel said.

“What?”

“A kind of demonic afterbirth unique to this region of the American South.” The angel scowled. “I have not seen its like since the Civil War battlegrounds. When angels and demons skirmished over the souls of the dead.”

“And now it’s back,” Dean said, peering with disgust at the bottom of his shoe. “But why? And why Wolverton?”

Castiel looked at him.

“He was touched by the Witness.”

“So your Witness used this guy as some kind of demonic snot-rag?”

“You don’t understand,” Castiel told him. “Moa’ah is a footnote in the Luciferian apotheca—one of its most obscure calling cards. It shouldn’t exist anymore. Its very presence here is a harbinger of the Apocalypse. And the Witness knows this. He wants us to know it.”

“And you’re looking for this guy?” Dean asked. “On purpose?”

“I need to find him.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean shook his head, “good luck with that.”

* * *

They found Winston back in his office, phone to his ear. Dean walked over and hit the ‘disconnect’ button.

“Hey!” the coroner snapped, leaping to his feet. For a second it seemed as if he might take a step closer, but then he saw something in Dean’s face that stopped him in his tracks.

“Who else was alone with that body?” Dean demanded.

“What?”

“You heard me. Besides yourself, who’s been back there?”

“Nobody. Sheriff Daniels, I guess. That’s about it. Whole thing happened right there on the battlefield, in front of God and everybody. If there was a rope around Wolverton’s neck, somebody would have seen it.” Winston sounded a little desperate now. “Right?”

“The rope is the least of your worries,” Dean said, glancing up at the ceiling. “You have surveillance cameras here? Motion detectors?”

Castiel looked at Dean.

“The Witness has full demonic powers. It could have passed through here entirely unnoticed.”

Winston’s eyes widened.

“
What
?”

“Bull. Anything that skeevy’s gonna leave a trace.”

Castiel shook his head.

“But—”

Dean cut in, turning back to the coroner.

“When does the toxicology report get back?” he asked.

Winston swallowed hard.

“Tomorrow, probably.”

“Did you find anything else out of the ordinary, inside the body or on his clothes? Any kind of markings or ritualistic burns and scars?”

“No.” But there was something in his voice.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Winston stared helplessly down at the desk top. “Jesus, yes!”

Dean’s eyes flicked to the phone.

“Let’s see who you decided to reach out and touch,” he muttered, clicking ‘speaker’ and hitting the redial button.

“Don’t do that,” Winston pleaded. “You really don’t want to—”

“Oh, but I do,” Dean replied while the phone rang, and finally picked up. A woman’s voice came through the speaker.

“Hello,” she said. “It’s—”

Dean frowned at Castiel.

“Wait, I
know
that voice.” He glared back down at the phone. “Who is this?”

But the recorded voice on the phone had already continued talking.

“—Candy. Me and my friends are having a party in the jacuzzi but we lost our bikini tops, and now...” The voice began to sigh and breathe more heavily. “You just
have
to help us find them. Just enter a credit card number for three minutes of—”

“You know this woman?” Castiel asked.

Dean cut the call off mid-sentence and looked at Winston. The coroner’s face was blazing red now.

“The township better not have been paying for that call,” Dean muttered, turning to leave. “And we’ll be back to take a look at that toxicology report.”

“Sure,” Winston said. “Whatever. Just... how about a little warning next time, huh?”

“He was not lying,” Castiel said as they stepped outside into the gathering dark.

“I know,” Dean sighed. “Which leaves us with exactly bupkes.”

“Not necessarily.” They walked down the sidewalk beneath the streetlights. “Wolverton could have encountered the Witness on the battlefield, or—”

“Hold on.” Dean stopped walking. “You’ve been talking a lot about the Witness this and the Witness that. But if this Witness hung out with Jesus and it’s got a thing for nooses, that leaves me with about one guess.”

“And that is?”

“Judas. You’re hunting Judas.”

Castiel shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Judas was more concerned with temptation and betrayal than with bloody violence.”

“Yeah, well, if there’s one thing I know about humanity, it’s that betrayal can get pretty messy when there’s gunfire involved.”

Up ahead, Dean heard boisterous voices and laughter. He turned around, taking notice of their surroundings for the first time. They had stopped walking a block away from a massive old church, its planks looking as if they had survived centuries of warfare and harsh weather, like a shipwrecked battleship that had come to rest here.

Crowds of people in suits and dresses were pouring out of its high arched doorway.

“Is this a...?” Castiel asked.

“A wedding.” There was a burst of applause and cheers, and Dean watched as the bride and groom came down the church steps, heading in the direction of a limousine that was waiting at the curb.

She was wearing an antique wedding dress; he wore a Confederate soldier’s uniform so authentic that Dean could actually see clouds of dust rising from its shoulders.

“You’re kidding. They get
married
in this stuff?”

“Love is a battlefield,” Castiel said.

Dean stared at him.

“What?”

“It’s a song I heard recently.”

Dean barely suppressed a smile and turned away from the angel.

“You’re something, Cass, you know that?” There was no response, and Dean paused without turning. “You just disappeared on me, didn’t you?”

Sure enough, when he looked back, Castiel was indeed gone.

Sam arrived at the pillared façade of the Mission’s Ridge Historical Society, having stopped by the Impala to discard his FBI jacket and tie. He climbed the granite steps to the front door, a slab of oak with an imposing iron handle, fully expecting to find it locked. Instead, it swung open on well-oiled hinges.

With a sense of coolness spreading over him, he stepped inside.

The entryway was windowless, darker than he’d expected, and the scrape of his feet echoed with a stony acoustic resonance that came from old places that had been left alone for long periods of time. He could smell camphor and old paper, canvas and mildew, and his eyes were still struggling to adjust.

For a moment he wasn’t even sure how big the entryway was.

“Help you?” a man’s voice asked behind him.

“That depends.” Sam turned, and a flashlight beam passed over his face, momentarily blinding him. “You work here?”

“I do,” the man said. “Sorry about the flashlight. Wiring troubles. She’s a lovely old building, but the electrical system can be a royal bitch, if you’ll excuse my French.” The man reached over to a fuse box embedded in the wall and fiddled with something inside for a moment. There was a loud
clank
, and lights came shuddering on.

“Ah, there we go.”

Looking up, Sam saw they were standing in a wide foyer. In front of him stood a man wearing an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, black t-shirt and faded Levis. He didn’t look much past his mid-thirties, but the first wrinkles of middle age had already settled around the corners of his eyes and mouth, giving his face a comfortable, lived-in look. The stubble on his jaw was a salt-and-pepper mix that gleamed a little in the light.

Next to him stood a young boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, also wearing jeans and a t-shirt—blond, fair-skinned, with wide, curious blue eyes that seemed to be taking in everything at once. The man held a huge, ancient toolbox, and the boy stood in unconscious imitation of the man’s pose, cradling a stack of thick hardcover books under one arm. There was no question that they were father and son.

“I’m Tommy McClane,” the man said, putting the tools down and wiping his right hand on his jeans before extending it to Sam. “This is my boy Nate.”