Fic - Cross Creek - 3/6

[zoemathemata]

Farrah finally agrees to sit down with Dean and give him details regarding the ghosts, but not until Dean gave his word that he wouldn’t do anything to them or about them without talking to her first.

He’s lying and she knows it if their stand-off staring contest is any indication.

Sam leaves them in the kitchen and goes back up to the room to start looking over the journal.

It’s a simple journal, nothing fancy. Just a notebook that you could find in any stationary store across the country. On the first page is a name and a year.

Francis DeWinton, 1986

Even though he’s most interested in the pages with the symbols and the details regarding the preparations that he made for going into room 43, Sam’s scholarly brain won’t let him start anywhere else but the beginning. So he starts reading.

A lot of the entries have to do with the hotel and work he performed on various things, a sort of tracking record for maintenance. There are entries about Farrah and Oliver and a woman named Noelle, presumably his wife and the twins’ mother. Sam reads about Farrah and Oliver making snowmen outside, about how Francis will need to go to town to pick up some parts, and a fight he had with his wife about the twins going to school the next year.

Sam feels like a voyeur, reading the details of their lives, but Oliver did give him the journal freely and he reminds himself that there could be more information in the book than just on the pages that Oliver had dog-eared.

He turns the page and finds an entry that catches his eye.

Fay and Ollie were playing outside room 43 today and when I reminded them they weren’t to play there and told them to go somewhere else, Fay said she was told to play there. I asked her who told her and she said she couldn’t remember. Whatever’s in that room - I think it likes having her close. I don’t know if it’s because it can watch her better from there or it wants - I don’t know. Later that night when Noelle had taken Fay for her bath, I found Ollie and I asked him to look inside his sister’s head and find out who told her to play there. I’m using one of them against the other and I hate it, but I have to know. He tried for a long time but he said ‘there was too much water.’ I don’t know what that means. He said all he saw was the letter ‘K’ and some kind of fruit. I asked him to explain it to me and I think he saw a pomegranate.

It’s not a ghost. I know all the ghosts here and they know us. I’ve spoken with Jonah, who has been here longest of the dead. He told me that this thing, whatever it is, has always been here, it was here when he first arrived, but deep. Very deep. It’s starting to rise to the surface and I think it has to do with Fay. Jonah once told me that to the dead, Fay and I look different. The dead can tell right away that we can talk to them. We’re sharper somehow. He said it was hard to explain unless you’d been on the other side. He said that for as sharp as I look, Fay is even more-so. Whatever it is that enables my family to talk to the dead, Fay has more of it than me and it caught this thing’s attention.

Sam turns the page and is surprised when the entry just ends, the next page accounting a water pipe break and the subsequent repairs. He keeps reading until he comes to the section Oliver indicated before with the glyphs but Francis never mentions room 43 or the mysterious entity again.

He’s researching the combination of herbs, spices and other ingredients that Francis used in the drink he concocted before going into room 43 for Farrah when he hears a small sound.

He looks up.

The young boy stands just inside his room, silent and solemn. His clothes are old, almost formal. They aren’t play clothes. They look like his Sunday best. His dark hair looks like someone was trying to tame it but it just wouldn’t stay put. Sam puts him at six or seven years. At least he was when he died. His eyes are deep, innocent and knowing in the way that only children can manage. He’s staring at Sam, face devoid of expression except for the intensity of his eyes.

“Are you… are you Charlie?”

When the boy smiles, his whole face lights up. Large brown eyes fill with happiness and Sam can see the gap in his smile where two of his bottom teeth are missing.

Sam’s experience with ghosts leans more toward the ‘I’m pissed you’re here and I’m going to try to kill you now’ variety and this is a totally new occurrence for him. Charlie walks toward him easily but despite his harmless appearance, Sam can’t help but lean back, out of his way when Charlie peers over to see what Sam’s reading. His smile fades as he takes in the symbols on the page. He’s probably barely old enough to read but he knows the symbols on the page, Sam’s sure of it.

“You know what this means?” Sam asks.

Charlie’s eyes meet his but the boy shakes his head.

“But… you’ve seen them before, haven’t you?”

Charlie’s unsure, biting his lower lip, not looking at Sam, but tracing his finger lightly on the journal.

“In another one of these? Another book like this?”

Charlie nods.

“In Oliver’s room?” If Oliver has another journal with the same kind of entry, it’s odd he didn’t mention it, but Sam can easily ask him for it.

But Charlie shakes his head.

“No? Maybe in Farrah’s room?”

Another head shake.

“Can you show me where?”

Charlie regards him carefully and Sam can almost see the little wheels turning in his head.

“It’s a bad thing, isn’t it?” Sam says. “The thing that’s in room 43.”

Charlie looks away but he nods as he does.

“My brother and I, we take care of bad things. We’re really good at it.”

Charlie looks back at him again and Sam can tell he’s not convinced.

“You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you, Charlie?”

His little head bobs up and down in agreement.

“I bet Farrah takes good care of you.”

Another small nod.

Sam pauses for a moment thinking. “She keeps the bad thing away?”

Charlie kicks at the ground with his feet, not looking up.

“I’ll take that as a yes. If you show me where the book is, maybe I can help her keep it away.”

Charlie shrugs and Sam isn’t sure what that means.

“My brother and I are really good. We fight monsters and we win. I bet the thing you’re afraid of, it’s like a monster, isn’t it?”

One slow, big nod.

“And Farrah keeps you safe, but what if she didn’t have to? What if the monster was gone?”

Charlie finally looks up from watching his feet and meets Sam’s gaze dead on. This time when he nods, there’s a surety about it, confidence. He turns and walks toward the door, disappearing through the solid wood. When Sam opens the door, Charlie is waiting for him on the other side, grinning widely, like he’s just managed to play a trick on Sam.

“Okay, it’s pretty cool that you can walk through doors,” Sam says and Charlie’s smile gets even bigger. He scampers off down the long hallway and Sam’s left hot-footing it after him.

He’s fast for a little guy.

Then again, the normal laws of physics probably don’t apply when you’re dead.

Charlie leads him to a hidden spiral staircase at the back of the hotel, one that was probably only used by servants or the lower classes back when the hotel was first built. It seems to be abandoned now, full of dust and cobwebs and Sam immediately feels grimy as he walks through and breaks several silvery webs. His footsteps are the only tracks on the dust and he’s careful to keep Charlie’s dark coat in sight. If he looses him, he’s not sure how he’ll find him again. He supposes he’ll have to wait for Charlie to find him.

The stairwell is cramped and built for shorter generations and Sam’s stooped over as he climbs. It’s on an outside wall and there are small windows at regular intervals, letting in the bright light from outside. With the snow on the ground, the sunlight bounces off clean and blue tinged. The dust that Sam is stirring up by climbing the stairs swirls in the beams of light, lazy and slow. He guesses by his quick peeks out the windows that they’re past the third floor already and the door he passes a few steps later should be the fourth.

They climb until they reach the attic.

Unlike most horror films where he’s sure he’d be about to be gutted, Sam has no fear of the attic. He remembers Farrah telling them clearly yesterday that it was safe. Given how particular she was about her instructions he has no doubt she was telling the truth. Charlie disappears through a small, slender door and Sam has to break off some rust on the handle before it turns with an awful shriek and lets him into the attic.

Frankly, it’s your typical garden variety attic. Covered furniture, stacked chairs, dressers, nightstand and the like. It looks like nothing ever got tossed out for being broken at Cross Creek, it just got shipped upstairs. The amount of junk is unreal. Sam has to work hard to keep from knocking over things as he follows Charlie’s zig-zagging lead through the piles. The attic spans the whole of the hotel, mimicking the slight H-shape perfectly, and it’s huge. If someone could be bothered to clean it out, they could set up walls and have a fifth floor to rent out. Although he supposes that they’d have to painstakingly go through everything and decide to recycle or junk.

There are a few dirty windows, but they let the light in well enough and Sam has no trouble seeing most of the expanse in front of him, nor following Charlie.

Finally, Charlie stops in front of what looks like a small tent. As Sam studies the structure, he realizes what it is.

“Is this a fort?”

Charlie nods vigorously, obviously pleased that Sam can tell what it is at first glance.

“Built it yourself?”

Another proud nod as Charlie flings back one of the sheets and creates a makeshift doorway. Charlie has to duck his head a little to get under and he motions that Sam’s to follow. Sam cringes as he folds his body in on itself and scooches into the small space, sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor.

Charlie is beaming as he sweeps an arm around and shows off his stash to Sam. The boy does have a lot of stuff. Books, knick-knacks, utensils, some broken appliances, rocks, coins… pretty much anything that any little boy would look at and think wow, that is the coolest. Sam would know. He used to have a similar stash, only his had to be kept in a small pencil box so it could be taken easily with him as they picked up their lives and moved again. He spares a quick, sentimental thought for his lonely pencil box, which got left behind mistakenly on a move and was never seen again.

“Are those…?” Sam points toward the set of car keys and Charlie looks sheepish as he hands them back.

“I won’t tell Dean you had them,” Sam swears solemnly and Charlie gives him a look of gratitude.

Charlie shuffles a few things around and then hands him a book.

Sam flips open the first few pages and immediately recognizes the hand-writing as that of Francis DeWinton, and a starting date - 1986. As Sam flips through, he sees none of the familiar words he was used to from the other journal about maintenance, or family life, but instead finds what he was most after.

Detailed accounts of strange occurrences at Cross Creek.

From his quick glance he can see that Francis started this journal after Farrah’s disappearance into the room. It contains stories told to him by his father and his aunt, superstitions passed down through the family. Then his own recollections and musings on the hotel, various guesses and limited research that he had done.

Sam shuts the book quickly and looks up to thank Charlie, but finds himself alone in the little fort. He flips back the makeshift curtain and takes a quick look around the attic, but he’s gone.

He works his way carefully back to the staircase and then his room. Settling down with the new journal, he begins to read.

It seems, while Francis knew of the symbols and the ritual with the drink ever since he was a young boy, he hadn’t put much stock into it and treated it like a cherished family fable. He respected the room as his father had instructed him, never went in and ensured that it was always locked and well marked. During the long summer months, it was a great tidbit to flash in front of the tourists and let their own imaginations wander away with what could possibly be hidden behind the door. During the off-season, he avoided it himself and if perhaps he got a chill or sick feeling when he passed by or stood too close, he never thought much of it. The whole hotel was haunted and he’d spent his life talking to ghosts, as his father did, and his father before him. Room 43 was just another supernatural thing in a life full of the supernatural. He never feared it.

And then Farrah and Oliver were born.

I never thought much of it. The hotel is always so strange and in a way, that strangeness is my normality. But on the day Fay and Ollie came home, the dead were agitated, unsettled. They couldn’t explain what it was but they said they felt a shift. They likened it to a window finally opening in a house boarded up for the season and the resulting pressure change pushing through all the rooms. I thought they were simply excited to have such young life in front of them. The dead have always liked the living. Some times too much.

Sam reads how Francis expected Oliver to have the family gift and was quite surprised when he showed no sign at all of being aware of the dead. He thought perhaps it finally skipped a generation. It wasn’t until two months after the twins were born that some of the ghosts told Francis that Farrah would be just like her father and he learned the talent hadn’t skipped a generation but had instead been passed on to a girl. It wasn’t that anyone ever said that wasn’t possible, it’s just the way it had been spoken of, the way it had always been talked about, Francis assumed it was only something that the men in the family could do.

But the ghosts told him different. They said that Farrah looked just like him from the afterlife and they could tell, they could just tell that when they spoke, she would be able to hear.

It was also very shortly after Farrah and Oliver’s birth that Francis started… feeling more about room 43. And the feelings weren’t good.

Today I passed by the room and I was immediately chilled and I thought I heard… scratching. Scratching at the door. I paused, thinking I could ask one of the dead to peek in for me but I was alone. When I looked back at the door, I saw the letter ‘F’ inscribed on the wood.

I know it’s not for me.

As Sam continues to read, Francis became increasingly worried and fearful of room 43 and began digging into the family library to see what he could learn.

Something lives here. Something other than the dead. It’s the reason the dead are drawn here. My knowledge is admittedly limited, but I don’t know of any other place that brings the dead to it. Certainly there are haunted houses wherever you go, but Cross Creek seems to be the only one that has no ties to its dead. I’ve asked the dead what it is about Cross Creek that pulls them in and they find it hard to articulate. The clearest answer I’ve gotten is that it’s like a physical sensation of being pulled, and in their deaths, when physical sensations are lost to them, it’s a most tantalizing thing. Many of them stay for a while and then cross over, as if they thought they could find something here and didn’t. I talk with many of the dead regularly and some of them simply like being here with the traffic of tourists in the summer.

But some said they still feel that strange pull and feel like they cannot leave until they find out what it’s from.

Sam turns the page and stops at the long list of symbols, small triangles held together by sticks. He traces his fingers over the tiny inkings. They are familiar to him in the way that most old languages are. At some point or another, he’s sure he’s father made him stare at something with these symbols. At the bottom of the page, Francis has labeled his diagram.

Cuneiform list

There are gaps in some columns and symbols traced or copied badly and then crossed out and redone, as if he was only noting down the glyphs he was interested in. There is one symbol drawn bigger than the others, in darker ink, as though traced over many times.


I remember as a child, my father had this list posted on the fridge, and he would make me write the symbols again and again. I asked him once where he got it from and why I had to do it. He said he dreamed the list one night in his sleep and every day that I didn’t draw it out he would have bad dreams. I asked what kind of dreams and I’ll never forget what he said:

‘I dream of a thing stretched out before me, vast and horrible. I have no past and no future.’

I wish I never understood what he meant.

Sam leans back in the chair, surprised when he hears his spine crack. He’s stunned to see that almost two hours have passed while he read through the second journal. Brow furrowed he absorbs the words from Francis’ journal, flipping back to the page with the cuneiform symbols. It takes little time to plug it into the internet search engine on his laptop and nod in recognition as he reads his results.

Cuneiform script is the earliest known writing system in the world. It emerged in the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq around the 34th century BC during the middle Uruk period, beginning as a pictographic system of writing. It was the most widespread and historically significant writing system in the Ancient Near East.

He purses his lips. To say his Sumerian knowledge is rusty would be generous.

He stares out the small window, trying to pull out whatever knowledge is lurking in his brain.

And he sees Charlie. Sam leans forward.

Charlie stands at the entrance of the maze, ghostly feet leaving no footprints in the snow. He doesn’t move for a moment until he turns and looks up, catching Sam’s eyes immediately. Sam leans forward in his chair to get a better look and Charlie waves brightly and beckons him.

And then ducks into the maze entrance.

Sam’s eyes trail over the tops of the evergreen bushes that make up the maze. In his head, it becomes a 2 dimensional sheet of paper, and he’s tracing his pencil over the pathways and turns, easily finding his way to the center. He can’t quite make out what’s there, some kind of circular stone bench perhaps and a statue.

He remembers Farrah clearly telling them to stay out of the maze, but in all truthfulness it really doesn’t look that difficult. And though he would never, could never admit it to Dean, he feels bad for the boy, ghost or no. He’s only little and seems a bit lonely. He taps the page of the journal with his finger.

It will keep for an hour or so. He huffs in wry amusement. It’s not like the dead are impatient.

He dons his jacket, leaves the room and quietly pads down the stairs. He can’t hear anything, so he assumes Farrah and Dean are still wrapped up in their ghost discussion. He spares a thought to wonder how it’s going as he navigates the back end of the main floor of the hotel, finally finding the door that leads out to the courtyard and then the maze.

As he steps outside he’s immediately slapped in the face by the sharp, cold air. It’s not unpleasant and frankly, he’s been hunting in colder places. He doesn’t mind the cold. Despite the fact that it’s a stone-bitch to dig up a grave and salt and burn it in the winter, in some ways, it’s better than doing it in vomit inducing heat, especially when you finally crack the casket and you get that awful first gag-worthy sniff. Both the Winchesters have done their duty puking from heat and exertion at a grave.

So, no, the cold doesn’t really bother him. His footsteps crunch in the snow and he has an odd sense of deja vu from his dream the night before, although his steps were soundless then. It’s enough to make him pause in his tracks slightly, lost in thought.

Charlie pokes his head around the corner of the bush and smiles at him as if to say, ‘What is taking so long?’

Sam grins himself and trots into the maze.

The bushes are taller than him and the feeling is surprising. He’s not used to looking up at things and consequently feels dwarfed immediately. The evergreen bushes hold the snow well and between their stiff pines and the white flakes, he can’t see through the wall they create. He drags his hand absently against the greenery as he walks, creating an aerial view of the maze in his mind and following along. He passes by a few openings and turns in favor of the route he’s already mapped out.

He takes a right, another right and then a left and is sheepishly surprised when he comes to a dead end. He lets out a puff of air in a self-depreciating laugh and turns back, following his footsteps in the snow until he backtracks to another opening. He must have miscounted.

When he reaches the second dead end, he frowns. He really was sure that he had the maze figured out before he entered it. He stands still for a moment, reviewing the pathway in his head, recalling each turn he took and placing it accordingly in the picture in his mind.

He’s always been good at spatial relations.

His frown deepens because, yes, he should still be continuing on an open path. He watches his breath plume out in billowy streams. It’s colder in the shade of the maze and even with his hands stuffed deep in his coat pockets, the tips of his fingers are starting to numb. Feeling ridiculous and slightly stupid, he decides to go back.

His stubborn streak is up and he’s already planning on going back up to the room and drawing out the maze for when he re-attempts his quest for the center. He’s a smart guy, how hard can it be?

Ten minutes later, panic starts to pluck her cold fingers against his insides. Lightly, gently, but pluck her fingers she does, nonetheless.

He should have been out by now. He knows he went back the same way he came, he followed his footsteps in the snow for crying out loud. He looks down at the tracks he made earlier as he places his feet next to each one. Heel to toe, heel to toe as he moves against his initial trip. Heel to toe, heel to toe, toe to heel.

No that can’t be right.

He wouldn’t have switched his direction in the middle of an empty path. He couldn’t have. He didn’t. The skin of his cheeks start to burn from the cold, and his nose is running profusely. The only sound is his light exhalations of air and his impossibly loud snorts as he tries to keep his sinuses in check.

And a rustle.

The hairs on the back of his neck rise and his stomach tightens in anticipation. The human response of fight-or-flight was long drilled out of him by Dad and Dean, replaced only with fight.

But that assumes you have something to fight against.

He turns in a slow circle and feels his guts drop when he sees an evergreen bush three feet behind him.

He knows he’s been walking in a straight line for at least fifteen feet.

Sam’s brain is immediately split in two. The rational side that understands the fundamental laws of physics, the cooly logical side that researches their hunts and plans for all eventualities is telling him calmly and firmly that trees can’t move.

Another rustling sound to his right is like a slap in the face to logic.

The amphibian part of his brain, the part that hunts things that go bump in the night, the animal side that’s kept him alive and relatively unscathed for years, is screaming at his rational side to shut the fuck up so that it can pay better attention and keep them from getting killed.

Or worse.

In the hunting world when things go ugly and go ugly fast, you’d consider yourself damn lucky to end up only dead.

His toes are going numb. Too long standing in the cold and too long ruminating for his toes and fingers. He goes to stamp his feet against the chill and his heart lurches as he feels resistance against them. He slowly looks downward.

A set of roots is wound around his feet.

A fine dusting of snow already sits on top of it.

He didn’t even feel it happen.

His eyes move up and around him again.

It’s too quiet now. Too still. His peaceful afternoon outside with the crisp air on his face has turned into a claustrophobic episode with too-tall greenery looming over him, around him and now starting to crawl up from beneath.

He yanks his feet free, pulling at the young, wet wood. Green spines break off the branches and stick to him. He pretends the sick feeling clawing at his belly is just annoyance as his hands become covered in a thin clear fluid and he tries to shake them clean.

His feet freed, he turns to his left, facing a large wall of green and branches. He’s no shrinking violet. If he can’t follow a path out, he’ll just plow his way through.

***

“… and I think that’s it,” Farrah finishes.

Dean stares at her blankly for a moment before realizing she’s not speaking anymore.

Three hours. Three hours of listening to her list and categorize every damn spook who is currently, or has been at one time, at Cross Creek. She wasn’t exaggerating her numbers before, or if she was, she’s excellent at making stuff up.

He stares down at the notepad he has out in front of him. Normally, he’s one to scoff at note-taking, especially where hunting is concerned. It’s not like being a good note-taker and being a good hunter go hand in hand. But by the time Farrah had gotten to spook #12, he found he was starting to mix up details. He couldn’t remember who came to the hotel when, what they had died of, if they’d ever been guests of the hotel before or had any connection to it, or if they had any reason for not crossing over.

According to Farrah, none of the ghosts at Cross Creek have unfinished business. They just like hanging around.

Dean calls bull-shit. He’s not yet met a ghost that didn’t have a reason for hanging on, their ghostly claws dug into the corporeal world for all they were worth. He feels like he’s getting the rose-colored version of it all from Farrah. That feeling and the sheer boredom involved in listening to her relate the details of over 70 spirits has made him a little belligerent.

Plus he didn’t get lunch and that makes him cranky.

He kind of thought he’d take a break when Sam ambled in for food, but it’s after three in the afternoon and Sammy has yet to show his Sasquatch face.

He probably already made himself a sandwich or scored food elsewhere. Bastard.

“I don’t buy it,” he says tersely.

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t care if you buy it or not, that’s the way it is.”

“You’re telling me out of 70 plus ghosts you don’t have one that causes problems?” Dean’s leaning over the kitchen table, tapping his index finger solidly on the tabletop.

“Not right now I don’t. I told you. They just want to hang out, see the tourists. Rattle some chains and make some spooky sounds. Sometimes we do get one that wants to cause trouble and I pull them aside and let them know that their shit won’t fly here. I find out why they’re causing problems, what they want, and I either get it for them, or I make them leave.”

“How? How do you make them leave?”

“I. Don’t. Know. I told you. I just… I kind of make the threat and then if they don’t take me seriously, it’s like I get mad and then… I kind of push at them.”

“Push at them how?”

“Jesus, are you just gonna keep spitting out the same questions over and over again?” she shoots rhetorically. “I don’t know. I just push at them with my head and then they leave. Sometimes I have to push harder than others.”

“What happens to them when you push them?”

She bits her lower lip. “I don’t really know. It’s like… I know they find it uncomfortable and it hurts. I asked Millie once if I could push at her and have her tell me what it felt like.”

Dean flips through his notes. “Millie…. Millicent Cooper, the one you say is a 1950s starlet?”

“Yes. She said it was like when she was alive and her funny bone would get hit, real bad. She said it hurt, but it was the kind of pain you can’t ignore. And she said it lasted for a long time after I stopped.” Farrah pauses and then calls out. “Sorry about that Mil.” She pauses again and her eyes are clearly directed to someone, something at her right. “I know, but I still feel shitty about it.” She turns back to Dean. “She also says she felt really weak and shaky.” Farrah’s eyes flick back to the empty space. “You never told me that before.” Pause. “Well I do feel bad and I was gonna feel bad anyway, you should’ve told me.” Another pause and then she laughs at something. “Okay, okay.” She turns back to Dean. “That’s all she’s got.”

“So what kind of problems make you threaten a ghost?”

“I dunno. Like if they’re mean to the tourists, or to the other spirits. Or we had one that was pyrokinetic and would set fire to stuff. Or they are really destructive with hotel property. Or sometimes I just get a real bad vibe off them. Like I walk into a room and I know they’re there and it feels… stained. Or tarnished.”

“How do they usually take it?”

“Like kids who’ve been caught doing something naughty and are pretty sure you can’t touch them. They get snarly and mean and flashy, trying to show off their mojo or whatever. Toss some stuff around, try to toss me around.” She huffs. “A ghost hasn’t been able to move me or Oliver without my permission since I was six.”

The same age she was when she went into Room 43.

“And after you push at them?”

“Sometimes they still try to act out and get a rise out of me. Sometimes they just leave right away. Cross over or go haunt somewhere else. I don’t really know. I just know they leave.”

Dean wonders if any of his haunts have ever overlapped with ghosts that have been kicked out of Cross Creek.

“So you think you’re what, Professor Xavier’s school for gifted spooks?”

She bristles at his tone. “You know, I didn’t ask you to come here and I didn’t ask you to help and I think I’ve been really good at answering your questions, but I’m done for today.” She pushes her chair back and gets up, stretching her back and legs with audible pops from her spine and knees.

Dean sigh is rueful and deep. “Look, I… In my line of work, I’ve never met a ghost, sprit or spook that wasn’t seriously fucked up and trying to do harm or just plain bat-shit crazy and causing trouble. This whole… situation you got going on here? It’s a new one on me and I’ve been hunting since I was eight.”

She eyeballs him. “Was it something you wanted to do?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, why not? I’m good at it. My dad did it.”

“It’s pretty much the same for me. My dad did it and he was good at it. It was never something I thought about ‘not’ doing.”

He mulls that over, nodding slowly as he does, and he thinks he gets it. He’s about to say something else when her attention goes from him to something lower down by her waist.

“Calm down,” she says immediately and then crouches down. “Okay, okay.” She looks up at Dean. “Charlie needs to talk to us. I can make him corporeal so you can see and hear him.”

“You can do that?”

She nods like it’s obvious. “Yeah, it’s what I do for the disco every year. It’s their one chance a year to be corporeal again.” She turns back to the empty space that must be Charlie and as she does, Dean can feel the air shift. The back of his neck tingles and the fine hair on his arm stands up with a prickly sensation crawling across his skin. As he watches, a little boy with a dark mop of hair flickers into being in front of him. He was kind of expecting soft lights and twinkling glares like the transporter beam of Star Trek, but instead, it’s like crackling static and ozone, sharp flashes and crunches and then Charlie’s in front of them, frantic eyes and worried face.

“I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. You know I can’t go in there,” Charlie pleads with Farrah, eyes darting worryingly over to Dean and back to Farrah.

“Go where honey?” She reaches out and holds his biceps, like a mom trying to ground a child to her while they continue to freak out.

“The maze. I showed him the book I had ‘cause I saw him reading the other one, and so I figured he’d want the book.”

“What book? Charlie what are you talking about?”

Charlie shifts back and forth on his feet and Dean can tell he’s realizing he just confessed to something he didn’t mean to.

“Your dad. He gave me a book to hide and I hid it real good but he said that someday I’d hafta give it someone and I thought it was him, the really tall one.”

“Sam?” asks Dean. “You mean my brother Sam?”

Charlie flicks his gaze to him again. “Yeah and he really liked it but then there was another me and I wanted to tell him, tell Sam it wasn’t me but it held me back and I couldn't do it and I wanted to come here right away but it wouldn’t let me.”

“Charlie, is it the bad thing? Was the bad thing holding you back?”

Charlie’s head nods so hard it would be comical if it wasn’t for the sick look on his face. “I tried to get here to tell you.”

“About the book?” asks Farrah.

“No, about the tall one, Sam.”

“What about Sam?” Dean demands.

“It made him. It made him go into the maze.”

***

“Charlie says Sam is in the maze.”

Dean had followed Farrah as she made a beeline back to her and Oliver’s small apartment room. Farrah’s tone is flat, succinct as she grabs her coat from the closet and zips it up.

“What the hell is he doing in there?” Oliver is pushing himself up from the couch, bracing his wobbly balance on his crutches.

Farrah’s on her hands and knees in the closet, tossing shoes around until she finds her boots and unceremoniously jams her feet into them, not bothering with the laces.

“It lured him in, Ollie,” she says as she stands up.

It’s silent in the room all of a sudden and Dean’s looking back and forth between the two of them waiting for one of them to speak when he realizes they are speaking.

They just aren’t doing it out loud.

“How ‘bout you stuff the psychic crap and share with the slow kids in the class?’ Dean shoots angrily.

“I was asking Ollie if he could tell where in the maze Sam was,” Farrah says unapologetically.

“And?” Dean prompts.

“I can’t,” answers Ollie. “The maze is one of my dead zones. It’s very difficult for me to get anything from there.”

“Did Sam ever give you anything of his?” Farrah asks her brother. “I mentioned it to him yesterday.”

Ollie shakes his head. “No, but…” he turns to look at Dean.

“But what?” Dean grinds out sharply.

“You think he’d work?” questions Farrah.

“Jesus fucking Christ if the two of you don’t knock it off with your cryptic bullshit, I will shoot one of you.”

“I was thinking,” says Oliver, “that siblings ‘belong’ to each other, in a manner of speaking.”

“So?”

“So, I might be able to use you as a locator for Sam?”

“I don’t get it, don’t you know this maze? Let’s just go in there and get him.”

Farrah shakes her head. “In the summer, of course I could do that. I know the maze and rescue the tourists all the time when they get lost, but you know, winter is different here and the maze is one of the places that’s most different. It’s not just a maze. It’s like a playground for this thing. It moves things; trees, statues, anything in the maze. It rearranges them. It changes the pattern. It could even start moving him, although it would probably have a hard time taking him too far. I can go in there and get Sam but it could take me hours or even days to find him without an idea of where to start looking.”

“And you think that you can use me to find him?”

Farrah and Oliver both nod.

“Then use away. What are you waiting for?”

Oliver hobbles forward on his crutches, his leg clearly bothering him more. He hesitates for a moment and then reaches out and grabs Dean’s arm. The room is silent as Oliver and Dean stare at each other.

“I thought you said I was null,” Dean comments.

“You are,” Oliver says, his tone distracted. “But I’m not trying to read you, I’m trying to get to your brother through you, the same way I would use his keys or a ring.”

“Are you objectifying me?” he says, feeling uncomfortable under Oliver’s scrutiny.

A faint smile plays across Oliver’s lips. “Yes.”

It’s quiet again and Dean tries not to fidget or shout at Oliver to hurry the hell up. Behind him he can hear Farrah pulling things out of the closet and then it’s silent. Finally Oliver speaks.

“South-southeast corner, about twenty feet from the center.” He drops his hand from Dean.

“All right,” says Farrah. “Sit tight.”

“Whoa, whoa,” says Dean quickly. “I’m going with you.”

“What did I tell you and Sam? Stay out of the maze. It’s not safe for you.”

“But it is for you?”

“It’s safer for me, yes.”

“What are you gonna do when you find Sam if he’s hurt, or unconscious?”

She squares her shoulders. “I’m a big girl.”

Dean huffs incredulously. “And he’s a bigger guy. You’ve got no chance if he can’t move on his own.”

“He’s right, Fay.”

She spins to face her brother. “Ollie!”

“I’m sorry but he is. If Sam’s hurt and can’t move on his own, it would take you forever to get him out and when Dean decides to follow you after you leave, I won’t be able to stop him,” Oliver says plainly. “He’ll just outrun me on my crutches.”

She stares at the two of them like they are mutineers on her ship. “Fine.” She turns back to the closet and pulls out another coat. “Take one of Ollie’s, yours is worth shit out there. Honestly.”

She doesn’t wait for Dean as she leaves the room and starts down the hallway to the back of the hotel. She opens the back door and they get hit with a cold wind and flakes of snow.

“Storm’s moved in,” says Ollie lowly.

“Yeah. You should probably dig out some blankets and put a pot of coffee on. When we bring Sam back, he’ll likely be cold and I’ll be pissed.”

“Ice princess,” Ollie jokes lowly. She smiles at him and leans forward to give him a hug. “Be careful, Fifi.”

“I hate when you call me Fifi.”

“No you don’t.” He pauses. “Fifi.”

She pulls away and is already down the small steps and heading toward the maze with Dean trailing behind her. His eyes roam over the hedge of greenery that’s the outer limit of the maze. The covering of snow on it is getting denser as the flakes fall quietly from the sky. It’s cold out. He can already feel the start of the chill through Oliver’s down coat and he wonders how long Sam’s been outside.

She halts just in front of the maze and turns to Dean. “Gimme your hand.”

He stares back at her. She rolls her eyes.

“It’s like… if I’m touching you, then you can see the maze how I see it, and you won’t get distracted or lost.”

“I can keep up with you.”

“It’s not that, it’s… it can make you see things and you might think you’re following me but you aren’t. But if were holding hands,” she makes a face at the expression, “then no matter what, you’re with me.”

“Should I go get my gun?”

“It won’t help you. There’s nothing to shoot at.”

He eyes her warily before finally slapping his hand into hers. Her fingers are cold and rough; calloused from all the work she does around the hotel. Then he looks at the maze.

It’s different now. Sharper. Taller. Darker. Denser. If it looked like this normally, no one would approach it with a ten foot pole. The bushes and trees are no longer green but dark, dark brown with black streaks feeding through as branches and roots. He has the feeling that if he reached out and touched the brown, it would cut him.

Farrah is tugging at his arm, pulling him into the maze and as they cross over the threshold a wave of nausea strikes him, making his stomach roll briefly. He feels like the air has changed, become thicker and they are pushing through it. Once inside the maze, he’s stunned to see there’s no sky above them.

Just black.

Nothing but black.

It makes his stomach roll again to look into the nothingness and he’s struck by a wave of vertigo. There’s no reference point and he stumbles to his knees. Farrah’s pulling at his arm.

“Don’t look up again,” she says tersely and as he climbs back to his feet he notices that she keeps her head tipped downward, able to see the brown and black, but not the nothingness above.

“Is this how it always looks?”

“Only in winter. We should try not to talk.”

She pushes forward, taking a turn. She stops as a branch reaches out from the side and tries to brush over her face. She mutters something under her breath that Dean doesn’t catch and the branch slinks back into mass.

The walls are writhing as they pass by. Like they are excited or tickled.

Or hungry.

He feels them, reaching out and grabbing at his feet but they keep moving. The reach a dead end and she turns back to face him, her lips a grim line.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing, we just have to back track.” She pulls him after her.

He thinks he hears laughing.

A sudden thought occurs to him. “Why don’t you just burn this thing down?”

He’s grabbed sharply and pulled into the writhing mass before he can even yelp out his surprise. He can hear Farrah shouting something, feel her cold fingers and sharp nails dig into his skin. It’s black and foul, the smell of dead rotting things filling up his nostrils and clawing it’s way down his throat. The stench is being chased by a branch and he tears at it with his free hand, getting a slippery grip on it as the tip of the branch starts to worm its way into his nasal cavity. He opens his mouth to shout and another branch, thick with slimy, soft leaves pushes into his mouth and starts to wiggle its way toward the back of his throat. He tries to yank his hand other free from Farrah’s but she holds fast and he feels her other hand fist into his coat and with a mighty yank she pulls him free, sending him sprawling to the ground, spitting and choking, long trails of saliva and brown sludge falling from his lips.

He realizes he’s pulled her down with him, her hand trapped painfully under his, pushed into the snow, as he rests his weight. But she’s silent as she waits for him to catch his breath. He sits back on his haunches, releasing her hand from his weight. He looks up at her.

“You shouldn’t say such things while we’re in here.”

“No shit.” He gets to his feet and she’s careful to keep her strong grip on his hand as he does. “Is this what’s happening to Sam right now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But Ollie didn’t say he was dead, so he’s not.”

He hesitates and he doesn’t want to ask but before he can stop himself the words are out of his mouth. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Ollie’s never wrong.”

He can hear the same confidence in her voice as she talks about his brother as he hears in his own when he talks about Sam.

She tugs on him lightly. “We need to keep moving.”

They continue on in silence again. She doesn’t speak and he keeps his mouth shut. The only sound is the sick slither of the branches as they turn in on each other, rolling over their own surfaces with a slick, oily sound, and the crunch of his feet and Farrah’s on the ground.

They come to six more dead ends, each one making Farrah’s expression more and more grim. He looks down at their hands once and their finger-beds are going from sick-white to a pale, pale blue. It’s colder inside the maze than it was outside. There’s no wind, but it’s like the maze is pulling the warmth from them. He realizes though that although it’s cold, his breath doesn’t plume in out in grey puffs.

It gets sucked into the air and there’s nothing.

He’s so focused on the ground under his feet that when Farrah is suddenly in front of him he almost runs into her back. He looks over her shoulder and sees her staring at a large mass on the ground about ten feet in front of them.

It’s a writhing lump of branches, leaves, moss and dead things. Dean’s seem some scary ass shit in his life but something about the pulsing pile makes him a little ill.

“What the fuck is that?” he whispers in her ear.

“Sam.”

“The hell?” He darts past her and her grip is surprisingly strong as she holds him. He turns back quickly and makes a move to yank his hand free. Strong or not, she’s still a woman and her strength is no match for his.

Then he sees her face.

It occurs to him in a split second that the maze is some kind of otherworld, and whatever it is that makes Farrah different, that enables her to speak with the dead also makes her something ‘other’ as well. He’d been following her the whole time they were in the maze and hasn’t seen her face for a while, either staring at the ground or at her back and now when he looks at her, she has an otherness about her. Her skin is sharply ashen, but she doesn’t look ill with the change in color. Her eyes which were dark grey before now have silver flecks in them. She looks cold; remote and far away.

He’s suddenly seriously concerned that he’s royally fucked.

She’s not looking at him but is staring at the large mass. She moves toward it and he has no choice but to follow her. When they get closer, Dean can make out Sam’s shoe, hidden deep within the mess and he struggles with the urge to pounce on top of the entire pile and start pulling and hacking and shouting for his brother. Farrah crouches down, kneeling in the snow and puts one hand on top and the branches immediately cover her hand, smoothly gliding over top, happy for more.

“What are you doing?” Dean rasps, watching as Farrah calmly lets the branches start working their way up her arm.

“Wait.”

He tugs at her hand, like a toddler trying to get his mother’s attention. “Seriously, have you like checked out or something?”

“Just… wait.”

She waits until the branches are curling their way up to her shoulder, one snaking around the faux fur collar of her puffy down jacket and wrapping itself around her neck. She turns her hand over in the large mass of branches and closes her fist tightly over as much as she can hold. And then she starts to speak. Her voice is low and soft and he has to strain to hear her words. At first he’s not sure he’s hearing her correctly, but as she repeats herself over and over, he can make out all the words.

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile, he found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a little crooked house. There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile…”

They are so seriously fucked, Dean’s not even sure he has words for it.

“All right, fuck this,” he says and he yanks at his hand.

And can’t free it from hers.

“He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a crooked little house. There was a crooked man…”

She’s slowly rocking back and forth and her eyes have glassed over, no longer seeing. She’s reached some kind of fugue state and he’s stuck watching her repeat some ridiculous children’s rhyme. Her voice is getting quieter and quieter until all he can hear is the soft sound of her k’s and t’s, and the low hiss of her s’s.

Then the shrieking starts.

He can’t tell where it’s coming from at first until he realizes it’s the mass covering Sam. It’s shrieking and squawking and turning over itself faster and faster. It tries to unwind itself from Farrah, spinning it’s way back down her arm, but it’s trapped in the vice-like claw of her grip. It tightens around her wrist and Dean can see it digging into the skin, pulling off layers of tissue. Blood starts to drip off her wrist and from her palm.

The mass starts to hiss, snapping out long angry branches at her face. One of them cuts the top of her cheek and she twists her wrist cruelly and Dean hears it mewl. Her expression is stoney, almost condescending as she repeats her rhyme. The turgid mass starts to hiss.

“Go away.”

He’s surprised when she says it. Her voice is clear and precise.

He’s even more surprised when the aggregation whimpers and starts to slink backward, coalescing itself back into the walls. It pulls itself off Sam quickly, leaving him wet and sludgy on the floor of the maze. Farrah keeps her grip on the branches in her hand until Sam is free and then she squeezes them, the liquid falling from her hand black and bloody onto the snow. There’s another high pitched whimper and then she tosses her handful to the ground.

Dean crouches next to Sam and uses his free hand to shake his shoulder gently. “Sam? Sammy? You still with us?”

Sam groggily moves his head and opens his eyes slowly. “Dean.” His lips are slightly blue, his clothes wet and dirty.

Farrah slides her bloody hand into one of Sam’s. “Can you stand up?”

Sam looks over at her and shrinks back slightly toward Dean. Farrah frowns in confusion, looking quickly at Dean.

She doesn’t know she looks different in here, Dean thinks.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he says lowly, trying to get Sam into a seated position. Between the two of them, they manage to get him to his feet, sandwiching him between the two of them. Farrah’s able to keep a hand on Dean’s, while she holds one of Sam’s over her shoulder.

“I got lost,” Sam mutters.

“We know,” answers Dean.

“Crazy lost and the walls were watching me.” His words are slurred and his feet sluggish as they half drag him along.

Neither one of them have anything to say to that and Farrah and Dean continue on in silence as Sam continues to babble and murmur.

Dean doesn’t know how long it takes them to make their way out. Less time than it took to make their way in by a long shot, as if the maze is tired of fucking with them.

As if Farrah tired it out.

They finally come to the break in the wall that signifies the entrance and Dean finally chances a look up as they cross the threshold and can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when he sees grey sky and shapeless storm clouds. He looks up at the hotel and sees Oliver standing in the doorway, posture tense. He’s got a soft, warm glow about him. Dean blinks his eyes, thinking he’s got snowflakes in them before he realizes that Farrah’s still touching his hand and it must still be part of how she sees things.

He looks past Oliver at the hotel and it too has a kind of glow, but not like Oliver. Where Oliver’s glow or aura is soft and shaded, warm and somewhat comforting, the hotel is almost swampy; thick and gooey.

But it isn’t threatening or foreboding like the maze. Dean doesn’t feel sick looking at it.

Just sad.

He can tell the second Farrah slips her hand away from his. It’s like a cellophane wrapper has been ripped off his view and everything goes back to normal.

The journey back must have warmed Sam up some and while it’s difficult to get him up the small stairs and down the long hallway to Farrah and Oliver’s apartments, they manage it and drop him on Oliver’s bed. Dean starts to strip Sam of his wet jacket and shirts as Farrah unties his boots and yanks them off his feet along with his socks.

The bed is warm, already heated up by an electric blanket and Sam shivers slightly and burrows under the covers as Dean tucks him in. Dean shifts his eyes over to Farrah quickly and then back to Sam.

“You should get your hand taken care of,” says Dean. “Your face too.”

He sees her out of the corner of her eye look down at her hand, cut and clotting, and the burn on her wrist where the branches sloughed off a few layers of skin.

“Yeah,” she says quietly, her tone laced with soft confusion, like she can’t quite remember how she got hurt. “I’ll get Ollie to bandage it up. You okay?”

“Me? Peachy.”

She nods and starts to back out of the room. “I’ll bring back some coffee and maybe some soup for Sam. I think he’ll be fine. He just needs to warm up.”

The second she’s gone, Dean leans over Sam and shakes him gently.

“Sammy? You okay?”

Sam blinks slightly, let’s loose a shiver down the length of his body. “I got lost, Dean.”

“I know.”

“Stupid pomegranates. Don’t eat the pomegranates.”

Dean nods like it’s sage advice, although he hasn’t a clue what his brother is mumbling about.

“I won’t.”

“I didn’t eat them, she will. She eats them on purpose.”

“Okay,” Dean soothes as he pulls the blankets up and around Sam.

“No.” Sam’s hand darts out of the blankets and catches Dean by the wrists. “It’s not okay, Dean. Don’t give her the wheel. Don’t.”

Dean has no idea what Sam’s saying but he’s got a sick feeling that it’s not just random hypothermia confusion.

“I won’t, okay? I won’t.”

Sam half nods and his eyes drift shut again. He sighs dreamily as the warmth starts to seep back into his body. Dean sits on the edge of the bed and tugs the borrowed jacket off.

He feels Oliver’s eyes on him before Oliver clears his throat in the doorway.

“Sorry for kicking you out of your bed, man,” Dean says gruffly.

“Don’t mention it.” Oliver hesitates, his mouth opening and closing quickly.

“What?”

“You should come see something.”

Dean spares a look at his sleeping brother, but the solemn, serious expression on Oliver’s face has him getting up and following Oliver out of the apartment and down the hall, retracing their steps to the back door.

“I didn’t want to go through the kitchen ‘cause Fay’s in there getting coffee and some soup for Sam,” says Oliver as he hobbles past the back door and down another hallway. They come out of a hidden door underneath the grand staircase and Oliver limps toward the foot of the stairs. When he gets there he pauses.

“I haven’t told Fay yet. But it’s not like I can hide it from her.” Oliver looks uncomfortable. “I’m really sorry, Dean. I should have never let you and your brother stay.”

Dean frowns as Oliver indicates with a jerk of his head for Dean to look up the stairs.

It’s scrawled across the wall at the landing in the same brown sludge that was so prevalent in the maze; one word above the small window that looks out to the maze, two words below.

Welcome, Sam Winchester.


Continue on to Part 4