ratherastory (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ratherastory) wrote2010-09-06 04:11 pm
ratherastory) wrote2010-09-06 04:11 pm
Entry tags:
Not the Demons You're Looking For (7/24)
Part 6
Part 7
Trust Dean to leave him alone to dig through the archives. By himself. Alone. Did he mention alone? Sam sighed, then reminded himself that going through all the police reports in the sheriff's office wasn't anymore fun than what he was doing, and that if Dean were in charge of going through all the microfiche documents he'd have given up after fifteen minutes out of sheer boredom. At least this way they would be sure to get whatever information there was to get, and with any luck they might be able to get their hands on the medical reports on the victims, maybe even be present for the autopsy on the woman who'd died the day before. At least this time they'd only have a minimal amount of cover-up to finagle, with Andy there to plant whatever suggestion they wanted in people's minds. As if that wasn't a chilling enough thought.
At least thanks to Andy's insight about the birth notices he had somewhere to start. It still took the better part of an hour to pull together a list of likely women with babies born in the last year. He sat, head in his hands, trying to bring her face to mind, but the vision had been fleeting, the woman standing with her back mostly to him. He'd caught a glimpse of long chestnut-coloured hair, high cheekbones, a thin nose, and that was it. He eliminated the women with very short hair, on the reasonable assumption that it wouldn't have had time to grow out that long in the intervening month, then eliminated all the women who weren't white, since that was about the only thing he was sure of. That still didn't narrow things down all that much, and he was beginning to wonder if there wasn't some sort of freak baby boom in the area in the last year. Eventually he narrowed it down to the ten likeliest candidates, and that was still too many. There was no way they'd be able to interview all these women before whatever it was that was about to happen happened.
He wanted to hit something really hard, frustration seeping from his pores. Instead he started scouring the archives again, trying to find a pattern to all the demon signs that had been cropping up in the area. Not surprisingly, there was a rash of very obvious signs dating from twenty-three years before, around the time Andy would have been six months old. Then nothing, though Sam painstakingly went through every paper published to make sure he wasn't missing anything. Dean would have been bored out of his skull. There had been a spike of activity in January, when he'd had the first vision that had brought them to Guthrie, then nothing until February, when the first death had occurred, and the activity had grown exponentially since then. Judging by the flood-levels of rain that had been falling since the day before, things were coming to a head. What else was new?
His phone rang not quite three hours after he'd first started his research, and he was relieved to see Dean's name pop up on the screen, since it promised a respite from the tedium. “Yeah? Hey. You sound —fine, I'm not saying anything... Yeah, I found a few things, nothing earth-shattering... Gesundheit... Yeah, sure, I'll meet you back at the house, okay?... Yeah, see you soon.”
He made copies of all the articles he'd pulled up, stacked them neatly into a pile, and begged a plastic bag from the receptionist to keep the rain from soaking the paper. He headed back out into the rain, grateful for the unheard-of luxury of an umbrella to supplement his jacket. Winchesters didn't do umbrellas. He was kind of surprised that Dean hadn't put up a fuss about the umbrellas getting in the way if they found themselves suddenly under attack, but then again Dean wasn't exactly at the top of his game, and was probably just as glad not to have to get soaking wet. He splashed through the puddles, the water seeping in through the gaps in his soles and soaking his socks, squelching as he walked. Dean's boots probably weren't in much better shape, which didn't bode well for later. Maybe they could both stand to get a new pair while they were here. Heck, Andy might be able to get them a hefty discount, but Sam wasn't sure if he was comfortable enough to go that far.
“Sam!”
He looked up to see Andy waving frantically at him from the other side of the street, umbrella tilting crazily in his other hand. Beside him Dean smacked him on the shoulder, and immediately the umbrella righted itself. Sam grinned in spite of himself. He liked Andy, and he had the feeling that Dean did as well. The kid was just so easygoing, in spite of all the weirdness and death that taken place over the past few months. Sam had said to Dean that Andy was a killer, when push came to shove, but he was beginning to think that Dean had been right, that it wasn't as cut-and-dried as that. Sure, the kid was more on edge now, but then, who wouldn't be? He made his way across the street, water sloshing around his feet, reaching the two just as Dean bent double in yet another sneezing fit, twisting away with both hands over his nose and mouth.
“Hih... HEISH! ISHOO! Huh-EKSHOO! HUPTSHUH! Huh-ISH-uh! HPKRRSH!” he straightened, cuffed at his nose with his sleeve, wiped his hands on his jeans. “Sabby,” he held up a hand by way of greeting. Sam could hear that his voice was starting to give out, although it probably wouldn't have been audible to anyone who wasn't family. It was just that he knew Dean's voice better than anyone alive, now. The thought depressed him. “How were the argchives?”
“Boring. You holding up okay?”
Dean nodded, but his nose was bright red, the only spot of colour in his otherwise pale face. “Yeah, I'b ogkay. Feel ligke I'be god cebedt id by head, bud bostly I'b ogkay.”
“We should head back,” Sam bit his tongue so as not to harp on about Dean's general state of health. There were only headaches and drama down that particular path. “We can make lunch, figure out our next course of action.”
“Uh... there's still no food at the house,” Andy pointed out. “We can always get groceries, but I don't really cook. It's not like I did much of it while I was living out of my van,” he said, a bit more defensively than Sam would have thought was warranted.
Dean was wrestling with a tissue that had managed to get soaked through with rainwater between his pocket and his face. “HAISHOO! Ugh,” he made a face, squashed the tissue into a soggy tattered ball in his fist. “Sabby cad't coogk either. I tried to teach hib, but id's ligke tryig to teach a badatee to rollerskate. Hilarious, but with really udfortudate resuldts. Hih... HISHOO! Jesus.”
“A manatee, Dean? Really?”
“If th-the shoe f... hih... HETSCHUH! If the shoe fits, Sabby...” Dean grinned.
“So, uh, groceries? Or are we going to stand in the rain?” Andy wanted to know, and was obviously desperate to interrupt them before they started arguing again. The kid had never had a brother, obviously.
“None of the above,” Sam decided. “We may as well give into the inevitable and find a place with hot food.”
“Baybe Dadcy is still worgkig,” Dean said, looking hopeful, and Sam sighed.
“Fine.”
Nancy wasn't working. Instead it was an older woman whose name tag read “Doris,” who smiled at them all in a motherly way, and left Dean looking sulky in the corner of their booth. Sam spread out his photocopied articles on the table while Dean pulled out the notes he'd taken in the sheriff's office, and together they bent over them, trying to piece together what was happening. Dean's cold was getting worse, Sam could hear it in the way each breath whistled quietly, imperceptible if you weren't listening for it, which Sam was. Dean might take care of Sam, but it was Sam who always figured out when something was wrong with Dean and alerted their father. When he bothered to think about it at all he thought of it as having a kind of Dean-radar, but most of the time it was like second-nature, like breathing, like knowing when a patch of cold air was a ghost or just a draft due to crappy insulation.
“Take your decongestants,” he said, not looking up from the notes, knowing better than to try to make a big deal out of this, as Dean twisted away, trying to clamp down on another coughing fit without much success. By the sound of it, this thing was going to settle right down in Dean's lungs, and the last thing either of them wanted or needed was Dean getting bronchitis, or worse, pneumonia.
“Aye aye, s-sir... HEPTSCHUH!”
“The sneezing totally undercuts your sarcasm, Kemosabe,” he remarked mildly.
“Bide be.”
“As does the congestion. Just take the damn pills, already.”
“Bidch.”
“Jerk.”
Dean had already produced the pill bottle from his pocket, pointedly swallowed the correct dosage, then popped a lozenge into his mouth, and that by itself spoke volumes. Andy was shaking his head, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, but he wisely chose to keep silent on the topic. Doris brought their food, a cheeseburger for Dean (Sam sometimes wondered if Dean ever ordered anything other than cheeseburger and pie in these places when it wasn't breakfast time), a grilled cheese for Sam, the lasagna for Andy. For the second time in as many days Dean was looking at his burger as though it might lunge out of its plate and bite him if he wasn't careful, and Sam caught Doris before she disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Can I get a bowl of today's soup too, please?”
“Sure thing, darlin',” came the answer, together with a smile.
The soup was already prepared, judging by the speed with which it arrived. Sam made a show of thanking Doris, and when she was gone he deftly switched out the soup for the cheeseburger. Dean looked at him, looked at the soup, blew his nose. Picked up the spoon without a word, and tried to look as though he wasn't wincing as he swallowed each mouthful. Andy buried his nose in his lasagna, tried to look as though he hadn't noticed a thing. Good survival instincts on that one, Sam thought, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Uh, is it me, or do we not have much to go on?” Andy ventured eventually.
Dean grimaced. “Dot you.”
Sam found himself mirroring his brother's expression. “Well, we've had cases with less than this, but not many. Also, those are the ones that didn't go that well, overall.”
“It's so weird, hearing you guys talk about them as 'cases.' As though it was just some detective story.” Andy took another bite of lasagna. “So what do we do?”
It was funny how quickly it had become “we.” Sam and Dean and Andy, instead of Sam 'n' Dean, the way it always was. It was strange, too, but so far Andy was fitting in pretty well, not messing with the rhythm. Then again, Dean's being sick messed with the rhythm, so maybe the situation wasn't exactly typical.
“I don't think doing anymore research is going to help at this point,” Sam said finally. “We should start doing interviews, talking to the friends and family of the victims. See if any of them know something.”
Andy stared. “Uh... why would they know anything about demons?”
Dean decided to field that one. “Sobetibes they dod't kdow that they kdow sobethig. That's why we talk to theb, jog their bebories, see if adythig pops up.”
“You, uh, want me to come with?”
Sam paused, took a good look at Andy's expression. “You feel comfortable doing that?”
A shrug. “Not exactly. But I think this might be important enough that I can maybe try and get over being squeamish about, uh, mind-controlling people into telling me their secrets. About the demon, I mean,” he looked very earnestly at Sam, as though he was worried that they might be thinking something worse, and he didn't look at Dean at all.
Sam wondered if he might not have to stage some sort of bonding thing, so Andy would quit acting as though Dean might put him down like a rabid dog at any moment. Then again, Sam himself had been more than a little worried about Dean putting him down like a rabid dog at any moment, and he could tell from the veiled looks his brother kept shooting at him that Dean was worried about that, too, and just thinking about it made chills run up and down his spine.
Part 8
Part 7
Trust Dean to leave him alone to dig through the archives. By himself. Alone. Did he mention alone? Sam sighed, then reminded himself that going through all the police reports in the sheriff's office wasn't anymore fun than what he was doing, and that if Dean were in charge of going through all the microfiche documents he'd have given up after fifteen minutes out of sheer boredom. At least this way they would be sure to get whatever information there was to get, and with any luck they might be able to get their hands on the medical reports on the victims, maybe even be present for the autopsy on the woman who'd died the day before. At least this time they'd only have a minimal amount of cover-up to finagle, with Andy there to plant whatever suggestion they wanted in people's minds. As if that wasn't a chilling enough thought.
At least thanks to Andy's insight about the birth notices he had somewhere to start. It still took the better part of an hour to pull together a list of likely women with babies born in the last year. He sat, head in his hands, trying to bring her face to mind, but the vision had been fleeting, the woman standing with her back mostly to him. He'd caught a glimpse of long chestnut-coloured hair, high cheekbones, a thin nose, and that was it. He eliminated the women with very short hair, on the reasonable assumption that it wouldn't have had time to grow out that long in the intervening month, then eliminated all the women who weren't white, since that was about the only thing he was sure of. That still didn't narrow things down all that much, and he was beginning to wonder if there wasn't some sort of freak baby boom in the area in the last year. Eventually he narrowed it down to the ten likeliest candidates, and that was still too many. There was no way they'd be able to interview all these women before whatever it was that was about to happen happened.
He wanted to hit something really hard, frustration seeping from his pores. Instead he started scouring the archives again, trying to find a pattern to all the demon signs that had been cropping up in the area. Not surprisingly, there was a rash of very obvious signs dating from twenty-three years before, around the time Andy would have been six months old. Then nothing, though Sam painstakingly went through every paper published to make sure he wasn't missing anything. Dean would have been bored out of his skull. There had been a spike of activity in January, when he'd had the first vision that had brought them to Guthrie, then nothing until February, when the first death had occurred, and the activity had grown exponentially since then. Judging by the flood-levels of rain that had been falling since the day before, things were coming to a head. What else was new?
His phone rang not quite three hours after he'd first started his research, and he was relieved to see Dean's name pop up on the screen, since it promised a respite from the tedium. “Yeah? Hey. You sound —fine, I'm not saying anything... Yeah, I found a few things, nothing earth-shattering... Gesundheit... Yeah, sure, I'll meet you back at the house, okay?... Yeah, see you soon.”
He made copies of all the articles he'd pulled up, stacked them neatly into a pile, and begged a plastic bag from the receptionist to keep the rain from soaking the paper. He headed back out into the rain, grateful for the unheard-of luxury of an umbrella to supplement his jacket. Winchesters didn't do umbrellas. He was kind of surprised that Dean hadn't put up a fuss about the umbrellas getting in the way if they found themselves suddenly under attack, but then again Dean wasn't exactly at the top of his game, and was probably just as glad not to have to get soaking wet. He splashed through the puddles, the water seeping in through the gaps in his soles and soaking his socks, squelching as he walked. Dean's boots probably weren't in much better shape, which didn't bode well for later. Maybe they could both stand to get a new pair while they were here. Heck, Andy might be able to get them a hefty discount, but Sam wasn't sure if he was comfortable enough to go that far.
“Sam!”
He looked up to see Andy waving frantically at him from the other side of the street, umbrella tilting crazily in his other hand. Beside him Dean smacked him on the shoulder, and immediately the umbrella righted itself. Sam grinned in spite of himself. He liked Andy, and he had the feeling that Dean did as well. The kid was just so easygoing, in spite of all the weirdness and death that taken place over the past few months. Sam had said to Dean that Andy was a killer, when push came to shove, but he was beginning to think that Dean had been right, that it wasn't as cut-and-dried as that. Sure, the kid was more on edge now, but then, who wouldn't be? He made his way across the street, water sloshing around his feet, reaching the two just as Dean bent double in yet another sneezing fit, twisting away with both hands over his nose and mouth.
“Hih... HEISH! ISHOO! Huh-EKSHOO! HUPTSHUH! Huh-ISH-uh! HPKRRSH!” he straightened, cuffed at his nose with his sleeve, wiped his hands on his jeans. “Sabby,” he held up a hand by way of greeting. Sam could hear that his voice was starting to give out, although it probably wouldn't have been audible to anyone who wasn't family. It was just that he knew Dean's voice better than anyone alive, now. The thought depressed him. “How were the argchives?”
“Boring. You holding up okay?”
Dean nodded, but his nose was bright red, the only spot of colour in his otherwise pale face. “Yeah, I'b ogkay. Feel ligke I'be god cebedt id by head, bud bostly I'b ogkay.”
“We should head back,” Sam bit his tongue so as not to harp on about Dean's general state of health. There were only headaches and drama down that particular path. “We can make lunch, figure out our next course of action.”
“Uh... there's still no food at the house,” Andy pointed out. “We can always get groceries, but I don't really cook. It's not like I did much of it while I was living out of my van,” he said, a bit more defensively than Sam would have thought was warranted.
Dean was wrestling with a tissue that had managed to get soaked through with rainwater between his pocket and his face. “HAISHOO! Ugh,” he made a face, squashed the tissue into a soggy tattered ball in his fist. “Sabby cad't coogk either. I tried to teach hib, but id's ligke tryig to teach a badatee to rollerskate. Hilarious, but with really udfortudate resuldts. Hih... HISHOO! Jesus.”
“A manatee, Dean? Really?”
“If th-the shoe f... hih... HETSCHUH! If the shoe fits, Sabby...” Dean grinned.
“So, uh, groceries? Or are we going to stand in the rain?” Andy wanted to know, and was obviously desperate to interrupt them before they started arguing again. The kid had never had a brother, obviously.
“None of the above,” Sam decided. “We may as well give into the inevitable and find a place with hot food.”
“Baybe Dadcy is still worgkig,” Dean said, looking hopeful, and Sam sighed.
“Fine.”
Nancy wasn't working. Instead it was an older woman whose name tag read “Doris,” who smiled at them all in a motherly way, and left Dean looking sulky in the corner of their booth. Sam spread out his photocopied articles on the table while Dean pulled out the notes he'd taken in the sheriff's office, and together they bent over them, trying to piece together what was happening. Dean's cold was getting worse, Sam could hear it in the way each breath whistled quietly, imperceptible if you weren't listening for it, which Sam was. Dean might take care of Sam, but it was Sam who always figured out when something was wrong with Dean and alerted their father. When he bothered to think about it at all he thought of it as having a kind of Dean-radar, but most of the time it was like second-nature, like breathing, like knowing when a patch of cold air was a ghost or just a draft due to crappy insulation.
“Take your decongestants,” he said, not looking up from the notes, knowing better than to try to make a big deal out of this, as Dean twisted away, trying to clamp down on another coughing fit without much success. By the sound of it, this thing was going to settle right down in Dean's lungs, and the last thing either of them wanted or needed was Dean getting bronchitis, or worse, pneumonia.
“Aye aye, s-sir... HEPTSCHUH!”
“The sneezing totally undercuts your sarcasm, Kemosabe,” he remarked mildly.
“Bide be.”
“As does the congestion. Just take the damn pills, already.”
“Bidch.”
“Jerk.”
Dean had already produced the pill bottle from his pocket, pointedly swallowed the correct dosage, then popped a lozenge into his mouth, and that by itself spoke volumes. Andy was shaking his head, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, but he wisely chose to keep silent on the topic. Doris brought their food, a cheeseburger for Dean (Sam sometimes wondered if Dean ever ordered anything other than cheeseburger and pie in these places when it wasn't breakfast time), a grilled cheese for Sam, the lasagna for Andy. For the second time in as many days Dean was looking at his burger as though it might lunge out of its plate and bite him if he wasn't careful, and Sam caught Doris before she disappeared back into the kitchen.
“Can I get a bowl of today's soup too, please?”
“Sure thing, darlin',” came the answer, together with a smile.
The soup was already prepared, judging by the speed with which it arrived. Sam made a show of thanking Doris, and when she was gone he deftly switched out the soup for the cheeseburger. Dean looked at him, looked at the soup, blew his nose. Picked up the spoon without a word, and tried to look as though he wasn't wincing as he swallowed each mouthful. Andy buried his nose in his lasagna, tried to look as though he hadn't noticed a thing. Good survival instincts on that one, Sam thought, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Uh, is it me, or do we not have much to go on?” Andy ventured eventually.
Dean grimaced. “Dot you.”
Sam found himself mirroring his brother's expression. “Well, we've had cases with less than this, but not many. Also, those are the ones that didn't go that well, overall.”
“It's so weird, hearing you guys talk about them as 'cases.' As though it was just some detective story.” Andy took another bite of lasagna. “So what do we do?”
It was funny how quickly it had become “we.” Sam and Dean and Andy, instead of Sam 'n' Dean, the way it always was. It was strange, too, but so far Andy was fitting in pretty well, not messing with the rhythm. Then again, Dean's being sick messed with the rhythm, so maybe the situation wasn't exactly typical.
“I don't think doing anymore research is going to help at this point,” Sam said finally. “We should start doing interviews, talking to the friends and family of the victims. See if any of them know something.”
Andy stared. “Uh... why would they know anything about demons?”
Dean decided to field that one. “Sobetibes they dod't kdow that they kdow sobethig. That's why we talk to theb, jog their bebories, see if adythig pops up.”
“You, uh, want me to come with?”
Sam paused, took a good look at Andy's expression. “You feel comfortable doing that?”
A shrug. “Not exactly. But I think this might be important enough that I can maybe try and get over being squeamish about, uh, mind-controlling people into telling me their secrets. About the demon, I mean,” he looked very earnestly at Sam, as though he was worried that they might be thinking something worse, and he didn't look at Dean at all.
Sam wondered if he might not have to stage some sort of bonding thing, so Andy would quit acting as though Dean might put him down like a rabid dog at any moment. Then again, Sam himself had been more than a little worried about Dean putting him down like a rabid dog at any moment, and he could tell from the veiled looks his brother kept shooting at him that Dean was worried about that, too, and just thinking about it made chills run up and down his spine.
Part 8