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“Dean. Check this out.” Dean came to look over Sam’s shoulder at his laptop screen. “Five women, five broken backs. All of them saying they weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary or where they’d expect to get hurt. One was taking a nap, even.”
“Huh. That is weird. But there’s no attacks, no evidence of violence?”
“No one saw anything and there’s no other wounds, but come on, broken backs for no reason? That’s gotta be our kind of thing, don’t you think?”
Dean shrugged. “Worth checking out at least. Beats sitting around here.” Dean finished off the last of his beer. “Can I just say how nice it is to be able to say that without having to justify why we should take a case instead of chasing after the Apocalypse or hunting Leviathans or trying to solve the Mark of Cain? Been a while since we could just chase whatever leads came our way.”
Sam huffed. “Yeah, that’s… can’t argue there. But it’s better now, because we have a home and some good friends. I don’t know that we’ve ever had life this good together.”
“No death threats, neither of us on a road that ends with us dead or evil… just a couple of hunters doing the hunting thing. Together. Let’s hit the road, huh?” Dean smacked Sam’s shoulder and left to get his bag.
In the two day drive, three more women ended up with broken backs, and Dean became a lot less skeptical. “Okay. Something weird’s gotta be happening. Split up so we can talk to them quicker?”
“Sounds good to me. You want the hospital or door-to-door?”
“Ugh, hospital. CDC?”
“Seems like the logical choice. Good luck.”
Three of the victims had gone home, and Sam visited all three. One had been tossing a baseball with her son while her daughter played hopscotch with a friend. The second was the one taking a nap. Neither woman remembered anything unusual until there was a sudden sharp pain in their back. Another had been outside sitting on the sidewalk teaching her baby to walk. She remembered a gust of surprisingly cool wind right before the pain started.
Dean’s interviews were similar. Normal, everyday behavior – not even lifting or bending, just doing things. Two of them mentioned the cold wind, three didn’t remember anything odd. “So, cold wind. That’s all we’ve got.”
“What about the victims? Anything we can find that they have in common?”
“Youngest was 20, oldest 47. Different races, one single, two divorced, four married, and one widowed. Live in different parts of town, different jobs, got rich and poor…”
“They all have kids, though. Only thing I can see aside from all living in this town. They’re all moms.”
“Moms with broken backs?” There was mischief in Dean’s voice.
Sam groaned. “Okay. I’ll start looking for sidewalk cracks. Sure, that’s exactly what this is.”
“Scoff all you want. I’ll check some too.”
To Sam’s great surprise, they found cracks in the sidewalks near every victim’s house. “Okay, but why. Why is kids stepping on cracks actually breaking their mothers’ backs?” Sam demanded. “That just seems odd for a ghost, weak sauce for a Trickster, surely Jesse’s grown out of believing that kind of thing…”
“Some sort of curse? Psychic projection from a kid in a dream, like those fairy tales?”
“Guess we start searching for recent coma patients or violent deaths. See if we can find anything.”
Sam spent a long, boring day at the library while Dean went out talking to people. He found the answer buried deep in the newspaper archive and called Dean. “So get this. Seventy-two years ago, this kid Violet Moore came home to find her mother lying on the ground in pain. She’d broken her back. According to her, it happened when she was lifting a heavy washtub, so perfectly normal – but Violet’s older brother Thomas told her it was because she stepped on a crack.”
“Okay?”
“The mom died a couple months later, after another broken bone. Thomas told Violet she must have stepped on another crack, and Violet ran off in tears. When Thomas was sent to get her for dinner, he couldn’t find her. They found her the next morning, where she’d gotten into the rat poison and eaten as much as she could.”
“Okay, so that explains why she’d be breaking backs, but why now? If it’s been seventy-two years.”
“The brother, Thomas, just died last week.”
“So… what, he’s breaking backs?”
“He was cremated, so I hope not because then we’re looking for an object tether. What if his guilt was somehow keeping Violet quiet, though? And now he’s gone, so she’s free to do what she wants.”
“Worth a shot. You got a location for her grave?”
“Yep.”
The salt and burn went reasonably well. Violet tried to stop them, but Dean held her off while Sam finished digging. Salt poured, body burned, they headed back to the motel. “You know what, Sammy? I think I’m getting too old for this.”
“Oh, come on, Bobby was doing this how long? And Rufus? Dad?”
“None of them had been doing it all their lives. Wear and tear on the body. Come on. Just humor me and tell me I’m not that old and help me feel better.”
Sam rolled his eyes and laughed at Dean. “If you want a massage, all you have to do is ask. Helps if you promise a happy ending, of course.”
“Dude. When have I not made sure you got a happy ending after giving me a massage?” Dean held up a hand. “If there weren’t witnesses present? Like Dad. That… would have been a bad idea.”